IDEA Reauthorization.

[Mayleng]

ATTENION!! ATTENTION!!
All parents of children recieving Special Education Services

On Wednesday November 17, 2004 the House and Senate will meet to discuss and possibly reconcile differences with IDEA for it's reauthorization.

I've attached some information from the folks at www.OurChildrenLeftBehind.com Press Release

-House & Senate Conferees to Meet Wednesday to Finalize Bipartisan Special Education Reauthorization Bill -

-WASHINGTON, D.C. - Members of the U.S. House and Senate will meet next week in hopes of completing a final, bipartisan special education reauthorization bill that can be signed into law before the end of the 108th Congress. The bipartisan House-Senate conference will reconcile differing versions of legislation passed by the House and Senate to strengthen and renew the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), the nation's special education law.-

Here's the link - they have lots of great suggests of who to contact and why.

www.ourchildrenleftbehind.com/pages/1/index.htm

Please - take the time out, drop an email make a phone call if you feel so inclined let your elected representatives know how you feel about the potential changes in the legislation. It's not just about funding - it's about your rights and your ability to re-dress the district.

[Mayleng]

LIPSTICK ON A PIG?
Wednesday, November 17, 2004
OurChildrenLeftBehind.com

Tricia and Calvin Luker

Today might well mark the end of the formal legislative process for IDEA reauthorization. Assuming the Conference Committee votes to accept final language, the Bill goes back to the House and Senate for straight up and down votes. Actually we expect the Bill will be placed into a much larger Omnibus Bill, again with straight up and down votes.

Yesterday Our Children Left Behind [OCLB] received three separate documents summarizing what likely will be in the Bill being considered by the House and Senate today. Open this link to access those documents. www.oclb.info/pdf/

We have reviewed the documents but frankly do not know what to think until we see the actual language the Committee will consider. It is too soon to tell if the summaries are nothing more than trying to paint lipstick on a pig. The proof will be in the language the Committee uses to pass the Bill.

At tomorrow’s Conference Committee meeting we believe it is important that parents and family members attending the session seek out and tell their stories [our stories] to the media representatives in attendance. Many parents will be wearing black armbands to commemorate the damage that certainly will be done to IDEA by Congress. The armbands also will identify parents for media members.

Whatever happens today, we parents, families and advocacy organizations must remain vigilant and mobilized for post-Congressional activities. After the President signs the reauthorization Bill the next step is to create or amend the federal rules needed to give the law teeth at the state and local level. OCLB will write more on the rules promulgation process once the Bill becomes law.

We encourage all who are in the Washington area to attend today meeting if at all possible. We parents, families and advocacy organizations have remained under the radar to the media for much of the reauthorization process. The Conference Committee meeting presents an excellent opportunity for us to emerge, to have our voices heard and to educate the public through the media about disability issues and special education.

It is hard to believe that the reauthorization process might actually be moving to “resolution.” For the last 20 months OCLB and hundreds of other parents, advocates and consumer based organizations have been doing everything we can to keep as much of IDEA ’97 as possible. Today we should be able to measure our success by measuring the Committee’s final language against IDEA ’97. We need to rejoice and celebrate our legislative victories to the extent that the Committee language retains IDEA ’97 principles, but we must prepare ourselves for the work ahead as we try to limit the damage we know is coming.

Tricia and Calvin Luker
www.ourchildrenleftbehind.com

Copyright 2004 by Tricia and Calvin Luker. Permission to forward, copy and post this article is granted so long as it is attributed to the authors and www.ourchildrenleftbehind.com.

[willoweezie]

I was just going to start a thread with a link from CNN about this, but I'll add it here instead:

www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/11/17/special.education.ap/index.html

I'm highly dubious as to how this will do what this quote says...

"The final agreement will be an across-the-board win for teachers, parents and students with special needs," said Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, chairman of the conference committee.

Having been knocked around by the system myself, forced out of my neighborhood school, only to find out from another ADHD child's mom (who is at the self-same school from last year) that HER child did receive the accomodations she needed there; while mine did not, I have NO faith whatsoever in this law, as it currently is, or with the proposed changes. m*d

[Mayleng]

Trouble with the laws is there is no TEETH to it, and the schools gets away with it. l*me

However, the new changes may make it worse as it seeks to restrict how much the Parents can seek in reimbursements for lawyer fees if they take the school to due process. This is tying our hands.

You should find out how the other mother got the accomodations, and why you didn't.

[Mayleng]

Another perspective.

quote:

From the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF)

[e-mail]

IDEA Rapid Response Network (RRN)

News Briefing #37 November 21, 2004

ALL OVER BUT THE SHOUTING

IDEA was reported out of the conference committee on Wednesday, November 17,
2004. The House passed the conferenced bill with a vote of 397 - 3 on
November 19, and the Senate agreed to it by unanimous consent on November
19. The IDEA has been re-authorized.

WHAT DID WE LOSE AND WHAT DID WE GAIN?

The bill we ended up with looks very much like the Senate bill, with a lot
of refinements that occurred over the last months and weeks. DREDF will do
a complete analysis of the law that is emerging and what it means for our
families and supporters and children, as well as a post-mortem of the
process, in the fullness of time. But we can say now that the voices of
parents and advocates were heard loud and clear, that we DID make a
difference in the outcome, and that, given the political and strategic
circumstances and the situation on the Hill during this reauthorization
process, our hard work and dedication paid off in getting our children the
best possible bill we could get. Is it perfect or ideal? No. Is it fully
funded? No. But we need to keep fighting and not be defeated by any sense
of despair or failure.

We lost some protections. It remains to be seen how "measurable annual
goals" and quarterly progress reports will work to replace short-term
objectives and benchmarks; up to 15 states may be granted an opportunity to
pilot optional three-year IEPs; students who violate school codes will have
to remain in an interim placement pending an appeal of the manifestation
determination (a hearing must occur within 20 days).

Yet we also held back ferocious assaults on discipline provisions and due
process protections, and we prevailed in several key areas, from an increase
in the number of certified special education teachers to expanded access to
assistive technology to sanctions on states that do not comply with the law.
And we retained continued services for students moved to alternate
placements, attorney fee reimbursements for parents who prevail in due
process hearings, and functional behavior assessments and manifestation
determinations. As we said in RRN #30 on September 30, 2003, there are also
key improvements in this bill: provisions for alternate assessments,
positive behavioral supports, school to life transitions, assistive
technology, and personnel standards.

In RRN #31, from November 6, 2003, we wrote: ". . . we should consider
ourselves as having dodged a bullet if we can emerge from conference with a
bill more closely resembling the Senate's than the House's." We worked hard
to dodge that bullet, and we succeeded. A great deal of the credit for what
we achieved goes to Connie Garner, Senator Kennedy's Disability Policy
Advisor and chief staffer on the HELP Committee for IDEA. A parent herself,
Connie Garner is a true champion of children's rights, and the parent and
advocacy communities are indebted to her. We were happy to hear Senator
Kennedy acknowledge her work both in his conference speech and on the Senate
floor.

WHAT HAPPENS NOW?

Everyone's efforts resulted in the bill being better than we feared, but not
as good as we would have liked. The first thing to say is that the voices
of parents were raised, we were heard, and we made a difference.

In the main, the principals of IDEA are preserved. The extremely negative
provisions in the House bill have been eliminated, and parents' rights
remain largely intact. The final bill does contain a few changes that are
weaker or that can be interpreted to be weaker than current law. Thus it is
important that parents and advocates have the best strategies to deal with
these new provisions. Now is the time to disseminate accurate information
about the changes, develop advocacy strategies, and ensure that parents of
IDEA students are trained in the new 2004 provisions.

Here are some examples:

1. Advocates fought against the early resolution meeting now set forth in
the bill on the grounds that parents may feel coerced to go to a meeting
after the filing of a complaint and be intimidated into signing a legally
binding document under duress. This concern is very real. Parents need to
know that they can opt out of this meeting if they choose to go to
mediation. Parents must know that they do not have to sign the document in
the meeting, but should take it home to consider.

2. The new manifestation determination does not specify that a manifestation
will be found if the child's disability impairs the child's ability to
understand or control the behavior or if the IEP has not been appropriately
implemented. Under the new language, a manifestation will be found any time
the conduct was caused by OR had a direct and substantial relationship to
the child's disability or the failure to implement the IEP. We should be
arguing that this standard is at least as strong as current law. If a
child's disability impairs the child's ability to understand or control his
behavior, it necessarily follows that the conduct was substantially related
to the disability.

3. The attorney fees provision has gotten a lot of attention. Parents
should know that the reauthorization did no more than incorporate civil
rights attorney fees law that has been established since 1978!

In other words, DON'T GIVE IN TOO EASILY. We can work with the new law!
Our children have not lost their rights.

DREDF will be developing more comprehensive materials on advocacy
strategies.

Unquote

[franksmom]

Here is another link I found.
Got it as a newsletter from Reed Martin. The entire site is full of info.

www.reedmartin.com/index.html