OSEP Leadership Conference

On May 29, 2003, Annie White (Labor Counsel from the Senate Committee on Health Education, Labor, and Pensions) and Connie Garner (Policy Director for Disability and Special Populations (Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions) addressed attendees at the OSEP Leadership Conference. They really tried to summarize how the current the Senate conversations were going and helped people in the audience better understand what to anticipate in the Senate's bill.

Here is a summary of some of their key messages (combined within this list):

• Senators Gregg and Kennedy are hoping to introduce a bipartisan bill in early June.


• There will be at least two weeks between the introduction and the mark-up. It is important that people read the bill and send their comments.


• The bill looks toward protecting the rights of students with disabilities, yet address the needs that schools have.


• The bill looks to align with No Child Left Behind.


• It considers recommendations from the President's Commission's Report.


• Unnecessary paperwork and procedures have been looked at and will be "clarified and simplified."


• The public should not be "wedded to current law." They are getting many comments to keep IDEA the way it is. Connie and Annie said that this is not helpful to them at this point, because things are certainly going to change. They need concrete suggestions.


• They are looking at Positive Behavior Support for all kids, but the discipline issues are still up in the air. This is being talked about, but not decided.


• Issues that may come up on the floor include: full vs discretionary funding, school choice, attorneys' fees, and discipline (if it can't be settled in a bipartisan way within the bill).

These bullet points were rewritten from my notes, wearing a parent “filter,” and by no means catch everything. Annie and Connie seemed keenly aware of the many issues that parents talk about at many of our meetings, such as teacher quality, discipline, and the like. Even though it seems that they are aware of our issues, controversy between the parties on specific issues still exist. Connie and Annie encourage us to contact them and our senators with our concerns and suggestions.

So, keep on doing your good work and contact your Senators' offices. We need to talk with and teach all of them about concerns that touch our children most.

For more background information, please scroll down and look at this whole homepage, and look around this Web site. We have our work cut out for us folks. Let's continue to support each other and keep on going.

Shari Krishnan
parentvolunteer@ourchildrenleftbehind.com

IDEA - Let It "B"

The IDEA reauthorization activity has been fast and furious. The Memorial Day weekend gives us an ideal chance to reflect on where we are today. Congress has gone home for the holidays to reconnect with their families, friends and constituents. The Senate work on drafting its IDEA reauthorization version churns ahead, but at a slower pace than anyone originally expected. Can we the student, parent and advocacy community already be making a difference?

Meanwhile, 6.6 million students receiving IDEA services and their families are enmeshed in the annual IEP process. They are conscientiously analyzing student outcomes from this year’s IEP, identifying current needs and new goals, and writing next year’s IEPs.

We are amazed that our community has been able to find any time to confront IDEA reauthorization issues. But not only are we finding time to confront HR 1350 and the assault on IDEA, we also are finding heroes. Mike Savory, a parent from Winchester, Virginia walked 90.3 miles from his home to Washington to dramatize the IDEA crisis. Parent groups and advocacy organizations have initiated letter writing and call-in campaigns. National disability rights and advocacy organizations have united to publicly oppose HR 1350 and to present a wealth of information and strategic responses to enhance community efforts to stop HR 1350. Our Children Left Behind has developed “Take Your Faces to Their Places.” We have united in diversity to save IDEA for our children. We can’t even begin to count the number of unsung individual and organizational heroes in this mission.

The Memorial Day brief respite has allowed us time to process everything that has happened so quickly since March 19th, and to talk more with parents who are living in and working in the trenches for their own children. Debi Lewis, a parent from West Virginia who has been fighting for her son’s inclusion in his community school, wrote us a simple email. She asked why we were working so hard to save Part B (the heart of IDEA) when it already is permanently authorized. She asked why we don’t just tell the Senate to leave Part B out of the IDEA reauthorization process. Great question!

Why, indeed? Ms. Lewis is absolutely correct. The IDEA sections that need reauthorization are Part C which addresses early childhood and intervention services and Part D, which focuses IDEA principles on strong research based best-practices, enhances the skills of IDEA educators and supports national, state and regional parent education and training on IDEA and special education. Part C and D need to be “reauthorized” because their funding clauses only permit funding through September, 2002. Part B, which contains the core IDEA programming provisions, does not contain a funding expiration date.

Congress has the power to amend any statute at any time it wishes. There is nothing illegal about amending Part B as part of the process of reauthorizing Part C and Part D. We realize now, with Ms. Lewis’s comments, that reauthorization is being used as an excuse to radically alter Part B even though no Congressional action is required to save Part B and to continue its broad range of programs, services and protections to the core student base IDEA serves.

What about Part B? IDEA ’97, the law in effect today, passed with the concerted effort of ALL special education stakeholders, including educators, administrators, students, parents, advocacy organizations and policy makers to create a comprehensive living Act to guide special education into the 21st century. IDEA ’97’s comprehensive reforms include the recognition that behavior challenges interfere with education and need special consideration. Congress and the stakeholders also recognize a need to build stronger parent-professional partnerships and to offer alternative dispute resolution systems that focus on partnerships rather than on litigation. IDEA ’97 emphasizes accountability across the system and across constituencies.

The best indicator of IDEA ‘97s comprehensive reforms was that it took two years to pass the federal regulations implementing IDEA ‘97 in the states. In our state, Michigan, the rules implementing IDEA ’97 were not passed until last year. In reality IDEA ’97 is still in the implementation process, and at its best has only really been in effect for the last two years.

The House of Representative justifies that HR 1350 is needed to increase accountability, reduce paperwork, and ensure that students who receive special education services are not left behind. What is wrong with this picture? IDEA ’97 has not been in effect long enough to see whether the 4 years implementing it has produced the outcomes Congress expected when it passed the Act. We only can begin to imagine the effort in administrative/teacher/parent hours and state administrative costs incurred to implement IDEA ’97. Why duplicate that effort now for HR 1350?

How does HR 1350 increase accountability when Congress made no effort to analyze the current effects of IDEA ’97? How is administrative activity and paperwork reduced when HR 1350 forces the Department of Education and the legislatures and educational officers in all 50 states to repeat the recently completed process to implement IDEA ’97? How does HR 1350 propose that states pay for these activities and still fund direct special education services to students at anywhere near the level virtually all stakeholders believe is required? Finally, how does HR 1350 promote improved outcomes for individual students when it removes the fundamental protections that insure that students who have disabilities receive a free appropriate public education?

We do not now choose to believe the House of Representatives had any deceptive motivation to use the reauthorization process to gut IDEA ’97 even though Part B is permanently authorized. Whatever Congress’ intent, the fact remains that students, parents and advocacy groups were left out of HR 1350 process. We need to ask the Senate to look at that, and to ask itself why Part B should be gutted – at huge financial expense to the states and at huge loss of educational outcomes for students – when IDEA ’97 has been given so little time to reap the benefits its collective stakeholders believed were possible when it was passed. Part B is permanently authorized. Before the Senate creates its own Bill amending Part B it should ask the simple question Ms. Lewis raised, “Why fix it if it isn’t broken?”

Tricia and Calvin Luker
Jessica, Missy, Lara and Will’s Mom and Dad
parentvolunteer@ourchildrenleftbehind.com

How Did We Get Here?

Students with disabilities and their families – and special education as we know it -- are about to be left behind. How did this happen? How did we get here? What happens if we don’t fight for our children now, right now? What can we do, and is it too late to do anything?

Our Children Left Behind has formed to answer those questions for students with disabilities and their families and supporters. We care about the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act [IDEA]. We all must work together to preserve IDEA programs and protections if students with disabilities are to continue receiving a free, appropriate, public education alongside their friends and neighbors who don’t have special needs.

WHY NOW? Congress is working on the “reauthorization” of IDEA, which was last reviewed in 1997. The process began in October, 2001 with the creation of the President’s Commission on Excellence in Special Education [PCESE]. The 19-member commission included 4 teachers and educators, 6 school principals and administrators, 5 government employees and policy makers, 2 business leaders and 2 members who were identified as parents of children with special needs. The PCESE made its recommendations in July, 2002. Its findings included that “[w]hen a child fails to make progress … parents do not have adequate options and recourse. Parents have their child’s best interests in mind, but they often do not feel they are empowered when the system fails them,” [Finding 4, emphasis original]; and that “[t]he culture of compliance has often developed from the pressures of litigation, diverting much energy from the public schools’ first mission: educating every child,” [Finding 5, emphasis original]. The PCESE’s Summary of Major Recommendations included that “we must insist on high academic standards and excellence, press for accountability for results at all levels, ensure yearly progress, empower and trust parents, support and enhance teacher quality, and encourage educational reforms based on scientifically rigorous research,” [Emphasis added.]

Congress’ role began in earnest in June, 2002 with the House of Representatives Committee on Education and the Workforce’s [HRCEW] web site call in separate notices to Republicans and to the general public for “Great IDEAs about special Educational Reform.” The call sought input on a number of IDEA issues including “increasing accountability and improving educational results,” “reducing the paperwork burden,” “restoring trust and reducing litigation,” and ensuring school safety. The 107th Congress ended its legislative session in December, 2002 without passing any IDEA reauthorization package, leaving the issue to the newly elected 108th Congress in 2003.

On March 19, 2003 – the same day America began its war in Iraq – the Improving Education Results for Children with Disabilities Act, H.R. 1350, was introduced in the House of Representatives to reauthorize IDEA. There were no public hearings on the bill between its introduction and its House passage on April 30, 2003. Other pages and links within our web site detail the problems with H.R. 1350. Students with disabilities, their parents and families, student/family advocacy groups and members of the public scrambled to encourage the HRCEW to slow down H.R. 1350’s progress through the House, and to give the families a fair opportunity to comment on the proposed bill. A national call-in day was set for April 29, 2003. HRCEW Chair John Boehner, and Education Reform Committee Chair Mike Castle posted an HRCEW web site alert to Members of Congress about the call-in, warning that “some lobbying organizations are spreading false and misleading information about the bill,” and promising that congress members “…can expect to receive calls with incorrect or incomplete information regarding the legislation, as well as requests to further delay this legislation that is overdue for reauthorization.” The “lobbying organizations” and callers the Congress members were being warned about included 39 organizations representing students and their families, and thousands of students, parents and family members like you and me who called in to urge the delay of passage and advance changes to H.R. 1350.

WHERE TO FROM HERE? On April 30, 2003 the House passed the bill, leaving students with disabilities and we who support them to do battle in the US Senate. Clearly Congress has not been willing to include students, parents or families in the core group of people influencing the drafting H.R. 1350, nor did the House of Representatives want to hear from us. We cannot let up our efforts in Congress or give up on our children. H.R. 1350 now goes to the US Senate. It can consider and amend the bill as it passed the House, or it can create and pass a new bill. Once the Senate passes its version of the IDEA reauthorization, that bill and H.R. 1350 will be sent to a Conference Committee of Senators and Congress members who work out the differences between the two bills. The bill that results from their effort is then sent back to the House and Senate for a new vote. Both houses have to approve the identical language.

WHAT MUST WE DO? We still can raise our voices for a strong IDEA reauthorization bill. There is still time to make a difference. An informal, grass roots effort is on to encourage students and parents to “take your faces to their places,” to go visit their US Senators in their state offices within the next three weeks. Student and parent advocacy groups are stepping up their efforts to mobilize us to action. TAKE ACTION! This is the biggest threat to IDEA since it first passed in 1975. Our children need us. Every voice counts.

OCLB Web Site Launched

Making its debut on May 16, 2003, the Our Children Left Behind Web site was created to address some of the untruths being said about parents as it relates to the reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).

Congressmen are claiming that parents are spreading misinformation and that we are not concerned about the recent passage of H.R. 1350. The passage of H.R. 1350 resembles the worst nightmare scenario for many parents who have students with disabilities.

The purpose of this site is to publish press releases primarily authored by students with disabilities and/or their advocates and to post the updated news under the "Breaking News" section of this site.

A volunteer mom paid for the hosting service and designed this Web site (please give her a break!). So, it is small and limited in space, with only five pages total. This site certainly will not be comprehensive of everything that is available.

Rather, it is a place to refer people who have little or no idea what of what is going on and "light their fire" to get moving to do something. A nice choice for people who say, "I am not political. I hate politics, but what can I do?"

Thank you for your support and interest.

About Our Children Left Behind

Debi, Calvin, Tricia, Sandy, and Shari

Our Children Left Behind [OCLB] was created in Spring, 2003 to serve as an information resource for students, parents, and organizations concerned about Congressional activities reauthorizing the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act [IDEA]. Our Children Left Behind is owned and operated by Shari Krishnan, Tricia and Calvin Luker, Sandy Alperstein, and Debi Lewis and is not a membership or regulated organization. Only Shari Krishnan, Tricia and Calvin Luker, Sandy Alperstein, and Debi Lewis are authorized to make statements for or speak on behalf of Our Children Left Behind.

Home page articles are written by Shari Krishnan, Sandy Alperstein, Calvin and Tricia Luker, and/or Debi Lewis and reflect Our Children Left Behind leadership consensus opinion. Information contained within other OCLB Web site areas, including The Grapevine, Message Board, Breaking News, and Resources are posted for the use of the reader and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Our Children Left Behind. Our Children Left Behind is not responsible for the accuracy of information or opinions stated in The Grapevine, Message Board, Breaking News, and Resources sections of the Our Children Left Behind Web site.

For more information on Our Children Left Behind click here or e-mail parentvolunteer@ourchildrenleftbehind.com.