Special Education Students Get Liberty

Leveling the disability rights playing field, the Supreme Court’s Winkleman v. Parma ruling waives the requirement for families who are challenging special education decisions to have lawyers.

I believe that people with disabilities and their families and friends need to know about the statutes governing our rights to receive a quality education. It is incredibly important for people to know what they must do when public education fails to perform their legally delegated responsibilities. Recipient knowledge has nothing to do either with future academic majors or future career interests. We must successfully stay in and graduate from our schools in order to be productive citizens!

To obtain those rights, families were previously and theoretically being allowed an option of self-representation in court under the Sixth Amendment. Right?

Actually, administrative hearings, which can be called to challenge the ‘final’ decision of an Admission Review and Dismissal committee, were infamous for ignoring Constitutional Law. Challenging unfair ARD committee rulings was thus a privilege reserved only for the wealthy. If you did not have money for a lawyer, you became stuck with whatever a school district wanted!

The Cleveland Bar Association previously (and seriously) attempted to slap a $10,000 'practicing law without a license' fine on a couple. Their crime was trying to obtain the appropriate educational setting for their son with autism.

Predictably, Winkleman is eliciting a wide range of reactions from every affected party. School district officials, particularly those directly involved in administering special education programs, think it will ‘remove focus from the child’.

Having been enrolled in special education programs, I know personally that program quality has nothing to do with district wealth. It has more to do with legal compliance. Any school district that does not acknowledge the student and parent's right of appeal cannot possibly be that focused on a 'child'.

All special education students have to undergo a yearly ARD to review the current year’s academic progress. This meeting ideally plans what accommodations a particular individual will subsequently receive for the upcoming year. It also determines when or if special education services will not be needed any more (such as when a student graduates from high school).

After my own parents were such forceful and successful advocates for my obtaining a quality education for me, discovering that school district recommendations were being automatically accepted by the families of my special education peers was shocking. With the limited legal options available to us, those other families had made their own best choices. But today’s students and families will have more open flexibility to oppose the decisions which they sincerely disagree with thanks to the increased availability of tools for that purpose.

National ARD IEP Advocates Founder Louis Geigerman also sees an overdue opportunity for instituting needed change. This Supreme Court ruling empowers parents and families to advocate for quality education.