Bryce’s Law, which has been introduced in the Missouri Legislature by state Rep. Dwight Scharnhorst, creates a special needs scholarship tax credit program that would be administered by the Missouri Department of Economic Development (DED).  Named after Scharnhorst’s late autistic grandson, Bryce’s Law would allow DED to establish criteria and standards for determining scholarship-granting organizations.

Parents of special needs students would be able to use those scholarships to send their children to a school well-suited to work with them.  Legislation would serve students in grades k-12 who currently attend a public school with an Individual Educational Program (IEP), including students such as those who are mentally challenged, speech and language impaired, specific learning disabled, deaf or hard of hearing, visually impaired, dual sensory impaired, physically impaired, emotionally troubled, diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder, or hospitalized or homebound by illness or disability.

These scholarships would be funded entirely by charitable donations from Missouri taxpayers.  Both individual and corporate taxpayers could claim tax credit against the taxpayer’s state tax liability equal to 80 percent of the contribution.  Scholarships could be used for payment of tuition and fees as well as transportation costs outside of a resident school district.

Without such assistance, many special needs children have little hope of gaining the education necessary to succeed in society.

Their well-founded fear is that hundreds, if not thousands, of children from the 2 nearby unaccredited school districts, St. Louis Public Schools and Riverview Gardens, will apply to their schools, and they will have no choice but to accept them.  So, among many solutions available, such as charter school expansion (including virtual charters and charters dedicated to special needs), open enrollment, virtual schooling, scholarship tax credits, to name a few options that could expand choice and parental options in the city and alleviate some of the demand that will assuredly flood the county if the courts uphold the decision, they want to go back and change the law so they are not legally obliged to accept any child outside their districts who applies.  Badda-bing~simple solution, eh?!

What is most concerning is that 10 other St. Louis county districts are facing accreditation problems as well.  Merely fortifying the borders of individual school districts will not improve St. Louis city and county’s development, nor does it improve our state.  Missourians would be best served by ensuring that all children have access to high-quality, appropriate and safe learning opportunities so they can achieve their maximum potential, regardless of zip code, race, socio-economic status and even, and especially, those with disabilities of many varied kinds.

Increasing the quality, quantity and access to appropriate educational environments will raise the tide of Missouri’s children and their futures.  Slamming the doors to access will surely sink the ship.

“”We listened to some of the problems parents are dealing with,” Slay said, “and across the board, they had two major concerns. They were going through emotional changes after their children had been diagnosed, worrying about their future, and they also were trying to navigate a very complex educational system.”

CEAM’s financial assistance and parent training program will call for applications in April and will grant financial scholarships for tuition and therapies this summer, empowering parents to seek solutions for their special needs children who are not excelling in their current classroom environment.

As noted in the article, it is critical for parents to know their rights and how to advocate for specific individual needs of their child.  Parents, upon learning their child has a diagnoses, must navigate a very complex education system in addition to managing emotional and financial stresses.  CEAM intends to alleviate some of that stress and allow parents to focus on the educational needs of their child through education and training.

There is great demand for this kind of assistance in Missouri.  CEAM is planning benefits in support of this program this spring and we are hearing from the community that we are on the right track.  Please hold the evening of May 6th for our Kentucky Derby Party and pull out your fanciest hat!  The race is on!

The situation:  Her child, now in 3d grade, acts out in class, and though the child has been receiving A’s and B’s, she questions the merits of the reporting and fears her child is not learning.  The Mother says she knows her child can learn, but she is quite certain by now that her child has some type of learning disability.

Has this child been advanced socially so the school does not have to address the problem?  IEPs and special education can be costly and very involved.  Perhaps there is nothing nefarious and the disability has simply gone unnoticed, but it finally is catching up?  Is there a disability at all?  And if not, what exactly is the problem?  To continue punishing this child is not working.

The Mother said she requested an evaluation of the child to see if there is a learning disability over 100 days ago and has received no response.

Now, I know as a Mother that 3d grade really advances beyond the basics of the child’s prior school experiences and it is critical that the child have all the basic learning skills under their belt by 3d grade.  So, if those skills were not built, you will really begin to see problems at the 3d grade level.

Again, I must inform her that I am not an advocate.  However, I do know a few things…and a few people, like a special education specialist.  Here is what the expert said:

Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, Special Education Division

I offered other information as well, already found on our resources page that any parent starting out on the path of specialized education for their child should know,  like “What Every Parent Needs to Know About IEPs” and the US Dept. of Special Ed. IEP Guide.  A law called the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act guarantees the right to a quality education to people with learning disabilities.

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) is a law ensuring services to children with disabilities throughout the nation. IDEA governs how states and public agencies provide early intervention, special education and related services to more than 6.5 million eligible infants, toddlers, children and youth with disabilities.

Most importantly, I encouraged this Mother to educate herself on her rights and to become the very best advocate for her child.  I pointed her to agencies that offer support and advocacy training and I truly hope she will work it with the school.  Then, in case she is not successful with the school, I told her about our financial assistance and parent training program.

I simply cannot wait until our prgram launches this next spring!  Then maybe I’ll know what it’s like to be Superman!!

On Thursday, I returned a call to another Mother in St. Louis city who called about her son.  They (parents) all call because of concerns about their children hoping that when I answer, I will be the one who can finally help them.  They are looking for their own ‘Superman’, just like the one who was noted missing in ‘Waiting for Superman’, the recent Davis Guggenheim documentary on public education being screened across the country, showing now in St. Louis until at least 10/28 (call to see if extended beyond that date).

I am not sure how this woman came upon CEAM and didn’t get the chance to ask.  She has no access to a computer.  Someone must’ve told her about about our financial assistance and parent training program, as I finally realized during this lengthy conversation that this woman was panicked and seeking an alternative that she now does not have.  So, what happened?

There was some kind of ruckus on the playground, preceding this call, involving a group of 16 children.  Though this woman says she has 3 witnesses affirming that her son had nothing to do with it, he has been somehow identified by his school as one of the 16 that is now facing the possibility of expulsion.  She told me her son is 11 year old, has an ADD diagnosis and an IQ of 18.  He also has no history of bad behavior.

When I shared this sad story with special education specialists (no less than 3 of them), they all winced and said either she meant that her son has an IQ of 81 or her son was not properly diagnosed.  She says she has had some parent training, but she was seeking an advocate for her child.  For if he is expelled, what will she be able to do for him?  She also said that the school’s designated representatives do not show up for her son’s IEP meetings.

I was able to make some personal recommendations based on what I know already about who in Missouri provides support, but the fact of the matter is that resources are scarce and one must be trained to advocate in this education bureaucracy.  I am not in a position to provide direct intervention and immediate consult/relief, which is what they all seek.  They are often pretty desperate by the time the calls come in.  They need help now.

All I could do was provide some phone numbers to help them find that superman and put this woman on our list to mail out applications in April when we finally launch our program.  But what about right now?  What about all those kids we will have to turn away because they do not live in the St. Louis metro area or because demand well exceeds our funds?  What about the Mother I met from Hillsboro whose 12 year old daughter with autism is sent to a state school that does not have teachers trained to advance her non-verbal child, nor an appropriate curriculum nor therapeutic services necessary?  Or the child in Union who did not receive a proper diagnosis of autism until he was in 5th grade?  I have not even met that family~a friend told me about this.  The 5th grade boy has a history of having been restrained, drugged and isolated.

I hate that I am not Superman because if I was I could swoop in and save these children by stopping that freight train that is their destiny.  I don’t want to tell anyone that Superman really does not exist.  Choice options like charter schools serving special needs learners, or open enrollment, at least for this demographic, and expanded scholarship funding would benefit these children and their families.  From a long-term perspective, society would benefit financially by advancing children to their fullest potential and independence.

National Charter Schools Conference
Chicago, Illinois

Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education, addressed the leadership of the National Charter School movement and conference attendees at the 10th annual National Charter School conference recently in Chicago.  CEAM was there.  Arne gave a resounding call to the charter school movement leaders to make wide-spread the acknowledgement of the difference charters can and are making in the lives of the most under-served children in our country.

Here are excerpts from Secretary Duncan’s ’4-Point Plan’ for charter school movement leadership:

Point 1

Create more schools for the most underserved: English-language learners, Special needs students and those who have been expelled.  Then do an extraordinary job of advancing these groups of children.

Point 2

Build stronger relationships at the state and national level with the Hispanic Caucus, the Congressional Black Caucus and Civil Rights Organizations to dispel the perception that charter schools are adversaries.

Point 3

Change the charter school debate by collecting data and generating longitudinal studies, showing proper comparison of children served by charter schools vs. those who sought charter school alternatives, but were not able to gain entry.  He referenced Caroline Hoxby’s break-through study as a model.

Point 4

The charter school movement’s leadership must be courageous and establish criteria below which charter schools should cease to exist and be pro-active in the area of self-governance.  Though the leadership and the community itself does not hold the authority to close down ineffective charters, Secretary Duncan calls upon the family of charter schools to not tolerate unacceptable performance within their family of schools and their authorizers.  He wants a list of ‘Good’ and ‘Bad’ authorizers, along with minimum criteria for charter school performance and pro-active self-governance.

In closing, Secretary Duncan says to the charter school movement, “Your best are world-class.  Your best give me extraordinary reason for hope for public education in this country.”  Now he strongly urges the movement to step up their role of leadership and let this country know what they stand for.

View comments, related videos, and more

There are few scholarship programs that exist for special needs students, especially if you are in a high school grade level. While there are financial assistance programs for early intervention of younger students, they are usually focused on a few specific disabilities and are limited in the scope of what the assistance will cover. The dollar amount of these programs is usually not enough for a parent to remove their child from a school district and place them in private services.

A common piece of advice that a parent receives is to call an IEP meeting to review their child’s goals and the progress toward those goals. The IEP is the Individualized Education Plan that is put together for a special needs student outlining goals for that individual student’s education, and how they will be met. Parents who call our office report their frustration with the IEP process. They state that no one in the meeting is on their side and education terms are not clearly defined. The overall feeling is that they are railroaded into the plans put together by the teachers or agencies in the meeting and have very little input. Meetings called by a parent to review a struggling student’s IEP often begins with a long delay in even holding the meeting and ends with the student’s little progress being excused away. The parent eventually gets tired of fighting this system and begins to seek a way to remove their child from the district that is failing them.

When a parent begins on this road, they quickly find that it is very difficult to move their child. In St. Louis and Kansas City, public charter schools may be one option. Unfortunately, there are no charter schools that focus only on special needs. The main roadblock to this is that, per Missouri’s charter school law, students must be admitted by a lottery process and not screened in any way before entry. It remain to be seen if a charter school in St. Louis or Kansas City built for special needs students would be successful solely based on the thought that only parents of special needs students would apply to a lottery for their school. According to the Center for Education Reform, there are 85 special needs charter schools in the country, mostly in Florida and Ohio. Even if these schools were to open in St. Louis and Kansas City and be successful, what option does a parent outside of those two districts have? Missouri is the only state in the country that has a geographic cap on charter schools. This cap limits charter schools to opening only inside of the St. Louis and Kansas City Public School districts. The schools can also only accept students who live in these districts.

Parents who call our office usually know that the law requires a free, appropriate public education to be afforded to their child. Therefore, they ask “can’t I just transfer my child to another district with better services?” The answer is unfortunately “no.” This ideal is called open enrollment and Missouri has yet to join the 40 other states in the country who have some form of open enrollment. Open enrollment simply allows parents to transfer their child to a school outside of their assigned district if the receiving district has room. For more on open enrollment, check out our previous post on how open enrollment would help special needs students.

Parents also call in and ask if there are special schools in their district only for special needs students. Twenty three districts contract with Special School District (SSD) of St. Louis County, who operates five special education schools. This leaves 500 districts in the state of Missouri without this option. Parents also report to us the difficulty of getting their child moved into SSD. One parent reported their child being suspended 11 times in the current school year before the district would discuss SSD as an option. According to the parent, this child was on an IEP the previous year and had far fewer behavioral incidents, but was removed from an IEP in the current school year, against the parent’s wishes.

The bottom line in all of these stories is that the parents of the 133,000 Missouri children with IEPs have very few options when they feel the assigned local district is not able to meet the needs of their child. Implementing real education reforms in Missouri will have a positive impact on special needs families. Open enrollment, charter school expansion and scholarship tax credit programs are all good ways to give parents options when their assigned local districts are not educating their children. Districts should look at this recent United Supreme Court case as evidence that the law gives parents great powers when seeking the appropriate education for their child. Districts should jump on board for reforms, or risk paying for children to go to specialized schools, even without their consent. Furthermore, having options will help these children on a path to become productive members of society. Isn’t that what everyone should be working toward?

In some cases, as Meta, MO mother Lois Wankum testified to the committee at their October 20th hearing, students are much closer to a school in an adjacent district than the one to which they are assigned. In other cases, parents are simply looking to remove their child from a failing school district and enroll them in ones that are better performing. For many special needs parents this policy could unlock the doors of educational opportunity for their child that is trapped in a district that does not have the appropriate services to help their child.

Open enrollment would allow for these parents, who often do not have the means to send their child to a private education service such as TouchPoint or Giant Steps, to move their child to a district that may have better services. For example, the Rockwood School District in suburban St. Louis County gave an excellent presentation on their special needs services at the St. Louis meeting of the Interim Committee on Autism Spectrum Disorders. At the same hearing a mother gave desperate testimony on how her autistic child was having many problems in his local school district and she could not afford to send her child to a specialized private school. “I am drowning here” was the phrase that she repeated over and over. Why should her head continue to be held under water by outdated school district lines? Why should these district lines trap her son in the boundaries of receiving an ineffective education instead of receiving a possible lifeline of intervention leading to a productive, healthy life?

A study in Minnesota, one of 25 states that have open enrollment, shows that “the families of special-needs students are increasingly using the open-enrollment option and are satisfied with their choices.” This same option could be a reality for the families of 133,000+ IEP students in the state of Missouri, should the state choose to allow this policy. These families are not concerned with outdated school boundaries, only with seeing that their child has the best possible education options, and thus the best chance for leading a productive life.

I felt the desire to write about the challenge of matching students with texts this week after a conversation I had with an 8th grade male student, Nick. To give you a little background on this student, Nick is an avid reader and enjoys reading science fiction and fantasies. I built a good relationship with him last year because I had the first three books of the Artemis Fowl series and I allowed him to borrow each book for as long as he wanted. This particular series of books is popular among boy readers because it offers a suspenseful plot that incorporates a devious young boy, Artemis, whose sole occupation is plotting extravagant criminal activities. Anyway, Nick came to me during passing period to see if I had any extra copies of the first Artemis Fowl book. He told me that he had two other friends who were interested in reading the book with him during the school day. When I first heard Nick’s idea, I was obviously thrilled. Here I had an 8th grade boy who wanted to start a book club of sorts with his peers!

It is a well-known fact, among teachers and researchers, that adolescent boys are most at-risk of falling behind academically. I have seen this occur in my own classroom, as I have an entire class of boys who are at least three years behind in reading levels. I immediately told Nick that I had an extra copy of Artemis Fowl and that I would talk to his advisory teacher to see if we could have the boys meet in my room once a week. Nick was so excited about our plan that he brought his two friends–with the Artemis Fowl book in tow–to my room at the end of the day. Within a few minutes, I had a group of boys reading aloud to each other and giving different voices to each character. What was unique about this set-up is that Nick, the avid reader, was actively supporting and encouraging his friends who are lower level readers.

While it is not always possible to bring a group of self-motivated boys together to read a story, I do think that my conversation with Nick reveals a few important points. First, it is important for us teachers to offer an array of books; kids need to feel empowered to choose a book that is interesting to them. Next, it is essential that these kids feel successful while reading the book on their own. For instance, when Nick read Artemis Fowl aloud with his friends, he used his skills as a fluent reader to help his peers sound out difficult words and add expression to their voices. Even though Nick’s friends are considered to be struggling readers, they felt successful because a peer was showing them “the ropes” of reading, so to say. I hope to continue to facilitate Nick and his friends reading of Artemis Fowl this quarter, and plan to post updates on how this group of boys progresses. If all goes well, I would like to implement a similar peer reading group among my own struggling readers!

“Consistent with our decisions in [School Committee of] Burlington [v.Department of Education of Massachusetts] and [Florence County School District No. 4 v.] Carter,” Justice Stevens wrote, “we conclude that IDEA authorizes reimbursement for the cost of private special-education services when a school district fails to provide a [free, appropriate public education] and the private-school placement is appropriate, regardless of whether the child previously received special education or related services through the public school.”

The ramifications of this decision could be felt for years to come as parents now have a precedent at the highest court in the land forcing public schools to pay for a student to transfer to a private school when the parent alone felt the transfer was necessary. This case revolved around the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), but could be a sign of what the future holds for education reform. If this case clearly stated that no longer do students with disabilities have to be trapped in schools that are failing to meet their educational needs, how long before the court sets the same precedent for ALL public school students?

Many of these families could be helped at no cost to the school districts if their state legislatures would pass legislation allowing for scholarship tax credit programs. A successful example of these programs can be found in Florida, andIndiana recently passed legislation creating a scholarship tax credit program. Sadly, the Missouri House of Representatives deafeated legislation creating a program targeted at special needs students during the 2008 session. The same bill was filed during the 2009 session, but was never voted on after a committee hearing.

Undoubtedly, the floodgates will open for families who, for years, have battled with their school district for their special needs child to receive a free, appropriate public education as prescribed by law. The challenge, and duty, now of everyone in the education reform movement is to make parents of special needs children aware of this Supreme Court decision. We can no longer allow for these children to be trapped in failing and inadequate school districts.

For this reason, i am proud to say that the Children’s Education Alliance attended the St. Vincent’s Annual Christmas Party. It was heartwarming to see the alumni of St. Vincent’s recount their stories and reminisce about their time at St. Vincent’s. This event raised money for the current residents of the home and I hope to have a full account soon of the amount of money raised so that St. Vincent’s can continue their mission of providing service to those in dire need of help.