It’s available at <>Review of Fixing Special Education

By Emmy Partin
Fixing Special Education: 12 Steps to Transform a Broken System
Miriam Kutzig Freedman
School Law Pro and Park Place Publications
2009

This little flipbook takes a critical look at special education in America and offers twelve suggestions to improve it. The author argues forcefully that the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) is no longer adequate (though it has played an important role heretofore) and that special ed itself needs an overhaul. She contends that IDEA has become too inclusive, now covering many children for whom it wasn’t meant and who don’t necessarily need special education. (Just 30 percent of kids currently covered by IDEA are estimated to have severe disabilities.) Moreover, today’s special ed regime serves to hold capable kids to lower standards, costs a lot of money, and encourages schools to give extra attention only to kids with diagnosed disabilities, which can mean less attention for others. Besides all that, the bureaucracy that has sprung up around IDEA has become overwhelming, as has the litigation, which further serves to pit parents against schools. Powerful stuff, and available for purchase here, at http://www.parkplacepubs.com.

Mass Lawyers Weekly recently ran a frontpage article about the rise in special education litigation. So sad. It’s tagline was, “With school resources dwindling, special education disputes attract lawyers.” Can it get any worse? So, let me understand what is going on in our schools: there’s less money for teaching and learning and we need to spend more on lawyers and litigation. How sad is that–such a wrong approach. Rather than working cooperatively among teachers, parents, and students, we have a stream of new lawyers ready to sue schools. www.masslawyersweekly.com. Check it out!

I am quoted in the article,

“There isn’t even data about how much special education litigation costs the schools, says Miriam Freedman at Stoneman, Chandler & Miller in Boston, a former BSEA hearing officer who now represents schools and is the author of a recently published book on the subject, “Fixing Special Education.”

“All of this litigation is bad for schools, bad for kids, bad for education, and even bad for parents,” she says.

It’s amazing… my book, Fixing Special Education–12 Steps to Transform a Broken System is out…. It is available at www.parkplacepubs.com. Lots of interest and sales so far. People are looking to fix the system–at least that is what I’m sensing. We need to reduce litigation, reduce the climate of fear of litigation, reduce paperwork and bureaucratic burdens, and why? To increase student learning, teacher time on task, parent and school cooperation. And why? To improve results for all students. It’s all pretty basic and rather clear.

Not so quick, apparently. See the Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly front-page story on November 23, 2009. www.masslawyersweekly.com.
It is headlined “Cases with Special Needs,” and discusses the rise in special education litigation, the fact that big corporate lawfirms are getting into the act and making the lawsuits far more complex and costly. Can that be because their own business litigation is suffering in this economy?

How sad it all is. The story’s tagline is “With school resources dwindling, special education disputes attract lawyers.” Less money for kids and more for lawyers. Wow. That is so the wrong approach. It is not the way to achieve school reform–improved teaching and learning for all students.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1940395-4,00.html
Interesting, interesting. For everything there is a season and a backlash…

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/bronx/hs graduate got cheated of an education ZC10KchIszRn4mGc1zUVjK

The New York Post reports this tale….

The high school ‘graduate’ with a diagnosed learning disability who has 2nd grade reading skills, got a high school diploma. He ‘passed’ the tests for graduation.

How did he do that? Well, on the fifth try, someone read the reading test to him (though testing rules did not allow it) so he ‘passed.’

Note that in some states, including Massachusetts, reading tests CAN be read to students!

Surely a case of testing and standards and accommodations gone awry…

I am so happy to let you know that my latest little flipbook is out! It is available at www.parkplacepubs.com and wwww.schoollawpro.com.

Fixing Special Education–12 Steps to Transform a Broken System, balances the tale of special education’s success with 12 steps to transform it for the 21st century.

I hope you find it thought provoking–let’s start that national frank and open conversation! Let’s get that transformation underway. It is time!

Thank you, thank you, Meet the Press, for bringing together Arne Duncan, Newt Gingrich, and Al Sharpton to discuss education. It was a very powerful, positive, and uplifting show. Takeaways? It’s all about results–we have a results problem. All of us need to move outside our comfort zones and focus on children, not adults. Schooling is our 21st century civil right. Parents need to work as partners with schools, not fight with them. And on it went. Fantastic.

If you missed it, it’s today, November 15 Meet the Press: http.//www.msnbc.com/id/8987534/ns/meet_the_press.

To put it all in context, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has 4.5 billion dollars to spend on excellent programs and proposals that focus on results… in the “Race to the Top” funds. Let us wish them all well.

But consider that he also will spend 12 billion dollars in ADDITIONAL funds for special education–even while that system is still input, not outcome, driven, and fully needs reform.

That is what my new book is about: Fixing Special Education–12 Steps to Transform a Broken System. Its publication date is this week! November 18! It is available at http://www.parkplacepubs.com and http://www.schoollawpro.com

Here’s the URL…http://www.directionservice.org/cadre/ctu/practicesA.cfm?id=102

As you know from prior blogs, SpedEx is the innovative, child-centered, dispute resolution model in Massachusetts. Free to parents and schools (eight cases per year are funded by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education). First come, first served!

Interesting and sad…. today’s set of blogs about the fact that university professors are finding that their science students do not write well. And their law students!

What we do at the K-12 levels has legs that continue through the education and life systems…

http://science-professor.blogspot.com/2009/10/literally-doomed.html

http://www.joannejacobs.com/

LRP ran an interesting story on line about these scores and students with disabilities (SWD). Among its findings are that SWD continue to perform poorly and the gaps between student groups are pretty much as they were in 2007.

Another issue was highlighted, however. That is the fact that different states exclude different numbers of students from the NAEP testing–the range is wide. For example, on the 8th grade math tests, the range was reported to be from 9% in Arkansas to 56% in Maryland.

How are we supposed to make any sense of these numbers and how are comparisons to be drawn. The article cited my concerns about this, and I quote a small portion for you.

“This, not the gap in scores, is the real problem, according to Miriam Kurtzig Freedman, a special ed attorney and consultant. After all, she said, many students with disabilities have academic problems, which is why they’re in special ed in the first place. “If we now are supposed to close [achievement] gaps, I don’t think that’s realistic…..” she said. On the other hand, “we want this thermometer [theNAEP] to work. . . . But if we have exclusions all over the place, we have a broken thermometer.”

The July 22 report by the National Assessment Governing Board’s Expert Panel on Testing Students with Disabilities, on which I sat, urged states to have a 95 percent participation in NAEP by students with disabilities. You can find the report at http://nagb.org/newsroom/PressReleasePDFs/SD-Panel-Report.pdf. There is also a PowerPoint presentation at the NAGB website.

Finally, note the upcoming hearings in Los Angeles and Washington DC about the reports by the Expert Panels (for students with disabilities and English language learners). Information is at http://www.nagb.org/newsroom/release/release-100109.htm
Written comments due on November 10.