Parent Toolkit

Tired of Dealing with Corrupt/Unethical School Districts?

Parents are often at the front line in dealing with corrupt/unethical school districts. This is particularly true if your child requires special education. Due to the ever increasing number of requests for help from parents, ASEE has created a series of pages designed to help these people take charge of the education schools are required to provide to all children. Pathetically, the need for these pages has been necessitated by the extraordinarily prevalent practices taken by school district to deny education to all children. Some common reasons that districts like to give for these abuses practices include:

	Special education takes money away from "normal" children and is wasted upon those (special education students) that won't benefit as much.
	We don't want to "label" children.
	All children have problems.
	We already have too many things to do - we don't have any more time to provide your child with "extra help."
	It's not fair to "normal" children.
	Your child simply isn't trying hard enough - he/she simply isn't doing what he/she's supposed to be doing.
	Oh, the class is just too hard for your student.
	Your child just "isn't trying hard enough."

Have you heard/experienced any of these (and other) asinine comments from district officials? If so, you're certainly not alone! Here's a list of suggestions that you may wish to explore if you're dealing with a district that appears to be violating your child's rights to a "Free Appropriate Public Education" (FAPE):

	It is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT for parents to learn as much as possible about their child's special needs, as well as Federal and State laws that are there to ensure that child's access to FAPE.
	Learn to play their game! Schools operate in their own little world: complete with the own language (acronym soup). Schools have a great advantage over inspected parents by excluding them from the existing "good 'ole boys" mentally that is so prevalent. By keeping parents in constant confusion over the the plethora of ever changing terms and acronyms, they are often able to effectively prevent your child from receiving greatly needed services. They are also able to totally bewilder and intimidate parents thereby saving a few more bucks on incompetent administrators/teachers, instead of educating your child.
	Know the law! Schools certainly expect that parents will (and do) get lost in the use of countless strange words, rules, protocols, acronyms, abbreviations, etc. More importantly, they don't expect parents to know anything about the laws that govern them! Give them a big surprise and KNOW THE LAW!