Fw/ Awak[e]STRANGE BEDFELLOWS IDEA & NO to S-1248

[Guest guest]

APRIL 8, 2004

STRANGE BEDFELLOWS

“Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.†Shakespeare’s The Tempest (Act 2, Scene 2).

OK, we admit it. We did not know that Shakespeare originated the line that we now all repeat as “politics makes strange bedfellows.†The Tempest’s jester, Trinculo, spoke the line in telling of a shipwrecked man who ended up sleeping next to a monster. Smart guy, that Shakespeare. He managed to get jesters, monsters, tragedy and an innocent victim all into the same bed. Sounds like the current Individuals with Disabilities Education Act [iDEA] reauthorization process.

We parents, advocates and supporters of America’s 6.5 million students who receive services pursuant to IDEA have been expressing our concern with proposed IDEA changes since March, 2003. Our numbers have been growing over the months. We also have had the support of dozens of national, state or grassroots consumer-based organizations. And now we discover we are in bed with monsters.

In recent weeks, four national lobbying organizations have united to announce their joint opposition to S. 1248. The organizations are The Council of Chief State School Officers [CCSSO], the National Conference of State Legislatures [NCSL], the National Association of State Boards of Education [NASBE] and the National Association of State Directors of Special Education [NASDSE].

These four organizations are among those we have been claiming for months have the paid lobbyists who have the ears of the Congressional leadership and the Executive Branch of our government. Indeed, just two weeks ago, on March 22nd, President Bush held a private meeting with over 35 chief state school officers at the White House. We’d like to know the date and time of the last private White House meeting President Bush held with 35 parents of children who receive IDEA services, but we know better than to ask, and we are deviating from our main point about sleeping with monsters.

How surprised we were to find that these national school and legislative lobbying bodies had suddenly seen the light and turned around to see things from our side. For a moment we thought that some of our tax money that our state legislatures and state schools send to these organizations to help fund their activities might actually be doing some good for children and families, rather than for school boards and districts. After all, Our Children Left Behind [OCLB], the parent volunteer website, has posted their recently released anti-S. 1248 statements on the OCLB website.

But then we got shipwrecked when we read the reports. They were not funny. The CCSSO, NCSL, NASBE and NASDSE [we’re tempted to call them the alphabet soupers] appear not like S. 1248 because it does not fully fund IDEA, and because they see the service requirements as unfounded mandates – our buzz word for “shipwreck.†They are singing the song that says we want your federal dollars for educational programs but don’t force us to be fair in monitoring or administration.

For example, the groups oppose giving any money to state protection and advocacy systems to give legal education and support to students and families who depend on IDEA for free, appropriate public educations. Here is the rationale as explained in one of their documents:

We believe that it is an inherent conflict of interest for states to fund protection and advocacy agencies to provide legal aid to parents. In every other area of the law, it would be a conflict of interest for an attorney to be paid by an entity that could potentially be the object of a lawsuit filed by that lawyer. That lawyer could potentially face a code of conduct violation for compromising the interest of his/her client by wishing to preserve the source of funding for his/her legal work. We believe that there are other sources of funding available to protection and advocacy entities that would not compromise their legal ethics. [Emphasis added – Item 9 of the Joint Proposed Changes to S. 1248 document posted on the OCLB website.]

Enter the jester. If we read this passage correctly, they are saying that since education money would be paying for parent lawyers, two things might go wrong. First, the money-payer – the school system – could be sued by the lawyer it was paying. Second, the parent lawyer – having been paid by the school – might throw the case so that the school will continue to pay the lawyer in the future.

Their concerns would be funny, if we did not already have a perfect working example of just such as funding system in nationwide use today. It is called “school lawyers.†For the first part of the equation, fees being paid by those who then get sued, the states and local school districts take money from the parents [taxes] and hire lawyers for huge fees to advise the districts on how to provide or refuse IDEA services, and then provide legal defense to the schools who are sued by parents [the lawyer-fee payers] for denying their children their IDEA rights. This system is identical to the system they oppose when the money [parent/taxpayer dollars] would be used to pay a lawyer to fight the school rather than the parent.

The second prong, that parent lawyers might throw cases if their fees are paid by the schools certainly has not worked going the other way. When, ever, has any school lawyer faced a “code of conduct violation†for throwing a school district’s case because, after all, the lawyer really is being paid by the taxpayer parents. Even the jester cannot laugh at this one. And the kids get to sleep next to a monster.

The four organizations also oppose S. 1248 because its proposed monitoring and enforcement is “punitive and arbitrary.†Read this clause in harmony with the previous statement on lawyers for parents. What is the common theme? These organizations do not want a stronger system of accountability put into place. They claim it will expose state schools to possible suit by the feds and loss of federal funds if the states fail to provide the services or protections required by IDEA. Another shipwreck. More kids and monsters.

And then there is the part about “Abrogation of State Sovereign Immunity.†This is a highly technical part of emerging [or some would say regressing] federal constitutional law. Lawyers know that this concept, which comes from the 11th amendment to the Constitution, affects how easy or hard it is for parents or governmental entities to sue states for damages when the states violate a person’s rights under federal laws like IDEA. In IDEA ’97, Congress included the clause abrogating state sovereign immunity. The four organizations want the clause taken out so that parents and others will have one less way to fight to force the state to do right by their children. States have successfully used this very argument to avoid having to pay damages for violating the Americans with Disabilities Act. Abrogating immunity is all about protecting school districts and forcing kids to sleep in beds next to monsters.

Another tricky passage these four organizations dislike is the provision seeking to better state what constitutes a “highly qualified teacher†for special education purposes. Evidently these organizations see this language as requiring special education teachers “to obtain credentials far beyond those required of other teachers and that this will quickly result in special education teachers leaving the field.â€

We do not have a good understanding of precisely how these provisions will be implemented. We do know, however, that we want our special education teachers to be “highly qualified†to address our children’s particularly identified and specified needs. These organizations suggest that rather than requiring the highly qualified special education teacher within a specific curriculum area, it should be enough that “students with disabilities have access to teachers who are highly qualified in content areas.†We would be in a better position to accept this proposal if the organizations were equally willing to permit us to use P & A attorneys or have federal monitors if and when the schools did not deliver on the promise to provide that access. But they do not seek to be held accountable, at least not as accountable as S. 1248 would require.

We could go on, but we believe we have given you a sense of the problems with the “Alphabet Soupers’†positions. The primary issue of substance upon which we agree with them is the recommendation to the Senate to vote “NO†on S. 1248. Their stand opposing S. 1248, coming as late as it has, still probably will help those of us who have opposed gutting IDEA for over a year.

But we have to be careful about how quickly or completely we embrace their presence on our side of the question. It has been said, too, that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.†We need to be clear with each other, and with Congress, that the “Soupers†are not our friends. If they and we share the victory this time and shipwreck S. 1248, we must know and accept that they will oppose us in the next effort to rewrite IDEA. The monsters will still be out there, but we’ll be out there, too, protecting our kids.

Tricia and Calvin Luker, today's parentvolunteer@...

©2004 Our Children Left Behind

<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">

Our Children Left Behind [OCLB] was created and is owned/operated by parent volunteers (Sandy Alperstein, Tricia & Calvin Luker, Shari Krishnan, and Debi ). Permission to forward, copy, and/or post this article is granted provided that it is done in its entirety and is attributed to the author(s) and www.ourchildrenleftbehind.com. For more about OCLB or to share information, please contact parentvolunteer@....

(`~`)J

Mike Savory

Awak(e)A_dvocacy

A Member of League of Special Education Voters.

Changing Special Education one vote at a time.

http://www.spedvoters.org/

Supports: League of SpeEd_Voters & Vote No to S_1248

D isabled Action CommitteeDAC 4 Virginia

N C TFFCMHJ & affil N.C.Tx.Federation Families 4 Children'sMentalHealth

Imagine Finding New Stories For People Who Experience Disabilities