OUR CHILDREN LEFT BEHIND
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MAY 26, 2004

TWO WRONGS DON'T MAKE AN EQUAL RIGHT

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act [IDEA] reauthorization process continues. The fundamental rights of 6.5 million currently eligible students are at stake. So, too, are the fundamental rights of tens of millions of other children who will follow in the years to come. No matter how we spin it, H.R.1350 AND S.1248 hurt children. The question now is whether we let Congress hurt children. For us it is that simple.

In the weeks and months ahead we expect that people and groups from all spectrums of the reauthorization issue are going to focus on differences or similarities between H.R.1350, S.1248 and current law. We, too, will be making points about present or proposed language. But education starts and ends with children. If one law takes a lot away while another law doesn't take as much away, isn't the result either way that the child gets hurt?

What is our present reality under IDEA '97? Do parents have to battle to find out about their rights and their children's right to educational services like extended school year, family counseling and support, how to get independent evaluations, or how to have their child included on field trips without their forced attendance? YES. We have received phone calls on all of these issues within the last week.

Ask the state Protection and Advocacy Systems what their number one intake call is about. We bet the universal answer will be problems parents are having with enforcing their child's right to receive special education services. Are students with disabilities fully included in all public schools or are substantial numbers of students marginalized or excluded from the general education environment all together? We believe vast numbers of students with disabilities continue to receive both a separate and an unequal education.

IDEA '97 is important to parents and children because it finally and fairly states what educational rights parents and children have and gives parents the power to enforce those rights. But even with everything that is good about IDEA '97, families and advocates still must fight to enjoy the full fruits of the law.

The IDEA reauthorization struggle officially began in March 2003 with the introduction of H.R.1350; a bill drafted to make the school administration lobby happy. We parents and advocates persisted in our message that H.R.1350 hurts children. The House ignored us and passed the bill anyway. Then came S.1248. Again, we families and advocates reached out to our legislatures, told our stories and provided reasoned arguments supporting our claim that S.1248 hurts children. The Senate ignored us and passed the bill anyway.

The thing we remember best about the Senate debates was how Senator after Senator stood up and claimed that they had heard from school board members, school administrators and teachers that S.1248 improved things. Few of them mentioned hearing from parents or families even though we know they were contacted. Those Senators that did stand and state they heard from families claimed that S.1248 was a victory for families when in fact S.1248, like H.R.1350, hurts children. S.1248 only hurts children less than H.R.1350. How is that a victory for the children?

We do not know how long the reauthorization process will continue. The only thing that we can predict is that the course and timing of next events will be unpredictable. We parents, family members, and advocates cannot rest in this period of uncertainty. We must continue to tell our legislators our successful and frustrating stories about IDEA '97. We must give them the picture of educational success for our children, and the picture of frustration of families fighting for rights under current, strong law. Then we need to tell them that this is the context in which H.R.1350 and S.1248 must be evaluated. Any way you look at it, any way you spin it, any way you describe it, those bills hurt children.

You cannot take a law like IDEA '97, make the mistake of gutting it like H.R.1350 does, then put some meat back in it like S.1248 does and then say that the final product makes the reauthorized IDEA a victory for children. You cannot take H.R.1350, which is wrong for kids, add it together with S.1248, which also is wrong for kids, and then say that two wrongs make equal rights. There are no equal rights when laws are used to hurt children. That is the sum total of our message to Congress.


Tricia & Calvin Luker, today's parentvolunteer@ourchildrenleftbehind.com


May 17, 2004 (Parents And Politics)
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MAY 17, 2004

PARENTS AND POLITICS

We have taken this weekend to digest last Thursday's Senate S.1248 vote and a flurry of post-vote comment. When all is said and done, we realize we are back to where we were a year ago; we know much about being parents, but little about politics. We have great confidence in our ability to speak for our children but little confidence that our words carry any political clout. We generally have little power in the political system, even if we have become more effective communicators as a "political" constituency. We have a long way to go.

The power of parenthood, it seems to us, always has been local. Clearly we carry the most power at home, with our children who expect us to provide for them and for their basic needs. Our ability to provide for our children depends much more on whom we are -- our own persistence and creativity – than on the political system within which we operate.

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act [IDEA] gets 6.5 million children through the school door, but the traits of the individual parents help to dictate how well the educational programming works for their children. We parents always will be stronger as advocates for our own children than we will be as a group advocating for children in Congress.

We slowly are becoming convinced that we parents never will be able to compete on a par with the formal, taxpayer funded school lobby, and the professional organizations that separately speak for school administrators, special education directors, school boards, principals, state legislatures, governors, teachers, therapists, psychologists, etc. These groups always are going to be able to hold more of Congress' ear than we families. After all, most Senators and members of Congress, and their staff members, are parents themselves and believe they have the instincts by virtue of their status as parents to understand and speak for us on the Hill.

We are proud of what a relatively small but growing number of parents have been able to do within a political system to color the information provided to Congress. While we might have expanded the Senate's knowledge of the educational plight of children who have disabilities and the pitfalls and dangers that await them and us under a new IDEA, we still have not done enough to build Congressional awareness of the overall reality of educational opportunities for students with disabilities. And it does not feel like we have made a significant difference in the overall IDEA reauthorization product. After all, if we had our way, Part B would not have been touched.

We must now reshape our own understanding of politics so that we do not expect too much of our elected legislators or of ourselves. We cannot know for sure what motivated each of the 95 Senate "yes" votes last week. Surely those votes came in part from the institutionalized power of the school lobby. They came from a political desire by some Senators to balance the more drastic changes that were included in H.R.1350.

The votes came, too, from a spirit of political compromise that we never will be able to embrace as parents of children who have special needs. How can we compromise our children's educational rights? How can we compromise their futures? How can we ever accept that politicians would dare do so with IDEA, or that they do so all the time with issues near and dear to us across the board?

A 95-3 vote does not really tell the whole story about the IDEA reauthorization process, the needs of children or the power of parents. We have heard rumblings that it was parents, rather than Congress, who were misinformed about the facts of the IDEA reauthorization. We respectfully but completely disagree. The members of Congress and their minions live in a different world from ours. They hear different voices and see different things. They believe themselves to be of our world, and believe they know what is best for us from a political perspective, even as we are the ones living IDEA on the street.

The IDEA process has taught us that WE know best what our children need. That fact is not subject to a vote of any political body. Thousands of families have tried over the last year to share with Congress what that local life looks like. Congress, for various political reasons, has chosen not to see.

We have one more chance to influence the IDEA reauthorization process during the next seven months. During this time we will work hard to help the House/Senate Conference Committee understand the stakes for 6.5 million local families. We cannot expect too much of our efforts because of our relative power on a national level as compared to the professional lobby. But we will fight.

But at the same time, we should continue to expect great things of our children and ourselves at the local level, whatever the law. We do know and live this life on a local level. We know our calling is to be parents and advocates for our children. We are not intended at this point to be politicians, and we cannot blame ourselves when politicians choose to ignore us. We all make choices. Our choice is to make our children first, so that they won't be left behind. It is not political. It is parental, and it's personal.