Supreme Court Makes Important Special Education Ruling
Monday June 22, 2009
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled on one of the most important special education court cases ever. The rulemaking in a nutshell: if parents find that public schools can not meet their child's special education needs, they can put the child directly in private school. They can then seek reimbursement from the public school system. Parents are entitled to reimbursement only if a federal court agrees that the public school can not meet the child's need and therefore a private school is the appropriate placement. This is true regardless of whether the child had ever received public school services - in other words, they do not have to utilize public school services first. The reason for that is because forcing special needs students to try public school services first, could result in their wasting unproductive time in inappropriate educational settings.
This is a landmark ruling that could result in more serious efforts by public school systems to improve the quality of special education services offered, in order to avoid enormously expensive private school bills. What does this mean for parents of deaf children? If I am understanding the court decision correctly, it means that parents of deaf children (including deaf children with multiple disabilities) are not required to send them to public schools first if they believe the public schools can not meet their needs. Instead, they can put the deaf child directly in a private school and then attempt to seek reimbursement.
Sources:
New York Times
Los Angeles Times
OregonLive
Examiner
Related About.com Guidesite: SpecialEd
Comments
You did not throw in how state schools for the deaf come in picture with this new Supreme Court ruling. Most state schools are public yet some descended from being private schools such as our first school in Hartford, Conn. This could be harbinger of things to come. Few deaf schools do close in those economic times yet most of them will thrive by being transformed into regional schools serving all programs for deaf children within their state. In that way, they remain the bastion of bilingualism.
Thanks for reporting on this landmark decision.
Considering ongoing plights of mainstreaming and self-contained programs for deaf pupils and schools for the deaf it’ll be interesting to see what happens down the road.
I’m afraid appeals may be used and time is killed. Unless concerned private schools is designed for special needs (excluding gifted and talented) an obstacle or rather a loophole I know will be used is their rigorous admission standards.
Justified because this will put deaf education programs on the edge. It’s time to get brutal with deaf schools including the pseudo-elite “best” deaf schools. They need to consistently fuel their pupils with psychological warfare necessary to succeed in mainstream colleges and fields. I’m in favor of ASL/Bi-Bi but what I’ve seen isn’t enough.
Thank you so much for this article, but sadly, the key phrase here is “Parents are entitled to reimbursement only if a federal court agrees that the public school can not meet the child’s need and therefore a private school is the appropriate placement.”
Where I live, it is like pulling teeth to get the district to pay for something like that, and the state and federal budget cuts certainly have not helped the situation.What is really heartbreaking is that we(and many like us) can not afford to go to court.
But please understand that my family and I have a positive outlook in all of this, and with persistency and prayers, we will all over come this!
Yeah, sure , another trick to get vouchers going.
This is a religious trick. Parochial or religious schools are camouflaged under the heading “private schools”. This is a clever way to use public funds for religious purposes to indoctrinate the kids at public expense.
They should specify , private, but not religious schools.
Residential schools are the ideal settings for deaf kids. They were started because deaf kids were not being well educated in public schools. The ignorant mainstream concept which might have been ok for special ed kids who hear like the other regular kids, has hurt deaf kids. Mainstreaming was a backward step, taking deaf kids away from a “linguistic community” where they were bombarded with language to prepare for the regular world. This court decision can reverse it all back to the proper channel, but to say private is just another tributary to enter.