ALEC, Republicans Beat Up On Kids in Special Ed

Republican lawmakers and corporations have a new target: kids in special ed.

It sounds like a sick joke, but it’s true.

Like cartoon schoolyard bullies, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)—the powerful coalition of corporations and rightwing legislators—has worked out plans to trick special ed students and their families into giving up their federally protected educational benefits, in exchange for cheap vouchers that can be used in unregulated, fly-by-night academies.

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Garcia-Roberts told of fly-by-night schools for the disabled in Florida, including South Florida Prep, where “two hundred students were crammed into ever-changing school locations, including a dingy strip-mall space above a liquor store and down the hall from an Asian massage parlor.” Students zoned out in front of blaxploitation flicks, supervised by inexperienced staff with no books and no curriculum requirements. At one school, parents complained that an administrator spanked his charges with a paddle, telling them the state had no jurisdiction to make him stop. (Turns out he was not far off: The Department of Ed can’t pull McKay scholarship funds from a school based on its disciplinary policies.)

more . . . http://www.progressive.org/schoolvouchers_alec_republicans.html

:wow: How much more evil can these greedy pigs get?

I did not know this:

"What a lot of people don’t understand, says Jeff Spitzer-Resnick, managing attorney for Disability Rights Wisconsin, is that disabled students who take advantage of special ed vouchers forfeit their rights under the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

That means they no longer have a right to a “free, appropriate public education” or the specific services that come along with that.

Not only that, they give up their chance to get their school districts to cover the costs of private education, if the local public schools can’t meet their needs."

I suspect that MOST people do not know that, including the parents!

Brownback keeps telling us he wants the Florida model in our schools. Makes me want to puke.

This just makes me ill.