It Ain't Me Babe, No, No, No It Ain't Me Babe

I was trying to find the information about how making public schools be responsible for educating disabled kids was more about politics than education. Still haven't found it, but the search is interesting.

I once went to Washington D.C. to speak to a couple of legislators about ESE Issues. It has been about 10 years ago and my memory has a lot of gaps in it.

I found this Report to Congress and was perusing through it.

I selected these few bits, but there are plenty:

Finding 1: Parent-professional relationships too often are strained and difficult, and parents and professionals frequently view one another as adversaries rather than as partners.

Finding 2:

Some parents have difficulty finding appropriate services for their children.

.......... the states are "evaluating" children to deny them service. "I don't have this service, and I don't have this service. We don't have the money for this service. We will need to re-evaluate." And when they finish their evaluation, the child is no longer in need of the service. And this is going on again and again, and again. And it is not just in the South...I deal with parents all over the United States.

......."What is lacking is a respect for the kinds of things that it is necessary for students with disabilities to learn......


Finding 7:

Many parents are uninformed about their rights under the law.

Although school districts are required to inform parents of their rights under the law, witnesses testified that parents frequently report that they are not informed.
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"We have a very complicated state formula mechanism [in West Virginia] where special needs students are triple-weighted. And that means that for every dollar appropriated for a regular education student, special needs students are given three dollars. Sounds good, doesn't it? There is a catch. The catch is that those funds are not earmarked and that the county superintendent and his board may spend it on whatever they please. It can be spent on salary increases for the administrators;......."

I could go on and on about things I can relate to that are in this report. I have been writing about these things since I was goaded into blogging.

This report was written almost 20 years ago.

Just read the titles of the Findings and you will get the picture.