Imagine if they had just used that money to actually provide service instead. That’d be a fab ABA program for those girls.”

People miss the forest for the trees…

Cliff

Imagine if they had just used that money to actually provide service instead. That’d be a fab ABA program for those girls.

FWIW–there is such a thing known as benchmarks and monitoring progress. Having gone through the IFSP and IEP process and reviews, that is one means of determining whether services are sufficient and appropriate, or misallocated. Most of the people I know are not asking for the moon and a balloon; they are asking for speech therapy for children who have speech problems, they are asking for academic programs that teach the appropriate skills in a meaningful time frame vs. going through the motions, they are negotiating for approaches that have greater promise to teach a particular child skills than ones that don’t. They are asking for opportunity for inclusion, and in some cases the LRE which is the goal of IDEA. From observation, these are not identical IEPs, and should not be, since the purpose is individualized and specialized. Review and negotiation is always part of the process. In the situation where the federal mandate is underfunded and we are in a situation of sorting through best practices and related training; the problem is that negotiation sometimes is more stressful and contentious than it might be otherwise for any of the parties involved.

The law also allows these safeguards and ability to go to due process. As Emily noted, this family prevailed in one ruling, another in appeal, and may very well appeal this one. The decisions in these local, regional and Supreme Court decisions carry some significance in what is considered reasonable and fair at the current time in interpreting law. Parents may possibly be unreasonable; based on the outcome of hearing and judgements, it appears that districts may be as well. If people didn’t try to exercise their legally defined rights, they might not find that out.

Most schools provide some form of aba but not Lovass because it’s not cost effective and it’s huge study is highly overrated.

A teacher who felt I wasn’t getting enough services spent an hour with me to do an assmeant for my daughter and then went to help me make a simple educational program I could do over the summer.
Yes I have to do all the work in incorporating it into my play based therapy but many parents would love it to be taught by the school to provide some services.

Our experience in our “Exemplary” Texas School District was completely appalling… MA has been a vast improvement.

Troll much?

I’ve been doing a lot of work on IDEA and ADA lately. I’m sure that these parents are aware of the rulings as described at Wrightslaw, and I’m sure their attorney is, as well. I’d wait and see where this goes next and what the facts of the case are before drawing any conclusions. This family appears already to have won/settled two complaints with this district, one having been won on appeal. That may well happen in this case, too.

It’s too bad the school district’s superintendent had to sound so satisfied at the “victory.” A little more grace would have been nice, as would some sense that he was representing a “We,” rather than an “I” in his statement. But he’s lost twice and the district appears to be low on funds to fight these battles. I wonder if that lack of funding might also be contributing to whatever the alleged lack of services in this case is.

Hello? We need money for education in this country. Think how much more rare the battles would be if education were fully funded. But that’s another topic.