Are you the parent of a child with autism or other disability that is considering finding an advocate to help you with your child’s education? Would you like a short list of qualities to avoid when choosing a special education advocate?
This article will help you avoid certain negative qualities in a prospective advocate, so that you can help your child receive a free appropriate public education.
Quality 1: Stay away from an advocate who has not received formal training in federal and state laws, and case law. Good advocates will have a working knowledge of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (federal law), and your state laws governing special education. Effective advocates do not have to memorize the law, but should know where to find any information that they need. Advocates must also know what due process hearings and court cases have already occurred, so that they can use the information to benefit your child.
Quality 2: Stay away from an advocate, who has little to no experience helping parents navigate the special education system. Unfortunately there are people who call themselves advocates, who do not have the experience that they need, to be effective. You do not want the advocate learning at the expense of your child’s education. Try finding an advocate at a disability organization like a Parent Information and Training Center (PTIC).
Quality 3: Stay away from an advocate, who guarantees you a certain outcome. While most advocates work hard and do their best, there are no guarantees in special education. You would rather work with an advocate, that has a realistic view of what can be accomplished for your child.
Quality 4: Stay away from an angry advocate, who seems to have there own agenda. I have heard of advocates that target certain school districts, due to their own anger. Every person including parents in special education, become angry at some point. But the important thing is that the advocate can continue to be professional, even if the school personnel are not.
Quality 5: Stay away from an advocate, that is not willing to challenge special education personnel, when the need arrives. Advocates must be willing to stand up to school personnel, for the good of the child, in an assertively persistent manner. This is the reason why it is so important to understand Federal and State special education law; you have the information you need to effectively stand up for the child.
Quality 6: Stay away from an advocate that does not promise you complete confidentiality! Advocates must not share any information that they learn about parents and their children; and unfortunately this does happen on occasion. You want your advocate to keep things you tell them confidential, as well as any strategies that they will be using.
Quality 7: Stay away from an advocate, that appears to be a know it all! No advocate including myself knows everything. You need an advocate, who is willing to find out the information that will help your child, if they do not know.
Advocacy is an art and involves trying different strategies to help the child receive a free appropriate public education (FAPE). By knowing what characteristics to avoid in an advocate, will help you make an informed decision about any advocate that works with you to help your child. Good luck!
By: JoAnn Collins
Posts Tagged ‘Special Education System’
Qualities to Avoid in Choosing a Special Education Advocate
November 30th, 20096 Ways to Improve Special Education For All Children With Special Needs!
October 25th, 2009
Are you the parent of a child with autism or another disability that is frustrated by the special education system? More than 6 million students with disabilities receive special education services in federally funded special education programs. This is about 9% of the country’s school age population. This is a lot of children who depend on the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), to help them get the services that they need to live a fulfilled life. As any parent of a child with a disability knows much improvement needs to be made to the special education system. This article will discuss 6 ways to improve the special education system.
Needed to improve the special education system:
1. More available parent training and more resources to pay for the training! Parent trainings are available but in most cases do cost, which prevents some parents from attending. Parents must understand their rights under IDEA in order to be effective advocates for their child.
2. More effective enforcement of IDEA, to include the withholding of funds from states and school districts, who are continually non compliant! The enforcement of IDEA basically does not exist. It is the federal governments responsibility to enforce IDEA to the states, and it is the states responsibility to enforce IDEA of local school districts. Neither one does very much in this area. Enforcement without withholding of funds will not work. In my experience it will not take many states losing their IDEA funding, before major positive changes will occur.
3. Improved diagnosis of disabilities and an easier eligibility process! Many children with disabilities throughout the US are told that they do not have a disability, therefore are not eligible for special education services. This reality hurts children with disabilities and may forever ruin their lives! Parents often do not even know that they can disagree with the schools opinion! The eligibility process needs to be made more child friendly!
4. Special education personnel must set realistic high expectations for all children with disabilities! Congress has said from the beginning that school districts expectations of children with disabilities are too low. School personnel and parents must believe that children can be successful in their education and lives, if given an appropriate education, and keep expectations high.
5. Focus on outcomes of special education so that all children will be ready for post school learning and independent living! For the year 2005-2006 55% of children with disabilities graduated from high school, in comparison to a little over 70% of children without disabilities graduated from high school. This will limit the children’s ability to go to college or get a job, which will affect the rest of their lives!
6. Improve the federal funding of IDEA! The current estimates are that the federal government only pays about 17% of per pupil costs for special education. The federal government needs to put their money where there mouth is, and fund IDEA fully!
All parents can be involved in advocating for systemic special education improvements. Notify your state and federal representatives and see how they are willing to get involved, in this process. Children with disabilities deserve to receive an appropriate education and live their lives to the fullest!
By: JoAnn Collins
Sarah Palin – Overture For Special Education
October 18th, 2009
The current presidential election has created a novel situation for those of us who work with kids with special needs. Governor Palin has promised that if she is elected to work with John McCain in the White House, she will be an advocate for families who have children with special needs. As I thought about the possibilities this might present for reform of the special education system, I inevitably considered the TAKS testing that goes on in Texas. This is the Texas Assessment of Skills and Knowledge test that is used to establish minimum standards for passing certain grade levels. The results of the exam are used to meet requirements for the federal guidelines in No Child Left Behind.
I am just an observer of how TAKS testing is implemented, but I may have an idea for Governor Palin and others to consider. I have watched the teachers I work with spend countless hours trying to figure out how to implement TAKS test alternatives for the children in the special education program. The way I understand things, every child has to be tested on subjects and knowledge areas according to their grade level. therefore, special education teachers have to take knowledge questions that would be on the regular TAKS test and break down the questions into fundamental skills that would be necessary to answer the target question. They do this until they get to a level of question that would be possible for a specific student with disabilities to answer with a reasonable degree of success. They do this for every child who has an Individual Education Plan in the grade levels that are testing. This means that every child with special needs ends up with a different test. This makes sense since we are talking about children with Individual Education Plans.
What does not make sense to me is why teachers are spending so much time on making up tests that will be different for every child and turning that in for use with standardized tests as a measure of a school’s performance? In talking with professionals in the public education system it seems that before TAKS-alt became the rule, some schools were “hiding” poorly performing students under the special education label so that they did not have to take the test or at least did not have their scores counted toward the school’s overall score. Since then, everyone has to take the test regardless of its educational value for the student.
The great education bureaucracy in their wisdom has apparently decided to make everyone take the test so that nobody can hide. I think this is an abrogation of their duties in oversight and now an unfortunate waste of valuable time resource for many of the teachers and students who now have to participate in this TAKS-alt system. I have no idea how scores are reconciled or accounted for in the broad scheme of things or if the scores from TAKS-alt figure into achieving “Exemplary” or “Recognized” status for individual schools and districts. Maybe we can open up a discussion here and find out? My initial thought about the situation is why didn’t the people in charge just fire people who were misusing the special education labels? How does it serve the children with special needs to take TAKS or TAKS-alt? I think this has come to pass to satisfy a bureaucratic need instead of an educational need.
The bottom line in my view, is that many of the children in special education are not in school to prepare for college or some kind of career. We are teaching them skills of daily living and preparing them with basic knowledge to live a quality life at whatever level they can attain. Many of the test questions developed for TAKS-alt are about skills and knowledge that would be taught regardless of the existence of the TAKS exam, but the time spent in developing TAKS-alt for every student is misplaced effort. I also must assume that scores from TAKS-alt testing will be statistically meaningless since every test is individualized. There is no way to create a standardized test for special education or compare scores across student results.
I don’t know if Sarah Palin will have any way to help bring some sense to the realm of special education, but we can start a conversation and see where it leads. I welcome comments and feedback for this topic. I am not an expert on the law and implementation for No Child Left Behind, but I see its effect in the “trenches” so to speak. For the most part everyone is trying to help the children, but sometimes we can’t see the forest for the trees!
By: Daniel Tague
