ADVOCATING 4 KIDS

SpEdWatch, Inc.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 

DATE: September 10, 2007 

                                                                                    CONTACT: Ellen Chambers, MBA

                                                                                           PHONE: (978) 433-5983

                                                                                           EMAIL:echambers@spedwatch.org

State can’t stop schools from breaking special education laws

If you have a child with a disability in a Massachusetts public school, you need to know two things. First, there are laws that protect your child’s right to receive the special education services they need. Second, school districts routinely break those laws, and the Massachusetts Department of Education (MASSDE) says they can’t do anything about it. You’re on your own.

According to MASSDE’s own records, between July 2004 and June 2005 schools violated students’ special education rights 1,159 times. Last April, the non-profit special education watchdog group SpEdWatch asked MASSDE to a commit to a goal of significantly reducing these violations. MASSDE refused. In a letter to SpEdWatch Executive Director Ellen Chambers, Associate Commissioner of Education Carole Thomson pointed to high staff turnover in the special education field as the reason why compliance cannot be sustained.

“These are not just pesky paperwork violations, like missing a filing deadline,” says Chambers. “These are violations that prevent children from succeeding in school, and in life. It’s a very serious matter.”
 

According to attorney Matthew Engel of the Disability Law Center in Boston, “Non-compliance with special education law by school districts is a serious problem throughout Massachusetts. Under state and federal law, the MASSDE has a clear responsibility to prevent and rectify such non-compliance. Thus, it is incumbent upon MASSDE to take strong proactive steps to combat continued violations on the part of school districts and there is no excuse for MASSDE to treat this issue as anything less than the highest priority.”
 

Ellie Goldberg, a Newton-based educational consultant and advocate comments, “Special education professionals and state officials who don’t respect special education laws create costly delays, waste and conflicts that deprive all of us of the quality school-parent relationships and the educational resources that all children need. And no one is more distressed than the parents of students with disabilities when a school district spends public tax dollars on lawyers to defend a school’s repeated violations.”
 

Chambers adds, “Approximately 90 percent of our state’s special education students have disabilities that do not impair cognitive ability. They are as intellectually capable as their non-disabled peers, but they are failing in staggering numbers because they are denied the meaningful instruction they need in order to learn. Now MASSDE is telling these children to accept the fact that their educational rights will be violated, to accept the fact that their educations and their lives will be compromised. That’s educational neglect, and a breach of public trust of the worst kind.”
 

SpEdWatch, Inc. is organizing a civil rights movement to fight for the educational rights of all Massachusetts schoolchildren with disabilities (ages 3-21). If you are interested in learning more about the movement you can contact SpEdWatch at (978) 433-5983 or info@spedwatch.org