Is Ed White high school violating disabled children’s rights?

Three things, Ed White is using City Year corp members instead of certified ESE teachers as in class support facilitators for ESE kids with IEPs that say they need support facilitators.

Next what would have been once considered Varying Exceptionality students are being placed in the Trainably Mentally handicapped classes because they don’t have much of a chance of passing the FCAT becasue if they are in the TMH classrooms they don’t have to take it. The difference between the streetwise kids with learning disabilities and the severely disabled TMH kids is huge.  

Finally the services the TMH kids at Ed White get don’t compare at all to the services the same type of kids get at Palm Avenue. It is like night and day folks, the kids at Palm Avenue want for little and the kids at Ed White are jammed into classes where they receive few services. The TMH kids at Palm Avenue have music, art, P.E., a pace lab with a teacher and classes that top out at 11 or 12. Ed White’s kids are packed into classes as big as 17 and have very little in the way of resources.

If our most vulnerable students aren’t getting what they need I shudder to think what the regular ed kid is getting.