Special Education Law Blog

Saturday, November 7, 2009

Poll Results In; We're Back in First Place

As a part of the fun component of the special education law blog, we run a poll on the lefthand side of the blog. These are not scientific endeavors, and we do not pretend that the results resemble science in any way. Nonetheless, we think that they are fun. The most recent poll just ended. The question was: Given the recession, should cost/money be a defense in special education cases? Here are the results:

43 (62%) No, money is no excuse
17 (25%) Yes, school districts don't have money
7 (10%) Maybe, tough question

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2 ( 3%) I'm too poor to answer
0 ( 0%) No opinion

Thanks for voting. Pretty lopsided results. Case closed. (That's a joke, as readers of this blog know, no case is ever closed in special education law!)

In other breaking news, this blog is back in first place in the best education blog category for the 2009 Bloggers Choice Awards. The contest is very close, please vote for this blog. We were lucky enough to finish in first place in the best education blog category last year, and it would further boost our credibility if we can repeat. You will have to sign up and respond to an email, but we really appreciate your support. If you would like to vote for this blog, you can click on the Bloggers Choice Awards button on the left hand side of the blog or else follow this link. There are a bunch of other interesting blogs to check out on the Bloggers Choice Awards website, and they are organized by category.

Remember that you can now read this blog on your mobile phone. Of course, you miss all the polls and links and resources and really cool pictures of me, but you do get the posts. Just bookmark this website: http://www.xfruits.com/jimgerl/?id=79913

Don't forget to check out all of the other resources on the lefthand side of the blog. There are lots of links to other websites and blogs with a wealth of information about special ed and special ed law. For example, you can follow the news by reading the headlines of the smartbrief issued every weekday by the Council for Exceptional Children. (This is an example of a blog widget or blidget) You can also see what's happening in the education blog world by clicking on the blognetnews button. There are also links to the exciting special education law groups we have created on the social networking sites Facebook, Ning, LinkedIn and Plaxo.

Finally, if you haven't already done so, please take one of the free subscriptions to this blog that are available on the lefthand side of the blog. Numbers help achieve credibility in the blogosphere. We have a lot of great subscribers, but we always welcome more. Please spread the word. There are three ways to subscibe: by email (you have to respond to an email to activate it); through an RSS feed to an aggregator or reader (like Google Reader or Bloglines or Netvibes, etc); or if you have a blog or website, through a blidget (a blog widget that shows this blog's posts an/or headlines right inside your blog or website). Thanks you for reading.

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Thursday, November 5, 2009

Teach Your Teachers Well: New Hot Topic -Teacher Education

I know that a number of the readers of this blog are professors who teach future teachers. I know a bunch of them, and they are really good at what they do. They are enthusiastic and dedicated to their students and those children whom their students will be teaching. But the way we train teachers is suddenly in the news- big time. I suspect that the following comments don't pertain so much to the institutions where my friends work, but a national debate has begun and we need to discuss it here.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan recently unleashed a firestorm when he suggested that the overall quality of teacher preparation programs in America is 'mediocre." Citing studies that over 60% of new teachers feel unprepared and his own discussions with teachers who feel that they did not receive enough practical classroom training and that they were not ready for behavior issues and dealing with poor children, Duncan stated his case. He called for revolutionary change in our methods of teacher preparation and stated that one million new teachers will be neede

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d in the next five years. Here is the New York Times story on Duncan's speech.

In a recent New York Times op-ed piece, Susan Engel, director of the teaching program at Williams College, took this point a step further. Here is the article. She suggests that teachers should be trained much like surgeons; working side by side with a very skilled mentor, getting plenty of feedback and taking on more and more responsibility as they improve as a teacher. She also suggests that student teachers and their mentors review videotapes of themselves in action to help them improve. She argues that student teachers should continue to study the subject that they will be teaching as well as education techniques; she strongly emphasizes the need for more training on the developmental needs of children. Finally she argues that school districts should be given the resources to hire new teachers in groups of seven to help develop more camaraderie.

These are some intriguing thoughts. I really like the surgeon-method idea. Teachers are important. Special education teachers are included within this group of important people. I think that one could easily make an argument that teachers, of general or special ed, are at least as important to our society and its future as surgeons. But if we train them like surgeons, shouldn't we also pay them like surgeons?

Also making recommendations for changes in teacher preparation and recruitment, as well as radical changes in teacher pay and evaluation methods, is the report issued Tuesday by the think tank called the Strategic Management of Human Capital. Scrolling down this link will lead you to the full report. I understand that the teacher unions fell that the committee that prepared their report ignored their input.

One of the problems that I have with the whole No Child Left Behind analysis is that it seems to blame the entire education problem on bad teachers. There are bad teachers; as a public school system product, I can say without equivocation that there are bad teachers. But really, there have always also been plenty of great teachers. I have a hard time believing that some bad teachers are the only thing wrong with the education system. Also the merit pay concept sounds like a good idea, but only if the evaluation system can be designed fairly- so that it truly identifies good teachers and not just the principal's pet or the popular kid!

What are your ideas on this topic? Do we need to make changes in the teacher preparation system? Are there other reasons that the education system is having problems?

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Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Charter Schools & Special Education: A New Article by Professor Weber Part I

Have you ever wondered about how the special education laws apply to students in a charter school? We tend to think of charter schools as things existing outside of the educational system. Some tell me that they are a curse; others say that they are a panacea. I suspect that the jury is still out.

Image via Wikipedia

Back to the question of special education and the charter school, this is an area that gets people worked up sometimes. I'm going to cite an excellent law review article that might answer all your questions:

Weber, Mark C., Special Education from the (Damp) Ground Up: Children with Disabilities in a Charter School-Dependent Educational System (October 12, 2009). Loyola Journal of Public Interest Law, Forthcoming. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1487667
You can get the article if you open an account on the SSRN here.

Now I have to admit that I have a bias here. (Hearing Officers always disclose their various potential biases. At least those hearing officers that I have trained do so!) Mark Weber is my friend. He is also one of the people who think about special education law issues, and I always enjoy reading his work.

Professor Weber goes into great detail in the article, and we will just scratch the surface here. I'm going to talk a little about charter schools in New Orleans in this post and a little about procedural safeguards in the next post, but I highly recommend that you read the whole article when you get a chance. It covers a lot of important issues.

New Orleans endured a great tragedy in 2005- Hurricane Katrina. The devastation and hardship was overwhelming. The response of the government was questionable. We all remember "Brownie;" don't we?

But one issue that has been less talked about is that Hurricane Katrina wiped out the New Orleans school system, or almost all of it. According to Professor Weber's article charter schools have been a key in the rebuilding of the school system. 49 charter schools now serve over one-half of the student population in New Orleans. That's a lot of charter school kids. The Recovery School District operates schools and oversees most of the charter schools.

Professor Weber argues that children with disabilities have largely been an afterthought in the rebuilding of the school system in new Orleans. He also discusses recent allegations that charter schools in New Orleans have steered away children with disabilities. If these allegations are true, the number of legal problems for the charter schools has risen dramatically. If charter schools are a part of the solution for education, clearly they must be able to educate children with disabilities as well as any other children.

So what is your opinion, are charter schools an effective option for children with disabilities? Are they improving our educational system? What principles should apply? What do you think?

Saturday, October 31, 2009

Last Day to Vote on Our Poll; Tech Update

This is the last day to vote on our poll. The current question is In this tough economy, should cost/expense be a defense in a special education case. No leads Yes 43 to 17 with 7 maybes and 2 too poor to vote. This is not a scientific poll. Nonetheless, be sure to make your voice heard. Vote today before the polls close.

The tech news is good. The most recent blog post was done by cellphone, and it was flawless. You can listen to my enunciation by clicking of the link to Jott. Unfortunately the corresponding Twitter mini-post got mangled. It was supposed to say "Musings of a special ed mediator. See Special Education Law Blog." Somehow musings became "uses" and law became "wall." But hey, as the public defender in My Cousin Vinny says, "I'm gettin' better!"

The post a few days back was done exclusively by email, and it was perfect. So both mobile options are working. This is great for me because I travel a lot.

Finally, the new mobile version of the blog is very successful. A number of readers have bookmarked the mobile website http://www.xfruits.com/jimgerl/?id=79913
on their web enabled mobile phones. They then can read the posts on their phones. They still need to subscribe, and that allows them to see the graphics and polls and links an

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d other resources that are not available on the scaled down version of the mobile website.

Our number of subscribers is at an all time high. Thank you and please keep spreading the word. The popularity of the blog helps our credibility in the blogosphere. Please keep reading.

The related special ed law groups on Facebook, Ning, LinkedIn and Plaxo continue to generate great discussions and interesting wall posts. The links to these groups are on the left hand side of the blog. Check them out when you get a chance.

Thanks again for reading this blog. I am very pleased that we can provide information, provoke thought, discuss policy choices and make resources available to all of the stakeholders who read the blog.

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Thursday, October 29, 2009

Mediation feels better....

Mediation feels better. I don't know about the participants but being a Mediator feels better than being a hearing officer.
listen

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Wednesday, October 28, 2009

California Court Rules that Private Insurer Must Pay for Autism Therapy

A Los Angeles trial court has issued a preliminary ruling that private insurance companies must pay for applied behavioral analysis treatments for children with autism. The Court found that a memo by a state agency permitting denials of coverage for such treatments was an in valid form of regulation that conflicts with a state law requiring insurers to cover mental and emotional health problems equally to physical problems. Here is the news article from the L. A. Times.

It should be noted that this is just a preliminary ruling. As long time readers of this blog know, legal disputes are never over until they're over. (I couldn't resist quoting Yogi Berra with the World Series on the horizon. Next year it will be the Cubs; do you know how many years I have been saying that?) The case has not yet been decided. There is much more yet to come.

If the preliminary ruling stands however, this could be an important decision. It

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also may impact special education law. Many parents have attempted to have their school systems provide or reimburse for ABA treatments. These have sometimes been successful, but often get stuck in the methodology category. Since the Rowley decision, courts have held that methodology choices are the province of professional educators. Where a district program denied FAPE, however, some hearing officers and courts have ordered ABA programs. If insurance companies must pay for ABA treatments or programs, (and as I said above, we are a long way from that being "the law.") there may be fewer attempts to look to school districts to pay for such services.

What do you think about this?

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Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Correction: 12.1% of Americans Have a Disability

The most recent post incorrectly states that 21.1% of Americans have a disability. That is a typo (or else proof of my arithmetic challenge. The correct number is 12.1%. Please follow the link for more details. I'm sorry for the confusion.

Thanks to alert reader Dick for bringing this to my attention.

By the way, this post was done remotely by email. Viva technology!
Sent from my BlackBerry wireless device from U.S. Cellular