Special Education will be 35 years old on December 2!

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Special education is middle aged (or is it young adult?).  A true milestone.

It’s time to celebrate how far we’ve come in this civil rights legislation. All students with disabilities now have access to  a free appropriate public education.   An awesome achievement.

Yet, even as we honor the success, we also need to acknowledge that much of the system is broken.   It is far too bureaucratic and burdensome–for schools AND parents.

We need to refocus our efforts to teaching and learning, not paperwork, compliance, and alas, that ever-present threat of litigation. 

The good news is that we in Massachusetts are working on several fronts, including SpedEx and Procedures Lite.  These have evolved through the annual celebrations of Special Education Day. For more information, please visit www.specialeducationday.com

Please let us know about systemic reform efforts in your state and community!

Here’s to a powerful December 2 anniversary.

About Miriam

Miriam Kurtzig Freedman, JD, MA—an expert in public education, focused on special education law— is a lawyer, author, speaker, consultant, and reformer. For more than 35 years, Miriam worked with educators, parents, policy makers, and citizens to translate complex legalese into plain English and focus on good practices for children. Now, she focuses her passion on reforming special education, with her new book, Special Education 2.0—Breaking Taboos to Build a NEW Education Law. Presentations include those at the AASA Conference, Orange County (CA), Boston College (MA), CADRE (OR), and the Fordham Institute (DC). Her writings have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Education Week, Education Next, Hoover Digest, The University of Chicago Law Review on line, DianeRavitch.net, and The Atlantic Monthly on line.

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