The Sound Of A Closed Door Can Be Deafening

There is something very intriguing about the doors to public education. I don’t know who built the first one, but I am sure that information could be found if one took the time. I have no doubt that the study of the origin and progression of public schools in our country would be a fascinating endeavor . I am also sure the following statement made by a former Teacher of the Year would not go without challenge:

“ The secret of American schooling is that it doesn't teach the way children learn
- nor is it supposed to. Schools were conceived to serve the economy and the social order rather than kids and families -- that is why it is compulsory.”



I throw that out there for others to attack or defend. The premise is why I have chosen it. The fact that even today there is much discussion about whether current influences on public education are self serving and not truly aimed at education is no different than the above premise.

I do know of two major social issues where it took the Federal Court to pry open the doors of public education that were obviously closed for two identifiable groups. One major door opening to the public as a whole was Brown v. Board of Education. Another major door opening to the public as a whole was the Education of the Handicapped Act (EHA or the Act). One must read about the many other doors that had to be pried open before these two major doors were forcibly opened.

Since the mid 1990's this writer first learned about the secret that when the teacher's door is closed, it is their realm. In fact it was told to me in that way almost verbatim. The secret was dirty then, and it remains so today.

I have previously asked the question "what rights does a regular education student have to their education." The answer to that question increases in intrigue and difficulty when one compares it to the answer of the question "what rights does a special education student have to their education."

Understanding case laws that have shaped our public education system is a formidable task. Many of the people who work day in and day out may not even know or understand where the pressures come from that effect their daily routine. A door may be physically closed, and a parent may be physically kept out of the classroom, but is that really keeping the parent out of the classroom?


I have chosen a passage from a federal case HONIG, California Superintendent of Public Instruction v. DOE, et al. to make a point:

"Envisioning the IEP as the centerpiece of the statute's education delivery system for disabled children, and aware that schools had all too often denied such children appropriate educations without in any way consulting their parents, Congress repeatedly emphasized throughout the Act the importance and indeed the necessity of parental participation in both the development of the IEP and any subsequent assessments of its effectiveness. See 1400(c), 1401(19), 1412(7), 1415(b)(1)(A), (C), (D), (E), and 1415(b)(2). Accordingly, the Act establishes various procedural safeguards that guarantee parents both an opportunity for meaningful input into all decisions affecting their child's education and the right to seek review of any decisions they think inappropriate. These safeguards include the right to examine all relevant records pertaining to the identification, evaluation and educational placement of their child; prior written notice whenever the responsible educational agency proposes (or refuses) to change the child's placement or program; an opportunity to present complaints concerning any aspect of the local agency's provision of a free appropriate public education; and an opportunity for "an impartial due process hearing" with respect to any such complaints. 1415(b)(1), (2)."

If we examine this part of the statement, does this not "put the parent in the classroom" : "guarantee parents both an opportunity for meaningful input into all decisions affecting their child's education and the right to seek review of any decisions they think inappropriate?"

Myths and Co-optation

In late 1996, when I realized that common sense and normal interactions with many of the people-in-power within the public school system did not work, I sought assistance from other sources. One of these happened to be a book.

"You, Your Child, and Special Education" - A Guide to Making the System Work by
Barbara Coyne Cutler

It made a lot of sense as I connected to the issues that were outlined. Parents like me are found everywhere. What I liked about the book was how she conceptualized "the system" and "parents". For instance, she conceptualized some "myths". She stated "they are effective in keeping a smokescreen around the human and everyday limitations and imperfections of the people who work for school systems, and, to the extent that they silence or confuse parents, they provide security to "threatened" school personnel. However, the myths do not really benefit anyone, - children, parents, or even school personnel." pg 16

She wrote about "myths about educators". They include:
"Educators are super experts in their field"
"Educators are totally objective"
"Educators are free agents"

And then she says this: "Professionals caught in the super expert myth try to maintain the appearance of knowing all out of fear that otherwise parents or colleagues will question their competence. Furthermore, the need to appear super competent may become more imperative if school budgets are tightened and more people vie for fewer permanent school positions. School personnel may feel financially and professionally threatened if they confess they do not have all the educational answers at their fingertips." pg 30-31.

Having said all of that, Cutler goes on to outline ineffective ways to deal with the system. The one I choose to point out is what she calls "co-optation". While she talks primarily about parents, I can't help but think this same strategy works for "disgruntled" school employees also.

While reading some of the local blogs, I can't help but wonder if these strategies will be used to rein in the ones who are vocalizing issues.

Once members of this group grow weary from struggling, they become grateful for kind words and special relationships. "Some schools are experts at recognizing these parents and do just enough to keep them in an ingratiating posture: a few kind words.. a little threat... . Be careful of the teacher or administrator who tells you that you are not like the other parents(because you are so understanding and realistic), who shares his or her problems with you, who is always in when you call, and who is unusually prompt about returning your calls. "

"Co-optation is a hard pattern to change because the seduction... is gradual, even insidious, process during which you have may occasions to develop the habit of supporting and sympathizing with the school person."

In an earlier post I asked this question - how do some people sleep at night?

Maybe the answer is somewhere in myths and co-optation.

Obfuscate and Cavalier - A Curtain? Shield?

I posted the below from the Tribune on my PRO on HCDS blog. Obfuscate and cavalier are unusual words to be seen together very often.

It took me from 1990 to 1996 before I started to analyze the repeated occurrences effecting me to conceptualize those two words about HCDS. When it was obvious to all that something was wrong, the focus on what was wrong was never the issue. Many many times in many different settings. Rather the focus was placed on a myriad of other areas, frequently me. Many times I felt that for "them" to fix the problem would admit (from them) that there was a problem. Therefore, the "fix" couldn't happen right away or until I was no longer there to see the fix.

My concerns about the special education issues in HCDS are not about me. It isn't because I am a malcontent. It isn't because I will never be satisfied. It isn't because I am an isolated incident. It isn't because I carry a broad brush. My kid is out of the system.

It is because the issues are real for the kids, the parents and the teachers. I just spent Saturday at a conference about special education. There were hundreds of isolated incidents, malcontents and broad brushes. It was not just parents. By a show of hands, I only saw two administrators. Even if there were more administrators there, it would still be a low number compared to the ones that were there because they are looking for answers to problems. According to the administrator that I heard spoke, there are a lot of good things happening in the world of special education.

I hope all of those things reported on are not undone by obfuscation and being cavalier. I hope that everyone, including teachers and supervisors, have the ability to speak up about their concerns when it comes to the rights of children with disabilities. I know, it's about all of the kids. If I had been at a science conference, I wonder if I would have heard "We are here for all of the children, and our support for the science department goes right along with our support for all of the students here in our District".

What is the cost to the District if the kids, the parents and the teachers do not trust the District?


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Click here: Shooting Case Raises Questions About District's Credibility Tribune says: "Instead of treating parents' questions with respect, they obfuscate or cavalierly dismiss them. "


I have been using the words "obfuscate" and "cavalier" to describe the HCDS since 1996.

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Shooting Case Raises Questions About District's Credibility The Tampa Tribune Published: September 30, 2007 Video: Shooting Raises Questions For Parents If Hillsborough County public school officials want parents to trust them with their children, they need to be responsive and honest. But in Temple Terrace, where many parents are worried about the safety of the area's high school, straight answers are hard to come by. And this seems characteristic of a school district that all too often appears obsessed with avoiding blame and minimizing problems. Consider the town hall meeting inTemple Terrace earlier this month. School leaders brushed off valid questions about student safety, telling parents the area's schools are merely the victims of bad publicity and misperceptions. The handling of the shooting death of King High School student Dalshon Walton during an after-school fight was particularly revealing. It has been nearly two years since the shooting, yet it continues to be a flashpoint for parents with safety concerns because the district has been so eager to dismiss this tragic event as irrelevant. Officials have insisted Walton's death had nothing to do with the school because it occurred just off campus and the shooter wasn't a King student. That remains King Principal Carla Bruning's stance. But investigators and prosecutors have amassed a voluminous file of documents and testimony that shows otherwise. And district officials who maintain there was no connection between the shooting and the school either are ignoring facts or are in denial. We dug into the case, which is detailed in thousands of pages of public documents at the Hillsborough County State Attorney's office. We found strong evidence that Walton died as a result of a dispute between King students, which started in the school days earlier over a minor insult and erupted into the brawl at the McDonalds. Testimony and investigators' reports say Otis Lorenzo Neal, who has since pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, was summoned to the fight by a relative who was a King student involved in that ongoing quarrel. In disturbing - but uncorroborated - testimony, a female King student said she saw the boy who brought Neal into the fight with a gun at school the same day. Hillsborough County Sheriff's Deputy Nathaniel Johnson, who is assigned to King, also testified he met with the same boy and his mother earlier that day because she was concerned trouble was brewing. Defying his mother and the deputy, the boy ended up at McDonald's. The fight clearly was a case of a school dispute spilling onto private property. Yet when asked why the school has always denied a connection, Bruning said she never knew the facts. Bruning says she was never briefed on the case and she never asked the details. Sheriff's Major Harold Winsett, who oversees the school resource officer program, says that's not true - Bruning was told by the school deputy the extent to which King students were involved. Even the school district's head of security, Dave Friedberg, says he has long known the facts of the case and that he and Bruning jointly made improvements in the school in response to those facts. Friedberg says school officials may have said the shooting was not 'related' or 'connected' to King because incidents not on school property are not considered school-related. But Friedberg says he also understands parents would have a broader interpretation. 'Is it school related? No,' Friedberg said. 'Does it involve us? Yes.' Friedberg, though, was not the one tasked with responding to the public about this incident. The school officials who did played word games. Their conduct makes the district look as if it intended to mislead people. This undermines school officials' credibility and takes some shine from what appear to be laudable safety improvements at King. The school has undergone security upgrades, adding a fence, surveillance equipment and an armed security officer. The school's annual crime stats show there were just three fights at the school last year, compared to the 58 that occurred in the 2005-06 school year. Yet school officials didn't come to the Temple Terrace town hall meeting armed with such facts, perhaps because that would have required them to acknowledge violence had been a concern. Reasonable parents will understand that bad things happen despite educators' best efforts. And there is no evidence the school was in any way negligent in the shooting. Yet being defensive seems to be school leaders' natural reflex. We've seen it in the way they've dealt with parents who have questioned the elementary math curriculum; in how they've handled parents who objected to abrupt boundary changes and now in how they answer questions about school safety. Instead of treating parents' questions with respect, they obfuscate or cavalierly dismiss them. At the town hall meeting, a King student who says he was at the fight animatedly talked about running when he heard the shots. Bruning heartily laughed at his account. But parents take such matters seriously. And when it comes to their children's safety, they want, and deserve, the unvarnished truth. To see video of a King High School student talk about safety at his school, go to TBO.com. Click on Tampa Tribune and then Opinion."

"We are the Experts" equals "We are the ones in Control"

There is a cost to arrogance that is boistered by ignorance.


My son's first three years in the HCDS were great. The problems started when we switched schools in 1990. As the year progressed, I experienced a few of the below, I just didn't know it. As the months went by, and meeting after meeting (increasing in both number of attendees and distance from my house) brought no results, we brought in a real expert on my kid's disability from Florida State University. This real expert spent two days observing my kid at school. This real expert then wrote a very comprehensive report. She included many anecdotal incidents to explain what should be changed. We were so excited because here was a professional saying what we had been trying to say, but we were never "understood".

As the people at FSU were not used to the culture of HCDS, they sent us a copy of the report also. (It is a common practice for schools to influence independent evaluations and control what information parents receive.) I did not know then what I know now, but the HCDS people were quite surprised when they gave us their copy of the report and we told them we already had a copy. Had I known then what I know now, I would have compared the two reports to see if anything had been changed. As the IEP team go through the report, I kept seeing that the "team" is not incorporating the recommendations of the report into the IEP. At some point I finally confront this. The answer was "well these are just recommendations, we don't have to do them.".

The last time I looked, the same person who said that is still in the same position now as she was then.

How many times do we hear in an IEP meeting :"well, that is the recommendation of the District's evaluation and it is a consensus of the IEP team that we......." while the parent is still trying to argue the information. It is interesting how the phrase "consensus of the IEP team" has so much more power than "The IEP Team, of which the parent is an integral member, is responsible for determining the services that are necessary for the child to receive FAPE." Spare me the interpretation that the District is ultimately responsible for the decision of FAPE. While I understand that premise under the law, if that is the mindset of the "district IEP Team", then why not say it out loud in the meeting and say "we (the District) recognize that you (the parent) are an integral member of the IEP team, but we are exercising our right to enforce FAPE, so it really doesn't matter what you or your independent evaluations say."


Mistakes People Make - School Districts by Robert K. Crabtree, Esq. Print this page Anything a school system does that undermines parents' trust creates a climate that is costly in dollars, time, peace of mind, and the quality and success of services given to the child. Here are the most significant school system mistakes, according to persons at every level of the system: 1. Refusing to let parents or parents' experts see programs, either within or outside of the school system. When school systems tightly restrict the parents' access to their own programs, the parents wonder what they are hiding and assume the worst; when they refuse to clear the way for parents to see an outside program, the parents will assume that the grass is greener over there; 2. Failing or refusing to communicate and actively coordinate with outside experts working with the child, such as the child's therapist or a tutor; 3. Ignoring reports from independent evaluators; failing to speak to those evaluators to clarify ambiguous information or recommendations; failing to add the evaluator's recommendations to the IEP when reasonable; 4. Failing to respond to parents in writing or at a meeting when a problem arises; 5. Taking a patronizing and/or antagonistic and/or insulting attitude toward parents; personalizing issues between school and parents; attempting to blame parents for their children's educational failures rather than looking for solutions (school system professionals need to treat parents with respect even if those parents are insulting and belligerent themselves); 6. Sweating the small stuff (e.g., spending twenty minutes at a team meeting arguing about whether the meeting can be tape-recorded); 7. Failing to observe procedural timelines and notice requirements (e.g., scheduling timely meetings, getting evaluations to the parents before the team meeting, notifying the parents who will attend the meeting, providing clear written explanations of parent rights); 8. Writing careless and sloppy IEPs. Parents, evaluators, and hearing officers all look first at the extent to which the written IEP reflects a thorough and logically coherent view of the child, the goals and objectives for that child's program, and a clear and understandable description of what will be provided, how, by whom, and when; and how the child's program will be evaluated; 9. Failing to implement an IEP and, worse, trying to cover up that failure; 10. Failing to modify an IEP that is not working and waiting, instead, for the program - and the child - to collapse; 11. Failing to provide additional or different services as a way to avoid having to make more restrictive (and expensive) outside placements; 12. Failing to call in expert consultants from outside the school system with good reputations among both school and parent communities who can help develop or monitor a program for a child with unusual needs; 13. Losing contact with families who have placed their child unilaterally. Some school systems forget or ignore their continuing responsibility to evaluate, review, and propose IEPs for children when they are attending outside placements at their parents' expense; 14. Botching the required procedures around suspension or expulsion of students with identified or suspected special education needs (e.g., failing to convene the team, failing to make a manifestation determination, failing to re-examine the IEP to see if services are appropriate and have actually been provided, failure to provide FAPE to suspended or expelled students with special education needs; 15. Failing to ensure that non-special education administrators - particularly building principals - are fully informed about and are following the required special education policies and procedures. http://www.fetaweb.com/02/mistakes.school.crabtree.htm

Trouble in a Hotel - But not in my Area

"Mr. Lampros’s introduction to the high school’s academic standards proved a fitting preamble to a disastrous year. It reached its low point in late June, when Arts and Technology’s principal, Anne Geiger, overruled Mr. Lampros and passed a senior whom he had failed in a required math course.
That student, Indira Fernandez, had missed dozens of class sessions and failed to turn in numerous homework assignments, according to Mr. Lampros’s meticulous records, which he provided to The New York Times. She had not even shown up to take the final exam. She did, however, attend the senior prom." http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/01/education/01education.html?em&ex=1186286400&en=acf692212ec5bd17&ei=5087%0A

Your Motel Concierge read the article. The school administrators attempt to challenge the credibility of the teacher, but the supporting anecdotes appear to put the teacher in a favorable position for his action. This article interests me in a couple of ways. First, I personally was involved in an incident similar to this, so there are at least two isolated incidents. Second, it gives credence to concerns that the pressures being brought to bear on the educational system for accountability and "producing a product" is resulting in desperate unintended consequences. It reminds me of when someone says that a student is doing well because the student is making good grades. However, when the student takes a standardized test, the student fails.

The other interesting point I read had to do with the School's grading policy. If a student shows up once in a grading period, they get 45 points towards 100. It reminds me of when one of my children was given extra points on an assignment for bringing in a roll of paper towels to her teacher(not the one in SpEd, the one in middle school, gifted, advanced math). But back to the 45 points. As an employer, I have often seen the attitude that an employee should get pay and raises just for showing up. I will be forwarding this article to a professor in a community college out west. She frequently complains of how she gets students who say they are going to be a nurse, or equivalent, yet they have no concept of basic algebra. And what does she hear most from the students- "well, I made good grades".

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