Supreme Court puts school districts on notice
The Supreme Court’s recent ruling put school districts on notice that if it failed to reasonably address the special needs of students, parents could opt to have those needs met at a private institution all at the school district’s expense. While this has the potential of placing a huge financial burden upon school districts, it doesn’t have to if school districts offer special education services to those students who qualify for them. Such is not always the case.
Educators will tell you that there has been a push by local school districts to significantly reduce the number of students qualifying for special education services. Special education classes were seen as a dumping ground for many students who had classroom management issues, with a higher than expected proportion being minorities. It is also true that special education programs are not fully funded by the federal government and frequently supplant funds from regular education programs. That is not fair. However, it is equally unfair for a school district to balance its books by depriving students of special education services. That has the potential to happen through the implementation of another federal program — Response to Intervention (RtI).
The intent of RtI is educationally noteworthy. It is a means to accurately measure a student’s academic needs and to determine appropriate interventions. Thus, RtI could provide assistance to those students not eligible for special education, but in need of additional regular education resources. However, RtI could also be misused by some school districts by delaying special education referrals or by retaining students with unidentified special needs within less expensive regular education programs.
Both regular and special education teachers are already seeing their workload increase because of RtI assignments, some possibly violating the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. While special education teachers often work with their students within regular education classrooms, thereby having “incidental” contact with regular education students, school districts are now having RtI students pulled out of their regular education classes and co-mingled with special education students who are receiving special education services at the time. Not only does this deprive special education students of instructional minutes per their Individualized Education Plan, but it also denies them due process rights related to their privacy. Special education advocates are surely paying attention.
With the recent Supreme Court ruling, it would be prudent if school districts did not misuse RtI or use it as a rationale to either deny or delay special education services to students. All it takes are informed parents to decide that such tactics are not in the best interest of their child and that perhaps their child would be better served within a private classroom environment — at the district’s expense, of course.
Ric Stephenson
Region 6 Director, Illinois Education Association-NEA
Edwardsville
Wah wah wah. Why should it be the government’s responsibility to address such special needs? In fact, I think kids would be better off going to a private institution to address those needs. Let the public schools focus on the run of the mill, cookie-cutter education.
The only reason Ric Stephenson wants public schools to do it is so that his beloved union gets the dough. He doesn’t care about the kids. No unions do. Why else do you see whiny union teachers go on strike when they should sit their butts in the classroom and teach the kids they supposedly care about?
The only reason I disagree with you is that I think that public schools should be closed because they do such a poor job as it is. Look at the number off indoctrinated fools that attend these poorly run schools.
Its time the government gets out of the education business. When a business does such a poor job then they are run out of business. The NEA is the most dangerous organization in the US today. Look at the results and then we can talk!
Agree the government(US taxpayers) should get out of the education business. Im tired of paying for people”s kids education.You had the rug rats,YOU pay for their education.
As is normal the right wing is at it again.
Especially dave hos is less than zero and myomy.
The talk about the results of the public schools. Yet they do not look at the limitations that the public schools work under.
The public schools are not allowed to pick and choose which students they wish to try and educate, the private schools do. So if a student has a low IQ or is disruptive the public school is required to take the student, the private school is not.
The private school can defray the cost of support staff by requiring parents to work a certain number of hours at the school each year, the public school cannot.
If the state or city chooses to provide bus service or medical service to a private school this does not come from the budget of the private school, it does for the public school.
Schools try to retain students that are failing in hopes of turning the student around. This results in the schools GPA falling. Years ago, as recent as the 1960’s, if a student had low grades they could quit school and still make a good living. Today that is not true. So schools are holding onto these students in the hope of teaching them enough to be productive.
To acknowledge any of these factors that public schools must deal with is repugnant to such conservatives. To do so would cause to many problems with their simplistic view of problems. Perhaps their educational system did fail because they cannot comprehend complex problems so they fall back on simplistic answers.
Then we have people like myomy. This one says that it is not his responsibility to pay to educate the children of others. Yet he receives the benefits of the education. The doctors, the engineers, the truck driver who learned to read so that he knows where to make a delivery all were the children of someone else.
If what myomy is true then why should any of us pay for any road that we do not use? The answer is we do get a benefit out of those roads as we get a benefit out of the education of other peoples children.
To acknowledge such facts though would require that they think beyond a simplistic world, and perhaps their education did fail them in denying them that ability.
The way I read this story is perhaps a little different from the rest of you:
First, there are laws that require public schools to provide special ed classes.
Second, if the public school district chooses to not provide special ed, for any reason, then they can be required to pay for those services elsewhere.
Third, some districts have been trying to balance their budgets by slashing these programs.
In response to the above, SCOTUS ruled that if a district cuts these programs, then the parents can sue the district and demand that they pay for these services elsewhere, even if it costs more than it would have cost otherwise.
Think-Dave-Ohmy …
Do you consider yourselves ” compassionate conservatives ” ?
You liberals just have no problem with failure. Why is success so foreign to you? Don’t you get it? Why in Gods name(sorry liberals) do you continue to throw money at failure and then complain about it?
Oh, I forgot. Cant you liberals see what government education has done for you. You guys are mess and you can only survive if you have a slimy politician make decisions for you. So, what was the point of having the government educate you. You are perfect examples of failure.
Of course as usual zero Dave does not wish to be bothered by facts. To do so would interfere wit his right to rant uncontrollably.
He looks at private education has uses that has his example to show what is wring with public education.
Do not let the fact that private education does not work under the same rules in who they must educate, get in the way. Do not let the fact that private education makes demands on parents that public education cannot make, get in the way. Do not let the fact that public education must educate the handicapped, get in the way. Do not let the fact that if busing and nurses are provided by government to private institutions at no cost the same service comes for public education comes from their budget get in the way.
No let us not let any of the facts get in the way for zero Dave. If we let the facts get in the way then he would be wrong. By ignoring the facts zero Dave is secure in the knowledge that he is correct, but then to do so we need to ignore the facts.
By ignoring the facts zero Dave is secure in the knowledge that he is correct, but then to do so we need to ignore the facts.
allow me to translate: Zero dave-you are a right-wing d-bag (and most likely “teabagger”) who gets his “facts” from Glenn Beck and other nimrods at Fox Noise rather than actually obtaining FACTS and then drawing your own conclusion.
You probably think that the AIDS quilt causes global warming and that Sarah Palin is a misunderstood “maverick” too,