Thursday July 26, 2007
IDEA Report Cards: Did Your State Pass or Fail?
From The Special Ed Advocate Newsletter.
http://www.wrightslaw.com/
Last week, the U.S. Department of Education published IDEA Report
Cards for the 50 states and 8 territories. The news is sobering.
Only 9 states met the standards for educating children with
disabilities
Alaska
Connecticut
Hawaii
Michigan
Oregon
Pennsylvania
Tennessee
Virginia
Wyoming.
36 states and 3 territories fell into the “needs assistance”
Alabama
American Samoa
Arizona
Arkansas
Bureau of Indian Affairs
California
Delaware
Florida
Georgia
Guam
Idaho
Illinois
Iowa
Kansas
Kentucky
Louisiana
Maine
Maryland
Massachusetts
Minnesota
Mississippi
Missouri
Montana
Nebraska
Nevada
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New Mexico
New York
Ohio
Oklahoma
Palau
Republic of the Marshall Islands
Rhode Island
South Carolina
South Dakota
Texas
Utah
Vermont
West Virginia
Wisconsin
or 5 states and 5 territories”needs intervention” categories.
Colorado
Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands
Washington, DC
Federated States of Micronesia
Indiana
North Carolina
North Dakota
Puerto Rico
Virgin Islands
Washington
If these states do not significantly
improve how children with disabilities are educated, they face
sanctions,
including loss of federal funds.
Weaknesses cited by the U.S. Department of Education include:
States fail to ensure that local school districts comply with the law.
States fail to comply with requirements about the transition from
school to college or work.
Aw, my state needs intervention. That just warms my heart. Not.
My son was in Florida’s autism program for three years, beginning at age 3. He did not make any significant gains in speech, reading, writing, or toileting. He was on of 12 kids in his class with one teacher and one assistant.
He was in Virginia for four years. In the first six months he was using PECS, sign, and speaking. He had learned to read, write and urinate in a toilet. He was one of six students in his class with one teacher, one assistant working on her Master’s in education, and one assistant. Virginia was an educational saint to my son.
He was in Michigan’s school system for two school years. They completely dumbed down his IEP, placing goals that he had achieved years earlier. They continued to fight with me stating that they had not seen him meet those goals. He was one of five kids with one teacher and one assistant. Yet in those two years, he never met one of his IEP goals, according to the evaluation team. However, our son did get a form of Medicaid, state disability, and generous respite services.
Now he is in another state and I am having the same fight with the staff. There are absolutely no services here for autistic children, not even respite care.
I trust the government’s assessment of public schools as much as I trust their terrorism threat assessments…which is not at all.
Well said Sarah. Personally, I am not sure how Kansas got such a good ranking either. So far we have received ZERO public services. They aren’t available. He aged out of Early Intervention and the school successfully stonewalled me because I started out the process too naive (but aren’t we all, really, when we start) and he still doesn’t have the IEP set up, so he isn’t even being measured, techinically. There is no respite care here until you get the DD waiver, and the waitlist is years long and you can’t even apply for it until after they are 5. The autism waiver is hopefully going to be put in place by the first of next year, but of all the applications in the state, only 25 kids will be granted an autism waiver.
I am happy with the private services I have obtained for Zane, but he needs a lot more hours. We are only able to do private services because they have financial aid because the cost of one place alone is actually higher than our entire income is for the year. (for 1.5 hours a week).
It is certainly enough to make a mother cry and scream.