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(a version of this post appears at Special Education Law Blog) Back in 1986, Congress passed the Handicapped Children's Protection Act, which (a) recognized that parents of handicapped children might disagree with schools over effective education of handicapped children, (b) recognized that parents, compared with school districts, had smaller resources, and (c) leveled the parent/ school district playing field, by allowing parents to recover their expert witness.
But then in 2006, the Supreme Court ruled that parents cannot recover expert witness costs, in the ruling costs, in Arlington Central School District v. Murphy (2006).
This is a real blow to most parents of disabled children. Why? Approximately 36% of children with disabilities live in families
earning less than $25,000 a year; over 2/3 earn less than $50,000 a
year.
There is an act before Congress that needs your Congressional Representative's support.
The IDEA Fairness Restoration Act (H.R. 4188) would override the Supreme Court's decision in Arlington v. Murphy (2006) and allow parents who prevail in due process or litigation to be reimbursed for their expert witness fees. H.R. 4188 is important to level the playing field and protect the rights of the 7 million children with disabilities.
Allowing parents to
recoup their expert fees simply restores Congress' original intent, as expressed in the Handicapped Children's Protection Act of 1986.
Why Is This Act Necessary?
School districts use tax dollars to employ and pay for psychologists and other paid experts at IEP meetings and hearings.
For parents, hiring qualified medical, technical, and other expert witnesses can cost many thousands of dollars. Few parents can afford this high cost, putting due process out of reach for most parents, who struggle to afford what their children with disabilities need.
When prevailing parents cannot recover expert costs, the playing field
is neither level nor fair, and children are denied a free appropriate
public education and other fundamental IDEA rights.
Introduced by Congressman Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland) and Pete Sessions (R-Texas), H.R. 4188 will restore Congress’ original intent and allow parents to recover their expert fees.
Why Is It Important For Your Congressional Representative to Co-Sponsor the Bill?
This is bi-partisan legislation, and the more co-sponsors, the more likely the passage of the act.
Why You Need to Call Your Congressional Representative:
In some ways, children with disabilities are invisible Americans (see, for example, Michael Bérubé's analysis of the Presidential candidates' positions on disability, Disability and Democracy)
Calling your Congressional Representative serves to put Congress as a whole on notice that educating all students with disabilities--as required by law--is a deep concern for the American public.
NCLD works to ensure that the nation's 15 million children, adolescents and adults with learning disabilities have every opportunity to succeed in school, work and life.
The adoption of RTI will of course require some deep, system-wide changes. While change is hard, and sometimes uncomfortable, we can reach our goal of providing high-quality instruction to all students if we work collaboratively and collectively. It is paramount that state and local policies and practices evolve in order to help inform building-level leadership. School leadership in turn will be able to galvanize school staff to embrace the necessary changes in roles and responsibilities and help facilitate the breaking-down of barriers between general education and special education.
The tagline for the RTI Action Network is: The Information You Need to Take Action, The Networking You Need to Be Successful.
The first online talk will be on Managing Ongoing Student Assessments, with Stanley Deno April 23, 2008, 1-2 p.m. EDT.
Progress measures have become a central component of the Response to Intervention (RTI) approach. Contemporary assessment has shifted focus from describing differences between students to measuring their progress toward important educational outcomes.
Curriculum-Based Measurement procedures are used to monitor basic skills growth, to identify students at risk of learning difficulty, to evaluate efforts to prevent and remediate low achievement, and to aid in making instructional decisions to accelerate learning.
Join our expert, Stanley Deno, Ph.D., best known for his research leading to the development of Curriculum-Based Measurement (CBM) progress monitoring procedures and their use in the RTI model, as he answers your questions on CBM.
John Wills Lloyd has a regular feature at his blog, Teach Effectively!, in which he asks readers to chose between a set of bogus reform initiatives.
Bogus Bowl III is up. Go vote. The choices are
Which of these is the most bogus reason for not testing whether students have learned what educators purport to teach?
Testing might injure students' self-esteem.
Some children are just not good test takers.
Testing disrupts learning itself.
Testing will take time away from teaching.
Tests can never reveal what students have truly learned.
According to a recent study, somewhere between 10% to 30% of children have difficulty learning to produce rapid, legible hand-written work(1). Handwriting difficulty is often linked with other problems such as attention deficit disorder. Poor quality of handwriting of children with handwriting problems seems particularly related to a deficiency in visual-motor integration. (2)
Children who do not acquire fluent, legible handwriting in the early years often experience far-reaching negative effects on both academic success and self-esteem.(1)
“Handwriting is one of the basic building blocks of good writing and plays a critical role in learning,” Graham, Currey Ingram Professor of Special Education at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College, said. “Young children who have difficulty mastering this skill often avoid writing and their writing development may be arrested. They also may have trouble taking notes and following along in class, which will further impede their development.”
There are three possible sources of children developing handwriting difficulties: a problem with the child, a problem with the teacher, or a problem with the curricula (and related materials).
Mel Levine, author of "All Kinds of Minds" practiced pediatrics at Children's Hospital Boston from 1971 to 1985. On March 31, 2008, attorney Carmen L. Durso filed a lawsuit on behalf of an unnamed plaintiff, alleging that between 1980 and 1985, Levine performed repeated and unnecessary physical examinations on his client, including sexual acts. There are six other plaintiffs in the suit with similar allegations.
In explaining the 23-year delay in filing such a suit:
The plaintiff who filed the lawsuit "was unable to recall and to understand" the abuse until February 2006, the complaint said. It says he has been in therapy since.
After leaving Boston, Levine was a professor at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine until 2006. In the last two years, he held an "unpaid appointment as an adjunct professor at the university, where he continued to see patients twice a month." UNC announced that Levine has volunteered not to see any patients until the suit is resolved.
In a faxed statement, Levine's lawyer, Edward Mahoney of Boston, said the doctor is innocent.
"Dr. Mel Levine has provided pediatric care to more than 15,000 children over 40 years and categorically denies that he has ever been abusive in any way toward any patient," said Mahoney, who questioned the motives of the lawyer filing the suit. "He adamantly denies these claims. Dr. Levine is distressed about the distorted or misinterpreted memories from decades past and questions the motivations."
The plaintiff "was unable to recall and to understand"--sounds like repressed/recovered memory therapy to me.
Update: The U.S. justice system incorporates the principle of "presumption of innocence": - The indictment or formal charge against any person is not evidence of guilt. Indeed, the person is presumed by the law to be innocent. The law does not require a person to prove his innocence or produce any evidence at all. The Government has the burden of proving a person guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, and if it fails to do so the person is (so far as the law is concerned) not guilty.
the Constitution does not dictate what we ought to think or say. Indeed, it protects those thoughts and statements, regardless of their content or viewpoint, under the First Amendment. We therefore need not limit ourselves in the ways the jury is limited--in terms of either the evidence we are allowed to consider, the threshold that evidence must meet before we draw a conclusion, or even our own default presumption.
At the present writing (April 8, 2008) all I know is that Dr. Levine has been accused. I don't know the extent or the robustness of the evidence in the prosecution's complaint, or the extent or robustness of the evidence for acquittal. Therefore, I will assume his innocence.
This is in response to the commenter, John, who is basing his arguments on speculation and innuendo.
Update below--list of blog responses to Seidel's subpoena. Most are better written than mine.
Update #2 -- if you would like to Digg this topic, the link is here.
Update #3--Full conflict of interest disclosure at the very bottom of the post
Update #4--Saturday April 5-- bloggers, below, and why the subpoena demands material having to do with any “religious groups (Muslim or otherwise), or individuals with religious affiliations." In a previous episode, Kathleen Seidel wrote Serving the Guest, "A cookbook with essays and anecdotes on the historic and contemporary role of food, eating, meals and hospitality in Sufism, the mystical tradition of Islam". In other words, not post 9/11 hysteria, but an attempt at intimidation, pure and simple.
Update #5--Sunday April 6 -- more bloggers, and note Orac's open letter to autism activists David Kirby and Dan Olmstead at Respectful Insolence. April 8: See the running clock, waiting for Kirby and Olmstead's response.
Update # 6 -- Monday April 7. All of the responses I've linked are supportive of Kathleen Seidel's work. Those who know her personally also express admiration for her character. However, there is an element who express disdain for her work and who cast aspersions on her character. I've listed those at the bottom of the post.
Update #7 -- Thursday April 10 FINALLY the national mainstream media catch on. Wall Street Journal's James Taranto leads off "Best of the Web Today" with coverage of the Seidel subpoena.
Update #8--Sunday April 13--intro to post re-written slightly to indicate that it was the Sykes' attorney, Clifford Shoemaker, who bears the most responsibility for the repressive subpoena.
The Sykes' attorney, Clifford Shoemaker, maintains a website for his firm, in which he claims that
The evidence is now overwhelming that mercury injected into pregnant women and small infants has caused a huge epidemic of autism in this county.
In fact, the evidence is now overwhelming that there is no connection between vaccination and autism. Anyone continuing to so claim is engaging in manufactroversy.
Mr. Shoemaker was featured in a March 24, 2008 Neurodiversity.com post, The Commerce in Causation, detailing how much money Shoemaker earns from litigating autism-vaccine-injury claims. On March 26, 2008, Seidel was served with a subpoena, issued by Shoemaker, to produce documents and records for the Sykes' suit.
the first phrase that occurred to me on looking through the subpoena was "fishing expedition", and the second was "intimidation". Several clauses indicate that Shoemaker is hoping to turn up evidence that Seidel has accepted support from the federal government, or from vaccine makers, which she says she hasn't. Also among the documents demanded: Seidel's correspondence with other bloggers.
Including me. But I'm in illustrious company, if you read the subpoena (available here). Seidel has filed a counter-motion to quash the subpoena; the attorney has two weeks to respond.
ElderAbuseHelp.com: War on Bloggers Comes Home to America. This post lists bloggers who have been subject to legal action, including Kathleen Seidel. However, the link has crashed my browser each time I've clicked on it, so Here's the link: http://elder-abuse-cyberray.blogspot.com/2008/04/war-on-bloggers-comes-home-to-america.html, and here it is as a TinyURL: http://tinyurl.com/5cwgq5
Bloggers expressing disapproval of the body of Seidel's work, approval of Clifford Shoemaker's subpoena, and ad-hominem attacks on Seidel: April 3 April 4
Conflict of Interest Disclosure relative to the Seidel subpoena, in which my blog I Speak of Dreams is named in item #5
I am a resident of the state of California
My blog, I Speak of Dreams (http://lizditz.typepad.com/i_speak_of_dreams/), is named in item #5 of the subpoena issued to Kathleen Seidel by Clifford Shoemaker, Esq., in Case No. 3:07-CV-660, Eastern District of Virginia, Richmond Division.
The blog I Speak of Dreams on the whole reflects my interests and enthusiasms, as well as personal notes. It also serves as an aide-memoire for me.
These interests and enthusiasm include issues having to do with private and public K-12 education, learning disabilities, teaching children with learning disabilities, and skeptical evaluation of claims of cures for various conditions. From time to time, I have blogged directly and explicitly on issues pertaining to autism, the education of persons with autism, the lack of evidence for vaccination in any form being a causative agent for autism, and issues having to do with autism in the media.
To the best of my knowledge, none of my immediate family members has autism or is affected by autism.
The blogs at http://lizditz.typepad.com/ are not legal entities, organizations, or businesses. The blogs are my hobby, which I support out of my own income. I do not accept funding or advertising.
I have never received anything of monetary value from Kathleen Seidel or Neurodiversity.com.
I have never met Kathleen Seidel in person.
I have never spoken to Kathleen Seidel.
To the best of my knowledge, I have never been in the same building with Kathleen Seidel.
I have e-mailed, or exchanged e-mails with Kathleen Seidel approximately 10 times since 2004 (the extent of my records).
I do own stock in various enterprises in the healthcare sector of the US economy. To the best of my recollection, all such stocks were inherited from my parents' estate in the mid-1990s. The collective value of such shares amounts to no more than 1.4% of my net worth.
To the best of my knowledge, dividend income from the entire healthcare sector of my securities portfolio has accounted to less than 1% of my annual income.
In other words, I spend more on groceries and fuel for my vehicles than I earn from my healthcare sector securities. Big Agra and Big Oil has a much bigger influence on my finances than Big Pharma.
I recommend this seminar (which is also available as a DVD and as Webcast) to every parent who has a child with a disability, especially children with learning disabilities.
If your school district has a Special Education PTA (SEPTA), it would be worth the investment to have the training over two or more meetings. If your district doesn't have a SEPTA, it would probably be worth your while to start one, using this training as a start.
This is an opportunity for family members, individuals, professionals, and providers to connect with the greater Autism and Asperger’s community. Exhibitors include Access, Inc., Autism Society of New Hampshire, Asperger’s Study Group of Keene State College, Autism Respite Resource Outreach, Crotched Mountain Rehabilitation, Family Support Council, Forward Motion Coaching, Howda Hugs, Landmark College, New Hampshire Connections, NH Commission on ASD, Parent-to-Parent of NH, Silver Lining Multimedia, Special Needs Support Group, Psychotherapy & Expressive Arts, our co-sponsors, and many more.
Film Screenings
12:15 PM Including Samuel, (55 minutes)
1:25 PM Autism and Law Enforcement: Roll Call Briefing, (21 minutes )
2:00 PM Including Samuel
For more information, please contact Shelley Viles at sviles@antiochne.edu or 603.283.2145
Why? Because the earlier we can diagnose problems in children, the earlier we can address them and keep them from becoming permanent impediments to their future. For example, most juvenile court officers agree that at least 15% of the children that enter the juvenile court system suffer from dyslexia. That means that the kids naturally start to think that they are mentally slow, or worse.
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