COPAA Advocate's Training

Parents sometimes ask how they can learn about special education law, to help them advocate for their own child or to help other parents who need guidance. A terrific opportunity to learn about special education advocacy has just been announced by COPAA - the Council of Parent Attorney's and Advocates, a dedicated group that includes both attorneys and non-attorney advocates.

Registration begins this coming Friday, April 5th, for COPAA’s Special Education Advocate Training (SEAT) 1.0 – Beginning Advocacy. This annual program is the first module in a a several part training that can lead to a competency as a special education advocate. You can go to the COPAA website to learn more about the role of advocates in the special education process and how the COPAA SEAT training works. There is also information on other organizations involved in training advocates.

Information on dates, fees, additional training programs, and COPAA membership (although membership is not required to participate in these trainings) is also available on the COPAA site. This course is expected to fill quickly, so don't delay in signing up if you are interested.

Least Restrictive Environment Revisited

Least Restrictive Environment (LRE) has long been a fundamental part of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). The IDEA mandate with respect to LRE states that,

To the maximum extent appropriate, children with disabilities, including children in public or private institutions or other care facilities, are educated with children who are not disabled, and special classes, separate schooling, or other removal of children with disabilities from the regular educational environment occurs only when the nature or severity of the disability of a child is such that education in regular classes with the use of supplementary aids and services cannot be achieved satisfactorily.

We have written about LRE before, and have thought that it was such a settled part of current law and practice that it was not subject to question. We were wrong. A recent blog post on the website of AASA, the School Superintendents Association, urges that Congress consider changing the LRE requirements of the IDEA to look only at the educational benefit to be provided by placing students in the least restrictive environment and not to consider benefits to such students that are not strictly educational, such as communication, collaboration, and social skills. The blog also suggests that revised guidelines on LRE, "could lead to a reduction of litigation ... [and have the] potential to ease the educational, financial, and emotional strains that are placed on parents and school officials when special education litigation reaches the courts." In short, the author wants to reduce the cost of litigating LRE issues when parents exert their rights to have their children educated in the least restrictive educational environment.

Our colleagues at COPAA, The Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, quickly responded to the blog post. In a detailed public post, the COPAA leadership discussed the court cases where LRE has been considered (and well settled) and noted that, "including students with disabilities in general education benefits students without disabilities. Research shows that time spent with non-disabled peers not only benefits students socially and connects them with their community but also enhances academic achievement for students with disabilities."

COPAA also posted a blog written by educational leaders which noted that LRE was not being appropriately implemented in all parts of the country and urged that it be expanded -- not limited -- and properly utilized for all students. These leaders did agree with the AASA blogger that the time and energy now used for litigating LRE issues could be put to better use, but noted that their recommendations for how to reduce such litigation were quite different. The COPAA bloggers wrote:

"We support efforts to scale-up the use of universal design for learning principles to all classrooms. We support efforts to expand access to communication and assistive technology to all students who need it. And we support school improvement and restructuring efforts ... including greater family and community engagement, strong administrative leadership, multi-tiered systems of supports used with fidelity, values- and evidence-based inclusive policy and practice, and integration of all support services for the benefit of all students."

We hope the folks at AASA -- and in Congress -- are paying attention.

IDEA and High Expectations

This month marks the 40th Anniversary of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act – the IDEA – first signed into law November 29, 1975. As most of our readers know, IDEA is the basis for educational services and supports for most students in pre-K through high school with a wide range of disabilities, including specific learning disabilities.

To coincide with this anniversary, the U.S. Department of Education has released a new guidance document for State Education Departments, noting that the IEP (Individualized Education Program) for a student who receives services under the IDEA must be aligned with the academic content standards for the grade in which that student is enrolled. This guidance has been welcomed by parents and advocates who have been concerned that students with disabilities are not being held to high enough standards. As noted by The Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates (COPAA), “the power of an IEP written with high expectations and its impact on a student’s ability to achieve” are important to students’ lifetime success.

Although exceptions are made for students with the significant cognitive disabilities, even students who are far behind their peers will be held to these academic content standards. However, where students without significant cognitive disabilities are “performing significantly below the level of the grade in which the child is enrolled,” the IEP should contain goals that are “ambitious but achievable.” The Department of Education notes that schools should provide children with specialized instruction to help close the gap between their level of achievement and state standards.

While we welcome high standards and expectations for all students, we will take a “wait and see” position as to whether schools can properly support students with IEPs who are below grade level in one or more subjects, especially those with specific learning disabilities that impact a particular aspect of learning, such as math. While high standards for all students are a laudable goal, the "devil is in details." Such standards need to be reasonable and relevant, not arbitrary.

For example, schools need to focus not just on content mastery, but also on competencies and skills that students can use to help them succeed in the future. Students need to have access to content and methodologies for demonstrating/assessing mastery that take into account their specific disabilities. These methodologies must not be inherently discriminatory and need to conform to the principals of Universal Design for Learning, including multiple means of representation, engagement, and expression. For instance, for some students, schools should consider a portfolio component of assessment.

We would hope that this new guidance does not result in grade retention for students who do not meet grade level assessments, when their failure to do so may be due to years of inappropriate instruction and inadequate methods of demonstrating mastery.

Learning to Advocate for Your Child - And Others

Parents sometimes mention to us that they are thinking of becoming an advocate for other parents and students who are seeking special educational services from schools. Most of these parents have dealt with the special education process with their own child and want to apply what they have experienced and learned to help others. Some of these individuals are attorneys who practice in a variety of areas but want to now learn how to extend their practice to the field of education law. Two upcoming programs offer an opportunity for newcomers to get started in the fields of special education advocacy and law.

As we have noted previously, COPAA (The Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates) is holding its annual conference March 6-9 in Baltimore. This event offers programs for both experienced attorneys and just-starting-out advocates, and is attended by hundreds of individuals from all over the country. It is an amazing way to learn about special education and how to advocate effectively, and affords attendees the opportunity to meet and learn from the leading experts in various aspects of this field. If you are even thinking about getting involved in special education law, this is the place to start. One note: COPAA membership and attendance at the Conference are not open to those who work for or represent school districts or similar agencies.

Another excellent opportunity for parents and others to learn about special education is at a Wrightslaw Special Education Law & Advocacy Training. There is one coming up in Plainview, New York, on March 21, 2014, but a check of the Wrightslaw website will allow you to sign up to receive the Wrightslaw newsletter, which announces programs in all parts of the country. Peter Wright is an attorney who overcame his own learning disability to become a leader in the field of special education and a respected resource for special education practitioners at all levels.

Research Supports Benefits of Inclusion for All Students

A recent Wall Street Journal article by Miriam Kurtzig Freedman, an attorney representing schools, raises questions about the practice called mainstreaming or inclusion, which places students with learning disabilities in mainstream classrooms along with typically-learning peers. A special education teachers works alongside a regular teacher in these classrooms to address the needs of the special education students. Here in New York City, these Collaborative Team Teaching -- CTT -- classes are quite common. Although inclusion has been generally used to refer to students with any kind of disability, Ms. Freedman focuses her analysis on students with learning issues, so we will limit our discussion to this kind of inclusion as well.

Photo: dave_mcmt

Freedman notes," Look into the research on inclusion and you will find that this policy is generally based on notions of civil rights and social justice, not on "best education practices" for all students." She goes on to state that there is no research on how inclusion impacts the academic progress of the typical learners and that parents of typical learners simply remove their children from public schools rather than complain about what Ms. Freedman describes as "simplified" teaching in inclusion settings.She notes that this impacts the goal of diversity in classrooms. "Can this be anything but very bad for America?," she asks.

Our colleagues at COPAA, the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, have fired back, in a blog post by Denise Marshall, the Executive Director of COPAA. Ms. Marshall notes: "The article by Ms. Freedman wholly disregards both the law and science. Her erroneous proposition that educating children with disabilities alongside their non-disabled peers is harmful to students without disabilities has no basis in science nor legal precedents. Not only is this claim based on stereotype, but this viewpoint disregards decades of legal and scientific developments and undercuts a quarter of a century of progress in remedying widespread discrimination against children with disabilities."

Ms. Marshall is correct; research supports the conclusion that all students do better in an inclusion setting. In fact, despite the concerns of teachers about managing a diverse classroom, there are numerous benefits -- both social and academic -- in such settings. Ms. Marshall concludes that Ms. Freedman  "is correct in stating that our schools thrive with a diverse population and engaged parents. However, the idea that removing children with disabilities from regular classrooms will promote diversity, defies comprehension. A return to segregation and exclusion of children with disabilities will hardly promote diversity and is definitely not the way forward.."

We agree.

When Children Influence Their Parent's Career Path

Within the last few days, we had several reminders that the difficulties faced by a child can help shape the path of a parent's work.

First, a friend called to report the good progress her son was making in his new program -- the next step for him as a young adult with significant learning and other difficulties. "You know," she said, "now that I have him settled, I'm thinking of a new career as an advocate for other parents. Do you have any ideas as to how I can begin this process?"

Almost the very next day, our colleagues at Wrightslaw sent out their Summer Newsletter, So You Want To Be An Advocate? Summer School 2013: Session 1 . It contains lots of helpful advice about how to begin to learn about special education and special education advocacy. We sent the link along to our friend, along with our suggestion that she also consider becoming a member of COPAA, the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, which has helpful listservs for lay advocates as well as attorneys, a website full of information, and which runs a terrific national conference each year (March, 2014 in Baltimore) which is a wonderful way to learn about advocacy and meet other advocates and experts.

A day or two later, we received a copy of Bostonia magazine, which contained the compelling story of Ed Damiano, an associate professor of bio-medical engineering at Boston University who is racing to develop a bionic pancreas to treat his son David's type 1 diabetes. Prototypes of an iPhone assisted device are in clinical trials and he hopes the device will be available for son to use in a few years, when he heads to college. Watch a video about the Damiano's experience below.

Finally, as many of our readers know, a number of years ago Dr. Paul Yellin served as Chief Medical Officer of a New York City hospital (and, before that, Director of Neonatal Clinical Services at a major teaching hospital) before his own child's learning issues led him to his present work and the founding of The Yellin Center.

Photo: Glyn Lowe

A New Way to Talk About Special Education

The terrific Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates (COPAA) recently held its annual meeting, and one important initiative to emerge from this gathering of education attorneys, parents, and advocates was a focus on the importance of language when we talk about children with special learning and other needs and the work we do to help them. Think about it: we know that special education laws grew out of civil rights legislation and court decisions. The very principles that were determined to apply to discrimination on the basis of race eventually grew to apply to discrimination on the basis of disability. Children who were excluded from schools because they had disabilities were no less the victims of discrimination than those who were excluded or segregated because of race.

We've also seen how effective language can be in shaping opinion and practice in areas from politics to marketing consumer goods. As described in a blog on the public area of the COPAA members website, attorneys Mark Martin and Jennifer Laviano propose a new way of talking about what we have always called "special education" and its related areas.

Among the changes they propose are using "civil rights" to refer to this this area of law and advocacy. So, an attorney would not be a "special education lawyer" but, instead, would be a "civil rights lawyer."  Students who are suspended or expelled can be better described as being "excluded from class and from learning." When children are removed from class they are being "segregated." And children don't need special services, they need a "meaningful education."

As the blog authors note, it is time that students and families and the attorneys and advocates who work on their behalf  "have the rights, respect, and equality to which they are entitled." Using language that more accurately conveys the rights of students and the roles of their supporters is one step in that direction. We agree.