Wow - Compare This With Side Commentary on Legal Defense Fund

"Why So Few"

"Litigating against a school district costs time and money that many parents don’t have, and school districts are increasingly willing to spend. Determined public schools can outspend and outlast almost any family. In California, school officials “fought so hard to block the claims of a student that Judge Oliver W. Wanger of United States District Court took 83 pages to berate the district’s ‘hard-line position’ and its law firm for ‘willfully and vexatiously’ dragging out the case so long that the former student is now 24.” Litigated cases are extremely rare; media reports of a tidal wave of special education lawsuits are contradicted by an examination of the data. In California, only 0.6 percent of students with a disability file a formal complaint over their educational services. Far fewer ever reach the courts.
http://www.hoover.org/publications/ednext/6018321.html

Unfair Set Up

Today, I am opening the doors to my "hotel". It will be heaven or it will be hell. I was in another "Special Ed Motel" for 21 years in several different wings. Some times I was treated as a guest, and some times I was treated as a recalcitrant. The constant was me - the variable was how honestly I was "handled".

For this post, I want to expose and explore an inane dichotomy of Special Education. Special Ed has a set of rules(Federal laws) that school personnel and parents are supposed to follow. The disparity in the level of knowledge of these rules (Federal laws) by either party seems to me to a problem that could easily be changed by having a forthright program designed to educate all the true intent of the rules (Federal Laws).

That is not what happens. What does happen is that as long as there is collaboration between teacher and parent, the system works as well as the regular ed system. When this collaboration becomes strained or challenged, the resulting actions of both school personnel and parent leads to what ultimately is an unfair set up for both of them.

The worst scenario is when the parent knows the rules (Federal Laws) and tries to enforce them vs. the school personnel who knows them and chooses to obfuscate them.

This "unfair set up" could be rectified by a sincere effort of an administration.

I think I know why it doesn't happen. I am curious if anyone else knows.


We need to deny that there's anything "special" about being disabled, so we can stop getting "special treatment" instead of justice -John R. Woodward, M.S.W.
http://www.jik.com/ilclang.html#TIME_TO_GET_RID_OF_SPECIAL