June 28, 2018, Vancouver, WA, Columbian: OSPI: Battle Ground special ed students slighted https://www.columbian.com/news/2018/jun/28/ospi-battle-ground-special-ed-students-slighted/ Battle Ground Public Schools last school year failed to provide about 90 students at Glenwood Heights Primary School with the special education services they should have received, violating federal and state special education law, according to findings by the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction. According to the report released in May, those students were supposed to receive part-time special education services in a designated “resource classroom” as a part of their Individualized Education Program, or IEP. …Those services can include extra time on tests, permission to take breaks throughout the day or occupational therapy. About 142 students at the Brush Prairie-area primary school are eligible for special education services, 90 of whom had IEPs that include part-time special education services, called “resource students” throughout the OSPI report. There are about 800 total students at the school. But changes to the 2017-2018 master schedule reduced that resource class period time from 40 minutes to 30 minutes. That meant some students who were supposed to receive additional math, writing, social skills or other lessons during that time did not receive the full amount specified in their IEP. An OSPI review of 20 students’ IEPs shows “that the primary school’s practice of limiting the amount of special education services resource students can receive, based on the building’s master schedule, is contrary to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and state special education regulations.”…
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Childhood Lost
Children today are noticeably different from previous generations, and the proof is in the news coverage we see every day. This site shows you what’s happening in schools around the world. Children are increasingly disabled and chronically ill, and the education system has to accommodate them. Things we've long associated with autism, like sensory issues, repetitive behaviors, anxiety and lack of social skills, are now problems affecting mainstream students. Blame is predictably placed on bad parenting (otherwise known as trauma from home).
Addressing mental health needs is as important as academics for modern educators. This is an unrecognized disaster. The stories here are about children who can’t learn or behave like children have always been expected to. What childhood has become is a chilling portent for the future of mankind.
Anne Dachel, Media editor, Age of Autism
http://www.ageofautism.com/media/
(John Dachel, Tech. assist.)
What will happen in another 4 years? How can we go on like this? This is a national (and international) problem of monumental proportions. We have an entire new class of children who cannot be accommodated by the system: many are manifestly neurologically impaired. Meanwhile, the government and the medical profession sleep on regardless.
John Stone,
UK media editor, Age of Autism
The generation of American children born after 1990 are arguably the sickest generation in the history of our country.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
It seemed to me that with rising autism prevalence, you’d also see rising autism costs to society, and it turns out, the costs are catastrophic.
They calculated that in 2015 autism cost the United States $268 billion and they projected that if autism continues at its current rate, we’re looking at one trillion dollars a year in autism costs by 2025, so within five years.
Toby Rogers, PhD, Political economist
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