- Nathan Levenson, Managing Director, District and Community Partners. www.dmcouncil.org.
Fixing Special Education is far reaching, yet practical. The analysis convincingly challenges conventional practice and lays out a road for reform. It is the intersection of out of the box thinking and a life time of in the trenches experience.
- Fordham Institution’s Education Gadfly review in the “recommended reading section
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.
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