On Special Education

I like to think of my readers as graduate-level experts on special education, but a little refresher never hurts: This site has some nice basic information about what disabilities are covered under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, and what rights are due to a child with a disability. The "14 Rights of Parents" is quite helpful.

If a parent came to you for help with information about navigating the special education system, where would you send them? What tips would you want to make sure that parent was aware of?

Posted by Christina Samuels at 5:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Back in June, I wrote a blog entry about an Arizona appeals court halting a voucher program for students with disabilities and students in foster care. At the time, I wrote that I understood why people might support a voucher program for students with special needs, but I was a bit more skeptical that foster children have the same need for special schools.

This Houston Chronicle article, however, outlines some of the educational difficulties faced by children who are adopted, and I would imagine that children in foster care might have some of the same challenges.

Because of abuse, genetic issues and a lack of prenatal care, adoptive children are much more likely to struggle with learning disabilities, prompting their families to leave public schools in search of the extra help offered by often costly specialty schools.

While adoptive children account for 1 percent to 2 percent of the population, higher rates can be found in almost every mental health setting, including residential facilities and public school special education programs.

Dan Lips, a senior policy analyst for the Heritage Foundation, wrote a paper a year ago (before the Arizona program was stopped) talking about the need for such vouchers.

I'm still left wondering if foster care -- or adoption, as this story outlines -- is the issue. The children don't need extra help because they are adopted; they need extra help because they have special education needs. If you support vouchers, wouldn't a voucher program for students with disabilities cover these kids too?

Posted by Christina Samuels at 1:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It's not a surprise to me that raising a child with a disability could be more costly than raising a typically developing child, particularly because of the cost of health care.

A researcher recently put a price tag on the burden shouldered by parents annually in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The average extra cost borne by families across the country is $774. Families in Massachusetts have the lowest out-of-pocket costs, at about $560 a year. Families in Georgia, however, have to pay the most -- about $972 a year. The full ranking table is here.

Paul T. Shattuck, a professor of social work at Washington University in St. Louis, published these results in the July issue of Pediatrics, and you can see the abstract here. The results were based on a nationwide survey of households of children with special health needs conducted in 2000 and 2001.

As the rankings show, almost everyone is paying something extra for their kids. But richer states tended to require less out-of-pocket health care expenses of their residents. About 86 percent of Michigan families reported paying extra for health care for their child, compared to 94 percent of Mississippi families.

Shattuck says his results suggest that Medicaid and the state children's health insurance programs (SCHIP) need to be revisited so that more money can go to families who have disabled children.

It's a fascinating report, and as families and educators know, medical care is only the tip of the iceberg (though probably the easiest to measure.) This study doesn't even get into such costs as tutoring, special enrichment activities, "soft costs" like time taken off work to attend school conferences or doctors appointments...all of those things are part of the price of raising a child with a disability as well.

Posted by Christina Samuels at 3:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Bipolar disorder among adults is little understood; among juveniles, it's even more of a question mark. Newsweek has a long but engrossing article about a Massachusetts family and their life with their 10-year-old son, Max, who has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder as well as a host of other problems: attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder. In his short life, he has been on 38 different psychoactive drugs.

Though the focus of the article is mostly on Max Blake's family life, his school life is mentioned as well. His behavior problems were so severe that he was suspended for months at a time. Finally, the district agreed to send him to the Manville School at a cost of $64,000 a year. Unfortunately, the program only goes to 10th grade.

What strikes me about any story like this is how alone parents often feel. This family lives in an urban area where they have access to some of the top medical minds and schools in the country, but they've still struggled for answers. What happens to families without ready access to those resources? Most of the time, they can only rely on the schools, which have their own resource problems. That's why I'm glad that more reporters are taking time to write the stories, so that parents can realize that they're not the only people going through these situations.

Posted by Christina Samuels at 4:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

I have to admit that the connection to special education is pretty tenuous, but I was transfixed by a story on NPR Wednesday about two families coping with transgendered young sons. One family decided to let their child live as a girl while another family is trying to make their son feel more comfortable in his biological gender, including taking away his "girlish" toys. Now, the child's mother says, her son has some friends who are boys and is no longer saying that he's a girl...but she senses that he's leading a double life. At school he plays with girls; at home, he knows that behavior is not acceptable. It's a compelling tale.

(The second part of the series, about a family that is considering hormone therapy to delay puberty for their transgendered son, is available here.)

Though the school/education angle was only a small part of the NPR stories, a quick Google search shows that this is hardly the first time that schools have had to make accommodations for transgendered youth. This article, which ran Saturday in the Philadelphia Inquirer, talks about the controversy that erupted when a 9-year-old third grader planned to transition into life as a girl. The school held an assembly for students to explain the situation. That didn't go over well with some parents.

"I did not think that the letter needed to go out," said Valerie Huff, whose daughter is a friend of the transgender student. "The kids don't make any big deal about it at all."

Mary Beth Lauer, district director of community relations, said there were no easy answers for school officials.

"This is something that was going to come out," Lauer said. "Isn't it better to be proactive, and let people know what is happening and how we're dealing with it?"

Does anyone have personal stories about schools and transgendered youth?

Posted by Christina Samuels at 1:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Readers who will be in New York May 9-11 should check out the Sprout Film Festival, a three day showing of films by and about people with disabilities.

The first day features "Including Samuel," a movie I didn't get a chance to see when it was shown in the D.C. area., unfortunately. The documentary, filmed by photojournalist Dan Habib, shows a family's efforts to involve their son Samuel, who has cerebral palsy, in every part of educational and social life. The last day of the festival will include a showing of "Autism: The Musical," which was recently broadcast on HBO.

Several other short films and documentaries look fascinating, like a 1970 documentary, "A Time for Georgia," about a girl with autism—I'd love to know what we thought of the disorder at that time, compared to now. "Fathers' Voices" is a short film on how men are affected by children with disabilities.

If anyone happens to catch any of these showings, feel free to leave a comment.

Posted by Christina Samuels at 3:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Virginia wants to drop a state requirement that parents have to be notified before terminating a student's special education services.

Like many states, Virginia is in the process of aligning its state special education standards to the federal standards included in the 2004 Indviduals with Disabilities Education Act.The state says this type of notification isn't required in the federal standards.

The state gave an example of how this might work: If a student with a learning disability was receiving an hour of occupational therapy a day, the school would have to notify a parent if it determined the child only needed 30 minutes of daily therapy.

But, if the school decided the child didn't need any occupational therapy at all, dropping the service without prior parental consent would be fine. If the parent protested, the service would be maintained until the matter could be resolved through due process.

(More details on all the changes are available here.)

No surprise, this proposed change hasn't gone over well with parents. According to a recent article in the Washington Post, 3,000 comments have been filed with the state on this proposal, and Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine has said he's not in favor of that change. The state's largest district, Fairfax County, is neutral on the proposal. And least one member of the state's board of education says he was surprised by the idea.

"I've always been an advocate for parental involvement, but there must be some reason that people think this is the right time for no parent involvement," board member Gary Jones said in the Post article. "I'd be interested in knowing what the reason is."

I don't think this proposal will last very long.

Posted by Christina Samuels at 4:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

Jim Gerl, at the Special Education Law Blog, has a recent post about a supposed 85 percent estimated divorce rate among parents of children with disabilities.

I've heard similar estimates before, but I've never been able to track down the research behind the claim. Others have raised the same question. I have no doubt that raising a child with a disability can put a unique strain on a couple. But there is some analysis that suggests that these children may not provoke the marriage-ending crisis that is popularly assumed. In 2004, Don Risdal and George H.S. Singer at the University of California, Santa Barbara, examined several research studies on marital satisfaction of families with and without children with disabilities. Part of their conclusions:

There is a detectable overall negative impact on marital adjustment, but this impact is small and much lower than would be expected given earlier assumptions about the
supposed inevitability of damaging impacts of children with disabilities on family well-being.

There's no question that some families are truly struggling, even if the overall effect may be small. And, in a country where around about half of first marriages for people under age 45 end in divorce (according to this report (pdf) from the U.S. Census Bureau), it's a certainty that educators will be working with many single parents of children with disabilities.

The PACER Center, a Bloomington, Minn.-based organization that offers a wealth of information for parents of children with disabilities, has created a fact sheet (pdf) on educating children of divorced parents that has good information for teachers and administrators as well.

Posted by Christina Samuels at 2:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The biggest problem for teachers these days? Overbearing parents, according to a survey of teachers in a well-to-do suburb outside Baltimore.

A Baltimore Sun article cited a soon-to-be-released survey of teachers in Howard County, Md., a district of about 48,500 students. The survey reports that 60 percent of teachers have reported harassment, primarily by parents. Those working conditions make it particularly difficult to retain special education teachers, according to the Howard County Education Association, which conducted the survey. The association is an affiliate of the National Education Association.

An official with the Carroll County Education Association, the NEA affiliate in a neighboring county, said parents of children in special education are among the worst offenders.

"A teacher is a pretty prime target when the child is not meeting their potential," Barry Potts, the president of the association, said in the article.

Interesting thoughts from teachers are included in the article, and in the lively side discussion on the paper's Web site, where people are posting their comments anonymously. The article left me wondering if at least part of the issue is related to technology. With Blackberries, instant messaging and e-mail, parents may expect instant responses from teachers.

However, isn't communication with parents what all teachers want? I've certainly heard stories about parents who don't bother to show up at individualized education program meetings. IDEA mandates that districts promote parental involvement, and districts are being evaluated by the federal government on parental satisfaction, among other things. No one wants a teacher to be physically threatened, as the article describes. But, how much communication with parents is too much?

Posted by Christina Samuels at 4:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (0)