Keeping The Doors Wide Open - Quality Counts '99 and offer alternative assessments for severely disabled studentsthose who is the assistant state superintendent for special education in oklahoma. http://www.edweek.org/sreports/qc99/ac/mc/mc1-s1.htm
Extractions: Keeping the Doors Wide Open by Kerry A. White t's all but impossible for an accountability system to say how well every student in every school is faring. In practice, experts say, many children with disabilities and those with limited English skills sit out state tests or stay at home on testing daydespite federal laws requiring their inclusion in large-scale assessments. The omissions have been a problem for years, and the problem is growing worse as schools feel increased pressure to win rewards or avoid sanctions based on test scores. Exempting disabled and limited-English-proficient students from assessmentsand thereby from accountability systemsmakes it difficult to gauge whether the billions of dollars spent each year on special education and language programs are well spent. "Educators, parents, and policymakers don't have the information needed to determine whether [those] students are meeting academic standards," says Martha L. Thurlow, the associate director of the National Center on Educational Outcomes, or NCEO, at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. "It's critical that all students be included when judgments are being made" based on test scores. But some relatively new federal mandates are slowly prompting change. Revisions in 1997 to the main federal special education law, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, and the 1994 reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act are closing the loopholes that have kept special-needs students away from their desks at test time. "States are making big strides in alleviating the problem," Thurlow says.
Easter Seals New Hampshire: Special Transit Service the needs of the elderly and disabled; Doorto District and 100% of the special needs transportation for http://nh.easterseals.com/site/PageServer?pagename=NHDR_Special_Transit_Service
American Indian Parent Network purpose is to help any parent with disabled children secure is behind only Tulsa, Okla, and oklahoma City in Paul is asking to leave all special programs behind http://www.pacer.org/parent/strib.htm
Extractions: Star Tribune Staff Writer Paul Woelfle can ride a bicycle 14 miles to visit a friend, but give him a hall pass and he'll never find his way back to class. Distracted by just about anything, he can get stalled by a drinking fountain or a chance game in the school gym. Then there are the problems that get Paul kicked out of school. Like the time he was accused of using alphabet-shaped cookies to spell out violent messages on a lunchroom table. Or just recently, when the school said he disobeyed orders to steer clear of a construction site behind the school. Paul tells his mother that he feels like a reject, and the Fridley High School teachers and counselors keep telling her that he's out of control. All Elaine Woelfle knows is that her 6-foot, raven-haired, hyperactive son needs to get through high school to have any shot at a good job. That means he's got this year and two more. To keep going, Elaine and Paul Woelfle have turned time and time again to PACER, a Minneapolis-based group whose central purpose is to help any parent with disabled children secure them a proper education. Around since 1976, PACER has provided everything from books to training workshops to teams of advocates who go with parents into school meetings to advocate for their youngster's legal right to an education "appropriate" to their special needs.
Extractions: Raising a disabled child is never easy. But some things can make it even harder than it has to be. Being a military family is one of them. Take Tyler, the 5-year-old son of Navy Petty Officer Second Class John Denman and his wife, Georgina. Brain damage at birth left Tyler prone to seizures and unable to speak. But "he will coo, and he will cry, and he will smile," said his mother, and "he responds wonderfully to music." Tyler breathes through a tube that must be carefully suctioned several times an hour, to prevent his saliva from choking him or breeding infection. Although Tricare, the health insurance program for service members' families, covers much of Tyler's care, his mother noted that "in April of 1998, Tricare pulled Tyler's nursing [care]. It has never been reinstated." So Georgina has learned to do much of the care herself, and gets help from nurses paid by California's Medi-Cal program. More than 70,000 military families have a disabled child or dependent who requires special care or schooling. Their ailments range from relatively minor learning disabilities to severe physical impairments such as Tyler's. Yet the system created to help them has disabilities of its own.
'D' Doesn't Stand For 'Disrespect' By Linda Schrock Taylor they are mistakenly regarded as being disabled with attention more than 80 percent of all special Ed students on 1995 figures from the oklahoma Department of http://www.lewrockwell.com/taylor/taylor59.html
Extractions: by Linda Schrock Taylor One day a friend and I were discussing the virtual explosion of special education students who are being labeled as ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) or ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) and assigned to our caseloads. My friend mentioned that the state in which she was teaching had created a new label – O.D.D. – and explained that it stood for "Oppositional and Defiant Disorder." We found it ironic that the word "odd" would become the label for children who refuse to comply with simple requests for decency; who refuse to respect themselves and others; who stay so "at odds" with simple expectations for acceptable behavior. I asked my friend to explain the diagnostic difference between ADD, ADHD, and ODD students. Her description was comical: "WellÂ…the ADD and ADHD kids are the ones you want out of your room. The ODD kids are the ones you want out of your school Our new assistant principal, a long-term committed employee of our district, is a dedicated advocate for children. Recently I requested his assistance in "counseling" a new student who still, after about six-weeks, refused to accept that I allow
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