Parents victimizing schools is the premise of this long winded article from the San Fransisco Chronicle. This article furthers the propaganda war against parents of children with special needs and fosters the notion that schools are being victimized. Among the many failings of this article, it fails to even mention the low standard of FAPE set out in Rowley. The article claims that "the law does not define appropriate–an omission that has lead to escalating disputes about what public schools must pay for." Ignorant of the law that the Supreme Court gave meaning to this term in Rowley over 30 years ago, and cases have been refining it ever since. The article misconstrues the power disparity between well funded schools with attorneys on their payroll, and parents who are forced to take significant risks to fight for their child’s education, usually when all else fails. The article misses this essential point. The article even misstates the entitlement of IDEA being to the age of 22 when it ends at 21.
The focus of the article is about a high school student with learning disabilities. His parents unilaterally placed him in a private school in Maine. Most of the parents’ issues in the case were not discussed in the article. According to the article, the school failed to create "a required ‘transition plan’ for the family. That is, district administrators had never filled out the proper form indicating precisely how teachers would ease the boy into bustling Woodside High [public school]." The article does not understand the nature or the importance of a transition plan.
A transition plan is meant to lay out the goals and steps as to how a child will achieve a measurable outcome upon leaving public school. It is not simply a plan to ease a child into high school. Education is not an ends in itself. The transition plan is the means to a meaningful ends of the child’s education. It is not a failure to fill out a "proper form," as if it was a minor oversight in the otherwise sound process. If it is just a "form" in this district, that is a major problem, as the transition plan is meant to be an individualized document not a set formula.
Mr. Paul Goldfinger, California school finance expert, who is quoted
extensively in the article, slamed parents’ desire for an appropriate
education.
" ‘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 funding, and the others get whatever’s left."
Apparently Mr. Goldfinger needs to get out more and see the reality of special education as it really exists in the world. For too many children with special needs, it may be a "blank check" in the sense that there are no numbers written on the check–that is they get as close to zero as possible. Indeed, news reports bear out that funding for special education is being cut. Goldfinger’s propaganda is the exact opposite of the truth. This article wrongly portrays him as an expert speaking the truth.
Children with special needs are frequently short changed. A recent report from Harvard reveals that the much touted No Child Left Behind law has effectively exempted special education students from the law. Moreover, Mr. Goldfinger needs to read the report of the National Council on Disability "Back to School On Civil Rights" which details the systematic violations of the rights of children with disabilities that go unenforced and without remedy.Download Back to School.pdf
The report in its executive summary states: "NCD finds that federal efforts to enforce the law over several Administrations have been inconsistent, ineffective and lacking any real teeth." This NCD report is based upon an exhaustive review of the data of the systematic ways children with special needs have not been receiving their entitlement under IDEA over many years. The NCD report stands in stark contrast with the unfounded and untrue perspective of people like Mr. Goldfinger, and this article from the San Fransisco Chronicle.