Thursday, September 27, 2007

LD Podcast #66 Child Find, National Reading and Math Report Card, and Should Kids Study More Science & Math?

In today's show, I talk about the latest LD Newsm including:

*A recent court case reported by Peter Wright, Special Education lawyer and legal expert, and his great online resource, . This case, Jamie S. v. Milwaukee Public Schools (E.D. WI, Case # 01-C-928), dealt with whether or not the Miwaukee Schools were adequately finding children in need of special education help and intervention. In this class action case, many children who could have used evaluations and interventions were denied these, in favor of more expedient "punishments" such as suspending a child rather than trying to get to the bottom of any problem behaviors in school. The schools defended themselves as trying to avoid stigmatizing children with a special education label, but in fact, were not doing their duty to identify and provide services to these children in the educational setting under the requirements of the IDEA.

*The new "Nation's Report Card" on Reading and Math have come out, showing a slight improvement of 2 points in the average 4th grade reading and math levels; a closing of the racial gap by one point. This seems like pretty meager progress, and it still holds true that only 34% of all children are testing proficient or advanced on the reading test. This means the gains are pretty much limited to moving children from the below basic to basic only reading levels.

*Lastly, I talk about a survey that shows while businesses are desperate for more highly trained students in science and math, many parents seem to think the science and math curriculum is adequate. This either means parents are not getting the message of the continued importance in this global economy of making sure our children are well educated, or we are doing a poor job of communicating the importance of a science education beyond the lab.

The LD Podcast is joining a new podcasting network= more information coming soon!

In the near future, short "the Best of the LD Podcast" shows will be available on LD Online, one of the best and most comprehensive LD resources on the world wide web. More on this as it becomes available!

We are contemplating trying a call-in show- if you would be interested in trying this format, please drop me an email at ldpodcast@gmail.com.

Bumper music courtesy of Al Renkle's song, Lemonade, Podsafe Music Network

Click here to download Show #66: Child Find and more

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