The Rights of Special Education

These past two weeks have been full of so much information and experience about special education. From the reading, I have learned a lot about all the different people involved in a child with special needs' education. To begin, there are many resources and professionals available to help the student to receive the proper education that they need. According to IDEA, they have the right to FAPE (free and affordable public education), LRE (least restrictive environment), zero reject child find, due process, IEP, and non-discriminatory evaluation. With all of these, comes the resources of different teachers and professionals that are available to help the students receive the help that they need.

This week in our mock due process trial, I was the attorney of the family. There was a case that we had studied about a boy named Garrett who had been in a horrible motorcycle accident when he was 4 years old. He didn't have any damage to his brain and didn't have any intellectual problems. However, he was paralyzed and did not have any control over his body. Therefore, he was in need of assistance at school everyday. When he got to fourth grade, his parents desired the school to start paying for a full time nurse to be hired and be there with Garrett everyday at school. He did not need help with anything medical, just needed that extra physical care. The school argued that they did not need to provide a nurse and that the parents should pay for it if they really felt he needed it. The parents did not agree and decided to sue the school.

Because of due process, which is the right to be heard and appeal, the family appealed and it turned into a very lengthy court case. As the attorney of the family, my job was to argue why the school should be paying for the nurse. The main argument was that the needs Garrett was in need of were not medical because they were in need of a nurse, not a physician. Also, because of LRE, Garrett needed to be in the classroom with his fellow peers in order to fully receive the education that he needed and be able to learn the way he needed to. It would be completely ineffective for him to learn at home because the school would not pay for a nurse to help him during school hours. Also according to FAPE, he had the right to receive a free and affordable public education. The parents did not have the money to afford the services that he needed to get an education and be at school.

I enjoyed this practice because it helped me to understand and apply the different principles of IDEA and see how they work in real life cases. I also learned that usually special education teachers are working a lot with general education teachers coming up with strategies and ways to help provide the best education for the kids with special needs.