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Take Your Faces to Their Places:
The Press Packet
Congress is Leaving Children Behind
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 16, 2003, For more information, contact: Calvin and
Tricia Luker (248) 544-7223
For more articles like this
visit
https://www.bridges4kids.org.
Today, May 22nd, we think there is a good chance that the Senate
bill reauthorizing IDEA will be released and introduced. We do
not know how quickly the Senate will move to pass the bill. This
is our best chance to reinstate the program and due process
protections stripped from IDEA in the House version.
www.ourchildrenleftbehind.com has updated its “Press Info”
section of the web site to explain how we can publicize the IDEA
reauthorization process to improve the final bill for our
children. Please visit that section before you leave us today.
It is now time to “take your faces to their places.” Next week
is Memorial Day week, and many of our legislators will be
spending time in their home districts. The timing is perfect for
you to make contact both with your Senators and with your local
TV, newspaper and radio outlets. We have written a press release
below for you to use to make the media aware of your effort to
save IDEA for our children. All you have to do to use the press
release is to insert your name [or your organization’s name] in
the appropriate place and add your contact information. You may
modify the press release to meet your unique community or
organizational needs. You also may delete the reference to
www.ourchildrenleftbehind.com if
you wish.
We really are getting into crunch time. Now is when our Senators
need to hear our stories, meet our students and children, and
see the faces of the 6.6 million children whose future rests in
the Senate’s hands. Please take a few minutes to get the word
out, and to “take your faces to their places.” The press release
appears immediately below. Good luck.
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Congress is
Leaving Children Behind
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 16, 2003
For more information, contact:
Calvin and Tricia Luker (248) 544-7223
CHICAGO, Illinois – 6.6 million students with disabilities and
their families stand to lose their right to a free, appropriate
public education. H.R. 1350, passed by the U.S. House of
Representatives on April 30, 2003, threatens to dismantle the
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). If a similar
bill passes the Senate millions of students with disabilities
will most certainly be left behind.
“The House passage of H.R. 1350 turns back the civil rights
clock 30 years. It took that long for parents to finally have
our students attend neighborhood schools. Now all of that is at
risk with the passage of this bill,” says Sandy Alperstein of
Buffalo Grove, Illinois, whose son has apraxia, a neurological
motor planning disorder.
Alperstein is not alone in her concerns. Most of the student and
parent advocacy agencies across the country agree with her.
Wendy Byrnes of DREDF (a national law and policy center
dedicated to furthering the civil rights of people with
disabilities and parents of children with disabilities) warns
that “the 108th Congress could have their place in history
secured as the permanent dismantlers of appropriate public
education for millions of disabled children in the United States
if H.R. 1350 is not amended by the Senate before becoming the
reauthorized and very dangerous IDEA it appears to be in its
current incarnation.”
Groups representing educators and other school-based
professionals opposed H.R. 1350 along with student/parent
advocacy groups. The National Education Association,
representing 2.7 million members, as well as the National
Association of School Psychologists, the American
Speech-Language-Hearing Association, and at least 66 other
organizations opposed passage of H.R. 1350. However, “the House
ignored this widespread opposition to H.R. 1350 in favor of the
lone voices of school administrators,” says Alperstein.
Paul Marchand, Staff Director for The Arc and UCP Public Policy
Collaboration, a former special education teacher, early
childhood director, and co-chair of the Consortium for Citizens
with Disabilities Education Task Force, who has been involved on
the federal level with IDEA since the early 1970’s, agrees:
“This legislation is the worst national public policy since
before the Congress enacted the right to education for students
with disabilities almost 30 years ago. The bill seeks to appease
school administrators at the expense of students with
disabilities and their parents. The House bill twists the law
from one for kids to one for school superintendents and
principals.”
Ann Slaw of Buffalo Grove, Illinois, a former school board
member and the mother of a child with disabilities also believes
the bill fails dismally in its stated dual purposes of reducing
paperwork and increasing educational results: “As a parent of a
child with disabilities and a former school board member, I must
say that this bill does very little to help our teachers and
very much to hurt our students with disabilities.”
“H.R. 1350 is scary,” says Susan Bauer, a Buffalo Grove mother
and the recipient of her school district’s Champion for Children
Award. She is particularly concerned with proposed changes to
the IEP (the blueprint for providing a student with special
education). “This bill takes away parents’ and teachers’
abilities to closely and appropriately monitor a child’s
progress at school. Optional 3- year IEP’s are a joke. Many
parents don’t know or will not know that they can have an IEP
every year. Removing benchmarks is a catastrophe. The reality is
these kids will fall farther and farther behind.”
“And without the procedural protections currently contained in
IDEA, which H.R. 1350 systematically eliminates, parents will
have no recourse,” says Alperstein.
Calvin and Patricia Luker, Michigan parents and advocates for
children with disabilities, feel the problems with H.R. 1350
stem from parents being excluded from the drafting process. “For
28 years Congress has been using a past experience and seeking
input from both parents and educators to improve IDEA for
students and schools. IDEA worked better for everyone,” they
noted. “That practice was abandoned this time around. Students
and parents have been stifled. The result is that students and
educators will suffer in the future if H.R. 1350 survives the
Senate. Learning to listen is a skill we’re all taught at a
young age. There’s still time for Congress to listen to
families, and to correct the problems in H.R. 1350.”
Dr. Bernie Travnikar, a retired school principal and special
education director from Pontiac, Michigan, agrees that parents
and students have not been represented fairly with the passage
of H.R. 1350. “The legislation is missing some of the most
critical components that help educators better understand why
students with disabilities act the way that they sometimes do.
If the Senate’s version of the bill looks anything like H.R.
1350, we can be sure to see an increase in students with
disabilities being expelled, suspended, and segregated from
their present schools for something as simple as making funny
noises in class, which is neither a dangerous nor a destructive
behavior.” Travnikar believes that the elimination of the
Manifestation Determination and the lack of strong language for
Positive Behavior Supports will result in countless students
behind left behind. “These are research based procedures to make
schools a better place for kids. Why would they eliminate such
important components for educational success as they reauthorize
the IDEA? For the life of me, I cannot understand what the House
was thinking. No wonder parents are trembling with anxiety and
anticipation. I would be too.”
Alperstein laments that “without an appropriate education, many
of these children will find themselves on the streets, or worse
yet, in prison.”
The Senate soon will introduce its own version of the bill
reauthorizing IDEA. “I hope the Senate will do a better job than
the House by really listening to parents and looking out for
students. Either the House members that voted in favor of H.R.
1350 didn’t think that students with disabilities are
‘children’, or they didn’t understand that kids with
disabilities need IDEA written as a “ramp” to optimally benefit
from No Child Left Behind [NCLB],” explains Alperstein. She
concludes, “If No Child Left Behind was intended to help all
students achieve, and parents are now to be treated as
customers, someone needs to shake my hand at some point. Let’s
see if the Senate knows how to do it.”
For more information, please visit
http://www.ourchildrenleftbehind.com.
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