Special Education Advocacy Class

This Special Education Advocacy Class has been offered to parents, attorneys, psychologists and marriage and family therapists once a year in California.  The 2002 Class has been videotaped so that others can read the materials and view the lecture online. Please note this leture is now out of date and does not include IDEIA 2004 changes. Please make sure you view The Update Video After Unit 8.

Class Selection

The video has been compressed for Windows Media Viewer which should be automatically installed on most of the newer (Windows 98 or newer) Windows computers.  Sorry, a Windows Media Video cannot be seen on Apple and other types of computers. If the video does not play, you either do not have a compatible computer, or the Windows Media Player is not installed. If you have a slow Internet connection, such as a 56K modem, then click the button next to the topic you wish to view.  This will give you a very small video with sound to view.  If you have a cable or DSL or faster connection, then choose the button for a larger and much clearer video stream.  There is a handout prepared for each unit.  You can download the handout, but you must have the Adobe Acrobat Reader which is free from Adobe if you just follow this  link.  The checklists mentioned during out lecture are located at the bottom of this page. The textbooks that are discussed can be purchased from our bookstore.

Unit	Topic	Acrobat Handout	Video Time	56K Modem	Cable/DSL Broadband
Unit 1	Introduction		24:43
	Glossary		40:16
	Special Education Eligibility	Rowley	50:44
Unit 2	Free and Appropriate Public Education (FAPE)		1:17:13
	Least Restrictive Environment (LRE), Aids and Services		1:16:28
Unit 3	Life Span Development		57:48
Unit 4	The Math of Psychological and Educational Testing		1:53:48
Unit 5	Specific Psychological and Educational Tests and Measures		2:28:48
Unit 6	The Individual Education Plan Team Meeting		1:07:13
Unit 7	Special Education Discipline Rules		2:14:03
Unit 8	Due Process Hearings		1:25:14
IDEIA 2004	IDEIA 2004 Update Video		0:33:56

Class Materials

Unit 3 will also require an understanding of the Rowley Decision. 458 U.S. 176 (1982).  FAPE- "free appropriate public education" is satisfied when the State provides personalized instruction with sufficient support services to permit the handicapped child to benefit educationally from that instruction. Such instruction and services must be provided at public expense, must meet the State's educational standards, must approximate grade levels used in the State's regular education, and must comport with the child's IEP, as formulated in accordance with the Act's requirements. If the child is being educated in regular classrooms, as here, the IEP should be reasonably calculated to enable the child to achieve passing marks and advance from grade to grade. The courts must be careful to avoid imposing their view of preferable educational methods upon the States. Once a court determines that the Act's requirements have been met, questions of methodology are for resolution by the States.

The above course materials refer to certain skill based checklists which were also handed out to the students during the seminar.  The following are the checklists which should also be downloaded and printed for use during the appropriate segments of the course.

It is very important for a parent to understand a child's Present Level of Performance (PLOP).  The PLOP is the starting point of and IEP.  The psychological testing performed by the school should establish the child's PLOP in each domain of interest, but sadly, often it does not. The following documents can be used by a parent to help establish your child's present level of performance, and to formulate an idea of the goals and objectives to be achieved.  These documents have been compiled by using curriculum standards created by various state departments of education.

HOW TO USE THESE FORMS:.  Download these forms and read/print them using the free Acrobat Reader.

The parent should then determine which of the curriculum skills your child has, and does not have by checking the box "yes" or "no" next to each skill at each grade level.  Once you reach a substantial number of "no" answers you may use that as a ceiling and need not go through the rest of the list.  Where you find the "yes" answers taper off and the "no" answers begin, that will be roughly your child's present level of performance.  The "no" answers should then be formulated as the special education goals and objectives for the next academic session.  In this way, you should be able to know if your child is making progress or not.  Shortly after the goals are adopted your child should be able to demonstrate the next skill(s) on the list and so forth.  Federal and state law requires that the present level of performance and the goals and objectives be specified in the student's IEP.  What the school writes in the IEP for the PLOP and goals should not be vague, but sadly it often is.  You are in charge of the process if you know, and specify and understandable PLOP, and you can then determine using this as a baseline or starting point if your child makes progress or not. If after a short period of time the child fails to add any new skills then you should schedule an IEP to determine why not.  You child should not sit for an entire school year without your determining that no progress is being made. 

If you have trouble completing these checklists, you can use a tutor to help you.  Any tutor who is familiar with the K-12 curriculum should be able to help you complete these in only a few hours of time.

It is important for a parent to know where your child is academically in a typical curriculum.  Test scores are helpful, but not particularly enlightening to a lay parent.  The checklists below are skill based, meaning that the child has or does not have an academic skill required at a certain grade level in a given academic area.  I use these checklists so that a parent can determine what academic skills a child has, and does not have, and roughly what grade level they are working on.  Most parents can complete these checklists, and many of them tell me that they understand for the first time what their child knows, and should know after going through these checklists.  The result is that the items checked off become the current level of performance for the child, and the items remaining become goals and objectives on the IEP.  Then the parents can watch week by week to see what new skills off of this list are learned. It is easy to track progress or failure if these curriculum checklists are used.

  K-12 Math Skills
  K-12 Reading Skills
  K-12 Writing Skills
  K-12 Listening and Viewing Skills
  K-12 Speaking Skills

  Pre-School Early Elementary Checklist for Child with Developmental Delay  This is a good beginning checklist for a developmentally delayed child such as a child with autism.  The early intervention programs in most states begin at age three.  The point of an early intervention program is "school readiness" which means that your child should be able to attend a fully integrated kindergarten program, and prosper and learn in this environment at the end of the early intervention program.  This will require basic skills such as the ability to pay attention, the ability to understand and speak language, perform certain self help tasks such as toileting, perform basic fine and gross motor skills including basic academic skills like writing the alphabet with simple implements, certain social skills such as turn taking, and basic problem behaviors such as tantrums need to be extinguished.  This checklist will show you where your child is, and where he/she needs to go to be school ready.  Each area on this checklist can be broken down into a list of more precise steps if needed, and the present level of performance and goals and objectives can be specified in extremely precise terms.  Your job as parent is to know where your child is in this scheme of things, know where he/she needs to go, and to monitor the program each step of the way.

Once a child has entered kindergarten, the focus of special education becomes more academically oriented. There is a scope and sequence of what should be taught in public schools, this is called the curriculum.  You need to know exactly where your child is in a typical curriculum.  By checking off the items on the lists below you will know, maybe for the first time in your life as a parent, exactly what your child knows.  What is not checked off needs to be a goal and objective.  Failure to move along in this list over time is evidence that your child is not making progress and thus not getting a free and appropriate public education.

 Sensory Integration Checklist  Many children with special needs have sensory integration issues.  Neurologically, an important brain function is to receive input from the senses.  This input is more than just vision, sound, smell, taste, and feel.  For example, there is the need for vestibular input, or your awareness of balance, proprioceptive input or your knowledge of where your extremities are without looking at them (walking up stairs without looking at your feet and more.  It is not uncommon that this input is either too loud or too quiet for a handicapped child, yet there is no way for the child to know or tell you that sensory input is out of balance, since they would not know what "normal" is.  This checklist if heavily checked shows the signs of sensory integration dysfunction which should be evaluated by a professional, usually an Occupational Therapist.  The OT can provide sensory integration therapy and resolve some of the sensory integration imbalance. 

Social Play Checklist
Fine and Gross Motor Skill checklist.
Vocabulary Checklist.  This is a good checklist for Pre-K students with speech and language disorders including Autism.  The core curriculum for these students is to develop expressive and receptive vocabulary.  This checklist helps you to exactly identify the expressive and receptive words that you child can use at any given time.  Later, you can use this checklist to identify new words added to his/her vocabulary. 
Self Help Skill Checklist.