High Court Seeks Input on Case

The U.S. Supreme Court is asking the Obama administration to weigh in as it considers whether to take up a case brought by the family of a girl with cerebral palsy who sought to bring her service dog to school.

The family of Ehlena Fry petitioned the Supreme Court to take their case last fall. Rather than accept or decline the case outright, however, the high court this week asked the U.S. solicitor general to provide the federal government’s viewpoint before the court decides whether to hear the matter.

Charter School Sued Over Denying Special Ed Students Services

Sorry for the heavy NY focus today, but lots of news. Happy Friday.

Special education students at a Brooklyn charter school did not get mandated services and were punished for behavior that arose from their disabilities, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court on Thursday. The suit, filed on behalf of five students at Achievement First Crown Heights, described a “systemic failure to provide them a free appropriate public education, in violation of their rights."

Dottie Morris is among the parents
suiding the charter school.

It said that students did not get physical therapy and other services for weeks at a time, and that a student with autism was disciplined for not looking in the direction a teacher instructed or for hiding under his desk.

Top States for Special Ed Litigation

Special education disputes are far more likely to be litigated in some states than others, with a new report finding that just 10 states account for nearly two thirds of all court decisions.Between 1979 and 2013, there were over 5,000 court decisions nationwide related to legal questions under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, according to an analysis published recently in the Journal of Special Education Leadership.Nearly 600 of those decisions came out of New York, while Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C. each accounted for about 500 decisions.

Opinion: Special Education and Race

Oped from today's New York Times by Paul L. Morgan, an associate professor of education at Pennsylvania State University.George Farkas, a professor of education at the University of California, Irvine.

More than six million children in the United States receive special-education services for their disabilities. Of those age 6 and older, nearly 20 percent are black.
Critics claim that this high number — blacks are 1.4 times more likely to be placed in special education than other races and ethnicities combined — shows that black children are put into special education because schools are racially biased.
But our new research suggests just the opposite. 

Feds Invest in Special Educators

With an eye on improving services for students with disabilities, the U.S. Department of Education is funneling millions into programs to train new special educators.

The Education Department said this week that it is granting $12.8 million to university programs coast to coast to address anticipated shortages in the field.

State Advocacy Group Fights District

ALBANY — An organization charged with safeguarding disabled New Yorkers is locked in legal combat with the North Colonie school district over whether the group should be allowed to investigate allegations that special education students suffered abuse and neglect in their elementary school.

According to court filings, Disability Rights New York last June approached the district, seeking to enter Blue Creek Elementary School after receiving allegations that several youngsters in a special "Academic Skills" class were inappropriately isolated in time-out rooms and restrained.

Opposition Grows to Use of Restraint and Seclusion in Schools

Deb Bellare isn't sure when her son Sam's nightmares began, but remembers it as sometime in 2006.

Sam Bellare and his mother Deb.

That was the year Bellare's breast cancer developed, the year of her mastectomy and chemotherapy treatments. It was also the year Sam, who has autism, turned 6.

And it was the year Bellare first learned Greece Central School District employees, coping with Sam's destructive physical and emotional outbursts, would sometimes pin her first-grader to the floor before whisking him off to a tiny "quiet room" to scream himself into exhaustion.

"I was sick, I wasn't paying attention and I didn't know any better. I thought they were doing the right thing," said Bellare.

Former Teacher's Aide Claims Special Ed Principal Abused Students

HAVERSTRAW, N.Y. — A former teacher's aide denied tenure by Rockland BOCES is suing his former employers, claiming the principal of a special-education program physically and verbally abused students and later fired the aide for reporting the conduct.

Kenneth Egan

Kenneth Egan said he recorded Principal Kimberly Taylor at the Hilltop School special-education program in June 2011 as she allegedly berated students, cursed and called one of them the R-word during a graduation rehearsal with 250 students present.

Preparing Special Ed Students for Jobs

JORDAN, Minn. — Each student needs to prepare for life after high school while still sitting in class before graduation day.

Every high school student needs to think about pursing a higher education or be ready to enter the workforce with necessary skills that match jobs in technical or service industries.

Special education teacher Vanessa Bigaouette teaches a Transitions class at Jordan High School that prepares juniors and seniors for life after high school. The curriculum covers subjects like planning for post-secondary education or training, employment and independent living.

New York School District in Court Over Special Education Placements

EAST RAMAPO, N.Y. — Officials in a New York school district are taking the state Education Department to court — again — to continue their battle against what the state says is repeated noncompliance with a law that requires disabled students to be educated in the most mainstream setting available.
The East Ramapo, N.Y., school board has agreed to pay attorney David Butler and his associates at their regular rate, $650 to $450 per hour, to initiate an appeal of the education officials' recent determination that the district "needs intervention" to satisfy requirements of the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).

N.J. Teachers Accused of Insulting Special Ed Students in Online Chat

Heard about this story this morning and really have to wonder what the teachers were thinking? And can totally understand the reaction of parents. Lesson learned: Don't put anything out there, even when your chatting, that you don't want to see in the news (or on Page 1, as we used to say at newspapers).

EDISON, N.J. — Parents of Edison special education students are furious in the wake of accusations that Edison schoolteachers participated in an online chat that insulted the types of kids they've spent their lives advocating for.

"This is my district, and it hurts even more," said Andrea Siragusa, an advocate for special education students like his son, a 7th grader in Edison's schools. "What is the rest of the class learning from a teacher like that?"

Report: African-American Students Moved to Special Ed at High Rate

BOSTON — Young black males in Boston are being dumped in special education classes and separated from their classmates at an alarming rate, a stunning new report out today reveals, prompting minority leaders to call for immediate reforms.

 NAACP Boston President Michael Curry

“It’s an unintentional consequence of bad policies,” said Najma Nazy’at, director of the Boston-area Youth Organizing Project. “I believe that how it happens here is through pushing out the young people who they just assume are going to create the most problems.”

NYS Faces Growing Special Ed Challenges

ALBANY, N.Y. — The Department of Education faces a daunting challenge in accommodating a large and growing population of special needs students, statistics in an Independent Budget Office report released Tuesday revealed.

The report found there were 183,850 special education students, constituting 18.1 percent of the total student population in D.O.E. public schools during the 2012-13 academic year, the most recent year for which data is available.

The percentage of special education students has risen every year since 2009, when the I.B.O. started collecting information on public school demographics.

Study: iPads May Aid Children with Autism Develop Verbal Skills

Adding access to a computer tablet to traditional therapy may help children with autism talk and interact more, new research suggests.

The study compared language and social communication treatment -- with or without access to an iPad computer tablet -- in 61 young children with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and found that the device helped boost the effect of the treatment.

Asking Children with Special Needs to Clear the Same Bar

Jackson Ellis will soon head to fourth grade. Diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, he's been receiving publicly funded services since he was 15 months old. Jackson's mother, Rebecca Ellis, a single parent, has made education advocacy her career. She's fighting to make sure her son gets the help he needs at his Mandeville, Louisiana public school. That's always been an uphill battle. But, since the state adopted the Common Core State Standards, Ellis says, it's become even harder.

"There's always been a gap — academically, socially — between what he could do and other kids could do," she says. "When the standards changed, the gap grew into this canyon overnight."

NYS Lawmakers Seek Funds for Children

ALBANY — With the clock ticking on the budget due April 1, advocates and legislators called Monday for the final spending plan to include help for programs benefiting disabled children.
The providers says that since the state Health Department revamped the payment system that was formerly run by counties, payments from health insurance companies have been delayed for weeks and months. They want the state to take responsibility for billing and collection for services to kids with autism, developmental disabilities or other serious conditions diagnosed when they are small children.

Bill To Help Ease Transition at Age 22

BOSTON — With the right services, autism advocates say people with developmental disabilities can work and live independently.  But instead, they say, many of them are cut off from special education when they turn 22 and do not qualify for adult services they need from the state’s Department of Developmental Services.
“We have many children who are sitting at home, watching TV, playing on the computer, don’t have access to a day program,” said Barbara L’Italien, spokesperson for The Arc Massachusetts.

Early Intervention Beneficial, Regardless of Method, for Children with Autism

For parents of preschoolers with autism, finding a classroom program for their child may have just gotten a little easier.A new study has found that it's the quality of a teaching program -- not the model of instruction -- that seems to be most important to a student's success.

Study: Charters Edge Neighborhood Schools in Special Education

As charter schools continue to proliferate across the country, a new study finds that they are offering benefits for students with disabilities.

In a report out this week, the Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford University compared the performance of students at charters with that of students attending traditional public schools in 25 states, the District of Columbia and in New York City. The analysis is an update to a similar report issued in 2009.

Top 10 iPad Apps for Special Ed

The iPad takeover of public education isn’t just confined to the mainstream classroom: Special needs educators, too, are finding that iPads can be a vital tool to support independence. What sets the iPad apart from other devices is the simple and visually robust user interface that can be used by almost everyone. It’s also a highly customizable device that can be set up with applications and features to support a variety of special needs.
With nearly a million apps in the iTunes App Store, identifying effective apps is often an overwhelming task for educators.