Posted by Christopher Melba | Posted on 19-12-2010
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Don’t miss this impressive series of stories in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser about Hawaii’s special education program, five years after the end of court oversight in the wake of a class-action suit filed on behalf of the state’s children with special education needs.
I’ve linked to the first story, but the related stories are also thoughtful and thorough. They tell the story of a special education system that appears to be improved from the state entered into a consent decree, but that still allows too many children to slip through the cracks. This particular article, “Left Out and Lagging,” gives some sobering statistics:
Statewide, just 3 percent of special-education 10th-graders are proficient in math, and barely a quarter meet benchmarks for reading.
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Posted by Christopher Melba | Posted on 13-12-2010
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A federal appeals court in San Francisco is set to hear a special education case on Dec. 15 involving the use of seclusion in school. It’s a case with powerful entities supporting each side.
The facts of the case: D.P., then a 7-year-old boy with with autism, attended the 8,600-student Peninsula School District in Gig Harbor, Wash., in 2004. As specified in his individualized education program, D.P. could be placed in what the district called a “safe room” to control his behavior.
There’s some dispute between D.P.’s parents and the school district as to what was agreed to—locked or unlocked door, covered or uncovered window in the door, adult supervision at all times or not—but all agree that D.P. was
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Posted by Christopher Melba | Posted on 13-08-2010
The Department of Education generates regular reports on states and their stimulus spending. But it shows every education program, not just stimulus funds for special education.
So I took the most recent report, from August 6, deleted all the other programs and created a PDF file that shows where states are in drawing down their special education stimulus funds.
So far, about 43 percent of the Part B allocation to the states has been spent; that’s the largest portion of federal funding for special education, and it’s used for students ages 6 to 21. About 36 percent of the section 619 preschool stimulus grant money, which would be used for children ages 3 to 5, has been spent.
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