The title of the article is “Tying the Science of Special Education to the Law.” Both science and law are fact-based disciplines (or are supposed to be), so this is a big issue for KPS4Parents, these days. I’m not going to repeat the whole thing here. You can link to it to see what I wrote.

The point is that there is a huge disconnect between the science of special education and the law of special education. As KPS4Parents approaches its 10th year of operation, we are looking at how best to focus our efforts based on what we’ve learned so far and this seems to be the critical nexus where our attention should be focused.

Somebody scientific informed the development of the IDEA. Congress couldn’t have come up with language like “measurable annual goals” and “present levels of performance” without someone who understands the science of it all chipping in.

One of the issues we’re looking to combat on a systemic level is the watering down of the term “measurable” by the public education system. There is only one definition of “measurable” and it doesn’t include ballpark estimations framed as percentages of accuracy. Real percentages are calculated from measurable data. IEPs are required to be reasonably calculated to render meaningful educational benefit, which, again, means using reliable empiricism.

School districts try to argue that they are not bound by the same degree of rigor as scientific research, but the term “measurable” comes from the use of empirical methods á la science. Hello!!!!!

It has always killed me that our public schools expect 3rd graders to produce science fair exhibits that include a hypothesis, methods (including for measurement), and results in a manner consistent with scientific method but the same school districts that teach this will do everything they can to exempt themselves from the same standards of accuracy when it comes to their duties to educate children with disabilities. Why specialists with advanced degrees think they are held to a lower standard of technical accuracy than the average 3rd grader is beyond me.

In any event, this is going to be something to which I’ll be devoting a lot of attention. I’ll be doing a lot of research and posting my findings as I go along. I may also be assisting in the development of a legal treatise on the subject, which could be constructive in preventing and resolving special education legal disputes in which measurability is at issue.

If you have any background knowledge on how the scientific terminology of the IDEA ended up in the regulations, please share! You can post your feedback below.

Even though the personalities she describes only account for a handful of “bad guys,” the non-compliant and/or substantively inappropriate actions of one district employee is often enough to derail the best efforts being made by the ethical district members of the team. To make things worse, most parents don’t know enough about the science or the law of special education to always know when they’re getting shafted. This makes it important for parents to educate themselves.

I want to focus on three particular personality types that Ms. Laviano describes in her posting because I’ve encountered individuals such as these relatively recently and have had to deal with each in a particular manner. One thing to note is that it is possible for a single individual to fit more than one of these negative personality types.

“The Smiling Assassin”

Smiling assassins are people who smile kindly to your face as they are twisting a knife in your back and, after you’ve picked up the pieces of the harm they’ve done as best you can, you wonder if they aren’t actually sociopaths or personality disordered. The general rule with these folks – who are often not identified until after they’ve already burned you pretty badly – is that nothing they say can be trusted.

The most common thing I’ve seen with this personality type is that they say one thing during an IEP meeting verbally, but then write down something that is too vague to be enforceable in the IEP document. So, for example, they may verbally commit to provide aide support to your child during lunch and recess to help keep social interactions appropriate with peers, but then only write in the IEP meeting notes, “Team discussed parent concerns regarding social interactions during unstructured times. Team discussed providing aide support during lunch and recess.”

Memorializing a discussion is not the same thing as agreeing to provide a service. If the team agreed to provide aide support during lunch and recess, then aide support should be described on the services page of the IEP, including the frequency and duration of such services. Many parents see the notes indicating that aide support was discussed and think this means the same thing as aide support actually being provided.

Even if you audio recorded the IEP meeting and can show that the team verbally agreed to provide aide support, this is only viable evidence in due process when arguing that the IEP document is substantively deficient and is not created in a manner that is reasonably calculated to render meaningful educational benefit in all areas of need. If you try to file a compliance complaint with your state’s department of education on the basis that the district failed to deliver on its promise, the audio recording doesn’t mean squat.

The language of the IEP document is what the state department of education can enforce, not what was verbally agreed-to but not documented in the actual IEP. Smiling assassins will say pretty much anything to placate a parent without actually committing the district to serving a child with special needs.

What is particularly disconcerting to me is when these smiling assassins manage to climb the professional ladder within their districts to achieve positions of great authority, only to screw kids, families, and teachers over on a systemic basis. Even in retirement, they can continue to have a negative influence on the colleagues they’ve left behind, poisoning the well against future generations that will never even know they exist.

One such individual in Ventura County who is semi-retired is still brought in by the Ventura County SELPA to conduct trainings for special education personnel. Now, don’t get me wrong. Ventura County SELPA is one of the better SELPAs out there and I have a lot of respect for its current director.

But, smiling assassins are consummate schmoozers who are extremely accomplished at social engineering and doctoring paper trails. Unless those who supervise them actually catch them in the act, they generally tend to get promoted on the basis that they seem to save public education agencies money while avoiding litigation with families. Even the most ethical supervisor can be fooled into thinking that these individuals are trustworthy and capable, when, in fact, they are sinister and self-serving.

The individual to whom I have referred above is exactly that type of person. KPS4Parents recently received information that this individual headed a training for special education teachers in the County during which the topic of non-English-speaking parents came up. Under the law, in order to ensure informed consent on the part of parents, translators are to be made available through the school district for IEP meetings involving parents who do not speak English.

Also under the law, parents who do not speak English have a right to a copy of any documents such as assessment plans, IEPs, etc. translated into their native language upon request. This law exists so these parents can understand that to which they are being asked to give their consent and make informed decisions.

According to our source, the semi-retired smiling assassin at Ventura County SELPA instructed the teachers during her training to address parents’ rights to translated IEPs by saying, “Instead of asking them if they want a translated copy of the IEP, say, instead, ‘You don’t need a translated copy of this IEP, do you?’”

By setting up the question in the negative, this smiling assassin was taking advantage of the fact that because parents generally don’t want to impose and are so grateful for the help they think their children are getting, they will say “That’s okay. I don’t need a translated copy of the IEP,” and sign off on whatever is put in front of them completely unaware of whether it conforms to what the IEP team verbally agreed to or not. When teachers participating in this training balked over the apparent lack of ethics of this approach, the smiling assassin reportedly replied, “Well, they don’t know how to read IEPs, anyway.”

In my experience, most smiling assassins tend to discriminate not only on the basis of handicapping condition, but also race, ethnicity, and socio-economic status. These are people who get into special education because their political inclinations compel them to protect the financial elite from paying for social programs promulgated by “bleeding heart liberals.” They have absolutely no regard for the welfare of children or the long-term fiscal consequences society will have to bear if these children aren’t properly educated before reaching adulthood.

These smiling assassins think they are serving the good of their own socio-economic class by acting as gatekeepers within the system to keep the “have-nots” separated from the “haves.” What they are doing is effectively the public agency equivalent of corporate espionage; they have infiltrated the system to undermine its purpose – at taxpayer expense, no less – not achieve the mandated missions of their agencies. They are funneling money out of our classrooms and into their own pockets, then doing everything in their power to make sure things stay that way.

“The Lawless Renegade”

Lawless renegades tend to have verbal diarrhea on a regular basis and say all kinds of things that they shouldn’t be saying. Like many smiling assassins, they have their own agendas which usually have nothing to do with achieving appropriate student outcomes, protecting children’s interests, or benefiting society as a whole. Unlike smiling assassins, lawless renegades do not choose their words very carefully but because most parents generally don’t know that much of what lawless renegades say is BS, they are nonetheless duped. Even if parents suspect that what they’re being told is inaccurate, they are often left unsure what to do about it.

In my experiences, lawless renegades aren’t so much out to screw people as they just have no idea what they’re talking about. Rather than engaging in espionage, their agendas are more mundane. By speaking in an authoritative tone, they seek to command the respect of the other people on the IEP team even though they have no idea what they’re talking about. In my experience, it’s not that they know the regulations are are deliberately seeking to break them; it’s more that they don’t know or care what the regulations are and are just looking to be seen as the voice of authority.

As Ms. Laviano points out in her article, a lawless renegade can be pretty much anybody on an IEP team. I’ve seen speech-language pathologists insist that kids have to be found eligible for special education as speech-language impaired (“SLI”) in order to “qualify” for speech-language services even when those children were already eligible for special education under another category, which is utter hogwash. The only thing an eligibility category accomplishes is to grant the child an IEP; it doesn’t determine what services the child will receive under the IEP at all.

I’ve also seen school site administrators back up their unionized general education teachers by making crazy claims about what their teachers are not obligated to do, in direct contradiction to the contents of children’s 504 plans and IEPs, which are legally enforceable documents with which their teachers must comply. Additionally, I’ve seen district-level administrators say all kinds of crazy, unfounded things like “You have to agree that your child is emotionally disturbed in order for him to be placed in the class that would best meet his needs,” where – again – eligibility does not drive IEP content, only whether or not a kid gets an IEP in the first place.

But, perhaps the most frightening lawless renegades are school psychologists who try to speak with authority about things outside of their qualifications, knowing full well that the other members of the IEP team usually have no idea what their professional limitations actually are. For this, we have to look at another type of unseemly IEP team member: the Pseudo-Psychologist.

“The Pseudo-Psychologist”

Pseudo-psychologists are dangerous because they use their titles to mislead people, mostly parents but also their colleagues. In many, if not most, states, school psychologists are not required to be real, licensed psychologists. In California, for example, all you need to be a school psychologist is a master’s degree in school psychology (which is pretty limited in scope) and a specialized credential from the California Commission for Teacher Credentialing. This is the same entity that issues credentials to teachers and school administrators. It is not the same entity that issues licenses to actual psychologists.

Even though I, myself, am currently working on my master’s degree in educational psychology with an emphasis in development, learning, instruction, and evaluation – which is more involved than a basic school psychology degree – with the intent of also getting a credential so that I can go on to become a licensed educational psychologist, I make no misrepresentations about my professional intentions. I have absolutely no intent of becoming a “shrink.” Educational psychology is devoted to learning, memory, development, and how best to render instruction and evaluate the efficacy of that instruction. It is not the same thing as studying to become licensed as a mental health clinician.

Nonetheless, people with nothing more than a master’s in school psychology and a glorified teaching credential will go into IEP meetings throwing around diagnostic language and opining as to whether students are mentally ill, need medication, and a ton of other things they aren’t qualified or authorized to say and do. But, because the word “psychologist” is included in their titles, the rest of the IEP team usually has no idea that these people are just talking out of their butts. If in doubt, ask this person for his/her license number and type. Chances are, they are not real clinical psychologists.

This isn’t to discount what a properly qualified school psychologist is permitted to do. The school psychologist’s job is very important in special education. It’s just that too many people let the title go to their heads and try to milk more power out of it than it’s actually worth, starting with deliberately keeping other people in the dark regarding their actual qualifications.

What makes pseudo-psychologists dangerous is that they are often also lawless renegades or career ladder-climbing smiling assassins. The most dangerous manipulators in the world are the ones who have been trained in any social science that includes counseling techniques and therapeutic methods. These skills can be abused by amoral smiling assassins to achieve their self-serving ends. Otherwise, you can end up with legal renegades who have just enough skill and knowledge to be dangerous and who will pop off with all kinds of crazy stuff peppered with professional jargon that, to the average parent or teacher, sounds really impressive even though it doesn’t mean anything real.

Parents should not have to worry about whether the professionals working with their children can be trusted or not. Unfortunately, in order to protect their children from harm, it is imperative that parents understand enough about the other members of their IEP teams to know how much of what these people say can be trusted or not. A large part of my job is calling BS on stuff that school district people tell parents that is not true and setting parents straight on what they actually have a right to request and/or demand on behalf of their children.

Earlier this school year, I attended an IEP meeting with a parent of a 6-year-old with learning disabilities who had developed a repertoire of behaviors that succeeded in getting him out of doing school work he found challenging. School personnel had been unwittingly reinforcing this behavior until the situation got entirely out of hand, resulting in several suspensions. When 6-year-olds get suspended, there’s usually some pretty incompetent people at school involved, in my experience.

Rather than admit that school personnel had fed into the behaviors and allowed them to provide the child with an escape from school work, the district’s school psychologist reached the unfounded conclusion that this child was emotionally disturbed. During the IEP meeting in question, the parent agreed to all of the proposed goals as well as services and placement. The only thing she didn’t agree with was the change in eligibility from SLD to ED.

The parent did absolutely nothing to prevent the District from rendering the intervention it proposed. She did nothing that could be regarded as interfering with her son’s receipt of a free and appropriate public education (“FAPE”). She simply was not willing to let a bunch of incompetents label her 6-year-old as emotionally disturbed to cover up their own mistakes and have him bear the consequences of that label without absolute proof that this was actually his problem – proof the district could not provide.

Incensed that this low-income single parent dared to contradict her overpaid opinion, the district’s school psychologist – in front of me and with the audio recording going, mind you – threatened the parent with due process if she refused to agree with the ED eligibility. District’s have an obligation, or at least the authority, to take a parent to due process if the parent refuses to agree to IEP content such that a FAPE cannot be provided.

However, in this case, all of the goals, services, and placement had been consented-to. It was only the eligibility category that the parent refused to agree to change, which had no bearing on what the district was empowered to do under the IEP to serve this child’s needs. The child had already been found eligible for an IEP as having a specific learning disability; it was unnecessary to redetermine eligibility in the course of modifying his IEP to more appropriately serve his needs. That to which the parents had withheld her consent interfered with nothing.

For the school psychologist to threaten the parent with due process was highly inappropriate. First, she lacked the authority to make such threats on behalf of the entire district. Due process is very expensive litigation and is meant to protect a child’s right to a FAPE, not to be used by sanctimonious old ladies trying to cram their unqualified personal opinions down the throats of parents who know when their kids are just pulling people’s legs to get out of doing things they don’t want to do.

For a school psychologist to threaten to commit tens of thousands of dollars at taxpayer expense to assert her opinion is both unethical and unprofessional. Not only was she a pseudo-psychologist trying to make the case that this little boy was mentally ill without any clinical data or the professional qualifications to support her assertion, she was also a lawless renegade making threats that she was in no position to make, but which the parent would have never realized if I hadn’t been there to step in. It makes me worry about how many unrepresented parents this woman has successfully suckered into capitulating over the course of her career with similar threats.

In the end, we filed a personnel complaint against this individual with the district, pointing to the audio recording of the meeting as evidence of our allegations, and had her removed from the child’s case. School district employees who work directly with children are bound by ethical guidelines. Parents who believe that their children are being compromised by smiling assassins, lawless renegades, and pseudo-psychologists have the right to file personnel complaints with these individuals’ employers. Parents may also have the right to file complaints with their state credentialing organizations against these individuals, as well.

I concur with Ms. Laviano’s recommendation that parents should audio record their IEP meetings (give at least 24-hour written notice of your intent to do so, first) to keep an accurate verbatim record of what was said by whom. This is your best protection against the kinds of unethical conduct that smiling assassins, lawless renegades, and pseudo-psychologists can engage in.

Many thanks to Ms. Laviano, as well, for sharing information about these personality types and more on her website. The special education students in Connecticut are lucky to have such a savvy attorney on their side.

The matter involves a systemic issue that impacted a number of children and is a powerful lesson for any school districts that are engaging in the same inappropriate behavior. The case involves a compliance complaint that was filed against Fox C-6 School District in Missouri by a locally-headquartered advocacy organization, The International Coalition for Autism and All Abilities (ICAA). The complaint alleges that the District systemically denied a FAPE to certain special education students whose classrooms were in specific buildings by shortening their school day in order to accommodate transportation schedules.

While matters of FAPE are not things tried through compliance complaints, procedural violations of the law are the purview of compliance investigations and the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (MODESE) acted on the complaint on that basis. The federal regulations permit for a student’s school day to be shortened per IEP team agreement and this arrangement must be documented in that student’s IEP. As with any IEP content, the decision to shorten a student’s school day must be based on individual student need, not arbitrary matters like bus schedules.

MODESE found that Fox C-6 was out of compliance with the regulations because some students were missing instruction due to their school days being unlawfully shortened in order to accommodate the District’s transportation schedules rather than because their IEPs called for shortened school days. This finding should serve as fair warning to any other school districts cuttings kids’ lessons short for reasons other than their individual learning needs.

As is often the case, what the complainant knew to be true based on the experiences of the families with which it works and what the investigators found were not identical. Some of this could very well have been a “CYA” move on the part of the District once it received notice that the investigation had been opened, resulting in not all of the allegations being sustained once everything was said and done. Regardless of whether the District attempted to clean up its act before investigators saw anything or not, the fact remains that it still got busted for the violations that MODESE did actually see – and it sent investigators to make on-site observations as to when kids were getting out of school and getting on their buses.

ICAA issued a graceful formal written response to the investigation findings, which maintained its stance that other violations had been taking place regardless of whether MODESE found evidence of them or not, but expressed its appreciation for the findings nonetheless. Some improvement is better than none at all  and even if the campuses that managed to dodge the accountability bullet got away with denying a FAPE, the District on the whole did not and we have to presume that all of this resulted in some kind of systemic change within Fox C-6 District for the better.

We thank ICAA for its tireless efforts to protect the educational and civil rights of students with all types of learning needs. And, we congratulate ICAA on achieving improvements in response to its complaint on behalf of so many students in Fox C-6 District.

But, of course, I have questions about the kid with the gun and have to caution everyone against vilifying this kid until we really know what the situation is with him, which could be limited by the degree to which his family is willing to disclose his confidential information to the public and/or which can be permissibly disclosed pursuant to the ongoing juvenile legal proceedings. Of significant concern is the following passage that I’ve quoted from the article linked to above:

The student had recently transferred to the school, Bill Poss, husband of teacher Natalie Poss, told KIRO-TV.

“I don’t know a lot about the kid other than my wife’s been coming home talking about him, and he’s been a real problem in the class, and she’s been very concerned about it,” said Bill Poss.

What the hell was Natalie Poss doing discussing confidential student information with her husband? If she was concerned about her student, her husband was the wrong person for her to complain to about the situation.

I appreciate that spouses share with each other, particularly involving challenging events in their lives for which they need emotional support, but confidential student information is still confidential student information. In the very least, Bill Poss should have kept his mouth shut and not shared the breach of confidentiality with the media.

When a teacher is faced with a clearly troubled student, the appropriate measure is to submit a written referral to the district for special education assessment and/or intervention. She may have actually done this without receiving an appropriate response from her employer, which is one of those things we’ll just have to see as the investigation proceeds. At this point, however, Bill Poss just exposed a huge FERPA violation for which both his wife and the District could be held legally accountable.

This is like the kids in Columbine and Jonesboro who were mentally ill and/or otherwise emotionally disturbed as well as unserved or underserved by their respective school districts. Had appropriate interventions been in place for these troubled kids, these shootings would have been far less likely to have occurred.

Unlike Columbine and Jonesboro, the 9-year-old third grader (and that info alone suggests a possible disability – was he held back after failing to meet grade-level standards?) in this case didn’t pull the gun out of his backpack and deliberately shoot anyone. It discharged from within his backpack, according to the reports. But, clearly his judgment is impaired if he thought carrying a loaded handgun in his backpack was a good idea.

The questions in my mind in addition to the obvious questions of  ”Why did he have a loaded handgun in his backpack?” and “Where the hell did he get it?” are “To what degree is his judgment impaired and why?”, “If the district knew he was troubled and presenting with behavioral challenges, how did he nonetheless make it through almost an entire school day with a loaded handgun in his backpack without anyone noticing until it accidentally discharged and shot another child?”, and “How many other school days did he walk around campus with a loaded gun without anyone noticing it even though they noticed his other troubling behaviors?” Clearly, appropriate positive behavioral interventions weren’t already in place for him.

I’m sure more information is to come that will shed more light on this situation. I’m just saddened to see the responsible adults in the situation making it worse by breaking the law themselves, even if it was an emotionally charged poor judgment call. Loose lips sink ships and Natalie Poss, as justified in being upset as she was and still is, very well may have just sunk her own ship as well as that of the school district for which she works by breaching student confidentiality under FERPA, which is just one more wrong on top of the shooting itself.

Two wrongs don’t make a right. The disclosure of federally protected confidential information to the public regarding a student, special needs or not, by a public servant does nothing to speed Amina’s recovery or achieve an appropriate outcome regarding the boy whose gun shot her.

I empathize with Amina’s family. I’m the mother of a daughter, too, and I would be devastated if something like this happened to my child. Amina was clearly the victim of a systemic failure to safeguard her and her classmates from harm, not the least of which was the district’s failure to appropriately intervene with the boy who had the gun before things went this far.

I think the school district responded appropriately by bringing in counselors and putting substitutes in the classrooms to help the teachers with all the other students coming back to school after the fact. But, this is all after the harm had already been done. There should have been a competent degree of “child find” long before things reached this unfortunate conclusion. Even if this boy turns out not to be disabled (which I find nearly impossible to believe), proper assessment would have still identified what the heck was going on with him and could have resulted in referrals to appropriate programs and interventions that could have nonetheless prevented this from happening.

If this boy could have been saved before the shooting, he’s very likely lost to us all forever now that he’s entered the juvenile justice system. Amina may be the one who was shot, but presuming she recovers as predicted by her family, the boy responsible for her shooting  is the one whose life is now most likely over at the age of 9. I hope both of them get all of the mental and emotional help they each individually need and that they are both able to recover from this horrible event.

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There are a number of states that have passed regulations that require insurance companies to fund services, including ABA programs, for their insureds who have autism. However, many insurance companies deny autism-related claims on a regular basis.

Insurance advocacy is an entirely different ballgame from special education and regional center advocacy and it’s too big of an undertaking for KPS4Parents to assume. However, other advocacy organizations exist to help families of children with autism pursue appropriate interventions such as ABA, speech-language services, and occupational therapy from their insurance carriers.

While we’ve never worked with any of these organizations, and thus cannot speak to the quality of their services, parents may still wish to check them out for themselves. The organizations we’ve identified that perform this type of advocacy and other parent resources on insurance coverage of autism services include:

• The Autism Health Insurance Project (California)
• Advocates for Autism of Massachusetts
• Autism Advocacy & Law Center (Minnesota)
• Autism Society of Ohio
• Gotham Government Communications & Relations (New York)
• Missouri Department of Insurance
• Elizabeth Birt Center for Autism Law & Advocacy (New York)
• Angelo & Di Monda (California)

There are also other resources out there for parents willing to take the time to search the internet and call around. The above-listed resources are just a few of many.

The argument for seeking support from insurance carriers are compelling, despite the fact that there are publicly funded agencies that are mandated to provide supports and services to children with special needs, including autism. One of the most compelling arguments is that insurance companies are highly profitable for-profit entities with very deep pockets, deeper than those of the publicly funded agencies mandated to serve children with disabilities. Autism is a both a medical and a psychological diagnosis and health insurance is generally intended to cover the costs of care for both medical and psychological needs as they are both health concerns.

I once heard Chris Angelo, the father of California’s AB 88, speak on the issue of insurance coverage for autism services and he made the point that top insurance company executives in wealthy health insurance companies are given end-of-year bonuses to the tune of millions of dollars, up to $20 million per executive. I also know from having worked in insurance for a while that the biggest investors in real estate, particularly commercial real estate, are insurance companies (though I don’t know how that’s been working out for them lately).

You can download a free copy of Mr. Angelo’s AB 88 advocacy guide that parents can use with their insurance providers, previewed below. Mr. Angelo freely gives this tool away so that parents can help themselves as much as possible. Ironically, after achieving the passage of AB 88, which he regarded as a great professional accomplishment at the time, Mr. Angelo later became the father of a child with autism only to realize the impact of what he had achieved.

It’s worth noting that AB 88 also applies to children with mental health disorders. While these students are eligible for special education mental health services and possibly mental health intervention from their county mental health agencies in California, if they have private health insurance, they are covered by the protections of AB 88, as well.

The things that parents need to keep in mind is that special education services are meant to address educationally necessary needs and, at least in California, regional centers are the payers of last resort after all other generic agencies (school districts, county mental health, etc.) have exhausted their obligations. In California under the Lanterman Act, regional centers are required to maximize consumers’ individual potentials, though I’ve never met anyone who has actually received this level of service from a California regional center in over 20 years of advocating for children with special needs. The idea of it is pretty much a joke.

Unless state law says otherwise (and most states’ laws don’t), school districts are not required to maximize anybody’s potential. And, generally speaking, they don’t. The purpose of special education is to render meaningful educational benefit – that is, give a kid with special needs enough to get by, not the best education possible. The famous analogy is that eligible students are not entitled to the “Cadillac” of an education but, rather a “serviceable Chevy.” In my experience, an appalling number of kids are getting something more like a “busted-up Pinto.”

So, while speech-language, OT, and ABA can be provided under an IEP, it’s only to the degree that is educationally necessary to render educational benefits. That doesn’t mean it’s all a kid needs. If it is enough to help the kid succeed at school but not enough to address all of the child’s needs, which can be the case, then parents have to supplement an IEP with outside services. The entity with the deepest pockets for supplemental services is the insurance industry and, unlike regional center programs, private health insurance exists in every state where regional centers do not.

In the wake of the public outcry over abuses by the financial industry, of which the insurance industry is a part, and government shortages of the financial resources necessary to render an effective degree of intervention to persons challenged by disability, turning to the insurance industry to achieve more bang for their buck is a timely solution for many parents. That said, we have to acknowledge that a significant amount of government shortages are due to misuses of funds, inefficiencies, redundancies, and waste within government agencies.

The danger in putting all of our eggs in the insurance industry basket is that we will neglect to hold the government accountable for its duties – something it is encouraging parents to do by pointing at the insurance industry a whole lot these days. The best planning parents can do is figure out what their children individually need, then figure out what the most is that they are entitled to from publicly funded agencies as well as their private insurance and go after all responsible entities to live up to their respective duties. That’s no small undertaking for parents, particularly single parents, raising children whose challenges make the act of parenting that much more difficult in the first place.

I don’t know a parent of a child with special needs who isn’t exhausted just from day-to-day parenting; the added task of chasing after services is often so daunting that parents tend to let things slide that could make a world of difference in their children’s lives as well as their own. This is what makes advocates and attorneys necessary to the process in many instances, which is again another cost and time consideration for parents, but usually one that can pay for itself. Running up an advocacy bill of anywhere from $500 to $5000 may sound like a lot until you consider that it can net tens of thousands of dollars worth of services for which the parents will not have to pay and which will enhance a child’s abilities, opportunities, and quality of life in ways that can never be fully measured in dollars.

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Bridging Over to Life After K-12

Many states mandate that all middle schoolers formally explore career options. For students with special learning needs, maintaining high expectations is an important part of this process. Here are some tips on how to focus on strengths to achieve this end.

Conveying to middle school students the importance of career exploration is quite a trick to pull off successfully. Many states mandate that students, often in the 8th Grade, develop the first components of what will be a comprehensive career plan with implications for course selection. Making the realities many adults find daunting relevant to thirteen-year-olds is possible and this important milestone shouldn’t be overlooked as an integral part of the IEP process, particularly in light of transition requirements as teens on IEPs grow older.

An Eye on Transition

While not all states mandate career plans, all do have required transition plans for students being served under an IEP. With this in mind, combine any middle school exploration of careers into an integrated approach that will blend easily into the transition plan several years later.

Whatever the individual school standards, make sure that the student’s IEP includes the following items for career education activities and resources:

• Interest Inventory
• Occupational Outlook Handbook
• Sample Household Budgets by Occupation
• Shopping list with costs
• Rental Surveys
• Student Loans
• Childcare Costs
• Automobile Maintenance and Insurance Costs
• Post-Secondary Opportunities
• Degree Options
• Online Learning Options
• Shadow Experience (if available)
• Résumé
• Social Media Job Search Basics

Focus on the “I Can”

It’s somewhat natural to impose too much real life knowledge and insight into a new teen’s plans for his or her future. Most often this is expressed by an urge to tamp down expectations based upon an understanding the student can’t honestly have yet. While it is advisable to hold students accountable for their reasoning, the appropriate role for an adult is to allow discovery. Whatever the identified disability, the combined career exploration effort needs to center on those abilities, including potential, he or she can achieve.

Carpe Diem

Focusing on the “I Can” strengths and having a student with special needs become engaged in their own future plans presents a unique window of opportunity. Without the pressure of time that accompanies transition plans, written within a year or so of graduation, middle school career planning, while important, comes with a comfort zone. Seize this time to construct activities that allow the student to recognize their strengths. Let them use their strong suits as a bridge from what they didn’t know about the world of work to what they actually look forward to achieving.

A Double Bonus

The need to have students begin learning about careers at an early age is well recognized. That curriculum in middle school that has a specific focus on career exploration is a commendable advance. For special education, building in both formal IEP goals (tied to the transition plan if age-appropriate) as well as the chance for students to focus on what they do well as opposed to remediation, is a great opportunity not to be missed.

Here is the video I was able to put together with the time and resources available to me. It’s hardly a work of art, but please appreciate the message.

If you’re wondering why I was leaning over a little and kind of looking up in some parts of it, my laptop was on the floor next to me and I was looking at it between segments to advance the slides of my script. I didn’t have anyone directing me to tell me that I was still leaned over a little at the beginning of some of the segments. My laptop was connected to our projector, which was projecting my script onto a cardboard display tri-fold opened out on a presentation easel to serve as a screen.

I created my own teleprompter of sorts with PowerPoint® and what I had immediately available. This was a last-minute DIY job if there ever was one; unfortunately, it was the best I could do under the circumstances. Also, thanks to a YouTube bug, the thumbnail image for the video is an awkward random freeze-frame and not what I selected. It will evidently take days for the issue to resolve itself and by that time, voting could be over, so please endure until it updates.

With this video, please forgive the lame and appreciate the effort. We greatly appreciate your votes on the Pepsi Refresh web site and via text messaging (text 110763 to 73774 - data rates may apply). See our dedicated Pepsi Refresh site at http://kps4parents.org/PepsiRefresh.

KPS4Parents recently received notice that we have survived the gauntlet and made it to the final voting round of the Pepsi Refresh Project. This is an exciting opportunity and we’d appreciate your help in securing $50,000 in grant funding from Pepsi to provide lay advocacy services to at least five students with special needs from families with low incomes as well as at least one parent training workshop to parents from low income households. All you have to do is vote!

We’ve built a site around our Pepsi Refresh undertaking, which you can see by clicking here. We’ll be uploading new content to our Pepsi Refresh site as it gets created, including a video, so follow our progress and vote for us!

I don’t know if the folks at Geico realize just how true-to-life this parody is. It’s quite the social commentary, if you ask me. Some teachers seem like robots, regurgitating the same derogatory drivel and dismissing legitimate attempts made by parents to be involved in their children’s education. Certainly not all teachers, but enough to make this video ring true with a lot of people. Those of us pursuing education reform are torn between finding it funny and finding it sad, but then tragedies and comedies are divided by a very thin line.