This was posted on Nancy Bailey’s Education Website today. This blog covers many special education issues. When I read what has been going on in Michigan, I was shocked. This kind of activity, in any state, needs to be stopped immediately. Special education is not a money game. It is not something to be perverted or corrupted. These are our children. These are 15-20% of our children if current trends continue.
By Marcie Lipsitt
Michigan once had a proud heritage of believing in the educational rights of our students with disabilities.
But what has transpired over the past 39 years is not worthy of our history books or a wondrous fairy tale of children’s dreams come true. For Michigan’s 200,000 students with an Individualized Education Programs (IEP), it has been a long, treacherous, and disappointing road to what we call a “Free Appropriate Pubic Education.”
One shining moment in this dark and disillusioning history took place on December 11, 2014, but this is just one victory in a sea of losses, and Michigan parents, along with local, state and federal, special education, disability and civil rights organizations, must prepare themselves for what’s to come in 2015 and ahead.
To read more, please go to http://nancyebailey.com/2015/01/22/some-michigan-special-education-history-a-lesson-for-all-states/#comment-256194
A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.
Margaret Mead, renown anthropologist
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Thank you for sharing my blog on the egregious state of special education in MI and it is has only worsened.
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I’m sorry to hear that Marcia. That was four years ago. It hasn’t gotten much better in Delaware either.
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