IDEA Report Card Issued Only 9 States Met Standards

[Jamies Mommy]

IDEA Report Card Issued

Last week, the U.S. Department of Education published IDEA Report Cards for the 50 states and 8 territories. Only 9 states met the standards for educating children with disabilities. 41 states and 8 territories fell into the “needs assistance” or “needs intervention” categories. If these states do not significantly improve how children with disabilities are educated, they face sanctions, including loss of federal funds.



Weaknesses cited by the U.S. Department of Education include:

States fail to ensure that local school districts comply with the law.

States fail to comply with requirements about the transition from school to college or work. To look at your own state and how it did go to: http://www.ed.gov/policy/speced/guid/idea/monitor/factsheet.html. To learn more about how this process works and what your state is required to do, read IDEA Report Cards: Did Your State Pass or Fail? http://www.wrightslaw.com/news/07/idea.report.cards.htm



Denise Jones, BCBA


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[peglem]

Thanks for posting this. I appreciated especially the commentary on the wright's law site.

[milivica]

Wow, that was some interesting info. I'm so glad you posted it. Might really help sometime as I begin Due Process.

I'm still having trouble understanding how these 'report cards' were determined. I'm going to read again tomorrow, my eyes are crossing here.

Great find, thanks!
Mili

[gynwhyver]

Funny that my state is on there as meeting the standards. Also funny, all the state's set the standards, and all of our school districts self-report. Kind of makes it easy to say good things about yourself, especially since the state can choose what standards to set. There are NO guidelines! So when you make standards so low there is no way they can not be met, it's also easy to pass. Guess other states didn't get the message. :rolleyes:

Agree with Wrightslaw and the skepticism: even when presented with (and even when Due Process finds in favor of parents for denial of FAPE, which is against IDEA regs), the DOE does not lift a finger to withhold fed $$ from school districts, and in our experiences, provides advice to districts on "loopholes" or "corrective action" to get around complaints, so there's no chance that funding will be cut.

The whole system is screwed up. I say fire everybody, hire parents of kids with special needs (who actually know what the laws are and aren't afraid to use 'em), and start all over again.

Sorry, still hating the public school system that I pay $$ into who refuses to educate my child.

[The Pogue]

Such things as drop out rates for children with IEP's vs. children without IEP's; Percentage of children with IEP's who participate in statewide assessments (with and without accommodations), percentage of IEP'd students receiving 'regular high school diplomas' vs. 'certificates of completion', etc.

It says nothing whatsoever about the quality of special education services in any state or district. It's all about assessment, statistics, and documentation, and means very little.

The amount of federal funding schools receive (both regular and special ed) is such a farce that any threats to cut funding are met with rolling eyeballs.

[Mother's Heart]

my state set their standards very high....then found out they were hard to meet. AFter a couple of years conversations turned to 'should we lower the standards?.