What’s the Difference Between General Ed and Special Ed?

What’s the difference between Special Ed and General Ed? This is a great question which parents are sometimes afraid to ask. The simple answer is that general education is the typical classroom that we think of when we think of school.  Special education is more complicated because it has changed over time.  Years ago before […]

What’s the Difference Between An IEP and A 504 Plan?

WHat’s the difference between an IEP and a 504 Plan? What’s the Difference? Before I get into the guidance, I just want to give you an ultra mini legal course in the difference between a 504 Plan and an IEP.  An IEP comes from the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (“IDEA”) and gives very specific […]

If You Think Your Child Has a Learning Disability, Do these 5 things.

If you think your child has a learning disability, do these 5 things. I am a mother and a special-education advocate, and I have dyslexia. Many parents have confided in me that they had a “hunch” that something was not right with their child. More often than not, a parent’s hunch turns out to be […]

Win in Federal Court for Our Clients!

Today our triplet clients had another huge win against the Miami-Dade County School District – the fourth largest in the country.  We’re so thrilled to report that Judge Joan Lenard of the Federal District Court of the Southern District of Florida denied the school board’s motion to dismiss our case.  Our clients, who won a due […]

Making School Work Wins Three Lawsuits Against the 4th Largest School District in the U.S.

An Administrative Law Judge of the State of Florida Division of Administrative Hearings (Case Nos. 14­5679E, 14­5668E, 14­5669E) ruled last month that the Miami­Dade County School Board, which oversees the fourth largest school district in the country, violated the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act for failing to adequately educate very intelligent triplets with learning disabilities […]

Charter Schools Have a Great Opportunity to Serve Sped Students Well

In the spring of 2012 the U.S. Government Accountability Office issued a study concluding that charter schools enroll a lower percentage of special education students than traditional public schools.  The latest is that the U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights has deployed “several broad compliance reviews” to address enrollment as well as legal […]

Finally, Some Good News for Gifted and Disabled!

Finally Some Good News for the Gifted and Disabled One of the most challenging and infuriating areas in which I practice is advocating for the gifted and disabled (called “twice exceptional”).  I feel particularly passionately about these cases because I fall into the category of twice exceptional.  I suffer from multiple learning disabilities.  When I […]

If RtI Isn’t Working for Your Child: Knowing Your Legal Rights

Response to Intervention (RtI) is a 3-tiered process of research-based instruction, which is part of federal law (IDEA 2004). Before RtI, in order to get considered for special education services (an “IEP”) the main thing your struggling learner needed was a psycho-educational evaluation (conducted by a private or public school psychologist). The evaluation needed to show […]