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January 25, 2002        News Morgue Search  www.feat.org/search/news.asp

EDUCATION

·        Congress To Examine IDEA For Reauthorization

·        ESEA, Appropriations Bills Keep Special Ed Underfunded

·        Centers for Families With Autistic Children

·        Reader’s Posts

 

 

Congress To Examine IDEA For Reauthorization

Hill Set To Debate Special-Ed

 

[By Amy Fagan in The Washington Times.]

http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020122-47983902.htm

With the ink barely dry on a massive new education law, Congress and the administration are rolling up their sleeves again — this time preparing to overhaul the federal program that funds special education.

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) is up for congressional reauthorization this year and will be a source of considerable debate, as Democrats continue to demand guaranteed funding increases for the program and Republicans push to make some changes to it first.

President Bush’s commission on special education, created in October, held its first meeting on Jan. 15. The 19-member group, which includes federal, state and local education leaders and special-education analysts, is charged with examining ways to improve the IDEA program and is expected to produce final recommendations by the summer.

Critics of the program say it offers incentives for school systems to force students into special-education programs even if they don’t belong there.

“Too many children are being wrongly placed in special-education classes under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, and we need to change that. The current special-education system, quite simply, is failing our children, and that’s unacceptable,” said Rep. John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican and chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee.

But Senate Democrats planned to continue to push for guaranteed funding increases for the IDEA program in order to fulfill the promise Congress made to states in 1975 to cover 40 percent of the cost of educating disabled students.

The government has fallen far short of meeting that goal, despite notable increases in special-education funding in recent years.

“I defy you to find a state or local school official who isn’t desperate to secure those funds,” said Jim Manley, spokesman for Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat and chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

Mr. Manley said the first step for Democrats this year will be to examine the president’s budget, when it is released, “to see how much of a priority it is for this administration.”

He said Senate Democrats probably will offer an amendment during the budget debate that would declare funding for special education an entitlement, meaning the IDEA program would be guaranteed its full 40 percent funding with no annual review.

Sen. Tom Harkin, Iowa Democrat, and Sen. Chuck Hagel, Nebraska Republican, added a similar proposal to the Senate version of the education bill last year, but House Republicans managed to keep it out of the final education bill. The Hagel-Harkin proposal would have cost an estimated $181 billion over 10 years.

Most Republicans say funding decisions should be tied to some much-needed changes for the IDEA program. If funding is guaranteed, all incentive for reform is lost, they argue.

In testifying before Mr. Boehner’s committee last fall, Education Secretary Rod Paige noted that minority students were disproportionately represented in special-education classes. Mr. Paige also said the system fails to teach many children fundamental skills like reading and then wrongly labels them as disabled.

The new education law includes a $975 million initiative by Mr. Bush to encourage reading skills at an early age. Mr. Boehner said this likely will help “alleviate the problem of misdiagnosing” students.

“But the special-education system needs to be comprehensively reformed,” Mr. Boehner said, adding that the president’s commission “will help us to do that wisely and with the best information available.”

Mr. Boehner’s committee will be responsible for reauthorizing the IDEA program in the House and Mr. Kennedy’s committee will do so in the Senate.

Nearly all lawmakers agree that states need more money for special education, but members of both parties will continue to be divided over whether that funding should be mandatory.

Congress agreed to spend $7.5 billion on special-education programs in fiscal 2002 — a $1.2 billion increase over last year’s level.

Deb Fiddelke, spokeswoman for Mr. Hagel, said she hopes that as reforms are made to the IDEA program this year, more lawmakers will agree to guarantee the 40 percent funding level for the program.

Hope Jordan, an assistant professor at the Regent School of Education, has more than 16 years of experience as both a special and general educator.  Miss Jordan said most schools in Virginia are doing a good job of referring children to special-education classes only if they truly need it. But she said additional resources are sorely needed to hire more special-education teachers. Copyright © 2001 News World Communications, Inc.

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ESEA, Appropriations Bills Keep Special Ed Underfunded

[Another view on the IDEA from Special Education News.]

http://www.specialednews.com/

Washington—After the special ed community came tantalizingly close to getting a commitment from Congress to pay the whole bill for federally mandated special ed services, the final version of the Elementary and Secondary Education reauthorization bill emerged from last fall’s behind-the-scenes wrangling with no promise of adequate special ed funding.  With the ESEA debates finally closed, Congress followed a week later with an $8.67 billion special ed funding package, nearly $9 billion short of what the states need from the federal coffer.

Though it was dubbed the “No Child Left Behind Act,” the new bill has some special ed supporters wondering how schools will be able to help students with disabilities progress when state education agencies receive less than 15 percent of the additional money they need to educate these children.

“Despite broad and deep bipartisan support to lift the unfunded mandate of special education, education bill conferees rejected the will of the majority in Congress to fully fund special education,” National Education Association President Bob Chase said in a statement. “This action is simply irresponsible and misses the opportunity to truly leave no child behind.”

However, others say disagreement about whether and how to change various provisions in IDEA, and how to tie IDEA funding to improved special ed performance, were key reasons the full-funding plan failed to gain enough support for inclusion in the ESEA bill. “The early and accurate identification of learning disabilities is critically important. But because of flaws in the current Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, too many children are being wrongly placed in special education classes,” argued Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Education and Workforce Committee. “Over-identification is causing countless children to be placed in special education classes they don’t belong in, and driving up the cost of special education nationwide.”

On a positive note, Congress increased the overall federal special ed allocation 17 percent from its 2001-02 appropriation. State grants for preschool, elementary and secondary special ed programs and services for 2002-03 went up 19 percent—they will get $7.53 billion compared to the $6.34 billion they received for the current school year. Congress also boosted funding for special ed teacher training 10 percent to $90 million for next year.

And the ESEA bill was just the first of two prime opportunities special ed supporters on Capitol Hill have to push a special ed funding mandate through Congress. With the federal special ed law, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, needing reauthorization by next fall, Congressional supporters say they will use that process to reintroduce some version of the six-year funding ramp-up plan that was cut from the ESEA bill. Sens. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) and James Jeffords (Ind.-Vt.) and Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) are among special ed funding’s leading advocates.

Bush’s new emphasis on reading yielded the states $900 million in “Reading First” grants, up from $286 million last year. Those funds, plus an additional $75 million earmarked as “Early Reading First” money for projects in low-income areas, must be spent on U.S. Department of Education-authorized and research-supported literacy efforts. With a new $12.5 million allocation, school libraries will also join in the nationwide reading effort, which aims to have every child reading by third grade.

Another notable change to ESEA under the new law is that students with disabilities will be increasingly included in national, standardized achievement testing, as a way to increase schools’ accountability for the progress of students in special ed. Though results of national and state assessments now must be reported based on more specific demographics, including poverty, race and ethnicity, disability and English proficiency, the law lets states determine how to improve reading and writing performance among those groups.

 

 

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Centers for Families With Autistic Children

[By Sarah Avery in the Raleigh News & Observer.]

http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/features/a23autismma.htm

The physical beauty of 5-year-old Patrick Lane, his deep blue eyes dazzling under sunshine-white hair, conceals a neurological defect that is at the center of a growing medical phenomenon. Patrick has autism, a developmental disability currently diagnosed in at least one in 500 Americans. It was once considered rare; in the 1960s, scientists pegged its occurrence at one in 2,500 people. So its increasing prevalence is as puzzling as its myriad symptoms.

Scientists have only theories why there is an increase.

Patrick’s parents, William and Helene Lane of Raleigh, N.C., said

their son had always acted a little peculiar. He was fretful, and often impossible to console. He didn’t walk until he was 15 months old. He hated loud noises, so that in church, when everyone said “Amen,” Patrick screamed.  By age 3, he spoke only about 100 words, and he mainly just echoed what someone else said.

When he was 3, he began isolating himself from his classmates in preschool, and his teacher suggested that the Lanes have him tested for autism.

The diagnosis was clear.

Autism runs along a spectrum, from severe to high-functioning, and

usually isn’t diagnosed until after age 2. Often, children seem to develop normally and then appear to regress. Severely autistic children withdraw from people, avoid eye contact, can be overly sensitive to light or touch, engage in repetitive behavior such as flapping their hands, and may erupt into tantrums or aggressive outbursts. In about half of cases, intelligence is impaired.

Patrick was on the high end of the spectrum, with normal cognitive abilities.

“We felt relief,” said William Lane, who practices environmental law.  “You can’t come to terms with something if you don’t know what it is. It gave us a diagnosis that people understand, and not just lay people, but people who can help — counselors, teachers, doctors.”

One of the first places the Lanes headed was to Chapel Hill, N.C., home of a program called TEACCH, for Treatment and Education of Autistic and related Communication handicapped Children.

The program began in the mid-1960s, and it was a radical departure from the prevailing philosophy that autistic children withdrew in response to cold, unfeeling mothers.

Eric Schopler had studied autistic children as a doctoral student at the University of Chicago and then as a professor at the University of North Carolina, and he came to the conclusion that the old Freudian interpretation was not only wrong, it harmed families.

With grant money from the National Institute of Mental Health, Schopler began using behavioral therapies tailored specifically to the child, and involving the parents as integral partners. If a child used hand signals instead of talking, for example, therapists and parents would work together, using a reward system, to insist that the child speak.

It was highly effective. Children who had been deeply withdrawn began communicating, and the parents, rather than being demonized, were invested in the therapy. By the time the grant money ran out in five years, Schopler had a devoted following. The parents insisted that the program continue, and turned to the state for help.

“We decided to have a legislative breakfast where we’d bring the kids and we could show how we’d worked with them,” Schopler said. “We were able to use a church in Raleigh, and more legislators showed up than we expected.  And the main guy at the time was Lt. Gov. (Pat) Taylor, who set the agenda for new legislation.

“We started the breakfast without him, and he showed up late and sat down next to a boy who was one of our toughest cases. The child ate his food with his hands, and he was eating grits with his hands and got grits on Taylor’s tie. But this politician was astute enough to see that the child was making a social interaction.”

The success of the breakfast led to the passage, in 1972, of a law that established three TEACCH centers around the state to offer diagnosis and therapies. The centers, offered without cost to families, were the first of their kind in the country. They established North Carolina as a model of progressiveness in autism treatment.

Now, TEACCH operates nine centers throughout the state, including the original site in Chapel Hill and a new center that opened this year in Raleigh. Together, the Chapel Hill and Raleigh centers handle 250 to 300 referrals a year; all nine centers have waiting lists.

Many of the people on those lists have moved from other areas of the country, leaving behind family and friends for the opportunity to get their child into a program. It’s a common phenomenon; in California, where autism services are also strong, the number of autistic children has spiked from 4,911 in 1993 to 15,441. Researchers there are exploring what, in addition to the draw of services, is contributing to the increase.

“We have more services than a majority of the states in the country,”

said David Laxton, communications director with the Autism Society of North

Carolina. “I had one person call on a Wednesday and said, ‘We’re moving to

North Carolina on Saturday, and we need to know where to live.’ “

Shelley and Dan Lakes have been waiting to start a TEACCH treatment program for their daughter Carly since moving to the Triangle in April. They relocated from Alabama in no small part to take advantage of the autism services. Carly, who is 7, was diagnosed with autism when she was 3, and the services in their small town were lacking. They had to travel 180 miles to Birmingham just to get Carly diagnosed, they had few advocacy resources, and the public schools were not well equipped to handle Carly’s hard-charging personality, so Shelley home-schooled her.

“If it hadn’t been for the (lack of) autism services, we would have stayed put,” Shelley Lakes said. The Lakes’ first stop in North Carolina was TEACCH. After an initial assessment, they were put on a waiting list and are hoping to begin the program this spring.

For William and Helene Lane, getting plugged in served as their own form of therapy: “Doing something about it healed the pain,” William Lane said. Once they got an appointment in the TEACCH program, the Lanes began the long process of working with Patrick to help him speak and interact more naturally.

Helene Lane quit her job as marketing manager at Cisco Systems and immersed herself in this new universe. She became a leader in the Autism Society of North Carolina, one of the largest and most active chapters of the national organization. And she learned to navigate the system, enrolling Patrick in preschool programs and getting him an Individual Education Plan, which school systems use to devise and map progress.

The Lanes agreed to participate in a research trial to examine what role genes play in the disorder. Similar research is being conducted at Duke among 200 families who have multiple cases of autism.

Eventually, genetics may prove to be at the root of the disorder. When parents have one autistic child, they have a higher risk of having a second child with the disorder — a 5 percent to 10 percent chance versus the 0.1 percent to 0.2 percent chance for unaffected families. But those are good odds, and the Lanes’ 3-year-old daughter, Kristina, is not autistic.

The Lanes said they wished Patrick’s behaviors had been flagged earlier, because he has had only two years of therapy. In that time, however, he has made tremendous progress. A casual observer might never know that Patrick has autism — he speaks when spoken to, is polite and considerate and even has a mischievous sense of humor.

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Reader’s Posts

Must find psychotherapist experienced with AS/ADD adolescents for 17 year old girl (Asperger’s/ADD, inattentive type; homeschooled, extremely bright and talented, now in second year of college). The mission is NOT to “cure” her nor act as ADD coach.  Western Massachusetts—Pioneer Valley area.

As the only Certified HANDLE® Practitioner in California, I offer a unique therapy program for individuals with autism spectrum disorders.  HANDLE is an acronym for Holistic Approach to NeuroDevelopment and Learning Efficiency. Differentiating HANDLE from other kinds of treatment are: a focus on sensitivities (including to pharmacological toxins), movement-based integrative activities, and applying Gentle Enhancement to weak systems.

Looking for information, publications, videos etc. on Applied Behavior

Analysis that I can employ at home while my 5 year old son awaits Ministry

of Community and Social Services’s Intensive Behavioural Intervention (IBI)

I am the mother of a 6 year old autistic child, I would like to know if

anyone has tried acupunture with their autistic kids.  My son is in a

special school with the ABA therapy and takes medications, but someone

recommended an acupunturist and I wanted to learn from any other parent who

 

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