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| 5/24 |
| 2006/2/18-23 [Reference/Law/Court, Politics/Domestic/California] UID:41922 Activity:high |
2/18 Now here's an excellent reason to put a child in the SF public
school system.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/02/19/SPED.TMP
\_ I'm going to make a prediction. I predict that the GOP is planning
a frontal attack on public education within the next year, and that
talking points are being distributed through their usual channels
in anticipation of that attack. You can jump up and down and flame
me, and say that's crazy now, but I'll just repost this whole thread
in a year, when we're hearing a new proposal to phase out free
public k-12 education in America.
\_ So, are you anti-vouchers? If so, what's your reasoning?
Or, do you really believe the GOP wants to completely phase
out free public education? Also, if you're so sure about
your prediction, why not sign your name? -jrleek
\_ I am 100% pro-vouchers, and yes, I believe that the long-term
goal of those at the top in the GOP is the destruction of
all social services.
\_ Well, I'm with you on vouchers, but I think your fear
of associating your name with your prediction shows
that you know the prediction is BS and your belief
really only amounts to paranoid delusion. -jrleek
\_ I believe in a totally anymous motd. Part of the
reason for that is that I think anonymity helps remove
ego from discussions. I find claims by people like you
that the only reason people don't sign is cowardice
to be childish and stupid. If you really care, I'll
just email you. Do you care?
\_ I didn't say the only reason people don't sign
is cowardice. I often don't sign myself, and I
would appreciate a completely anonymous motd, so
people wouldn't get "outted" by lamers. But
in this case you not only made a specific
prediction, but bragged that you'd come back and
rub it in any flamer's faces when it came true.
This suggests that you want the "benifit" of
being right, but don't want to pay the "price"
of being wrong. That actually does sound like
cowardice to me. I don't really care who you
are, I just suggest that if you're going to
"call people out" you should have the guts to
sign your name. That said, I'm sure not going
to remember this in a year. -jrleek
\_ okay, if i was a poor person and my children flunked out
of highschool i would start sueing schools for them not
having provided special education and ruining my childs life.
I would start sueing every school and get poor people to sue
school after school. it's the only way for the poor to make
money.
\_ I want to go kill the fucking parents, piece of shit.
\_ Yeah, me too. Evil manipulative fuckers.
\_ Um, when did Woodside become part of San Francisco?
\_ 1. SFUSD is a recent favorite motd target. 2. SFUSD is
probably an easier mark with deeper pockets.
\_ Hey, I was a frustrated youth too! I should sue for a million
dollars as well.
\_ The State of California is required to provide education to
all children. Unsurprisingly, special needs kids are not often
catered to. It's not uncommon for those parents to sue to get
the education their child needs. Maybe these parents took
advantage of that or maybe not. It's not clear the what extent of
services their child may need.
\_ How would you ever legally decide whether a child actually
"needs" a service? Horseback lessons? It's patently obvious
that while all children could benefit from that, no child
actually requires it. Same goes for a private schooling
across the country. The school they chose had no special
services, it was just away from home and small.
\_ Things like that can make a big difference. With children
who have special needs, class size is a huge factor,
for instance. As someone else said below, an army of
therapists, doctors, teachers, and so on must all be
involved in deciding that a child has special needs. I
am surprised at the callous and uninformed responses in
this thread. It's possible this couple manipulated the
system. However, what evidence do we have of that?
\_ I am a bit confused. You say "an army of therapists, etc."
are involved in deciding a child has special needs? An
army? 11% of all students 6 to 13 receive some special
ed (http://www.nichcy.org/pubs/research/rb2txt.htm And
an army is required to certify each child? I fail to see
how that army scales to 11% of the student population.
Ref please.
\_ Don't take the word 'army' literally. The point is
that parents can't just make this stuff up. There
are a lot of people involved in the process. My
nephew is 9 and autistic. Each year he gets evaluated
by at least 3-4 different people in addition to
his own doctors and teachers. He has probably been
seen by 30-40 different professionals by now. It's
not like his parents can just make stuff up. In fact,
in my experience they tend to score him as more
functioning than he really is, probably for a
combination of financial and practical reasons.
(It's easy for him to fake being 'normal' for an
hour session, but it's quite eye-opening to spend the
weekend with him.) One social worker can handle a
lot of cases, for instance, so don't worry about
the numbers game. Just rest assured that the government
(including school districts) doesn't easily cough up
wads of cash to any dipshit parents who claim their kid
has issues. From what I see, for the most part kids
who should be receiving services are not and not
the other way around.
\_ OK, so the "army" was just hyperbole. Now have
you read the sfgate article? There, the Woodside
parents are doing "'unilateral placement--enrolling
a child in a private school, then billing the
district for tuition". IOW, they bypassed that
\_ OK, so the "army" was just hyperbole, and you
extrapolated from your experience with one nephew.
Now have you read the sfgate article? There, the
Woodside parents are doing "'unilateral placement--
enrolling a child in a private school, then billing
the district for tuition". IOW, they bypassed that
"army" and hired their own special ed expert to find
a prep school, and then the Woodside parents hired
a lawyer to sue the school district so the district
would pay for tuition and family travel cost to
visit the child in Maine.
a prep school in Maine. Then the Woodside parents
hired a lawyer to sue the school district so the
district would pay for tuition and family travel
cost to visit the child in Maine. In fact, according
to the artcle, of 3763 special ed kids who filed
complaints last year, the distrcits had secret
settlements with 90% of them.
cost to visit the child in Maine. Nor does it seem
that the Woodside child was all that disabled.
Even the mother said "He's a model child". His
problem? "[H]is frustration and anxiety were so
high that [he could] turn to drugs...".
\_ Actually, I am not using just one data point.
I met a psychology professor whose specialty
is 'special education' and he referred me to
a private practice attorney who deals with
filing suits against school districts. The
way it works is that the district drags its
feet until confronted with parents who are
willing to do something about them. Then they
pay up because it's actually cheaper to pay
the parents than to solve the initial
problem. They don't do so until there has
been a mountain of evidence amassed against
them (i.e. they feel they will lose the
case). This is where the expert testimony and
evaluations come in. I don't know if these
parents were full of shit or not, but I am
appalled at the responses nonetheless.
\_ Did you read the article? It's obvious
they are full of shit. If you don't know
then you're an idiot.
\_ Why are you appalled? Did you read the
article? It's obvious that things like
horseback riding aren't needed. And in
this case of the small school across
the country, that's complete bull also.
From the article, the parents put the
kid there WITHOUT having any specific
reason, just the mother's whim basically.
If you think that's fair to the taxpayers
then you can fuck yourself.
\_ Now, 90% of complaints are settled by the
school districts. It seems difficult to
settle 90% of the time and at the same time
require "a mountain of evidence amassed
against them". In fact, the only way I think
90% settlement can be explained is if the
school district bends over like a cheap whore
on speed.
\_ If you don't know anything about the
process then just say so.
\_ Given a choice between anonymous motd
assurances from someone with a vested
interest in the system or sfgate,
interested in the system or sfgate,
I'll run with sfgate.
\_ Thanks for posting this. What a ridiculous ass story. I bet
that kid doesn't have a single thing wrong with him, except
that he has a psychotic bitch of a greedy mother. No wonder
he has "anxiety".
\_ I know who this family is. Is anybody prepared to terrorize
them if I provide the name?
\_ Do you mind if I ask how you know it's them?
\_ I don't have the time, money, or personal bandwidth to do it,
but I think it would be poetic justice to bring civil suit
against them for extortion/theft of public services or the
like. -dans
\_ It doesn't even matter. Technically speaking you don't have
standing to sue anyway.
\_ Gee, isn't this vigilantism?
\_ Yup. -dans
\_ No vigilantism would be if you firebombed their
house. This is using the legal system to bring
about justice.
\_ It's vigilante use of the courts. Of course, I
don't really mind this since I'm not opposed to
all vigilante acts (eg the Billboard LIberation
Front is non-violent, usually thought-provoking,
and makes good art). Using the courts for
vigilante justice is much safer than the street
variety since the formal bureaucratic procedures
of the courts provide some level of check against
the chance of `bad' or unjust acts being
successfully completed. Then again, there's
always the possibility for abuse. Many
organizations (eg the RIAA) use the legal system
the way a corner street thug uses a gun or
baseball bat. -dans
\_ So is their kid really a 'tard or just a typical
underachieving teen?
\_ So how do children get certified as needing special ed?
\_ doctor's evaluations, state and/or private, administrators,
teachers, etc., etc.
\_ In addition to the above, the process also hinges on an
advocate willing to badger and harrass. This is true both
for legitimate and illegitimate cases.
\_ It would be interesting to see what percentage of special
ed application is rejected.
\_ Probably not as many as you would think. More likely is
that an application without an active advocate will
simply be set aside.
\_ It's easy to get approved for 'special ed' (usually
just a diagnosis). It's hard to get approved for
special ed outside of the district and/or to get
money from the district to pay for additional
services. Also, as someone above said, without a
strong advocate your case will languish for years.
Many parents cannot afford such a person/people
(usually a social worker, a doctor, and an attorney).
Districts will otherwise practice a policy of
appeasement, giving in here and there over time to
avoid actually doing everything they should be.
Note that there are some good districts. I am
referring to the bad ones, which are most of them in
California.
\- You know I think one of the "right' outcomes
would be for the reporters in cases like this to
give the names of the parties involved. Journalists
makes sometimes make wild claims based on the
"public's right to know" but often they or their
editors filter it through a bit of an agenda.
For example in union strike coverage they often
dont list the salaries involved. The recent
muscisian strike was an interesting exception.
\_ Now, this is what confuses me. At first the poster
above says "an army of therapists, doctors, teachers,
and so on must all be involved in deciding that a
child has special needs." Now you tell me it's
easy to get approved. OK, so you say certification
as needing special ed is easy, it's getting approved
for outside resources that's hard. But isn't the
original articl all about parents skipping the
outside special ed process altogether, and then
sueing afterwards for the expenses? If the system
is set up so that certification to be eligible for
special ed is easy (your claim), and then sueing for
outside services rendererd is easy (sfgate's claim),
isn't that just asking for trouble?
\_ OK, so you say certification as needing special ed
is easy, it's getting approved for outside resources
that's hard. But isn't the original articl all
about parents skipping the outside special ed
process altogether, and then sueing afterwards for
process altogether, and then suing afterwards for
the expenses? If the system is set up so that
certification to be eligible for special ed is
easy (your claim), and then sueing for outside
non-preapproved services rendererd is easy (sfgate's
easy (your claim), and then suing for outside
non-preapproved services is easy (sfgate's
claim), isn't that just asking for trouble?
\_ You will only win a suit if there is evidence
supporting your case. You can send your kid
to boarding school in Switzerland and bill
the district for it, but you will lose unless
you have built a good case. Therefore, suing
for outside services (preapproved or not)
is not easy unless your case might win. It is,
however, easier than actually getting the school
district to provide those services themselves.
This is what the professor told me in so many
words. Keep asking the district for what you
need and let them tell you 'no'. It works out
better for everyone that way. If they say
'yes' and then half-ass it it becomes much
more difficult to prove that the program is
substandard and the school pays as much or
more money in the end anyway while your kid
fritters away in useless classes for 2-3-4-5
years of valuable time while the case goes
through the legal process. This is why many school
districts would rather pay kids who genuinely
need special help to go where they can
receive it. It's better for the kids and
cheaper/easier for the district. |
| 5/24 |
|
| www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/02/19/SPED.TMP At Woodside High in San Mateo County, college-prep classes awaited a 15-year-old boy with learning disabilities and anxiety. He would blend in with other college-bound students, but also receive daily help from a special education expert. He would get a laptop computer, extra time for tests -- and an advocate to smooth any ripples with teachers. If an anxiety attack came on, he could step out of class. Instead, they enrolled him in a $30,000-a-year prep school in Maine -- then sent the bill to their local public school district. Similar stories are playing out up and down California as more parents of special education students seek extra-special education at public expense: private day schools, boarding schools, summer camps, aqua therapy, horseback therapy, travel costs, personal aides and more. Dissatisfied with -- or unwilling to consider -- classes and therapies offered by public schools, growing numbers of parents have learned that demanding more can yield striking benefits, especially when they threaten to sue. And an expensive legal battle is the last thing district administrators want. Legal proceedings "are a huge time drain on your administration and your teachers," said Karen Mates, special education director for the Tampalpais Union High School District in Marin County. "You don't want to spend precious dollars on this, so districts will settle a case to avoid it." The result: Expensive legal judgments and confidential settlements add hundreds of millions of dollars to already soaring special education costs across California, while taxpayers are kept in the dark about how the money is spent. Meanwhile, California school districts shift more than a billion dollars a year out of their regular school budgets to pay for it all. "This is not sustainable," said Paul Goldfinger, a California school finance expert. "Special education is a growing portion of budgets in many districts, squeezing out services for other pupils. Yet to many parents whose children need help, nothing seems more justified than seeking the best. In the Woodside case, the boy was still a year from finishing middle school when his parents hired a consultant to find them an alternative to Woodside High. The consultant, Miriam Bodin, suggested several private schools, all outside of California. The parents chose Kents Hill, a bucolic boarding school with one-tenth the enrollment of Woodside High -- and no special education program. "I didn't care if they had special education," said the boy's mother, who agreed to discuss the case if the family were not identified. Records show the parents had previously gotten their elementary district, Portola Valley, to pay half the tuition of a small private middle school in Vermont for students with learning disabilities. Now they hoped to get the Sequoia Union High School District, which includes Woodside High, to pay for Kents Hill. The family hired attorney Kathryn Dobel, an expert in special education cases. She filed papers in 2002 demanding that Sequoia Union pay four years of tuition and the family's costs for travel between Maine and California. And by the time the boy graduated from high school in 2004, the Woodside case would stand as an icon of the troubled state of special education: parents and educators at odds, inequity in a system meant to equalize, and myriad rules so esoteric they've spawned a new specialty field for lawyers. "Special ed," as it's widely known, is a hard-won civil right born in the 1970s and designed to correct years of discrimination by giving children with special needs an equal opportunity to learn. When it works as it should, special ed offers a lifeline to kids with a range of disabilities, from speech impairments to brain injuries. Each child receives an "individualized education plan" specifying the type and amount of extra help they'll get. A team of parents, teachers, therapists -- and, increasingly, lawyers -- meets to update the plan. The bedrock of the federal law is a "free and appropriate public education" for anyone with disabilities, from birth to age 22. But the law doesn't define "appropriate" -- an omission that has led to escalating disputes about what public schools must pay for. Special ed serves nearly 700,000 students in California, and the program appears to be working for most of them. Last year, 3,763 children with disabilities were the subject of formal complaints over educational services, triple what it was a decade ago. Parents open the vast majority of cases, and districts have a built-in financial incentive to settle them because it can cost up to $40,000 to go to a hearing. And then there's the possibility of an expensive judgment against the district. Last year, districts participated in 386 full hearings -- just 10 percent of cases opened. The rest -- 90 percent -- were resolved through secret settlements. "They really don't want parents out saying, 'Oh, if you just sue this district, you'll get whatever I got,' '' said Elizabeth Estes, an attorney with Miller, Brown, & Dannis, which represents districts. It's an equation that virtually ensures some children will receive benefits unavailable to those whose parents do not file complaints. Examples include "dolphin therapy and horseback riding," said Johnny Welton, a special ed coordinator for Contra Costa County. "Things that are beneficial to kids but are not an education-related service." Welton said such programs cost tens of thousands of dollars and lure parents in with the promise of outstanding results. When parents ask for them, educators are forced to do "risk management." "Why not pay for a few hours of horseback riding instead of spending $50,000 on attorneys at a hearing?" In recent years, private education at public expense has become a sought-after benefit for children with a wide range of disabilities. The practice of "unilateral placement" -- enrolling a child in a private school, then billing a district for tuition -- is gaining ground, say educators. In California, private enrollment for students with disabilities has risen nearly five times faster than the overall increase in special ed students, state records show. Since 1993, the number of students in public special ed programs rose 27 percent, to 681,969 from 539,073. But special ed students placed in private schools at public expense rose nearly five times faster -- 128 percent, to 15,926 from 6,994. As costs soar, many educators paint a picture of a system financially out of control and increasingly unfair to students who families can't afford lawyers to win them extra-special education at public expense. In Sonoma County, for example, a family recently enrolled their child in an out-of-state boarding school, then billed their district not only for tuition, but airfare, car rental, hotel, cell phone calls, meals, tailoring, new clothes, an iBook computer, stamps, tolls, gas and 13 future round-trip visits. The district paid "a portion," said a school official who revealed the bill on condition of anonymity. "Special education is a huge industry now," said Joyce Willett, the Sequoia Union High School District's special ed director. "I don't think the average person realizes what's going on." Mates, the special education director for the Tampalpais Union High School District, agreed. "We're looking at a huge crisis heading into our schools," she said. "At a time when education dollars are scarce, my district alone spends hundreds of thousands of dollars each year to pay for private placements for the children of Marin families, where schools often become the enemy. I want to expand our special education programs, but I can't even bring that up." And as the demands on special education rise, experts say the financial consequences for public schools are staggering. All California students, disabled or not, feel the impact of rising special ed costs. In all, 28 percent of special ed expenditures in California came from regular education budgets in 2004. "It's a blank check," said Goldfinger, vice president of School Services. "The system is stacked so that one segment of the population -- disabled children -- has first call on fundi... |
| www.nichcy.org/pubs/research/rb2txt.htm PDF version Introduction Since the implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) nearly 30 years ago, legislators, educators, and parents have wanted to assess the impact of special education services for children with disabilities. Are growing numbers of students with disabilities graduating from school with high school diplomas? Many research studies have been conducted over the years in an attempt to answer these and other questions related to special education. National evaluation of the IDEA is one of the ongoing responsibilities of the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) in the US Department of Education. Currently, OSEP is funding seven national studies aimed at doing just that. One of these studies is SEELS--The Special Education Elementary Longitudinal Study. SEELS is a six-year study (1999-2005) that will document the school experiences of a national sample of school-age students with disabilities. The study will follow the students as they move from elementary to middle school and from middle to high school. SEELS will study academic performance, school experiences, family life, social adjustment, and personal growth of each of these students. An important feature of SEELS is that it does not look at the students at a single point in time. Rather, it assesses change throughout the students' public education. Information from the study will help to improve schools by informing the US Department of Education, the US Congress, state policymakers, parents, and educators about what works well and ways to improve educational services to better meet the needs of students with disabilities. To find students for the study, school districts across the country were first randomly selected and invited to participate in the study. These districts represented a variety of geographic locations, sizes, and community income levels. About 300 individual school districts and 40 state-operated schools for deaf and/or blind students agreed to participate. From these schools, approximately 14,000 students were randomly selected, and their parents were sent information about the study and invited to participate. Of these students, nearly 12,000, aged 6 to 12 as of December 1999, and their families agreed to participate in the study. The students represent all the disability categories in the IDEA and comprise a variety of races, incomes, and genders. These students will be 12 to 18 years old when the study ends in 2005. All together, these students are representative of school-age children across the nation. This will allow SEELS to make valid statements about what educational and special services look like for children all over the country. There are three main data collection activities for SEELS, each done three times over the life of the study. Parent interviews: Through telephone interviews, parents/guardians are asked to respond to questions about the school and family life experiences of their children. The first interviews were done during the summer and fall of 2000. Parents who did not have a telephone interview during the first round were mailed a written questionnaire to complete that included several of the telephone interview questions. The second round of parent telephone interviews was conducted in 2002. The final round of parent/guardian telephone interviews is scheduled for the 2003-2004 school year. Student assessments: SEELS learns about students' academic performance and their perception of school and learning through face-to-face assessments/interviews with each student. Professionals were hired and trained to arrange and conduct the interviews with students. If a face-to-face interview is not appropriate for a student, a person familiar with that student is asked to complete an alternative assessment of the student's ability to conduct daily activities in school and in the community. The first student assessments were done in spring 2001 and 2002. The final round of assessments will be completed in the spring of 2004. School questionnaires: Three types of questionnaires are sent to the schools to obtain important information about the schools, the educational experiences of each student in the study, and how they are doing in school. In spring 2002, SEELS asked schools to select one person to be a point of contact for the study. This school site study coordinator updates SEELS on student participants' enrollment, gives questionnaires to teachers, and sends transcripts (when students are in high school) to SEELS. The school questionnaires include: School Characteristics Survey-- (one per school) on the policies and characteristics of the school; Language Arts Teacher Survey-- (one per student) provides information about the students' instructional goals, classroom experiences, assessment, accommodations, social adjustment, and educational progress in their language arts classroom; and the School Program Survey-- (one per student), a questionnaire about the students' placements, programs, and overall progress. Students approach their educational experiences from complex backgrounds and histories that are shaped by personal characteristics, such as: * age, gender, and ethnic background; These factors shape students' home life, experiences at school, and involvement in the community, as do the ways in which students, parents, school staff, and other service personnel work together toward positive results for students. Understanding the characteristics of students and their households is essential to understanding the many major life experiences of students and to being able to serve them well. Below are some initial findings obtained from parents' interviews that tell us more about the personal characteristics of the students and their families. Disabilities In 2000, SEELS found that youth receiving special education services made up 11% of all students between the ages of 6 and 13. Of these special education students: * 75% were classified as having either learning disabilities or speech/language impairments as their primary disabilities. Students in each of the other disability classifications represented fewer than 2% of all students with disabilities. When combined, these other categories comprised about 6% of students receiving special education. When findings are presented for students with disabilities as a whole, the experiences of students with learning or speech/language disabilities are largely represented. Because the vast majority of students with disabilities are students with learning or speech/language disabilities, it is important to look closely at the results for each disability category. Gender Among the general population of students in grades 1-8, boys and girls are represented in about equal numbers (US Census Bureau, 1999). Boys also comprise more than half of the students in each disability category. Some research has suggested that the higher proportion of boys among elementary and secondary school students receiving special education may be because schools use identification and assessment practices that inaccurately identify boys, more often than girls, as having certain kinds of disabilities (Shaywitz & Shaywitz, 2001). The greater number of boys among children with disabilities appears at very early ages, before school practices come to bear. Whatever the reason for the greater number of boys among students receiving special education, it is important to understand that the research findings about experiences of special education students, as a group, are dominated by the experiences of boys. Age As stated above, 75% of the students in the study are classified as having either a learning disability or a speech/language impairment as their primary disability. Children in the younger age group (6 to 9) are more likely to be identified as students with a speech/language impairment (47%). Older students (ages 10 to 13) are more often identified as having a learning disability (54% to 56%). First, speech/language impairments are frequently apparent from very early ages. A learning disability, sometimes referred to as the "hidden disability," is not so readily apparent... |