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The Council for Disability Rights |
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September 2006
Dept. of Education Reauthorizes Individuals with Disabilities Education Act Dear Colleague: Alexa Posny, Director of the Office of Special Education Programs, and I would like to inform you that on Aug. 3, 2006, Secretary Margaret Spellings announced the release of the Part B Final Regulations implementing the 2004 reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Secretary Spellings has made it her mission to see that the promises of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), and IDEA become a reality in every state, school district and classroom in the country. She has been, and continues to be, a strong advocate for the alignment of NCLB and IDEA to ensure equal access to education and to promote educational excellence for all children throughout the nation. The official version of the Part B Final Regulations was published in the Federal Register on Aug. 14. As you know, President Bush signed the reauthorization of IDEA on Dec. 3, 2004. These amendments strengthened the federal effort to ensure that every child with a disability receives a high-quality, free, appropriate public education, designed to achieve the standards reflected in NCLB. Following the reauthorization of IDEA, the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services held two series of public meetings across the country to solicit suggestions and ideas to help us develop proposed regulations and to gather public comments on our proposed regulations. We received thousands of e-mails and letters from your organizations, as well as from school administrators, teachers, parents and advocates. The comments addressed a range of topics. Overarching themes emerged around the implementation of IDEA and NCLB, including highly qualified teacher requirements, private school placements for children with disabilities and response-to-intervention models to identify children with specific learning disabilities. We made significant clarifications in the final regulations, based on these comments. However, we still have work to do. We are working on the Part C regulations and on responding to comments and making appropriate revisions to our plans for implementing the Pilot Programs for Paperwork Burden Reduction and Multi-Year IEPs. Still, the IDEA Part B Final Regulations were our biggest challenge and we are pleased to see them released. While the regulations may, at first, seem overwhelming, we have restructured them into three main sections to make them easier to use. We integrated virtually all requirements from the new law and applicable pre-existing regulations. We've assembled these materials using the same general order and structure as those of the IDEA itself. We believe this organization will be helpful, both in reading the regulations and in finding the direct link from a regulation to its corresponding requirement in the law. The bulk of the document, the preamble, is nearly 70 percent of the entire package. This section does two things. First, it summarizes the major changes in the final regulations from the proposed regulations that we published in June 2005. Second, it includes the Analysis of Comments and Changes that describes the Department's analysis of the more than 5,500 comments received. The second section is the actual text of the regulations. This part covers less than one-quarter of the entire package. These are the actual requirements for special education and related services for children with disabilities that apply to all states receiving IDEA Part B funding. The remainder of the regulations package is a series of appendices that provide tools for implementation and use of the regulations. In addition, we have posted Model Forms for IEPs, Procedural Safeguards Notices and Prior Written Notices on our website. These forms describe the minimum content that is needed to comply with the regulatory requirements for these topics. With the release of these Part B Final Regulations, we are ready to make important shifts in our thinking. We are excited about moving from concerns with writing the regulations to seeing the regulations used as a vehicle to substantially improve services to all children. We see these new regulations resulting in better planning, more accountability, improved instruction and higher achievement. Alexa and I agree that these regulations create an opportunity for a paradigm shift that will allow us to begin articulating new approaches to identifying and teaching children with learning difficulties. In 2002, another revolutionary law, No Child Left Behind (NCLB), promised a quality education to all students, including students with disabilities. These statutes will work hand-in-hand to fulfill the promise of high achievement for all students. We are working closely to see that NCLB and IDEA align effectively to ensure equal access to education and to promote educational excellence for all children throughout the nation. As the report of the President's Commission on Excellence in Special Education noted in 2002, we must think of children with disabilities, first, as general education students. We look forward to working with you in supporting the implementation of these regulations in several ways. We have identified opportunities to provide technical assistance, including a comprehensive introduction of the regulations at the OSEP Leadership Conference at the end of this month, community-based meetings and regional meetings. In the coming weeks, you will hear more about the details of the community-based meetings. We encourage you to attend these meetings in order to become more familiar with the Part B Final Regulations. We will also have a video, topic briefs and other materials to further support you in providing assistance to your constituents. In addition, we are developing a curriculum that can be used at both the state and local levels to train providers, parents, advocates and other stakeholders. OSERS is taking additional steps to help with this effort. In April, we partnered with Henry Johnson, assistant secretary for elementary and secondary education, to develop the Tool Kit on Teaching and Assessing Students With Disabilities. This Tool Kit represents a collaborative effort between OSERS and OESE to assist states, local education agencies and parents in raising the achievement of all students with disabilities. We have already broadly disseminated the Tool Kit and we plan to continue to make copies available to anyone who requests one. Our initial audience included those in state-level leadership positions, chief state school officers, state directors of special education, and state assessment directors. Our Web site will be updated with materials, particularly for parents, as they become available. We appreciate the commitment and dedication of parents, educators, policymakers and others interested in improving the education of children with disabilities, and we look forward to continuing the work with our partners and stakeholders in fulfilling the promises of NCLB and IDEA for children with disabilities across the nation. For your benefit, we are including the link to the Department's fact sheet, Raising the Achievement of Students With Disabilities: New Ideas for IDEA, which accompanied the announcement of the Part B Final Regulations. Sincerely, John H. Hager 
Part B Final Regulations implementing the 2004 reauthorization of the IDEA
Model Forms for IEPs, Procedural Safeguards Notices and Prior Written Notices
Fact sheet: Raising the Achievement of Students With Disabilities: New Ideas for IDEA
Source: US/OSEP, 8/18/06 National Council on Disability Youth Advisory Committee Seeks Four Members The Youth Advisory Committee (YAC) for the National Council on Disability (NCD) announces the opening of a nationwide search for four new members. One of the positions is reserved specifically for high school students. NCD is an independent federal agency, headed by 15 Council Members appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. The collective responsibility of NCD is to make recommendations to the President and Congress on issues affecting all Americans with disabilities. NCD's overall purpose is to promote policies, programs, practices, and procedures that guarantee equal opportunity for all individuals with disabilities, regardless of the nature or severity of the disability; and to support the empowerment of individuals with disabilities to achieve economic self-sufficiency, independent living, and inclusion and integration into all aspects of society. The YAC, a 12 member advisory committee with applicant ages from 16-25 encourages youth across disability sectors, diverse racial and ethnic groups, and under-represented areas of the country to apply. Application documents must be received through E-mail by September 14, 2006 at 5:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time. The application consists of :
Please do not send your application to any other address, if you wish it reviewed for this recruitment period. The YAC ensures that NCD's policy recommendations and activities give consideration to the perspectives of young people with disabilities. Meetings are planned and conducted through tele-conference arrangements under NCD's budget. If a face-to-face meeting occurs travel and lodging are assumed by the agency for active members of the committee, in accordance with federal guidelines. 
Send application, or for more information
For more information about the YAC
Source: NCD email, 8/12/06. Where Yoga Begins : A Paraplegic Yoga Teacher tests the Frontiers of Mind-Body Integration By Andi McDaniel Most people would consider Matthew Sanford a living miracle. Nearly 30 years since the car accident that killed his father and sister — and left him paralyzed from the chest down — the youthful 40-year old is a yoga teacher, sought-after speaker, and newly anointed author of Waking: A Memoir of Trauma and Transcendence (Rodale, June 2006). He's also a dedicated husband and father. As we share a table at a sunny, neighborhood café — he in his wheelchair, I in one that's stationary — he wears a big, easy grin, like someone with a wonderful secret he's dying to share. As it turns out, Matthew's secret will change the way I feel about yoga, disability and, for that matter, life in general. And it just might do the same for you. Yoga for Any Body Glance at the cover of any yoga magazine, or an ad for a trendy new line of yoga wear, and it's easy to typecast how yoga is supposed to look — a nimble, 20-something in an elegant backbend, or a roomful of well-behaved downward-facing dogs sheathed in tight, cropped black pants. But the most convincing examples of yoga's power don't necessarily fit this mold. As Sanford phrases it, "Yoga moves through any body." And if anybody should know, it's Matthew. After 12 years of simply tolerating his disability — essentially dragging around everything below his should blades "like a head on a stick" — Matthew decided there had to be a better, fuller way of understanding his body. At the time, his only strategy for coping with his disability was the Western medical model, which typically encourages people with spinal cord injuries to overcome — or compensate for — their paralysis. Perhaps it's his unusually tender heart, or maybe his irrepressible curiosity — but Matthew wasn't content knowing just one-third of his physical being. At the time of this realization, he was in graduate school, studying philosophy at the University of California, Santa Barbara — one of many stages in his long search for answers. He recalls explaining his decision to take a leave of absence to his graduate advisor: "I have to take care of my body. I'm coming apart." Not long afterward, Matthew met his lifelong teacher. Jo Zukovich, an Iyengar yoga practitioner, had no experience working with students with spinal cord injuries — and in fact, neither did any other yoga instructor he could find at the time. What Matthew and she were about to explore was uncharted territory. Luckily, Jo had what Matthew calls "an uncanny ability to empathize into another's body." To teach Matthew, Jo would have to connect intuitively with his experience of paralysis. But first, the pair faced some basic obstacles — like figuring out how Matthew would get from wheelchair to yoga mat and back again, on a daily basis. Also, from years of physically compensating for his injuries, Matthew's body was totally out of alignment. With his upper body hunched to the left, and his weight resting on his right hip, Matthew would sit on his mat so crookedly that one leg was three inches ahead of the other. Much of Matthew and Jo's early work focused on simply tracking his body into a straight line. Luckily, as early as their first meeting, Matthew began to feel tremendous benefit from the simplest yoga poses. Upon "taking his legs wide" for the first time, Matthew experienced a rush of energy he hadn't thought possible. Then, prayer pose facilitated a sense of upward energetic release. Gradually, he begins to feel what he calls "an energetic awareness — a tingling, a feeling of movement, not outward but inward, a sense of hum" throughout his paralyzed body. He explains it this way: "The mind is not strictly confined to a neurophysiological connection with the body. If I listen inwardly to my whole experience (both my mind's and my body's), my mind can feel into my legs." Of course, Matthew will never regain muscle control in the lower two-thirds of his body, but what he does experience suggests that a meaningful — and thoughtful — connection exists beyond the scope of the spinal cord. "I do not have the luxury of confirming my presence through flexing muscles," Matthew says. "And yet, I still experience a level of integration." Today, when Matthew sits on a yoga mat, legs crossed in lotus pose, he is a vision of grace and balance. Jo is constantly amazed. "The things he can do now — and make look so easy — were so difficult back then," she recalls. In fact, despite Matthew's lack of feeling throughout his abdomen, his practice has enabled him to develop some abdominal control that gives him increased mobility. And while he still wouldn't giggle if you tickled his feet, Matthew's lower body glows with presence and life. An Out of Body Society To witness Matthew's facility with his body — a body he admits is a "hard one to live in" — is to feel awe at the human spirit, to be reminded that it can thrive even in unimaginable adversity. Matthew's bright spirit has attracted all sorts of wonders into his life, from his wife Jennifer — whom he's known since childhood but had never dated — to his extroverted six-year-old, Paul, whose playful eyes peek out from under an abundant crop of thick, blonde hair. Matthew asks me toward the end of our conversation, squinting under an intense June sun, "At its core, living is a sensation, isn't it?" Trauma or not, I know that he means it. But what Matthew's experience demonstrates about mind-body integration is not limited to incidents of trauma. "What's the difference," he asks plainly, "between someone in a wheelchair and someone who sits at a desk, for eight hours every day?" His point, of course, is that many of us detach from our bodies on a regular basis, such as the nature of the modern world. As we grow ever more familiar with the virtual reality of our computers and cell phones, inevitably we become more detached from our physical realities. As Matthew explains it, "We can no longer rely on the natural course of our lives to manage the mind-body relationship, to maintain a sense of inward presence." How then, are we supposed to stay in touch with our bodies? Through programs called "Bringing Your Body to Work" and "Yoga at the Desk," Matthew teaches corporate employees about the value of maintaining presence in the body. "Your body is your most underutilized asset," Matthew tells them. "It's the best home your mind will ever have." From Here, Yoga Begins In addition to the outreach programs and able-bodied yoga classes he teaches through Mind-body Solutions, the nonprofit he founded, Matthew also teaches an Adaptive Yoga class at the Courage Center, a well-known rehabilitation organization in Minnesota. The class, which is based oh the Iyengar principles of alignment and precision, is one of few in the country open to a variety of disabilities. When Matt Sanford began practicing Iyengar yoga with Jo Zukovich in 1991, there were few available resources on adaptive yoga. Today, the field is still relatively new — but thanks in part to Matt and Jo's pioneering work, future students won't have to start from scratch. Here's a head start:
Teaching yoga to students with disabilities — ranging from cerebral palsy to multiple sclerosis — has deepened Matthew's respect for the transformative power of yoga. With the range of challenges presented by each student (including students with brain injuries, some of whom have difficulty remembering poses week to week), Matthew's class isn't the portrait of serenity ("more like organized chaos," he jokes). Yet it is perhaps the ultimate illustration of what yoga is all about. After all, a physical disability is essentially "mind having a hard time moving through the body," he says. "Which is just an extreme version of what we all experience." Throughout the adaptive yoga class, Matthew reminds his students to approach their practice from a place of acceptance. "From here, yoga begins," he says. For students with severe physical disabilities, yoga begins in a difficult place. But yoga moves nonetheless through any body that takes the time to open the door. Source: Conscious Choice, pp. 48-52, August 2006. Chicago Area Autism Seminar : Social Skills/Adolescent Issues Spectrum Training Systems Inc. will conduct a seminar, "Social Skills and Adolescent Issues on the Autism Spectrum" in Crystal Lake, IL on October 11-12, 2006. Oct. 11 - Social Skills & Frustration Management Dr. Jed Baker: Specific, user-friendly strategies and techniques for providing relevant social skills instruction to children and teens with ASD will be shared at this workshop. Enjoyable socialization methods are emphasized so individuals may experience success and desire to build skills. Social deficits affect life at home, school and eventually in the workplace. Conference participants will learn both highly beneficial strategies that can be used across a variety of settings and routines; and practical and effective solutions to assist 'typical' peers, family members and professionals to become more understanding, accepting and engaging of those with social difficulties. Jed Baker is the author of "The Social Skills Picture Book," "Social Skills Training," and "Preparing for Life." Oct. 12 - Adolescent Issues on the Autism Spectrum Chantal Sicile-Kira: Adolescence is a time of positive growth as well as challenges. This session will provide practical strategies for teaching teenagers of all ability levels the necessary life skills of self-care, self-regulation, self-advocacy, and self-esteem. What and how to explain about puberty, relationship boundaries and sexuality will be discussed, as will common adolescent concerns such as bullying and masturbation. Individualized transition plans will be covered. Areas to be emphasized include: focusing on the student's strengths, developing work/career skills, preparing for college, different types of employment structures, employer needs and the use of mentors. Chantal Sicile-Kira is the author of "Autism Spectrum Disorders: The Complete Guide to Understanding Autism, Asperger's Syndrome, Pervasive Developmental Disorder, and other ASD's," and "Adolescents on the Autism Spectrum: A Parent's Guide to the Cognitive, Social, Physical, and Transition Needs of Teenagers with Autism Spectrum Disorders." Early Bird Rates(until 9/8) Professionals: $130 for one day, $195 for two days Parents: $95 for one day, $160 for two days Regular Rates: (9/9 -10/12) Professionals: $140 for one day, $205 for two days Parents: Early Bird rates still apply. Groups of 4 or more receive 10% off! Location/Lodging: We have a block of discounted rooms at the Holiday Inn Chicago-Crystal Lake, where the conference will be held. Call 815/477-7000 today - these will go quickly! (Crystal Lake is 32 miles NW of O'Hare Int'l Airport.) Continuing Education: 12 CPDUs will be available through the Illinois State Board of Education for the conference (6 for each day). Payment: Purchase orders, Visa/Mastercard and personal checks are accepted. Full payment is required for entrance into conference. Please fax purchase orders: 920/882-0736 For more information, call 920/749-0332, or:
Spectrum Training
e-mail Spectrum Training
Source: Spectrum Training Systems, 8/14/06. Brain Injury Association of America: Focus Testing of New Materials The Brain Injury Association of America (BIAA) is producing new materials for the National Brain Injury Information Center (NBIIC) and Brain Injury Awareness Month 2007 that are to be focus-tested. These materials will include a poster representing faces of people with brain injury and presenting the theme: Brain Injury: As Diverse as We Are. The poster will be accompanied by four fact sheets/vignettes of the people in the poster and include information and statistics on the leading causes of brain injury along with resources. There will also be two booklets on behavioral issues following brain injury and a guide for families and caregivers. The NBIIC is also producing a new booklet about children and brain injury to be disseminated to callers requesting information on brain injury and children. They are recruiting persons with brain injury and their family members for individual interviews and focus groups. Participants cannot be employees or volunteers for the Brain Injury Association of America or its state affiliates. Focus-group participants will be asked to review materials and then attend a 60-minute telephone meeting. The individual interviews with persons with brain injury will take about 30-45 minutes. Each participant will receive $50 for participating. If you are interested or know someone who would qualify and be willing to participate, please register on the web site.
Register
Source: Brain Injury Association of America Support Public Housing Operating Subsidies Without additional federal funding, reductions in public housing operating subsidies due to rising utility costs will have direct negative impacts on the living conditions of senior citizens, people with disabilities and other low-income families in public housing. Problem: In late June, the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) informed public housing authorities that they will receive only 85.5% of what is needed to operate public housing in 2006 due to an unexpected operating fund shortfall of $283 million. The operating shortfall is primarily the result of rising utility costs. In January, housing authorities had been told by HUD to expect only 92% of what HUD knew was needed to cover their operating costs because of limited budget appropriations. The difference between 92% and 85.5% represents $283 million. Housing authorities are struggling to remain afloat after decades of under-investment. Public housing funding has declined by $1 billion since FY01. The nation's housing authorities operate more than 1.2 million units. Households have average annual incomes of $11,465 and 51% are elderly and/or disabled households. Funding operating subsidies at 85.5% will be completely unworkable for many housing authorities and will put residents' homes at risk. Solution: Advocates for public housing are currently working on securing a supplemental spending appropriation of $283 million and for adequate funding for the operating subsidy next year. Action Needed: Please contact all four members of Congress from Illinois who serve on appropriations committees: Senator Richard Durbin, Representative Mark Kirk (R-Highland Park), Representative Ray LaHood (R-Peoria), and Representative Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-Chicago). Ask them to support a supplemental spending appropriation of $283 million and for adequate funding for the operating subsidy next year. Deadline for responding: Please take action by September 15, 2006. Source: Housing Action IL, 8/28/06. Lifespan Respite Care Act [The National Respite Coalition seeks immediate distribution to your members, networks, associations, email lists, website postings, etc. ] This summer, the National Respite Coalition has been working diligently with House and Senate staff to secure a date for consideration of the Lifespan Respite Care Act before the 109th Congress adjourns. Significant progress has been made thanks to our Congressional champions, Rep. Mike Ferguson (R-NJ) and Senators Warner (R-VA) and Clinton (D-NY). We have been told that there is a very good chance the bill will be considered in September when the House takes up other important health legislation, and that the Senate will follow House action. A vote on the Lifespan Respite Care Act in September before Congress adjourns is much more likely if House and Senate Members hear from constituents in the next few weeks. If Congress fails to enact the Lifespan Respite Care Act before the October deadline, the process will have to start anew in January. Now is the most critical time to voice support for the bill with your legislators and get them to take action.
For more information, please see Urgent Lifespan Respite Care Act Alert
Source: National Respite Coalition | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
