gee. no kidding.

Generation Jobless: Students Pick Easier Majors Despite Less Pay

If I had a buck for every time a student has told me that he or she selected X as a major because it involved no math or science beyond general education courses, I'd be wealthy.

the games schools play to avoiding providing services to children with special needs and disabilities--a second consideration

Disclaimer:  there are a lot of great special ed teachers, guidance counselors, and school psychologists out there.  This article is not about them, or directed at them.  It IS about the schmucks who too often find jobs in the school system wherein their ability to keep the school for paying for providing services is what keeps them employed.  I am tired of pretending that they don't exist in large numbers.

Here is an incomplete list of some of the myths and just plain falsehoods used by school districts to avoid compliance with IDEA or 34 CFR for children with special needs and disabilities.

Myth #1:  "We know more about your child's disability than you do."

why is public education so adversarial toward the parents of special needs children? a first consideration

For the past fifteen years I have been representing children (my own and others) in 504 and IEP meetings around the mid-Atlantic region (including Maryland, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, and New York).

My role is "parent advocate," which is virtually the only loophole favorable to parents under the whole IDEA and 34 CFR structure that governs the education of children with disabilities and special needs.  Parents have the absolute right to bring in any advocate they please (with some restrictions on actual attorneys) without prior notice to the school district.

When you arrived, unannounced, as a Parent Advocate, a number of things generically happen.  First, there a lot of shuffling and whispering, as the others on the "team" tell each other that there's an outsider in the room.  Then there is the inevitable but ever so polite request that I provide my bona fides for knowing anything at all about public education or special needs children (they, of course, being school district employees, are immune to such questions).

Then they start the meeting.  If you've ever been a parent unhappy with your child's educational experience in a special ed or 504 disability setting, please feel free to skip the next painful section:  you've been through it too many times.