Making Special Education Actually Work

About Making Special Education Actually Work

Making Special Education Actually Work

Publisher

Anne M. Zachry/KPS4Parents

Category

education

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

18 Jan 2021

Latest episode

14 Jul 2025

Latest episodes

28 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   14 Jul 2025

   They Already Know: School Refusal After ICE Raids and the Legal Duty to Respond

   The recent ICE raids in Ventura County, where we are located, has prompted us to engage with other local community leaders to address the needs of the families that have been impacted. In particular, we are providing technical assistance and guidance to other activists about how public education resources can be leveraged to support the children left traumatized by the ICE raids, many of whom are too afraid to go to school, now. In 2019, the Ventura County SELPA provided professional development on how to distinguish between disability-related school refusal and truancy. They warned districts that emotional distress, including trauma, can keep children from school, and that school refusal should not be treated as willful defiance. That training still applies today. In fact, it applies even more urgently in the wake of recent immigration raids that have left many children too afraid to return to school. And under state and federal law, school districts and charter schools are already obligated to act. I want to share with you a PowerPoint presentation that was shared with me many years ago by a colleague at the time who worked at the Ventura County Special Education Local Plan Area (SELPA). I've converted it to a video with my verbal input as to the contents as they relate to the ICE raids, which I'm not going to transcribe here. If you're reading this post, you'll have to watch the video. If you're listening to the podcast, it's not going to make much sense without the slides. I'm including a PDF of the presentation for download here, as well, if you'd rather consume its contents that way. The above video explains the logic behind the strategy I'm sharing with you here. I've already shared the relevant documents with local activists who are dealing directly with the affected families. For families and guardians of children who have been traumatized by the ICE raids in California such that their access to education is now compromised, regardless of whether or not they are already in special education or on 504 plans, it is critical that they be evaluated for mental and emotional health needs that might require services and supports. This could include mental health services across home, school, and community settings, as well as in-home instruction on a temporary or ongoing basis according to their individual needs, as identified by comprehensive assessment in all areas of suspected disability and unique student need. There are four PDF documents listed here for download: Parent Instructions in English & Spanish Parent letter template in English Parent letter template in Spanish Additional handout to share with local education agencies Parents or guardians and their advocates and activists are encouraged to use these tools to create written correspondence that triggers assessments by local school districts and charter schools of individual children who are showing signs of trauma from the ICE raids that negatively impacts their access to education and/or their ability to benefit from instruction. Assessments are based on suspected disability and trauma is a disability. The goal with this post/podcast is not to create a long-winded article for reading or listening. This isn't entertainment; it's useful information to help people protect the children in their lives who have been harmed by these ICE raids. Please use this information responsibly to protect vulnerable children in need. #TheyAlreadyKnow #SchoolRefusalIsNotTruancy #ChildFindNow #Protect805Kids #TraumaIsADisability #PublicSchoolsProtect #SupportDontPunishKids #FAPEForEveryChild #TraumaInformedSchools #MentalHealthMatters #ImmigrantJustice #FamiliesBelongTogether #DisabilityJustice #SpecialEdEquity #805Strong #VenturaCountyKids #CamarilloCares

2. 

   10 May 2025

   What is "Eugenics" and How Does it Relate to Special Education?

   Many people don't know what the word "eugenics" means, but parents of special education students will recognize the behavior associated with eugenicist thinking. Special education is not an isolated, siloed experience with no bearing on the rest of society, and history shows us that societies don’t just collapse because of a few bad actors or terrible ideas. They collapse because their systems stop evolving with the needs of their people. I have spent the last 34 years upholding democracy at the local level through special education compliance, asserting all the while that special education is the “canary in the coalmine” for the rest of our civilization. The degree to which a society is civilized is revealed by the degree to which it takes care of its most vulnerable members. When societies collapse, systems that once protected people can no longer fulfill their functions and start existing for their own benefit, causing constituent needs to become the means of perpetuating the system rather than the ends served by the system. These systems stop spiraling upward through stages of reflection, accountability, and self-correction and, instead, stagnate and drift into patterns we recognize all too well; patterns that include horrors like eugenics. What Is Eugenics, and Why Should We Be Worried? Eugenics is the scientifically discredited and morally indefensible idea that society can be “improved” by encouraging reproduction among people with “desirable” traits while suppressing or eliminating reproduction among those deemed “undesirable.” In the early 20th century this ideology fueled forced sterilizations, segregation, and systemic discrimination against the poor, disabled, mentally ill, and minority populations (NHGRI). Even after the Holocaust exposed the full horror of where eugenic thinking leads, many of its assumptions remained embedded in law, policy, and cultural attitudes. Today we are seeing a resurgence of these ideas under new guises: Coerced sterilizations of women in immigration detention centers Cuts to disaster relief and public-health infrastructure that disproportionately impact marginalized communities Erasure of tracking systems for disease, disaster, and civil-rights data, making vulnerable groups less visible and less protected These actions aren’t accidents. They are systematic attempts to decide who deserves to survive and who doesn’t, without ever saying the real intent out loud. One of the things about my tendency to use Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) in any attempt to understand behavior is that it really helps identify when actions speak louder than words, which is why I recommend that everyone have a basic understanding of ABA. It's hard to miss the function of a behavior when it's this obvious. Project 2025 Threatens Publicly Funded Special Education Project 2025 is a published blueprint backed by major political operatives that calls for dismantling federal civil-rights enforcement, including abolishing the U.S. Department of Education. Key figures inside the current administration have publicly stated that their job is to “eliminate” the Department. Project 2025 proposes to: Eliminate or severely weaken the USDOE Roll back enforcement of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) Shift authority to states without guaranteeing civil-rights compliance Divert public funds to private schools that need not serve disabled students equitably So, Project 2025 and Eugenics: Here's the Link At its core, eugenics builds systems that decide whose lives are worth protecting and whose are expendable. Project 2025 follows this template by removing protections for disabled, poor, and marginalized students, making survival and success conditional on wealth, ability, and conformity. While supporters frame these moves in language about “freedom” and “efficiency,” the practical effect is to systematically privilege some groups while abandoning others. Selective protection of life, det

3. 

   7 Apr 2025

   Using ABA to Identify & Deal with Misinformation

   Special education and disability-related areas of civil rights law are complex systems of law and science that require an understanding of how an individual person is impacted by their unique disabilities within the unique contexts of their unique individual lives. The whole person has to be taken into account in order to determine the degree to which their disabilities impact their Activities of Daily Living (ADLs), which includes learning, employment, and community access. In special education, the presence of disability alone does not automatically make a student eligible for special education, though it still makes them protected under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act (504) and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). In special education, having a disability satisfies only one prong of a two-pronged line of inquiry that requires, upon evidence of a disability, further evidence that the disability interferes with the student’s access to education in some kind of meaningful way that requires specialized instruction of some form. In some states, such as California, if a student demonstrates a speech and/or language impairment such that they satisfy the Speech-Language Impaired (SLI) eligibility category pursuant to the regulations, and require speech-language services but not Specialized Academic Instruction (SAI), the speech-language services can be considered SAI for the purposes of finding the student eligible for special education. This is because public school instruction is so heavily weighted on language that having intact language skills is necessary for accessing the instruction. That said, many students, particularly those found eligible under the Autism (AUT) criteria, experience significant impairments in pragmatic language that many not interfere with their academics in most cases, but greatly interfere with their ability to interact in socially appropriate ways with others. This can impact their peer interactions during unstructured times like lunch and recess or passing periods, participation in group learning activities in the classroom, safe behavior during school drills or actual emergencies, etc. Addressing these kinds of challenges through special education can be just as educationally necessary as addressing the academic needs of a child with an intellectual disability, profound medical condition, or learning disability. Figuring out who needs what, if anything, in special education requires an expert level of assessment and data analyses. Furthermore, special education is a regulated process. Local education agencies have to abide by the rules attached to the federal special education dollars in order for their states to receive said dollars. Compliance with 504 is non-optional for any entity receiving federal dollars of any kind, such as public schools, and compliance with the ADA is mandatory, period. Federal special education law mandates the application of the peer-reviewed research to the design and delivery of special education, to the degree doing so is practicable. This means that approaches that have already been proven to work, that is, evidence-based practices, must be used when addressing the individual needs of each special education student pursuant to the applicable regulations. In theory, logic should prevail under the circumstances. However, as the whole world is now seeing first-hand, the government in America has always been infiltrated by anti-democratic thinkers and morons who have no idea what they are doing. Sometimes these people are one in the same. Not to say, “I told you so,” but back when people kept comparing me to Don Quixote when I’d make a stink about special education violations as a matter of a departure from the rule of law by local government agencies, I kept telling people that special education was the “canary in the coal mine” for democracy in this country. The measure of how civilized a society is goes to how well it takes care of its

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