Posts by Jennifer Parker
One Special Needs Child Left Behind
Published January 14, 2009 @ 06:07PM PT
From Special Education guest-blogger Jennifer Parker: When I first set about writing a Special Education guest-post for change.org, I sent an invitation for responses to the Educating for Human Greatness community. One of its members wrote the letter below, sharing her experience, as a teacher, with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act [IDEA]. Because it hits upon a lot of the topics discussed in previous posts and comments, I'm reprinting it almost in its entirety.
Retired teacher Tanya Sharon's account of a student that came to her from a residential facility for mentally retarded people reminds me of the subject of my first post: the state of education for students with disabilities, before federal law protected their right to a free, appropriate public education. As I read it, I felt as if I was in the classroom with the teacher, sharing in her joys and frustrations. On the joyous side, this student made tremendous progress in Tanya’s class, despite a lack of support. But read what happens to this child after he leaves her class. Did this child receive an appropriate education? What are your thoughts?
Jennifer,
Several years ago … I was … given a first grade class of 30 students with about 10 who could speak some English. (I speak Spanish so I could communicate with the children and their parents.) In October the administrator brought in a boy who had been living in a residential facility for retarded people in Mexico. I was told that he was there only until they could get paper work to identify him as "trainably mentally impaired" and transfer him to a "special" school. The mother, who spoke no English, didn't want her son sent to another school so she and I worked together to find advocates and translators for her and her child. It wasn't until April that we finally had an IEP conference.
Because what the mother was asking was so controversial, the meeting included the head of the special ed. department along with a social worker advocate and lawyer for the parent and child besides the usual attendees. We met for two full afternoons at which time it was decided to leave him in the classroom but to provide a full time aide. We finally got an aide in May but she was fired within the month because she spent a great deal of time on her cell phone and was absent several days each week.
Special Education 2: The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and Congressional Intent
Published January 07, 2009 @ 03:56PM PT
[Editor's note: This is the second post on the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act by guest-blogger Jennifer Parker, a legal advocate for educational rights of children with disabilities. See her first post here, and read more from her blog, Best Policy Practice.]
The Intent of the Ninety-fourth United States Congress
Members of the Ninety-fourth United States Congress took notice of the facts and rulings in PARC and Mills. Congressional response included an investigation into the status of all children with disabilities. After an investigation and hearings, Congress enacted Public Law 94-142, originally titled Education for All Handicapped Children Act and later reauthorized and renamed Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA 2004).
As noted in the United States Code Congressional and Administrative News 1975 (USCCAN), Congress introduced the legislation in response to
…landmark court cases establishing in law the right to education for all children [Mills and PARC] … In 1954, the Supreme Court of the United States [Brown v. Board of Education] … stated “In these days, it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education.”
The investigation yielded valuable data about the numbers of children not receiving an appropriate education. Congress found that, out of 8 million children with disabilities, only 3.9 million were receiving appropriate education. 4.25 million children were either receiving no education or inappropriate education.
Origins of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act
Published January 06, 2009 @ 09:14AM PT
[Editor's note: As promised, this post by guest blogger Jennifer Parker is our first to focus on special education. It won't be our last. I'm excited to have Jennifer on board. See more of her work at her "Best Policy Practice." Now, here's Jennifer (and note that all images below are from Willowbrook):]
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I have the great fortune to be an education advocate for chronically ill children. It's rewarding and frustrating work that combines my public school teaching experience with my legal background as an attorney for parents of children who happen to have special needs.
Every week I talk to parents about the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, federal laws that entitle children with disabilities to a free, appropriate public education. Most of the parents I work with have not heard of these legislative acts or want to know more about them. I look forward to helping guide this community through discussions on IDEA and special education in general. But before we get there, let's go back a few years. Just a few - because to discuss where we are, we need to examine where we've been.
Before 1975, when Congress passed the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, later reauthorized and renamed Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, a child deemed "uneducable" could be (and often was) legally barred from entering public school in most states. Uneducable children were children who were - or who were thought to be - mentally deficient, "crippled," blind, deaf, "defective," "delinquent," epileptic, or "diseased" .
