UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑x

IN RE: :

PRESIDENT\'S COMMISSION ON :

EXCELLENCE IN SPECIAL EDUCATION:

‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑x

Hyatt Regency Coral Gables

50 Alhambra Plaza

Coral Gables, Florida 33134

Tuesday, April 9, 2002

8:00 a.m.

APPEARANCES:

TERRY BRANSTAD, CHAIRMAN

CATHY WOOLEY‑BROWN

STEPHEN BIRD

ADELA ACOSTA

WILLIAM BERINE

BETH ANN BRYAN

C. TODD JONES

APPEARANCES: (CONT\'D)

PAULA BUTTERFIELD

JAY CHAMBERS

ALAN COULTER

THOMAS FLEMING

JACK FLETCHER

DOUGLAS GILL

DAVID GILL

DAVID GORDON

NANCY GRASMICK

BRYAN HASSEL

DOUGLAS HUNT

G. REID LYON

BOB PASTERNACK

MICHAEL RIVAS

ED SONTAG

CHERIE TAKEMOTO

KATIE WRIGHT

DIANE EMERY

CAROL LANG

DR. CAROLINE M. HOXBY

JOHN WINN

APPEARANCES: (CONT\'D)

DIANE McCAIN

SHAN GOFF

ELIZABETH COULSON

SANTIAGO GARCIA, JR.

ALICE HARRIS

P R O C E E D I N G S

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: May we have your

attention, may we have your attention? Thank you

very much.

MR. JONES: If anyone is need of

interpreted services, our two interpreters are

located here at the front of the room.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD; Good morning. I\'m

Terry Branstad, Chairman of the Govern; I almost said

governors. I guess I\'ve been there a long time.

Chairman of the President\'s Commission on Excellence

in Special Education. And I welcome all of you to

our meeting here in the Miami area. The focus of our

hearing today and tomorrow are parental involvement

in special education.

Before we get started, however, I want to

briefly describe to you the mission and the

activities of the Commission. President Bush

established this Commission last October to collect

information and to study issues relating to federal,

state and local special education programs. The

Commission\'s ultimate goal is to recommend policies

to improve the educational performance of students

with disabilities so that no child is left behind.

The no child left behind message has

become a familiar and important one. It is the

guiding principle of the newly reauthorized

Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Now it comes

into play with the work of this Commission. Why?

Because children with disabilities are at the

greatest risk of being left behind.

At the onset I must reaffirm that the

Commission\'s work is not designed to replace the

upcoming congressional reauthorization of the

Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Whether

the report that we produce and issue this summer will

not only provide vital input into the reauthorization

process but also in the national debate on how to

best educate all children.

To date the Commission and its task forces

have held hearings in Washington, D.C.; Houston,

Texas; Denver, Colorado; Des Moines, Iowa; and Los

Angeles, California. We have looked at issues such

as teacher quality, accountability, research in

special education, funding and cost effectiveness.

Our hearings today and tomorrow we\'ll look at

parental involvement and ways in which educational

options might be expanded for children with

disabilities.

Children of parents who involve themselves

in the educational process have many advantages.

Research shows that these children tend to have

better grades, higher test scores and fewer

behavioral problems. Parental involvement is also a

vital component to successful special education

programs as well.

However, there is one key difference.

Parents of special education children have fewer

educational options such as charter schools,

parochial schools and school choice options such as

McKay Scholarship here in the State of Florida.

This is a results oriented commission that

is eager to hear from each of you. We need your

suggestions. Please tell us what works. Show us the

models and we will have a public comment period this

afternoon to ensure that you have a chance to provide

us with input.

I thank all of you for your interest in

our work. We will begin today\'s hearing.

Yes, we need to have people to speak

directly into the microphones so that everybody in

the audience can hear you. I\'ve got a voice the

projects pretty well, but it\'s important to speak

directly into the microphone. I know at some of our

previous meetings some of the panelists and some of

the audience had difficulty hearing.

Our first panel this morning is going to

be discussing options for parental involvement in

special education. And our panelists include Miss

Diane Emery, Public Relations Coordinator at the

Cushman School located in Miami and Ms. Carol Lang,

parent from Cushman School; Dr. Cathy Wooley Brown,

State Charter School Coordinator for the Florida

Charter School Resource Center at the At‑Risk

Institute, College of Education, University of South

Florida; and Stephen V. Bird of North Carolina,

parent of a child with a severe disability.

MS. EMERY: Good morning. My name is

Diane Emery and I have just a short presentation for

you this morning. James Figer, a parent and Board

member used the word ‑‑ to describe the manner in

which he and his wife made the choice to send their

child to the Laura Cushman Academy. The word ‑‑

means to stimulate a response.

The theme is one I found to recur in my

conversations with other parents who are encountering

a negative situation. We\'re stimulated to respond.

The Figer\'s were stimulated to respond and discovered

the excellence of Cushman.

Residing in Maine, the Say family had

their child tested by the public school system. Told

that their child needed physical therapy but did not

test poorly enough to access academic services. The

school refused to offer physical therapy as a stand

alone. Their child would be eligible for services

after she failed a grade. The Say family was

stimulated to respond and found Cushman over a

thousand miles south.

The Stewart family pressured their child\'s

second grade teacher to request testing after being

turned down the previous year. They were told their

child\'s problems presently were not serious enough to

qualify for academic services but by the fifth grade

she probably would qualify. Stimulated to respond,

the Stewart\'s came to Cushman in the search for a

smaller class size and retested their child who was

placed into the academy.

The Dugan and Pastel family evaluated

their child at 17 months, discovering language and

learning delays serious enough to qualify for an

early intervention program. He aged out at three and

entered in an exceptional student educational program

in the public school system. He was ineligible for

additional services because testing did not reflect

any profound issues. Another evaluation undertaken

by the family again detected processing and learning

issues that stimulated a response that led them to

Cushman.

These stories are about the families who

had the good luck to find space for their kids at

Cushman and who had the resources to make this

choice. The real story is about the thousands of

families across America who don\'t have options like

that.

MS. LANG: Good morning, ladies and

gentlemen. There I am. I\'m here today as a parent

of a child with learning difficulties. A parent who

probably had a pretty typical response to the

stimulus of which Diane Emery just spoke. I happen

to believe that a picture is worth the proverbial

thousand words. And since our time is limited, this

is what I think would best represent my reaction to

learning that my then four year old son was having

some learning problems.

As the figure in Edward Munches the screen

shows, that is the face of fear. That face is scared

to death. And that was, actually, I learned from

using my tools on my power point presentation

yesterday that the correct grammar is that was I even

though I would like to say that was me, all right.

Afraid of the unknown. And while parents of the LD

kids soon learn that a little levity is absolutely

necessary to keep us sane, all kidding aside. The

challenges that face the parents of learning

different children are daunting and can overwhelm

even the most stable and well grounded.

In fact, it\'s my view that while we spend

important time talking about children at risk, we

really need to give some more thought to helping

parents at risk. Mixing some metaphors here, it\'s

like the flight attendants telling us to fasten the

oxygen mask over our own faces before we place the

mask on our children. To save the children we must

save the parents. To educate the children we must

education the parents.

I bet I\'m not the first to tell you how

much of a strain the challenge is of learning

different children can be and how that strain rubs

relentlessly on the fabric of husband, wife

relationships. Guilt, recrimination, as much

discussion about what did we do wrong as there is

about what do we do now? LD is hard to face and

harder to understand.

In my case, you know, I went through the

litany of what did I do wrong? Maybe it was the fat

free milk I gave my son too early in his life.

Little laughable things. Finally while I loath to

admit it, embarrassment that my two career, well

healed, well schooled professional couple family

could have a child that has trouble recognizing

colors, let alone writing the alphabet.

So, it occurs to me as you work through

your recommendations for the President, that you need

to give some attention to what needs to be done

within our special education programs to help parents

recognize that one, there is no blame that needs to

be placed or taken; and two, that the LD challenge is

really a chance to discover the best in their

learning different children.

Well before we can see that glass half

full, however, I think we need to recognize that we

also have an important task in getting society in

general to accept that learning differences are a

reality from which we should and cannot hide. The

denial of them has a lost opportunity cost. That

learning differences are not a contagious virus that

requires us to corner off and separate those who have

them. Nor are they attributed to a particular

socioeconomic class.

Seems to me that we have to take the

mystery out of meaning differences as a prerequisite

to any successful special education program. Before

we can offer choices to support the educational needs

of learning different children, we really have to

accept the reality of learning differences and that

that acceptance must be pervasive throughout society.

So, exactly how did I go from fear of the

LD unknown to acceptance of the challenges of LD to

even zealotry for the cause of LD education? Let me

once again resort to visual aids. I think; oops, can

we go back? This is not an art history class but I

did get a kick out of doing it. It\'s the picture

before this one. Sorry.

Actually, this is the last picture, for

those of you who want to know. We\'ll take this one.

There you go, there you go. Now, this is, for those

who may remember their art history. This is

Heronimous Basch\'s \"The Garden of Earthly Delights\".

And it portrays my journey to acceptance with just

the amount of irony. Much is made; this is one of a

three tryptic huge canvas and much is made of the

weird and seemingly irrational imaginary in this

canvas. Much of it remains unsolved.

And that\'s just how I felt in the world of

LD. There\'s just so much going on in the canvas of

special education. So much to know about Learning

Differences in general. Research being undertaken,

new medications, old medications being delivered in

new ways, a whole new vocabulary. Things, words like

PED Scans, vestibular, proprioceptive, central

auditory processing; all requiring virtual technical

proficiency.

This is no garden. This is that nightmare

again. And I have to say on some days, there\'s a

little picture, you can\'t see him, of a little weird

nebbish in this Basch nightmare who\'s bending over

and growing out of his lovely posterior is a bouquet

of flowers. And I have to tell you on some days

that\'s exactly how I felt. Boy, am I out of place in

this world I\'m exploring.

In my case my journey was greatly aided by

sheer fortuity. The school where my son is enrolled,

the Cushman School, had for years recognized the need

for providing a clinical program for children with

specific learning differences. But it wasn\'t until

1998 that the program was open. Fortunately for me

that was the year my son entered senior kindergarten

and he became one of the first in a group of 13 to

inaugurate the Laura Cushman Academy.

What I found there was the de‑

mystification of the Learning Different argot that I

so needed. The special education professionals, they

outlined their view of my son\'s needs, made

suggestions for independent psycho‑educational

evaluations. Gently reassured me when I overreacted,

and there were times, many times when I did,

initiated a course of action, that\'s another term,

IEP, all of which you are already familiar with, and

kept me informed of his progress.

Early identification, immediate feedback,

no hassles, consistency, equanimity, a

rationalization of the cacophony of information which

had so overwhelmed me. I was blessed that I had

available the specialists who not only understood

what grows in this fertile LD garden but who knew how

to cultivate, how to get the very best from each of

the children. And while Linda Johnston, the head of

the Laura Cushman Academy, will speak with you

tomorrow about the learning model she developed

there, I can tell you that it had a positive impact

on my life, my family\'s view of LD and my son\'s

learning experience.

However, as important as that learning

model is, what really made my journey to acceptance

smooth was the commitment to diversity that the

Cushman School has. Every child there, Learning

Different or not, is viewed as gifted and unique.

And diversity is therefore welcomed and embraced.

Within this context the learning differences of my

son and his Academy classmates are less pronounced,

less exaggerated. If every child is different, every

child is unique then arguably every child processes

information in his or her own singular way.

Different becomes a characteristic of every one, not

just a few.

And while my LD child does indeed require

more focused attention and has benefitted from a

lower student teacher ratio, an individualized

guidance, within the Cushman setting there\'s clearly

less of a negative stigma. He has flourished in that

environment. His self confidence and esteem growing

with every accomplishment. I would urge you to think

of that commitment to diversity as a precept to any

special education program for Learning Differences.

If there were to be an illustration of the

elements that made my journey a positive one, it

would be something like the famous Brogial painting,

which you saw earlier and you\'ll see again. This is

the \"Peasant Wedding\". What\'s here is a strong

confident balanced perspective. It\'s sort of a

gravity, a heaviness that demands respect. It\'s the

collaborative marriage. A parent trust and teacher

experience in expertise that results in a celebration

of the learning diversity of every child. Our

challenge as a society is to provide this setting for

all of our children, whether the venue is private,

charter, parochial or public.

Thank you for listening to my comments.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Thank you very much.

We\'ll now go to Cathy Wooley‑Brown.

MS. WOOLEY‑BROWN: Good morning. Welcome

to Florida. I want to talk to you this morning about

two of my favorite subjects; special education and

charter schools. Options for parent involvement,

which is your panel\'s topic this morning, does that.

It puts parents in the driver\'s seat and lets them be

actively involved in their child\'s special education

program.

I want to go back, though, to the summer

of 1996. The legislative session was just over. The

Charter School Bill passed. At that time I was not a

charter school advocate. I was not even an informed

consumer of what charter schools were. I accompanied

our superintendent to the signing of the Charter

School Bill in our school district, Lakeland,

Florida. And as the bill was being signed I kept

thinking, what\'s this charter school stuff? It must

be like magnate schools. So I just passively watched

the folks at the table pass out pens and congratulate

the signing of the Charter School Bill.

And a little woman made her way through

the crowd and tapped our superintendent on the

shoulder and handed him a large stack of papers. And

he said, what\'s this? And she said, well, sir, it\'s

an application for Florida\'s first charter school.

And he said, oh, that\'s nice. What kind of school do

you propose? And she said, well, it\'s a school for

attention deficit hyperactive children. And I, I am

proposing such a school in your school district.

So, he smiled and shook her hand and

turned to me and handed me the stack of papers and

said, Dr. Wooley‑Brown will help you with this

charter school. I was like, oh, I think I\'m going to

find out what a charter school is.

Well, it turns out the woman was a medical

doctor. She was a pediatrician and she knew of the

growing number of children with attention deficit

disorders. She also, though, had a deeper passion

for creating this school. She was a parent. She had

four children. They had all been eager, bright

students. And then her last child, Matthew, was

diagnosed as having ADHD.

She told me that Matthew moved

consistently in his kindergarten classroom. She said

he hummed to himself and absolutely drove his

kindergarten teachers crazy. She had tried private

schools. She tried public schools. She even took

him out of school and tried home schooling. All of

those failed. She knew as a physician the

physiological problems that were faced by these

children. But she also knew that medical management

was only part of the problem or part of the solution,

that there had to be more. There had to be an

education environment.

So, I took her stack of papers home that

night and I read them. And I read them with an

educator\'s eye because I had been working in the

school district. It\'s a large school district. We

had 80, nearly 80,000 students, over a hundred

schools. I had been Director of Special Education

for 14 years. So, I read it with an educator\'s eye.

She proposed small classes, 1 to 12. She proposed a

pair of professionals in each classroom, lowering the

ratio to one to six. She proposed intense teacher

training so teachers would understand how children

with attention deficit disorders learn.

She proposed an environment where moving

and talking would not be punished as long as it was

not disruptive to other students. She proposed a

classroom without traditional desks and tables. But

places, other kinds of places where children could do

their work. She proposed an individual educational

plan for every child in this school, even if they

weren\'t involved in special education.

She also proposed parenting classes and counseling.

And she saw teachers as facilitators of instruction.

Guiders of learning. And that children would have

choices throughout the day.

Then I reviewed the budget. I had run

programs in the State of Florida. I knew how much

money there was. Like a good bureaucrat, I took her

plan and I marked it up with my red pen and I went

back to work the next day. Met with the physician

and the superintendent. And I looked at them and I

said, this will not work. I\'ve looked at your plan.

It won\'t work.

And she listened to me and she said, you

know, it\'s not going to work as you design it.

You\'re looking at schools a certain way. It will

work as a small school of innovation. I said, but

there\'s not enough money. I know. I\'ve created

schools. I\'ve started schools. She said, I\'m

putting all the resources within the classroom.

That\'s where I\'m going to put the money. I\'m not

going to have a lot of bells and whistles. I\'m going

to concentrate the services on the children.

I said, but, you know, you want this.

What about other parents? You know, I think parents

are pretty happy here with the services we\'re

providing. She said, you know, I talked to parents

every day when they come in with their children. And

some are happy. You\'re right. But some are just

settling and some want something more, something

different.

So, I listened to her and I really

believed she could make it work. So, off we went to

make this school a reality. Long story short, that

charter school opened two months later at capacity

and with 200 children on a waiting list. The charter

school that I spoke of is called the Apple School.

It\'s in Lakeland, Florida and after nearly six years,

it\'s still open. And it\'s still a viable choice for

family.

I learned through that experience a number

of things. But I also learned the power of parent

choice and parent commitment. I learned about, as an

educator, visionizing schools through the eyes of a

parent. I had been an educator and I had been a

special ed director a long time. But I had never

visionized a school like a parent would.

That year there were five charter schools

in Florida. The Apple School was a special purpose

school serving children with disabilities. That

trend has continued. I want to show you a few slides

of just what the growth has been in Florida. You can

see we\'ve had several growth. That year we had five

and, of course, one of those was a charter school

focusing on children with disabilities. We moved the

next year to 33, then 75, 112 schools, 149 and this

year we have nearly 200 charter schools in Florida.

About 15 percent right now of the charter

schools in Florida target students with disabilities.

But generally in Florida there are schools that we

have clusters of students with disabilities. So

about 20 percent of the charter schools, the students

in charter schools in Florida which is over 40,000

right now are students with disabilities.

We\'ve also seen a similar growth of

schools targeting at risk kids. That first year, out

of those five, two schools targeted at risk students,

students that were at risk for dropping out of

school. We see a lot of early intervention charter

schools. And now we\'re at 30 percent of the charter

schools in Florida are targeting students who are at

risk for special education or at risk for dropping

out.

Let me show you a map of Florida and see

how wide spread the growth of charter schools have

been. When you count those dots there\'s nearly 200.

We\'re talking about another 55 charter schools

approved for next year.

Because of the diversity and because of

the educational options that are out there, I think

parents are, parents of children who have

disabilities are flocking to charter schools. What

does that mean for your job as you look at the

difficult position of reauthorization of idea? I

hope you will consider the value of parent choice

within the context of the least restrictive

environment.

Sometimes looking at schools through

different lenses is not only powerful but it helps us

look at the individual needs of children at different

points in time. Permit parents working with their

child\'s IUP team to exercise a choice in placing

their child in an appropriate educational setting

that may not be perceived to be the least restrictive

environment.

Just like the Apple School was designed to

serve a unique population, other charter schools are

offering various programs within the larger

educational environment. As educators I think we

almost become myopic. Looking at the needs of

children, and I was guilty of this, by their labels

or what\'s available or a continuum of services.

Charter schools are expanding those choices. It\'s

forcing us to look at schools with a new lens.

As a former Special Education Director I

have seen Charter schools spring up from parent

initiatives that I never envisioned nor would I have

ever created. It is important that IUP teams value

the parent choice as they serve children with

disabilities. That first year I moved from being a

skeptic to a charter school advocate. When schools

are free to think differently parents responded

differently and teachers respond differently.

I saw teachers there on Saturday and

Sunday with no compensation, attending training,

working with families, doing counseling. I saw

parents who I had known from my office who were

sometimes disgruntled. Now with the charter school

saying what can I do to make this school work? They

were volunteering, they were attending parenting

classes. They were involved in their child\'s

education.

When parents choose a school they become

invested in that whole school\'s success and outcome.

The next year our school district had four more

charter schools. Another school was approved in our

district for children with disabilities. And I left

the school district at that time. I felt like it was

time to move on and I moved to the University of

South Florida and helped to establish the Charter

School Resource Center, which provides technical

assistance statewide.

Part of the funding for the center comes

through IDEA State Discretionary Fund. It\'s

important that states have the flexibility within

IDEA Funds to meet statewide needs like technical

assistance for charter schools. I\'ve worked with

charter schools from the ground up creating them out

of dust. And I understood how difficult it is to

create a school from nothing.

School systems have an infrastructure.

They have many departments that can help them create

schools. A charter school has to write an

application. That\'s the first thing. Then they have

to articulate their vision to the public, if it gets

approved. They have to hire an administrator,

recruit and train teachers, develop a curriculum,

find a facility, order furniture, get supplies,

recruit a student body, arrange for transportation,

determine what food services they\'re going to

provide. In addition they have to deal with their

governing board and policy. It\'s a complex

organization. To have the knowledge of the

intricacies of special education law on top of doing

all those things is often lacking.

Traditional public schools, when they have

a problem in special education, they can lean back on

the central office or on the school district.

Charter schools need similar support both when

they\'re getting started and ongoing as children come

in with IEP\'s who have individual needs. They need

ways to meet their needs within their school.

It is my recommendation that technical

assistance models that have been successful, such as

those in the State of Florida, be continued by

providing flexibility to state as they address

statewide needs with their IDEA Funds. Just like you

can\'t be too rich or too skinny, there can\'t be too

much technical assistance in the area of special

education. Otherwise special education will be the

giant gotcha for charter schools. They want to serve

children with disabilities but they need assistance

to do that. They need help through the special

education maze.

The Charter Friends National Network is a

group of individuals who work together to forward

charter initiatives. And the National Association of

Special Ed Directors, both of these groups have

worked to clarify issues and obstacles and have begun

sharing best practices across and between the states.

A natural next step would be to have states help each

other with charter schools special education

technical assistance.

In Florida, charter schools are part of a

school district. They are a public school just like

any other public school in the school district. The

school district is the LEA. They are responsible for

providing FAPE, the Free Appropriate Public

Education. But within their application, charger

schools must describe how special education will be

implemented. Having that linkage in Florida between

the school district and the charter school has been

very important.

But more important have been clarifying

the roles; who does what when. Can charter schools

count on the school district to evaluate their

students if they suspect the child has a disability?

What if the charter school needs a surrogate parent?

Do they go to the school district or do they do that

on their own? What if they need a vision specialist?

Who is responsible?

Under the leadership of the Florida

Department of Education and through various technical

assistant documents and ongoing training the roles

are becoming clearer. We still have a lot of work to

do in Florida. It doesn\'t mean we\'re done but we are

beginning to clarify those roles. In Florida charter

schools have also started leaning on each other.

They\'re forming a relationship. They\'re sharing

services. Sometimes the therapist from one school

will also work with another charter school.

Charter schools are even in some places

sharing a special education teacher. It\'s through

such cooperative relationships between charter

schools and school districts and charter schools

working with each other that has begun to provide an

organizational frame work needed for strong special

education programs.

Therefore, it\'s imperative that Congress

continue to permit and encourage such relationships,

whatever works in that particular state rather than

mandate any one particular relationship, that a

charter be an LEA or a charter school be part of an

LEA.

The last thing I want to talk about is

accountability. Today accountability is everywhere

for everything and we never can have enough of it.

In Florida we have a high stake test cal;led the

Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. And we have

the Governor\'s A+ Plan, where charter schools, like

all public schools, are held to academic progress.

As IDEA is reauthorized I know accountability is

going to be on your minds.

I would hope that you would look at models

that are used in Florida and those described in the

No Child Left Behind because looking at charter

schools I\'ve learned that they inject a heightened

level of accountability into public education. In

addition to accountability for academic outcomes,

charter schools are held accountable by their

authorizers, their governing boards but most

importantly, their parent for teaching the school‑

specific objective that can be crucial to the

development of individual children.

Parents are actively involved in charter

schools. And if the school is not meeting their

child\'s needs they leave. I have seen Florida, in

Florida, charter schools closed because they weren\'t

living up to the promises made to parents or they

weren\'t meeting parental needs. These decisions are

very personal. They are very child centered.

Charter schools live and die by

accountability. That\'s a good thing. But the

measures are not only academic. They are more

subtle. They are student outcome measures that are

described in the mission and vision of the charter

school or in a child\'s IUP. Perhaps charter schools

can provide a valuable lesson as we look at

accountability for all schools on how parents can be

an integral part of the school\'s accountability plan

and a vital part of their child\'s special education

program. The power of parental choice can be

underestimated.

Thank you.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Stephen Bird.

MR. BIRD: Thank you. Members of the

Commission, I appreciate the opportunity to come

before you and speak today. I am honor to appear

before you so that I can explain my experience as a

father of a six year old girl with severe and

multiple disabilities who has experienced significant

problems working with in the present educational

system and early childhood system established under

the Individuals with Disabilities Act, the IDEA.

I offer my comments to you not merely to

tell you my own story but to translate my experiences

into ways to improve how federal policy actually

makes its way down to individuals, those families and

their children with disabilities the IDEA is

ultimately intended to serve.

My experience is not just with my present

home state of North Carolina but also with Oklahoma,

two states very far apart geographically and in terms

of their resources to serve children with

disabilities. In any event, I want to spend my my

time before you today to talk about how the IDEA is

implemented at the local level and what my experience

may provide for each of you as you consider ways to

improve this system because this system needs

improvement.

Before my daughter was born, my wife and I

planned for a life that an academic life provides. I

am a professor of journalism at a small liberal arts

college in North Carolina and before that I was a

professor at a similar college in Oklahoma. We

wanted a life where my work affords me the

opportunity to spend quality time with my family

where I am home for holidays and during the summer.

What we didn\'t expect was the need to become policy

and legal experts just to make sure our daughter

received the early childhood services she needed and

now the educational services she needs in order to

benefit from education to her maximum abilities.

My daughter received services under Part C

of IDEA, services for infants and toddlers with

disabilities and now receives services under Part B,

services for school aged children. At every step of

the way my experience has been one of frustration. I

learned early in my daughter\'s life that an

Individualized Family Service Plan, IFSP, was more

individualized to the needs of the service providers

than my daughter\'s needs.

I cannot tell you how many times my

daughter\'s IFSP and IEP were written before we

attended the meetings, meetings where the group or

team is supposed to discuss how to coordinate the

best services for my daughter. In my experience and

that of other parents I\'ve come to know, the

professionals see parents as secondary participants

in determining the services to provide.

I am sure educationally agencies have

great pressures to control expenses and to dispense

services to as many children as they can. But the

intent of IDEA is to ensure that the parents are

active in the IFSP and IEP processes that are related

to their children\'s educational services.

In considering what to say before you

today that would provide meaning in the effort to

reform the present IDEA that it may better serve

children with disabilities, I wish to present my

thoughts for your consideration. I come before you

not as a parent‑advocate of some group, not as an

expert in special education policy, not as an

administrator. I come before you as a parent who

tells you the present system does not work as well as

it could and should work.

I am a parent who has given this

considerable thought and, although my recommendations

may seem beyond the scope of change, the one most

important point I want to emphasize is that you

recommend to the President that IDEA can be improved.

We all need to be able to discuss how to improve this

policy. If we do not talk about what needs

improvement, then we will never better educate our

children with disabilities and we will never see them

reach their potential.

The concept is simply this: How can what

was ground breaking in 1975 be the best for today?

Even the last reauthorization in 1997 cannot be the

best we can do today. How many of us would settle

for the best computer available in 1997 five years

later in 2002? In 1997, none of your Blackberries

were available. Where would you be today if those

Blackberries were not in your hands?

Increasing the power to make decisions in

the educational services arena will improve how well

we service children with disabilities. If parents

have more choice and the dollars then follow the

child, at least they can choose the services their

child receives. How can the right of school choice

be measurable worse than our present system? A

system where I, personally, can say I have

experienced more than one IEP meeting where the

school should have provided more services only to

find out this fact after the fact, a point at which

is far more difficult to regain those services.

As a parent living an average life who

just happens to have a child with a severe

disability, I offer each of you my perspective and

suggestions for reform. Let me first say that I

believe without the IDEA and its predecessor we would

not be as far in realizing the rights of people with

disabilities and more inclusive opportunities, not

just in education but in all other aspects of life.

We have come far, but now is the time to

move a giant step forward and offer parental choice

that will drive improvements in the system.

Therefore, I offer the following suggestions to

improve the system from a parent\'s perspective.

Increase parent choice. Let parents chose

where to send their child to school and allow funds

to provide special education and related services to

follow their child. Let parents choose charter,

private, and religious schools as part of the options

to regular public schools to educate their children

with disabilities. Provide federal policy that

allows special education funding to follow the

individual child and let parents choose the type of

school where they will send their children.

This will drive accountability if parents

can choose where to send their children and if they

are subsequently allowed to take the funds to

education the child with the child. Education

should, and in other eras did, lead change in this

country. No portion of the country\'s education

population is in greater need of this reform than

those receiving special education.

Secondly, simplify the federal regulations

implementing the IDEA. The federal regulations

implementing the IDEA are too complex and too

confusing to be understood by most parents who happen

not to be attorneys or are unfamiliar with education

policy. In my experience, most school districts and

teachers do not understand the regulations either.

If these regulations are so complicated that

educators and parents cannot understand them, then

who can say that the children are being educated as

intended under the IDEA. I found that parent

advocacy organizations don\'t always know the answers

to my questions because they don\'t know every

regulation either.

Third, make monitoring of each state more

effective and public. I cannot find out how well my

home state implements the IDEA on a more consistent

basis. Some more effective method to compel state

agencies and public schools to comply with the future

of IDEA must be considered.

Fourth, change the IEP process. I can\'t

tell you how complicated IEP forms are today. I am

sure I ma not the first parent or teacher to tell you

this. The IEP is just an extension of federal

regulations, too complex to be a tool to be used by

teachers to educate children with disabilities. My

daughter has been in three school districts and it

seems to me that schools are more concerned about

administrative and legal issues than educating

children.

Some of the daughter\'s teachers have never

seen her IEP. In my case, the school is more

concerned that I sign the IEP than anything else.

Some become defensive whenever I want to talk about

my daughter\'s pre‑written IEP, rather than discussing

with me how my child will be educated.

Fifth, require on‑going professional

development. As a college professor I am appalled

that public school teachers are not better trained to

provide effective teaching methods. My impression is

that many teachers are not, especially in the general

classroom, qualified to work with children who have

disabilities or who learn differently than the

average student. Teachers should be required to

maintain their certification through true

professional development.

No teacher association maintains peer

professional review; no state board monitors

competence. Attorneys, doctors, CPA\'s, and other

professionals maintain peer review and monitor

professional competence and professional ethics.

Teachers do not.

Teaching special education is often an

afterthought, not a first choice among educators. I

know this is not a recommendation to you for federal

policy but I ask this Commission to encourage

educators to seek greater degrees of professionalism

by increasing their own professional development

activities for special educators. By doing so you

will greatly increase choice and opportunity for

people with disabilities.

Thank you.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Okay, we\'ll now go to

the questions of the panel. I\'d like to start by

asking Dr. Cathy Wooley‑Brown, what is required in

the State of Florida to become a charter school and

what advice would you give to other states in terms

of authorizing charter schools? Especially charter

schools that could meet the needs of children with

disabilities.

MS. WOOLEY‑BROWN: In the State of Florida

you have to be organized as a not for profit. So you

have to have an entity, a legal entity that\'s not for

profit. And you also then have to write a charter

school application. In the State of Florida the only

sponsoring entity is the local school district. So

you take your application, just like the doctor I

described, and you turn it into the school district.

Then it goes through a review process and that

application is either voted up or voted down. And if

it\'s voted up, you begin your process.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Is there any limit on

the number of charter schools you can have in the

state?

MS. WOOLEY‑BROWN: There are limits by

school districts. A school district that, like Miami

Day that has over 100,000 students, you can have 28

charter schools. However, conversion charter

schools, which is a public school that might convert

to a charter school does not count in that 28. And

the local school district can ask that that number be

increased or the person that comes in, the 29th one

who comes in could also ask the State Board to have

that number increased.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: So there\'s quite a bit

of flexibility ‑‑

MS. WOOLEY‑BROWN: Lots of flexibility

here in Florida.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: And what advice would

you give to other states that might be looking at

this?

MS. WOOLEY‑BROWN: Well, charter schools

are across the country. Many states have limited the

number of charter schools. In Florida it has been an

important part of the whole choice movement. You\'re

going to look at other choice alternatives in

Florida. But charter schools have been out there.

They are public schools. They\'re held to the

accountability standards. And I would hope other

states that are looking at it would build in those

kinds of systems, too.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Steve Bartlett?

MR. BARTLETT: Dr. Brown, when you set up

in the charter schools, were you able to use IDEA

money for technical assistants? I see in your

testimony your recommendation is to allow technical

assistance using IDEA. Were you able to use IDEA

money for technical assistance for charter schools?

MS. WOOLEY‑BROWN: Yes, sir. That is

really how the bulk of our funding for the center is

provided. It\'s through the state\'s discretionary

IDEA funds. And because of my background in special

education and because if you looked at the slides,

nearly half of the schools in Florida, the charter

schools, are either targeting students with

disabilities, serving a large number of students with

disabilities, or serving at risk students. So, that

‑‑

MR. BARTLETT: So, what change in federal

law in IDEA should we make to, to make that, to

facilitate that?

MS. WOOLEY‑BROWN: Just continue; well,

there\'s really kind of a ‑‑

MR. BARTLETT: Change, change.

MS. WOOLEY‑BROWN: ‑‑ couple of changes.

Continue to allow the states the flexibility. But

also you might want to look at some incentive funds

under IDEA to help states that don\'t have a technical

assistance model. Maybe if Florida had some

incentive funds we could help another state put in

place those kinds of programs like we\'ve had in

Florida to provide technical assistance.

MR. BARTLETT: Are you asking for more

flexibility? You\'ve just asked for more money. I

got that part.

MS. WOOLEY‑BROWN: More money; you got

that.

MR. BARTLETT: Yeah, this comes back to

the flexibility part.

MS. WOOLEY‑BROWN: No, I think there is

flexibility but I know in some states they do have

declining enrollment students and special education

students. So, as the state has discretionary money,

that money might be declining and they couldn\'t meet

a state‑wide need even if they wanted to provided

assistance to charter schools.

MR. BARTLETT: And the funds that then

would ordinary flow to a school district for IDEA,

are you then able to use that money to go to the

charter schools on a per capita basis or a student

basis?

MS. WOOLEY‑BROWN: No, the charter school

has used those money just like any public school

would use those money. It\'s as an idea that they

would be treated the same as other public schools.

And in Florida many districts flow the funds directly

to the charter school because that\'s how they treat

their other public schools. And some school

districts they provide supports and services and

training. They provide staffing, personnel or

training for the charter schools too out of the IDEA

funds.

MR. BARTLETT: So there are no barriers in

federal law to that flow of funds today.

MS. WOOLEY‑BROWN: Yes.

MR. BARTLETT: Thank you.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Bill Berine.

MR. BERINE: Dr. Brown, good morning.

MS. WOOLEY‑BROWN: Good morning.

MR. BERINE: I have a couple of questions

for you that deal with FAPE and also tax burden and

to a certain extent, performance data. I come from a

state very different from Florida. I come from

Kentucky, a relatively small population state. It\'s

got about 7.4 million people all together.

Around 1989 we decided, as a state in a

state‑wide process, to reform education and we went

to the Kentucky Education Reform Act. Schools were

be declared unconstitutional. All the school boards

were just virtually done away with and told to start

over by the courts.

As a result of that, after ten years,

charter schools are not even mentioned in Kentucky.

Virtually unknown. I wonder why Florida didn\'t look

at school reform as an alternative rather than

creating an alternative system? Do you have any idea

why?

MS. WOOLEY‑BROWN: Well, again, I\'m a

charter school advocate and I\'m a special ed

advocate. But charter schools are not a separate

system. They are, they expand the choice of the

public schools within existing systems. So, they are

providing other alternatives within an existing array

of choices in public education. They\'re not

something out there that\'s a separate system.

MR. BERINE: Sounds very different to me.

And again, coming from a state where it\'s virtually

unknown.

With regard to the tax burden, what data

do you have that charter schools, which are serving a

minority number of students in Florida, of being

supported by the public tax structure? What

percentage of those charter schools are being

supported by non‑charter school tax dollars?

MS. WOOLEY‑BROWN: Well, charter schools,

the funds in Florida follow the child. So, the funds

that the child would have in any public school follow

that child. Those are public tax dollar funds into

the charter school. Charter schools do a huge array

of fund raising with other, getting other sources to

fund so that they can meet their needs. But the

funds, basically, for their operational program, come

from ‑‑

MR. BERINE: Do you know if that\'s fairly

typical of other charter school movements in other

states?

MS. WOOLEY‑BROWN: I think it is.

MR. BERINE: The tax dollars follow the

child?

MS. WOOLEY‑BROWN: Yeah, follow the child,

especially for operational services.

MR. BERINE: I\'m still curious. You\'ve

been in Florida for quite some time. If the schools

were felt to be or perceived to be generally as

being not adequate, what school reform is going on to

rectify that situation?

MS. WOOLEY‑BROWN: Well, let me give you

an example. I think charter schools have nudged,

because of the competition aspect, public schools to

change. We have, there\'s one school in a school

district that the school is typically referred to as

stinking blinking by the parents. It\'s not a school

parents want their children. A charter school moved

in in that neighborhood. It was instantly full. Had

a long waiting list.

I had a number of conversations with

school board members from that district and the

superintendent about what they could do. And I said,

look at the charter school. What do they have that

you don\'t have in your school? And they made changes

in that public school to have students come back to

that public school. They added technology. They

made building changes. They made administrative

changes. They lowered the class size to get children

back into that public school.

MR. BARTLETT: One final question. What

data are you aware of in the charter school movement

that makes a difference with regard to the

performance of the children?

MS. WOOLEY‑BROWN: The jury\'s still out on

that in terms of long term data. I have seen

individual, in Florida we have individual student

data that must be reported each year. So, when a

charter school starts they pre‑test their students.

Where their kids are starting and then where are they

at the end of the year. And that data is then sent

to their sponsor so that they can make a decision

about whether that program is working. If that

program is not working for the children, then the

school will be closed.

MR. BARTLETT: Thank you.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Doug Huntt, and we

have a lot of people on the list so I\'m going to try

to ask you to keep it limited to just a few minutes,

if we can. Doug, go ahead.

MR. HUNTT: You\'re not just referring to

me, Mr. Chairman?

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: No, everybody else.

Not at all but I\'m looking at this list. And seeing

that we\'re going to get behind if we don\'t really

keep our questions limited. But go ahead. It\'s your

turn.

MR. HUNTT: Thank you, sir. I want to

tell each of you I appreciate your salient

presentations. They were excellent and I appreciate

you being here. I was wondering the big movement in

the disability community is for individual choice.

Has that run contrary to parent choice in your own

experience? And at what point should children have

the say on whether they want to go to a charter or

private school or stay in public education?

MS. EMERY: The choice that I made was ‑‑

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Please speak into the

microphone. Thank you.

MS. EMERY: You know, my son was a young

child when I made my choice. And I think that

obviously there\'s going to be a relevancy as,

according to the age of the child. But in my case,

did I think that my child had, he had real no

understanding of what was going on for him. I had to

make those choices for him. It was obvious to me as

a parent that he was having difficulty in a myriad of

ways. And, you know, he had really no involvement or

planning of like how we attacked those issues only

that we found providers that he was able to respond

positively with.

And so I guess in that regard, that\'s what

I was looking for was to find environments for him as

far as the school and other outside school therapy,

that he would respond positively. He didn\'t want to

change schools when we moved to Cushman, you know.

Like he made a big issue about that but, you know, we

found a place that was right for him that it had an

integrated environment for him to receive academic

help as well as OT, speech and, you know, like a

myriad of services offered in an integrated

environment which has been really beneficial.

MR. BIRD: In my situation, my daughter

being six years old, has not required to enter in the

school system until she\'s seven. And because of that

my wife and I are still debating as to what is going

to be the best option. The problem is there aren\'t

too many options there. We live in one of the better

school districts in the state but it\'s one of the

better school districts for kids who learn under

normal conditions.

So, we generally make our decisions based

upon what\'s going to be best for our daughter. But

right now we\'re not sure what that is because, you

know, again, she\'s not of school age. Required in

North Carolina you have until seven years old. So,

we just don\'t know. Right now we\'re really debating

the issue. And I would say that it\'s so much up in

the air that we\'ve been talking to the special

education teachers here in the last couple of months

about putting her in the school district next year.

And they say if we really want to follow through on

that we need to make a decision pretty quick. It\'s

just a tough decision. It really is. We\'re really

having a hard time making it.

MR. HUNTT: So, I want to be clear, Dr.

Bird, on your recommendation. It seems to me what

you\'re saying is that public money should follow the

student wherever he or she may go so that if your

choice is parochial school or a private school in

another manner, then the public money should follow

that. Is that your ‑‑

MR. BIRD: That is exactly right. You

know, the problem right now is because it isn\'t

following the child, there just aren\'t that many

opportunities.

MR. HUNTT: So, finally, Mr. Chairman, I

would just ask why wouldn\'t the provision that allows

charter schools, and the same argument used for that,

be applied to private school then? Dr. Brown, would

you answer that?

MS. WOOLEY‑BROWN: Be applied to creating

a system where parents can chose a private school?

MR. HUNTT: That\'s right. In other words,

if the money will follow the child into a charter

school, which is a non profit, why then couldn\'t IDEA

be allowed to provide funding for a student that may

want to go to a parochial school, for instance?

MS. WOOLEY‑BROWN: Well, I think the venue

is changing every day. In Florida you\'re going to

hear about the McKay Scholarship Program that does

just that. The money does follow the child into a

private school if that\'s the parents choice.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Alan Coulter.

MR. COULTER: Dr. Brown, just a few quick

questions. You mentioned that the accountability

system for charter schools is comparable to the

accountability system for public schools. So kids in

charter schools take the FCAP?

MS. WOOLEY‑BROWN: Yes, they do.

MR. COULTER: How long have they been

doing that?

MS. WOOLEY‑BROWN: Since the inception.

MR. COULTER: Okay. So, do you have data

on FCAP performance of kids without and with

disabilities?

MS. WOOLEY‑BROWN: Yes, we do.

MR. COULTER: Where\'s that data available

for commissioners to take a look at it?

MS. WOOLEY‑BROWN: I\'d be happy to provide

it. We\'ve been doing an analysis of charter school

FCAP data because one of the focus of the Resource

Center is to provide assistance for schools in

special education but also in curriculum and looking

at where the schools are in terms of their student

performance is very important.

MR. COULTER: In the rating of schools

that the Florida Department of Education uses, are

there any charter schools that are currently rated as

beneath acceptable level?

MS. WOOLEY‑BROWN: No, we don\'t have any F

schools that are charter schools. We do have A

schools.

MR. COULTER: That\'s great, that\'s great.

Tell me also about suspensions and expulsions. Do

you have data on suspensions and expulsions of kids

with and without disabilities for charter schools

compared to regular schools?

MS. WOOLEY‑BROWN: I don\'t. The

Department of Education may have that data. The

charter schools do report suspension and expulsion

data as a public school. And that would be part of

the system that would then be collected at the

Department.

MR. COULTER: And I guess I take it from

your remarks that you would be supportive that

whatever accountability system the state imposes on a

public school system, that that same accountability

system should be imposed on charter schools?

MS. WOOLEY‑BROWN: Yes, sir.

MR. COULTER: Okay, thank you very much.

MS. WOOLEY‑BROWN: Absolutely.

MR. COULTER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Doug Gill.

MR. GILL: Thanks, Mr. Chairman. I just

kind of have a couple of questions for no one in

particular but I seem to be kind of confused at

times. And I\'m sure you can straighten me out. When

I hear charter schools expressed sometimes, as you

did, Dr. Brown, as a, basically another step in a

continuum of options available to public school aged

students. Is that right?

MS. WOOLEY‑BROWN: Right.

MR. GILL: Then help me understand the

notion of competition among those particular options

as a part of the least restrictive environment

because as I understand it LRE is, in fact, a full

continuum of options individually determined. And

charter school, in your mind, would be one of those

options. So, how do we get into this competition

between options? I don\'t quite understand what that

is. And the other thing that I don\'t quite

understand is the charter school movement an

expression of dissatisfaction with public schools or

an endorsement of an alternative structure?

MS. WOOLEY‑BROWN: Okay, I\'ll answer your

second one first. I think it is an expression of

alternative structure. I don\'t think, I mean, in the

situation with many schools, they are started because

there\'s not such a program available. As Dr. Bird

mentioned in his state there\'s not a program

available for his daughter and so he\'s looking at

other options. That\'s what I hear from many parents.

MR. GILL: And those options are in the

context of a continuum of options available to any

public school child, special education, public school

child. Is that right?

MS. WOOLEY‑BROWN: Yes, but maybe not as

targeted. Maybe in this particular situation, we

didn\'t have a program in our school district that

focused on Attention Deficit Disorder. We had large

schools. Our smallest elementary was probably 800

students. This particular option was very small. It

was very personal. It was very focused on the needs

of those children in that school. The training for

the teachers was different.

MR. GILL: Okay, so it isn\'t an option for

special education students. It\'s an option for

students who have Attention Deficit Disorder. Is

that right?

MS. WOOLEY‑BROWN: That was their target.

That was the group that they were targeting. But we

have other schools that are targeting children with

autism or children that are medically fragile and

complex. Charter schools who are targeting children

who have disability have that as their focus. But

there are charter schools that are serving typical

students within that whole array that are providing

that kind of competition for traditional public

schools.

So, within the least restrictive

environment, sometimes when you\'re looking at a

school that\'s targeting only or targeting students

with learning disability, at that point in time that

might be the best option for those children. As a

special educator, did I ever have a school that just

targeted those students? No. I had programs within

the school district.

MR. GILL: But you actually had the

schools but they were private schools and they were

for profit ‑‑

MS. WOOLEY‑BROWN: We did.

MR. GILL: ‑‑ private schools in other

parts of the country.

MS. WOOLEY‑BROWN: We did.

MR. BIRD: I\'d like to make a quick

clarification. What I said was that there aren\'t any

charter schools in our district. There are charter

schools in North Carolina. But what I\'m finding is

in North Carolina it\'s really tough to find charter

schools outside of metropolitan areas. And I happen

to live in the western part of the state. From what

I understand some of the toughest conditions for

parents of children with special needs not only occur

in the western part of the state but a lot in the

eastern part of the state, particularly the least

populated areas.

So, while they do exist, there just isn\'t

an option there for us in our district. So, I do

want to clarify that.

MR. GILL: As charter schools exist in the

State of North Carolina ‑‑

MR. BIRD: But they do exist.

MR. GILL: ‑‑ that is, in fact, a local

district option, is it not?

MR. BIRD: I believe it is.

MS. EMERY: And I have a comment about

that also. It has to do with like antidotal stories

of families who are with kids at Cushman. And the

problems that they\'ve encountered and many of the

reasons the families are in a private school is

because the kinds of evaluations that were given in

the public school system failed to determine problems

that were considered severe enough to allow those

families to access services.

So, part of the problem in looking for

alternatives or choices for families that we need to

deal with, I think, is the evaluations that occur

with those children up front. And we have to

understand that it\'s not an acceptable thing to tell

family that your child has to fail before, that

things have to get worse before we can start to help

your child.

So, families are looking for alternatives,

looking for charter schools going to private schools

because they\'re encountering such difficulties in

trying to access mandated services through the public

school system.

MR. GILL: So you\'re saying the evaluation

system is not sophisticated enough to pick up the

subtleties of the learning difficulties that you

experienced.

MS. EMERY: What I believe, again, you

know, it\'s antidotal, is that the evaluations that

are given by the public school system, if there\'s

almost, that they\'re advocating like a different

perspective. They\'re evaluating the child from the

perspective of trying to determine how to offer

services through a huge bureaucracy. And the

measurements they use are very different than what

really need to be used to look at the kids, to figure

out what\'s wrong with that child and to educate him

in the best way possible.

So, there\'s a lot of children who need

help up front that are being told, you know, the

parents are being told, well, we can\'t help you now

but come back in a couple of years. And that\'s

unacceptable.

MR. GILL: Yeah, thanks for your attempts

to clear up my confusion.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Bryan Hassel.

MR. HASSEL: Dr. Brown, you mentioned the

Florida charter schools are part of the local school

district, that there are other states where charter

schools are independent of their local school

district. And I think that independence is treasured

in those states by charter schools and yet presents

problems when it comes to, in some cases, delivery of

special education services because of the detachment

from the district structures and service providing

processes. And I wonder if you have any thoughts

about what, if anything, federal policy could do to

make it easier for charter schools in those states to

provide special education. You mentioned the need

for technical assistance. Are there any other

federal policy ideas that, I know it doesn\'t, isn\'t

needed in Florida but in other states might be

helpful?

MS. WOOLEY‑BROWN: Well, thank you for

asking that. ‑‑ I\'ve handed you a position paper

from the Charter Friends National Network. And it\'s

on, this is a number of folks like me who have

backgrounds in special education who are now working

in the charter arena. And yes, that\'s true. In

those states they like being the LEA. But because

they are so small, creating a continuum of services

and delivering services for every child who might

walk into your door, if you\'re a small charter school

that serves about 140 students, which is the national

average, size of a charter school, that\'s just mind

boggling that you could do that.

So, one of the recommendations of this

group is that you might want to think about a new

definition of an LEA so it\'s not just regionally

base, where it is not just based at a school district

site. But maybe groups of charter schools forming

cooperatives could function like an LEA. And that

would be helpful for those states because in some

states charter schools are very fearful about the

child who might walk in their door who has extensive

needs, that they\'re not able to meet their needs and

what that would for them in terms of their finances.

That\'s not an issue in Florida but my

colleagues across the country would greatly

appreciate your consideration of that.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Jay Chambers.

MR. CHAMBERS: What the panel has proposed

or suggesting is some exciting alternatives for us to

consider and I appreciate those recommendations or

suggestions. One of the thoughts or questions I have

for you is if public money were to follow the child

into whatever school, whether that be a public school

or a private school, don\'t the private schools

essentially become public schools under those

circumstances? And how do they differentiate?

MR. BIRD: I\'d like to answer that one.

Being a professor at a private college I can say that

we get federal funds but we are not a public

institution. We retain our private institution

status. There are some restrictions that come with

those funds. At the same time that is allowed a

college such as Lenore Ryne College where I work to

stay in business. So, I think if we follow that

model that certainly we can see that private schools

remain an option.

I think if it wasn\'t for that model a

number of private schools would have gone under. I\'m

talking about colleges at this point, would have gone

under. And a number have. But I don\'t know if

Lenore Ryne would still be around if public funds

were not coming to Lenore Ryne College. And that\'s

not only in the forms of government loans but that\'s

also in the forms of grants and of course we know the

GI Bill and the other things that funnel public money

into Lenore Ryne College.

MR. CHAMBERS: How would that work in a K

12 public school system because I really see that as

a very different system than a higher education

system?

MS. WOOLEY‑BROWN: Do they become a public

school?

MR. CHAMBERS: I\'m just picturing control

following my legislators thinking to themselves,

we\'re providing money. If we\'re going to do this for

IDEA children, we\'re going to have to do it for other

children as well. And ultimately where my money goes

as a state, I\'m going to want some control over it.

MS. WOOLEY‑BROWN: Some accountability.

MR. CHAMBERS: Some accountability.

MS. WOOLEY‑BROWN: Well, that\'s kind of

how I have fallen into the charter school arena

because there is that accountability. But at the

same time it\'s free and flexible. That first year,

as I became a charter school advocate, I kept

thinking about the freedom and flexibility. But the

physician who started that school kept testing that

with me. Her first thing was do we have to use your

report card. And I said, well, yeah. You have to

use the district\'s report card because we want the

accountability. And she said, well, remember we\'re

free from everything except health, safety and civil

rights issues and you\'re saying the district\'s report

is a health, safety and civil rights issue? And I

said, no, it\'s really not but you must report

progress to parents. And she said, oh, we have no

problem doing that. We just want to do it

differently.

And I think that freedom and flexibility

of the private school or a charter school to continue

to think outside the box is what this is all about.

It\'s not to make them; because I said to charter

schools, if you\'re going to be like everybody else,

this is way too much work. Don\'t do it. You have to

stay different and independent so that you can

continue that innovation which is the purpose of

charter schools.

MR. CHAMBERS: Where do we draw the lines

though? I guess that\'s kind of concern that I have.

MS. WOOLEY‑BROWN: Now, in the State of

Florida, and you\'ll hear more about the McKay

Scholarship tomorrow when Linda Johnson, who\'s the

Director of the Laura Cushman Academy, makes her

presentation. But in the State of Florida if a child

has tried to access services through the public

school system and the system has failed to meet the

needs of that child, they can apply for the McKay

Scholarship and use that money to go to a private

school.

The private school doesn\'t change their

admissions policy. And they can still request,

require the parent to pay the full tuition. So, it\'s

just a piece of the financing that comes in. So, it

does provide that flexibility that we\'re looking for

and it doesn\'t really impact the way that the school

administers itself.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Katie Wright.

MR. CHAMBERS: But can ‑‑

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: You\'re not done yet?

MR. CHAMBERS: I\'m asking more questions

than ‑‑

MS. WRIGHT: I don\'t wish to go over time.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Well, I\'m concerned ‑‑

MS. WRIGHT: I don\'t wish to go over time,

Mr. Chairman, because it\'s 9:25.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: I know.

MS. WRIGHT: But I do have two comments

and one brief question that takes a brief answer. My

comment is first of all, I want to commend the

presenters. I really do. Then the next comment that

I want to make is that I\'m from two states that have

been against a lot of the people in these two states,

Missouri and Illinois. We\'ve had fights about

charter schools. I have been opposed to charter

schools and I\'m a special educator.

The reason I have been opposed is that in

St. Louis, Missouri and East St. Louis and Chicago,

we could not see how charter schools would really

help special kids. We felt that they would take the

best and the brightest. Now, I\'m glad to see that in

Florida, you know, this is different.

My question is this, are your children

segregated? What about inclusion? I\'m very

interested in inclusion. Do you see where I\'m coming

from?

MS. WOOLEY‑BROWN: Sure.

MS. WRIGHT: That\'s just one question and

a brief answer.

MS. WOOLEY‑BROWN: Sure.

MS. WRIGHT: I don\'t want to go over time

with my cause for people to go over time.

MS. WOOLEY‑BROWN: Many charter schools

were started by parents who wanted inclusion. In

fact, one charter school that was serving autistic

children co‑located with another charter school so

they shared one campus so that they could have that

inclusion model. Many of our charter schools that

are serving zero to two children. And then as they

moved up, they wanted an inclusion model. So they\'ll

have a regular child care program that\'s a fee based

program on the same campus where they have children

with disabilities having their special charter

school.

MS. WRIGHT: Thank you.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Nancy Grasmick.

MS. GRASMICK: I\'d like to begin by

thanking the presenters for your excellent testimony

this morning. I\'d like to ask Dr. Brown, when you

indicated that the local district received the

application ‑‑

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Dr. Grasmick, if you

could speak a little closer ‑‑

MS. GRASMICK: When you indicated that the

local district receives the application of the

charter school, if that application denied, is there

an appeal process?

MS. WOOLEY‑BROWN: Yes. It\'s appealed to

the State Board of Education. And right now that\'s

the Governor and the Cabinet. And they can review

that application and make a recommendation to the

School Board. And then the School Board can then

take action again. It ultimately comes back to the

School Board.

MS. GRASMICK: Second question; is the per

pupil expenditure exactly the same as it is for a

special needs child in the public, regular public

school system?

MS. WOOLEY‑BROWN: Yes, ma\'am, it\'s

exactly the same.

MS. GRASMICK: Thank you. And finally for

Dr. Bird, I know you can\'t answer this completely

because we don\'t have time but do you see the IEP

process as being more of an input process than a

results oriented process from the parental point of

view in terms of what are the achievements that are

measured for your child that are anticipated with

benchmarks towards those results?

MR. BIRD: I would say it\'s, in my case,

perhaps, or in my daughter\'s case, perhaps it\'s

neither. I think it\'s more of a situation where, of

what can we provide for the child under the financial

constraints we have to work with.

MS. GRASMICK: And there isn\'t a lot of

discussion about anticipated results.

MR. BIRD: No.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Bob Pasternack.

MR. PASTERNACK: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I know we\'re running short on time, but I\'m going to

try to ask a couple of quick questions because I just

need some help here in terms of understanding a

little bit about the President\'s demand for

accountability for results and just in terms of what

we know about kids with disabilities in charter

schools in Florida.

What percentage of charter schools serve

kids with disabilities in the State of Florida?

MS. WOOLEY‑BROWN: 14 percent target

students with disabilities. 20 percent of the

children in charter schools, over 8,000 students, are

children with disabilities.

MR. PASTERNACK: 14 percent are, by

targeted, does that to mean that at hundred percent

of the students in those schools are kids with

disabilities?

MS. WOOLEY‑BROWN: That\'s who they\'ve

targeted. In most cases it\'s not totally a hundred

percent but it\'s very close.

MR. PASTERNACK: And 20 percent of the

kids in charter schools are kids with disabilities.

MS. WOOLEY‑BROWN: Yes.

MR. PASTERNACK: And that compares to what

percentage of the kids in the public schools who have

disabilities?

MS. WOOLEY‑BROWN: It\'s higher. And part

of that is because charter schools have an array of

special education options and these targeted programs

that are making that percentage higher. In my school

district we were at 15 percent of the children in the

district had disabilities.

MR. PASTERNACK: And in response to Dr.

Coulter\'s question, I\'m not sure that I, that I

understand. Are the results for kids with

disabilities who attend charter schools documented to

be different than the results of kids with

disabilities who don\'t attend charter schools?

MS. WOOLEY‑BROWN: In terms of the

comparability?

MR. PASTERNACK: In terms of their

performance on the state mandated tests.

MS. WOOLEY‑BROWN: Well, you\'re looking at

student progress, year to year student gains.

MR. PASTERNACK: Okay.

MS. WOOLEY‑BROWN: And that\'s an

individual kind of thing. What is in the Florida

charter school law is looking at the comparability of

that school and their targeted group with another

comparable group in the school district. And we did

an analysis for the Department of Education on seven

schools. And the charter schools\' students did as

well in their second or third year as a similar

population of students in school districts. In many

cases they did better.

MR. PASTERNACK: And would those data be

available to share with the Commission as well?

MS. WOOLEY‑BROWN: Yes, sir.

MR. PASTERNACK: Thank you, ma\'am. And a

couple of other quick questions. What\'s the

principle difference between the free and appropriate

public education which is provided in the charter

school and the free and appropriate public education

which is provided to kids with disabilities in the

public schools?

MS. WOOLEY‑BROWN: The choice that parents

are making going into the charter school and ‑‑

MR. PASTERNACK: How about from an

instructional point of view, just to help the

Commission understand it from a policy perspective.

What\'s different about the charter school than the

environment in which kids with disabilities who don\'t

go to charter schools experience?

MS. WOOLEY‑BROWN: The school size is

different. The average size of a charter school in

Florida used to be around 100, 150. Now we\'ve had

some larger schools open up that have skewed that

number. But the school is smaller. It\'s more

individualized. It\'s easier to see the child\'s needs

being met within a small school than it is a school

that has 2,000 students. The child is part of a

smaller group. The group is together so children

move from grade to grade with each other. So a child

with a significant disability, even if they\'re in a

charter school that doesn\'t target children with

disability have a support group year to year.

MR. PASTERNACK: So the mobility would be

less for kids with disabilities in charter schools

compared to kids with disabilities in public schools?

MS. WOOLEY‑BROWN: We haven\'t looked at

the mobility rate of students coming in and out with

disabilities. We\'ve looked at mobility in charter

schools and there\'s, within the first three months

there\'s a higher mobility rate than in the school

district. But once you get past the first three

months of the school opening and the enrollment

settles out, the mobility rate of the charter school

is less.

MR. PASTERNACK: What percentage of

parents take their kids out of the charter schools

and put their kids back into public schools?

MS. WOOLEY‑BROWN: Again, looking at that

first window, people who choose sometimes keep

choosing other options but it\'s a very small

percentage. I don\'t have that with me.

MR. PASTERNACK: And the quality of

personnel that are in charter schools compared to the

quality of personnel that are in the public school

serving kids with disabilities, what differences do

we see?

MS. WOOLEY‑BROWN: They are certified

and/or qualified. And the charter schools selects

the best quality personnel. In many cases they\'re

equally certified. In other cases they have special

expertise. We have, in one situation, we have a

medical doctor who gives up his lunch hour to teach

health science in our charter school. You find

charter schools using part time instructors than I\'ve

seen in public schools. I\'ve seen more job sharing

in charter schools than I\'ve seen in public schools.

So, I think they\'re looking at the personnel issues

because they are so small, looking at ways of

staffing differently. And sometimes that\'s been to

the child\'s benefit.

MR. PASTERNACK: And finally, Mr.

Chairman, the K 12 schools, you\'ve mentioned the Part

C Program, that some of these charter schools

actually provide services to infants and toddlers?

MS. WOOLEY‑BROWN: Yes, they do.

MR. PASTERNACK: And what about through

the secondary level? Are there K 12 models for

charter ‑‑

MS. WOOLEY‑BROWN: Yes, yes. In fact, we

also have a school that\'s serving adults with

disabilities and their charter school program ends at

age 21. But their, their other program continues

beyond that serving other adults.

MR. PASTERNACK: And the graduation rate

for kids with disabilities from charter schools

compared to the graduation rate from public schools

would be what?

MS. WOOLEY‑BROWN: We have very few

secondary schools. I don\'t know what the graduation

rate is because we have very few and they have been

opened probably less than two years.

MR. PASTERNACK: Thank you very much.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Thomas Fleming and I

think this will be the last one because we\'re running

behind. Go ahead.

MR. FLEMING: Well, Bob actually asked one

of the questions that I had in mind which was dealing

with the reality of certification and this is where I

really welcome the parents, just hearing them today

because of the years that I taught. I think that

that was an area we never really was able to convey

to parents. What the difference between a special ed

teacher and a regular ed teacher. So, that was one

of the questions that I was interested in also. And

you\'re saying that all of the teachers that are

working with children with special needs, whether

they\'re learning able or emotionally impaired or ‑‑

delinquent have certified teachers in those areas to

work in the charter schools with the kids?

MS. WOOLEY‑BROWN: Or they are qualified.

And in the State of Florida, qualified means an

invaluable community resource and expert in their

field. So, some charter schools have people who have

background in mental health working as part of the

team. They also have people who maybe have worked at

a university and they have moved down to work in a

charter school. So they\'re either certified and/or

qualified.

MR. FLEMING: And that kind of information

is always available to the parents?

MS. WOOLEY‑BROWN: Yes. In fact, that\'s

one of the requirements of the charter school law in

Florida is that you have to report the qualifications

of the teachers to the parents. And you have to do

that annually before the parents sign up for the

school and then at the end of each year. And most

charter schools keep vetoes in their, on their front

desk so that parents can review that. And that\'s

something they really do, they\'re very proud of is

the qualifications of their teachers.

MR. FLEMING: And just one question to Dr.

Bird. In your initial descriptions my ears caught

one thing that you said. In parent\'s choice,

parental choice, that public schools, private

schools, charter schools and religious schools,

parents should have the choice of them. And the

religious component just kind of made my eyes go up a

little bit. Is there a difference in Florida or in

North Carolina that you do have a public money going

into religious schools?

MR. BIRD: I\'m not really aware of any.

That\'s really more my focus than the charter schools

because there are religious schools in our district.

But I\'m not aware of any public funds headed in that

direction in North Carolina.

MR. FLEMING: Dr. Brown, is that anywhere

in Florida?

MS. WOOLEY‑BROWN: I think you will hear

about the McKay Scholarship Program and I am aware of

some McKay Scholarships that do go to religious

schools.

MR. FLEMING: Okay, thank you.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: I want to thank our

panel; Diane Emery, Carol Lang, Dr. Cathy Wooley‑

Brown and also Dr. Stephen Bird. Thank you all. And

Alan Coulter has a question of the Chair.

MR. COULTER: Governor, I learned from

Commissioner Bartlett at a previous meeting we

obviously have, I think, questions of Dr. Brown that

weren\'t answered given the data that was available to

us. So, we\'re going to keep the record open until we

get the data on the results piece. So, is that ‑‑

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Yes.

MR. COULTER: Thank you very much.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: And thank you. I;

yes, Cherie?

MS. TAKEMOTO: Does that also include

those of us commissioners who did not have a chance

to ask questions? Can we submit questions to get

answers?

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Yes. And I, you know,

I feel bad about that. We did have about three

commissioners that didn\'t get to ask questions that

were on the list. But in order to try to stay on

schedule, we cut it off. But, yes, if you wish to

submit written questions to the panelists.

And again I want to thank our panel. As

you can see, a tremendous interest among the

commissioners. Thank you very much.

We\'re just going to proceed without a

break right to the next panel, which is, this segment

is entitled, Options for Parental Involvement in

Special Education, Part 2, the Economics of School

Choice Options for Students with Disabilities. And

our presenter is Dr. Caroline M. Hoxby, Department of

Economics at Harvard University and the National

Bureau for Economic Research.

Dr. Hoxby, I\'m pleased to turn the floor

over to you. Thank you for being here.

DR. HOXBY: Well, thank you very much. I

would like to thank the commissioners and the

Commission for inviting me. And I\'m looking forward

to your questions very much. I always think the

question and answer period is the most important

part.

Let me start off by trying to give you a

bit of a summary of what I think my key ideas and

recommendations are with regard to school choice and

disabled students. I\'d say that there are four basic

problems that policy makers or people, experts like

me worry about when it comes to appropriate education

for disabled children.

The first is whether they are getting

appropriate funding. The second is whether the

appropriate funding, even if granted, is actually

going to educate the child and ensuring that his

Individual Education Program, or IEP, is implemented.

The third is recognizing that appropriate funding is

really not enough because disabled children are such,

are so individual that, you know, the appropriate

funding that might work in one district might not

work the same way in another district for a different

child. So, we\'re really concerned to make sure that

the appropriate funding makes its way to an

individual education program that works for the

child. And finally, the public has an interest in

ensuring that the funding is used efficiently and

none of it is wasted.

Now, I think that school choice actually,

although it was initially, I think, feared when

people were thinking about school choice and disabled

children. For someone like me, I think we realized

after our first glance that actually school choice

provided an amazing number of options or instruments

for dealing with these basic problems that have

proved to be very difficult to deal with under

conventional school funding and school control

systems.

And I think the ideas are basically

intuitives. Let me go down the four problems and

then I\'ll talk more about details. The first problem

I said was appropriate funding. And it turns out

that school choice provides us with some means of

learning about whether a child has sufficient funding

attached to him or not. And I will talk about that

in detail in a minute.

The question of whether the appropriate

funding is actually going to implement the child\'s

individual education program; well, here\'s an area

where school choice has an obvious advantage over

conventional financing because in conventional

financing, yes, the federal government and the state

government send money to a local district and they

say that\'s supposed to be spent on the child\'s

individual education program.

But it\'s difficult to ensure that that

always happens. And parents worry about whether

their child is getting all the funding that is, has

been appropriated for him. With school choice it\'s

fairly obvious that that would happen because the

funding is individual and the funding follows the

students. And the ability to make the funding

individual means that we have many more instruments

or opportunities to make sure that the funding system

works well.

I said that recognizing that the child has

appropriate funding is not enough to make sure that

the child has an appropriate program because children

are so individual. Well, in this case school choice

gets to take advantage essentially of the fact that

parents have rather unalloyed motives and want their

children to do well.

Right now parents are rather under

utilized resource in special education. But school

choice makes better use of them. It makes use of the

fact that parents are seeking the best way or will

seek the best way to make use of the funding that\'s

available for their child.

And finally, ensuring that the funding is

used efficiently, well, school choice plans, because

the money follows the child, have a tendency to drive

out or to reduce the enrollment of children in

schools that are not providing schooling efficiently.

So, if you\'re a parent of a disabled child and you

realize, look, my child\'s funding would go a lot

further in the Thomas Jones School than the Bob Smith

school, then you prefer to send your child to the

first school. And that ensures that schools that

aren\'t providing schooling efficiently are not

actually educating children.

So, now let me get into some of my more

detailed presentation. A common opinion is that

school choice programs pose problems for students

with disabilities. In particular, people fear that

disabled students will be unable to effectively

exercise school choice and will therefore be left

behind in schools that provide poor education.

I think this common opinion ignores

evidence that suggests that schools, including public

schools, have responded by improving their

instruction when they face serious competition from

school choice. But more importantly it ignores the

fact that school choice is especially valuable to

disabled children because they benefit

disproportionately from having a good match between

themselves and the school.

We have evidence that the achievement of

disabled children is particular sensitive to their

having a good match with the school. Indeed, parents

of disabled children disproportionately value the

existing opportunities for choice in the public

system. Although choice programs are not prevalent,

as we all know, parents of disabled students are more

likely to take advantage of the choice programs that

do exist than are the parents of non‑disabled

children.

I\'m going to show you a quick slide from,

this is from the; well, I thought it was going to be

‑‑

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: I believe it\'s the one

next to it. There are two switches.

DR. HOXBY: Thank you. Oh, good; okay.

This is from the National Household Education Survey,

which is a very large representative survey of the

United States. And the yellow bars are for disabled

students and the blue bars are for non‑disabled

students. And what we have across the bottom is

different income ranges all the way from very low

income families, less than \$10,000 of income up to

more than \$75,000 of income. And you can see that in

virtually every category parents of disabled children

are more likely to be exercising choice than parents

of non‑disabled children.

And I think this just shows that parents

of disabled children are attempting already to try

and find the best match for their children. Thank

you.

Moreover, parents of disabled students are

more likely to search conscientiously for a school.

And they already gather more information about their

schools than an average parent of a non‑disabled

child. They also interact more with their children\'s

schools more often and through more different

channels.

Here I have another chart just from the

National Household Education Survey. And the parents

are asked whether they interact with their child\'s

school in zero ways, one way, two ways, three ways or

four ways. And they ask about various types of

interaction including meeting with teachers, visiting

your child\'s classroom during school hours, attending

parent meetings and things like that.

And you can that if you look at the

category of parents who don\'t interact with their

school at all, parents of non‑disabled children are

over represented. The blue bar is higher. Where

when you get to parent interaction with their child\'s

school quite a lot, you can see that parents with

disabled children are over‑represented. And that\'s

because they really are more keen on interacting with

their child\'s school and understanding whether the

program is working well for their child.

Parents of disabled children are aware of

the fact that the federal and state government

provide additional funds for the education of their

child. Without choice, however, parents are often

frustrated because they have difficulty determining

whether the extra funds are actually being spent on

their child\'s education. Parents of disabled

children should have the leverage that is

commensurate with the funding associated with their

child. In a well‑designed school choice program,

they would. Parents of disabled children should be

able to take their child\'s funding to the school best

suited to his or her needs. This is important

because even within a narrow category of disability,

different students perform best under different

conditions.

Properly designed funding is really the

key to making school choice an opportunity for

disabled children instead of a risk for disabled

children. So, my goal is going to be to describe a

couple of schemes to you in which disabled children

are able to exercise maximum choice and would not

ever be segregated in schools involuntarily and

schools have incentives to educate disabled children

efficiently.

Everything that I am going to say about

properly designed funding for school choice applies

to either voucher schemes or charter schools schemes.

And what you want to think of is that charter schools

are reimbursed with a fee that resembles a voucher.

Now, I know that for many people the word voucher and

charter school trigger very different reactions. And

I wish to avoid those reactions. So, I\'m simply

going to use the word fee hereafter to refer to

either one, the voucher or the charter school fee

that a student would carry with him when he moved to

a school of choice.

Well, it\'s possible to design a choice

scheme that applies only to disabled students. And

indeed, the Florida McKay Scholarships is one. The

schemes that I have in mind are generally those in

which choices universally offered to students,

disabled and non‑disabled alike. And the only reason

for that is that the more universal a choice scheme

is, the greater are the opportunities for good

schools to flourish and greater are the incentives

for schools to be efficient.

As a first pass, we should consider a

choice scheme in which a disabled student carries a

fee equal to the full per‑pupil funds associated with

him. Does such a scheme make sense? On the one

hand, the idea is sensible because the fee is equal

to the amount his local district was getting to

educate him. It would be hard to justify making him

leave behind the aid that his district was receiving

because he was a student there.

After all, his parents pay the property

taxes that make up local revenues and it was his

presence that attracted state and federal funds.

Sometimes we hear the argument that it is reasonable

for a local district to keep some of the money

associated with a student when he leaves to go to a

choice school because the district\'s cost do not fall

by the full amount of per‑pupil spending when the

student leaves.

This is essentially an argument about

economies of scale. The idea is that losing a margin

student does not reduce cost by the average cost.

Whether this argument makes sense for regular

education students or not is controversial. But it

certainly does not make very much sense for disabled

students.

Disabled students have individualized

education programs which are inherently not very

susceptible to economies of scale. There is no

economic justification for a local district keeping

any of the funds associated with a disabled student

so that the fee could reasonably be set equal to the

total funds associated with a student under a first‑

pass choice scheme.

Now, this first‑pass scheme would allow

disabled students to exercise choice effectively and

would give the schools good incentives as long as the

state and federal aid for each disabled child is

exactly what is needed to implement his individual

education program. So long as the fee is equal to

this average cost of implementing the IEP, the

student should have a wide range of schooling options

available to him. And schools that do particularly

good jobs of educating disabled students will be able

to attract parents who will notice that their fee

goes further there.

Now, unfortunately most school choice

plans that we have in the United States right now do

not have fees that resemble this first‑pass scheme.

Most of them have fees that are not designed right

now to allow disabled students to exercise maximum

choice. Indeed, in the typical school choice scheme

none of the additional public funds associated with a

disabled child follow him when he moves to a school

of choice.

Now, Florida\'s McKay Scholarships are

something of an exception because all of the federal

and state funds associated with a disabled child do

follow him the Florida McKay Scholarship. Let me

just put up another couple of charts to show you some

of the variety that we see now in the United States

in school choice programs.

So, here what I show on this little table

is three of the major voucher programs in the United

States and then two of the largest open enrollment

programs in the United States. Open enrollment means

that a child can choose which school district, which

public school district to attend. The three voucher

programs, these are all publicly funded vouchers are

the Florida\'s McKay Scholarships, the Milwaukee

Voucher Program, of which many of you will have

heard, and Cleveland\'s Voucher Program, which I\'m

sure you have all heard because it\'s in the Supreme

Court right now. And then we have an open enrollment

program in Minnesota and Massachusetts.

And you can see that in most cases

basically state funds do follow students when they

make a school choice. But in most cases, categorical

aid for disabled children does not follow students.

It does in the case of Florida and it does in the

case of Minnesota but not in any of the other cases.

For instance, in Milwaukee or Cleveland, every child

gets exactly the same voucher and disabled children

do not get any more.

Pupil weighted aid is the aid that comes

from the State School Finance Formula because

disabled children have bigger weights in those school

finance formulas than non‑disabled children. And

most cases that aid does not follow the children.

And local funds often do not follow children too.

For instance, in Florida McKay Scholarships, the

local funds do not follow a child.

If we look at charter school programs,

there\'s a bigger base because it really depends on

the state. And let me say before we even look at

these other states that Florida is an example of a

state where the charter schools are directly under

their district or they\'re part of the LEA and that is

why they get all of the funds associated with the

child. So, in Florida\'s case, charter school case,

this would be yes, yes, yes all the way across

because they are part of their local district.

Typically charter schools give up autonomy when they

are part of a local district in return for getting

more of the funding.

You can see that they always get the

state\'s basic funds. But in many cases charter

schools do not get categorical aid associated with

disabled children, they don\'t get pupil weighted aid

and they don\'t always get the local funds. So, one

of the first things that I would like to recommend is

that disabled children who are more expensive to

educate and are certainly not any cheaper to educate

at a choice school than they are necessarily at a

public school, should get all of the funds associated

with them so that at least we are doing what I would

describe as a first pass, reasonable school choice

scheme.

Finally, I\'d like to speak about a more

sophisticated scheme that economists of education are

very interested in when it comes to school choice. I

call this scheme a first pass scheme in which the

child just takes all of the funds currently

associated with him because it can be greatly

improved upon. This is because it is naive to think

that the state and federal government get it exactly

right when they allocate aid to a disabled child.

What we worry about is that some disabled

children would carry fees with them that would

probably be too stingy and other disabled children

would carry fees that would be more generous than

would actually be necessary to implement their IEP.

This would encourage schools to move funds across

students, which is probably not appropriate.

A choice scheme would be much better if

the fees were set by a mechanism that adjusted a

disabled student\'s fee upwards if most of the schools

conclude that his fee is too stingy to implement the

IEP or adjust a student\'s fee downwards if the fee is

too generous in most schools\' opinion.

Well, we might think of appointing a panel

of experts to make such adjustments ex post. It is

really preferable to have a mechanism that

automatically adjusts the fees before we observe that

some disabled students are not able to exercise

choice. In a paper entitled \"Ideal Vouchers,\" which

should really be entitled \"Ideal Fees,\" I describe an

automatic mechanism that imitates the actions of a

market or an auction. Of course there\'s no real

auction that takes place but it just imitates that

action of an auction. And it picks the fees for each

category of disabled students that is market‑

clearing. And by market‑clearing, what I mean is

that it picks the fee that is just equal to what the

average school thinks is necessary to implement the

child\'s individual education program appropriately.

Basically, the mechanism that I described

would require a computer program that would be run at

a State\'s Department of Education and would require

the gathering of some information from public schools

and any private that was participating in a choice

plan. However, the parents would not need to see any

of this. They would only need to choose their

child\'s school based on their understanding of what

is best for their child.

These mechanisms are not onerous to run

and they have already been used in a variety of

circumstances in higher education for assigning

students to dormitories, assigning medical residents

to medical residencies in hospitals and so on. So

they are tried and tested.

To summarize, my recommendation or my key

message is that school choice gives you, the

Commission, great new opportunities and instruments

for solving some of the problems that have plagued

the policy for disabled children for years. And it

gives you many more instruments than you would have

if you only decided to use conventional methods of

regulating and funding special education. And that

is because each student or at least each category of

disabled students can have a fee associated with him

individually and because we can take full advantage

of parents\' willingness to exercise the effort

necessary to achieve good matches for their children.

As a result, you, the Commission, will

have much greater flexibility to solve the unique

problems of disabled students and to make parents a

much effective resource.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Okay, we\'ll start with

the questions. I think Cherie was up, I think, so

Cherie Takemoto.

MS. TAKEMOTO: Thank you. I\'m so glad

that I wasn\'t able to ask the question of the

previous panel because I\'m hopeful that you can help

me understand this. I\'m one of the parent members of

the task force and I want to say, show me the

implementation. And this might also require some

answers from my fellow commissioners who know more

about this than I do. But a child with autism who we

heard children are benefitting from something called

ABA. It\'s not a forever program but it is very, very

expensive and with that intervention there can be

some pay out. So that can be, say, \$40,000 a year as

opposed to another child with autism that goes to my

son\'s school who is on the honor roll and doing very,

very well.

So, are you saying, is it the eligibility

category that you\'re running this on or is it the

level of need?

DR. HOXBY: No, it\'s really that you

really wanted; well, what you really would like to do

is to be able to say, let\'s say we have two children.

They both have autism but they have needs that are

going to, one has needs that can be fulfilled by

\$40,000 only. And another one has needs that could

be fulfilled by almost just maybe ten percent more

than regular education spending.

What you would like to have is those two

fees differ at an individual level. And each child

has the fee that is appropriate for him or her. But

also have the parents have the ability to make

choices about which school is going to most

effectively implement a program that can be funded

with those fees.

MS. TAKEMOTO: Okay, because I was doing a

little polling and I hope, I\'m not going to guarantee

these numbers are right but this is just sort of ball

park. I send my child to Dr. Gorden\'s school and get

the 24 hour ABA care. That can maybe up to 20 to

\$40,000. But, in other words, lots of money. I send

my same child, I keep my child in school system. The

schools are not providing that ABA and let\'s just say

the cost of my child is \$11,000.

I send my same child to Adella Acosta

School in Prince George, Maryland and I have an

automatic allocation of \$3,500. I send that same

child to my school system who gets a federal

allocation of \$650 but is probably paying \$4,000

more. And so I\'m just wondering; and I don\'t know

how I\'m going to get this ABA program that is

reasonably calculated for my child to benefit and

address the causes, address the autism needs or

whether it\'s my child or another child who has, say a

seizure disorder and needs the monitoring to make

sure that there\'s no brain damage caused because no

one knew how to respond to seizures.

I\'m just wondering, how is that going to

affect Adella\'s \$3,500 a year allocation per pupil if

I take my \$40,000 kid and say, now Prince George

County, Maryland, you\'re going to pay this \$40,000

because it does have educational benefit?

DR. HOXBY: Well, I think what you\'re

getting at is the fact that under the current system,

the funding for a disabled child is incredibly

complicated.

MS. TAKEMOTO: Yeah.

DR. HOXBY: Right? It\'s incredibly

complicated and it actually depends on which school

you put your child into. So, it is not the case that

as a parent you can say the individual education

program that my child had was judged to cost, was

judged to cost approximately this much by a typical

school or including choice schools and private

schools in my state and therefore I can now decide

how to make the best use of those funds. I might

want to take it to a private school. I might want to

take it to a charter school. I might think that a

public school district is really the one that\'s

providing the best education for that level of

funding.

But what you don\'t have is this system in

which you have the right as a parent to say,

effectively it\'s not the case that any amount of

money can, there are, you know, there are budgets,

right? So, it\'s not the case that any amount of

money necessarily is going to be allocated to my

child. But at least I should have control of the

amounts of money that is allocated to my child\'s

education.

And furthermore, therefore, if I\'m going

to fight for more funding for my child, it should be

extra funding that I get to fight for that then I

could take to any school that would be able to

provide an appropriate program. So you would not be

trying to both, you would not be worried about if I

take my child to a different school where there might

be more appropriate education I would lose funding.

MS. TAKEMOTO: Or that the school system

itself would be negatively effective.

Mr. Chair, am I entitled to ask my fellow

Commissioners questions related to implementation of

such an idea?

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Yeah. I think what

I\'d like to do is try to get the questions asked of

the panelist first and then, because isn\'t there time

for us to have discussions? So, if you could save

the questioning ‑‑

MS. TAKEMOTO: Okay.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: ‑‑ of other panel

members until that time, I think that may be the best

way to handle it.

MS. TAKEMOTO: Great, thanks.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Okay, David Gordon.

MR. GORDON: One of the; thanks, Chairman.

One of the issues that we talked about previously is

the issue of the very high cost children. And my

question to you is let\'s say a private school can

basically run a program for any amount, any amount of

money. So, how do you get a handle on some kind of

capping to keep the costs from escalating out of

control for the low incident high cost children?

DR. HOXBY: Right. Well, let me back up a

second and say I think, let me say I think we should

not be rejecting the better in search of the perfect.

We are never going to be able to solve the problem

that there are some, a very small number of children

who have extremely high costs associated with them

and that those costs will probably always be

controversial.

They are individual children who cannot be

put into a category in any meaningful way. And there

will be wrangling between different experts,

different schools and parents about exactly how much

funding should go with those children.

I don\'t really think that school choice is

going to help you a great with those children, to be

quite honest. It just doesn\'t solve that problem.

What it could be very helpful with is students who

are disabled in categories of disabilities that are

sufficiently common that schools and experts could

have a reasonable degree of agreement on what is the

level of funding that we now have for these students

and what is a normal level of funding for that

category of students.

Therefore, if you have a student who\'s

totally exceptional, there is no such thing as what

is the state\'s normal level of funding for student

like this type. That just doesn\'t exist as a number.

I think when I said we don\'t want to reject the

better in search of the perfect, the real question is

can a parent with a disabled child whose disability

is not rare, exceptional, unusual, be able to take

the funding that is currently allocated to his

child\'s education, which as a rule is at a minimum

110 percent of regular per‑pupil spending and ranges,

I\'m talking about common categories of disability

ranges up to two and‑a‑half times of regular per‑

pupil spending.

Can you make much better use of those

funds? And the vast majority; although it is the

case that these children are not the most expensive

children to educate, the vast majority of funding for

special education in the United States does go to

children who are in this range. So, I think we don\'t

want to, we don\'t want to ignore this range of

students.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Adela Acosta. Jay

Chambers.

MR. CHAMBERS: Dr. Hoxby, it\'s a pleasure

to welcome a fellow economist to the table. I\'ve got

a couple of questions. First, I guess I\'m struggling

with the data that you presented that suggested that

the parents of disabled children are more involved

than the parents of non‑disabled children. In the

sense that, just by virtue of the nature of the

relationship that parents of disabled children have

with the school, they\'re drawn into involvement. I

mean, when you count the number of times they spend

or the activities with which they get involved in the

school. So, I guess I\'m wondering to what extent

that really doesn\'t present an accurate picture of

their involvement because they\'re kind of drawn into

that system as opposed to the parents of disabled

children.

DR. HOXBY: Well, I think they are.

Perhaps I didn\'t speak well. The point that I was

trying to make was that one of the things that people

worry about with school choice is that you\'ll have

choice available to parents. But the parents won\'t

interact with the schools. They won\'t care. They

won\'t find out what choices are open to them. They

won\'t be bothered to talk to a teacher or someone at

the school about what might be good for their child.

Those types of concerns just do not apply

to most parents of disabled children. They are

already in there interacting. So, I guess the point

I was trying to make was that a set of concerns that

people often raise with school choice programs just

doesn\'t apply very much to this group of parents

because they are so concerned already.

MR. CHAMBERS: I guess I\'d also like to

follow up with questioning that Cherie began a little

while ago. Having just spent about a couple of

million dollars worth of government funds collecting

data about students with disabilities and trying to

figure out the costs, I know how difficult that is.

I also know how difficult it is to figure out the

relationships between the characteristics or the

needs of children and how much, how many dollars are

going to be required to provide appropriate services.

I\'m still struggling. I\'m picturing a

bureaucracy at the state level. I\'m picturing

possibly complex models that I\'ve had an awful lot of

trouble trying to figure out having spent the last

ten years of my life doing research in this area,

figuring out exactly how one arrives in some

objective way to a fee that is associated with the

necessary dollars to provide a child even in the

range you talk about of 110 to, you know, two and‑a‑

half times, 1.1 to two and‑a‑half times the

expenditure of a regular child.

How do you arrive at a number? Can you

elaborate a little bit more on that, please?

DR. HOXBY: Okay. So, I think there are

two ways; I agree with you. It is very difficult to,

if you or I were to try to come up with a definitive

set of estimates of exactly what is the cost of each

child IEP, I think it would be a very hard thing to

do. So, that\'s why I said at a first‑pass, what we

could do is we could say, all right. We don\'t know

whether the current funding schemes are right or

wrong. But what I\'m going to do is I\'m going to take

the State of Ohio\'s School Finance Scheme and I\'m

going to look at an individual child\'s, this is an

easy thing to do, an individual child and say, well,

I know how much is coming to him from local spending.

I know how much is coming to him because of the state

categorical aid. So, he might fit into one or more

of the state\'s categorical aid programs. And I also

know what his pupil weight is in this state school

finance scheme.

So, I can figure out how much extra the

school district is getting from the state through its

school finance scheme because he is present in the

district. And then I\'m going to look at any federal

categorical programs that he fits into and I\'ll take

the funds from those two. I\'ll just add up all of

those pots of money. That may not be the most ideal

way to calculate it but that is the money that is

appropriated to him right now.

And I think at a minimum we can say that

whether or not that\'s the ideal amount, I don\'t think

it probably is the ideal amount in many cases. At a

minimum the parent should be able to have the sort of

leverage that is associated with those funds.

There\'s no doubt about whether those funds exist in

the system because of that child. They do exist.

So, at a minimum, say, as a parent you should at

least have the leverage associated with the funds

that already exist in the system because of your

child.

Now, a more ideal system, as I talked

about, really goes to trying to figure out how much

it does cost to implement an individual education

program. And there, I think, what you have to do is

try and get, you essentially have to try and elicit

that information from the market. Just like it\'s

very difficult if you and I were to; I\'m going to

talk economics before my minute, but if you and I

were to try to figure out what every item should cost

in the grocery store, that would be very tough.

Basically those prices are set by the market.

And I think we need to, again, try and

make use of the information that we would find out if

parents were to try and exercise choice and we would

find that certain categories of disabled students

have lots of access and have lots of success finding

choices open to them. And other categories of

students did not. We would know who needed to have

their fees raised.

So, that\'s essentially, as you move

towards that, you\'re going to get a better system.

MR. CHAMBERS: In response to the

encouragement under IDEA of moving away from systems

that encourage identification, that encourage

placement. And when we start thinking about the

difficulty with even identifying the students in the

groups that you\'re talking about, the high incident

students, I\'m trying to picture how the states that

have moved towards census based funding systems, and

many have where the funding is based on population.

It has nothing to do with the number of special ed

children in a school. They\'ve moved away from

counting kids because of the difficulties of

identifying kids.

The money that\'s available for those kids

right now is going to be whatever is available for

virtually every other kid in the system.

DR. HOXBY: There are a few states, you\'re

right, that have moved towards census based funding.

But still probably 46 states out of the 50 states

have systems in which there\'s either categorical aid

or there are pupil weights that are based on pupil

categories. So, I can\'t say that this is going to

work for every state. But 46 out of 50 is not, is

not peanuts in terms of trying to understand how we

could move towards a better system.

As I say, I don\'t think this is a perfect

system. I\'m simply trying to say we have a system

now. The question is can we improve upon the system

we have now. Not necessarily can we get to an ideal

system.

MR. CHAMBERS: I\'ll stop questioning at

that point but I have to admit my frustration in

figuring out exactly, other than the fact that you

stated full funding. In other words, whatever

dollars this child would have gotten in one system,

that child should have access to that same set of

dollars in another system or in another context. I\'m

still trying to figure out how one determines that

amount. So, I\'ll stop there.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Bryan Hassel.

MR. HASSEL: Let me just pick up where Jay

left off. I think it might be helpful if you could

say a little bit more, a little more elaboration on

how this market like or auction like mechanism would

actually work. I know you were brief in your

comments. They probably told you to be brief. But I

think some elaboration on that would be helpful to us

in understanding what it would look like in a state

or in a district.

DR. HOXBY: Right. Okay, I can tell you,

I can also; one of the reasons I was brief was that

it\'s one of those things that, unfortunately, easier

to describe with equations and things than it is

with, in words. But that being said, this is the

basic way it works. Let\'s say we had a group of

choice schools and they all had the same group of

students applying to them, just to keep it easy. So,

they have maybe 100 students each applying to them.

And there were ten schools. And what you would

basically do was you would ask the schools either to

rank individual students or rank categories of

students. So they might rank a group of students who

have the same types of problem.

And when they were doing that ranking they

would know essentially what funding would be

following the student to their school. Now, if you

thought that the funding that was following a student

was really far too low to be able to implement his

IEP effectively, you would want to put him low in

your ranking just because you would think, well, if

he comes to my school, I will have difficulty

actually fulfilling his IEP and fulfilling the

mandates.

Well, that information comes back up to

the state government or the local government that\'s

implementing this choice scheme. They\'d look at all

these rankings and they say, we notice that let\'s say

a learning disabled children tend to be ranked lower

than some other categories of children. That

suggests that the funding for them is not high

enough. So, we\'re going to raise the funding for

them. And then we\'re going to send, we\'re going to

send these lists back to the schools and we\'re going

to see whether, in fact, the student has now, are

ranked equally with other types of students.

What you\'re really looking for is you\'re

looking for the schools to be telling you or giving

you the information that says, okay, I now think that

the funding is high enough so that when I\'m asked to

implement the individual education program, I do not

feel that I have to find some of the funding from

some place else. I have to take it from some other

students. I have to take it away from some overhead

costs that I was going to otherwise have.

And those sorts of mechanisms are used.

There\'s no real auction done and this is all done

before anyone ever goes to a school. But when these

mechanisms are run, it\'s a good way to try and get

the schools to tell us what it is that they think

it\'s going to cost to implement a child\'s IEP. And

what you come out with is a sort of typical, a

typical cost of implementing a child\'s IEP.

Now, I think that these schemes are

difficult to run in practice. They are used in

relatively closed settings where you have a certain

number of, a relatively small number of students.

And that\'s why I should have presented two types of

schemes. On the one hand, let\'s just take the

funding that\'s associated with the child. Let\'s

figure out what that is. That\'s something that we

can do quickly. On the other hand, let\'s try and

think about how we learn to adjust these fees

appropriately.

And maybe you want to start, maybe you

want to start with one and move towards the other

gradually as you learn that certain groups of

students do not seem to be able to exercise school

choice effectively as others. That would give you

the same signals that says we need to adjust funding

upwards for that category of students.

MR. HASSEL: So, the trigger that would

tell the state, for example, that a student was not

adequately funded, would be low ranking by schools

that the student wanted to go to, which also would

translate, would that translate into the student not

being admitted to the school under this kind of

scheme?

DR. HOXBY: In this scheme, this scheme

would actually, this mechanism would actually operate

before anyone was admitted to any school. But it

would be similar to saying that if the child had

applied to this school, the school would have been

less willing to let him gain access.

Now, if we\'re talking about charter

schools, they have to let the child in. What we\'re

saying is the school would have been unhappy because

they would have felt under funded, not that they

wouldn\'t have admitted him. We\'re trying to get the

school to tell us whether they would have been

unhappy, basically.

MR. HASSEL: One possibility, it would

seem, under such a system would be that the total

spending for special needs children would be higher

than it is today or lower. I really can\'t tell which

way it would go in the abstract. But it\'s possible

that through a kind of process like this, amount of

spending that was deemed necessary would go up or

down. And if it went up, I guess that creates a

fiscal challenge for a state. But you\'re not

suggesting that it would automatically rise or fall.

There would be some mechanism at the state that would

allocate whatever resources were available as well as

they could given what the system was telling them

about costs.

DR. HOXBY: Well, if we think about the

idea of, if we think about the principle at stake, I

think the principle at stake is that children with

special needs should have appropriate education. And

they should be able to exercise the same, they should

be able to have the same educational opportunities as

are open to other children.

If this system were to reveal to us that

more funding were needed so that they did, they were

able to exercise choices effectively, that, I think,

would be the system telling us that we had not

actually been fulfilling the principle before.

So, yes, I think, this is a system that

would say it\'s possible that you could find out that

really more funding is needed because you were not

sufficiently funding some disabled students

previously. You could also find that you might have

been over funding some students. I don\'t claim to

know the direction. But I do think it tells you

what, how well you\'re fulfilling the principle.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Bill Berine.

MR. BERINE: Thank you. Actually Bryan

and Jay asked my questions. So, I just have a

request, Dr. Hoxby. Your paper, Ideal Vouchers, is

that available?

DR. HOXBY: It is available. And one of

the easiest ways to get it is it\'s just on my web

site so it can be downloaded. And, of course, hard

copies can be made available as well.

MR. BERINE: Was that distributed, Troy,

in that last box of stuff?

TROY: ‑‑

MR. BERINE: All right, great. Thank you.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: I think Doug Gill is

next.

MR. GILL: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dr.

Hoxby, I appreciated your testimony today. We would

liked to have had you in Los Angeles at the Finance

Committee discussions because I think you have

brought kind of a different dimension to this, which

I think is very important. And that is the notion of

the calculation of revenues available in special

education as opposed to a focus simply on

expenditures and costs because I do think it\'s very ‑

‑ But I also think, given our experience in the State

of Washington, that you are correct. It is

calculable in terms of what those revenue

availabilities are.

So, kind of a question that I want to ask

you is kind of twofold. One is I think what you\'re

saying is that the implementation of the charter

school mechanism approach whatever is certainly

linked to the establishment of vouchers or as you

prefer to call them, fees. Is that correct?

DR. HOXBY: I think how a charter school,

whether charter schools are actually going to work

for disabled children or not work for disabled

children depends totally on how that fee is

determined because in some; let me just say, in some

states, for instance, in Arizona, a charter school

will get what they call the State\'s Basic Aid. Now,

that amount is inadequate for anything except

possibly a disabled child who has just very, very

slight disabilities. It would be completely

inadequate for any major disability at all.

So, it simply is not the case that a

disabled child could make use of the charter school

choice system effectively. And I think we can\'t

think about a school choice, we can\'t think about

school choice plans and just forget about the

financing. We really have to think about what fee is

a child going to carry with him. It\'s going to make

this plan either work or not work very well for

students.

MR. GILL: Well, I think you are correct

and that is an issue that has to be applied to the

sum total of special education. I mean, it\'s very

difficult to determine excess cost if you don\'t know

what the baseline costs are for educating any student

in that particular system. Then it\'s difficult to

then establish then what is the excess of that let

alone what is 40 percent of that excess cost because

it is highly variable and obviously dependent upon

the availability of revenues.

DR. HOXBY: Right.

MR. GILL: The other question I have for

you, and I\'ll be brief, too, is, and we\'ve heard this

before a couple of times. To your knowledge is there

any data which show, and I think your data actually

show in my estimation an expression of

dissatisfaction with the provision of special

education in public schools across multiple income

level. Is there any data to your knowledge that

establishes a relationship between the availability

of charter schools and the increased performance of

students with disabilities in an educational context?

DR. HOXBY: Well, I think we have very

limited information. Let me tell you what I think we

have. There are two ways we can try and compare the

performance of students in charter schools and in

regular public schools. Charter schools are public

schools so we have to say regular public school. One

is that we can compare how much their performance

improves on an annual basis before they went to the

charter school, so when they were still at the

regular public school and then after they go to the

charter schools. So we can really look before and

after for an individual student. That\'s one way that

we make the comparison.

And then another way that we make the

comparison is to look at students who go to the

charter schools who have disabilities and students

who remain behind in the regular public schools who

also have disabilities. And the best way to do that

is to find students whose parents wanted them to go

to the charter school but who could not get in

because they were put through a lottery and they were

put on a waiting list.

And that way what you get is equally

motivated parents in both groups. There\'s always the

concern that the type of parent who sends their child

to a charter school or the type of parent who makes

use of a voucher may be a more motivated parent than

a parent who does not. So, making these comparisons

is not, is not a perfect science. But those are the

two things we try to do.

Let me tell you about what I know about

the evidence on both of those. And I will say that I

think it\'s difficult for, I would think it would be

difficult for the Commission to get a lot of publicly

available evidence on this in part because I know, as

one of the people who\'s conducting one of these

studies, that although we can now talk about the

results of some of these studies, the confidentiality

agreements that we signed at the beginning means that

we cannot release a lot of the micro data for another

few years.

When you compare students to themselves

when they were at the regular public schools, what we

tend to see is that students with disabilities who

attend charter schools are doing slightly better in

the charter schools after about two years. But the

differences are statistically significant. Students

with profound disabilities tend not to be in these

programs at all because of the low level of funding

in many states for students with disabilities who

attend charter schools. They just don\'t participate.

So, we\'re not going to learn about whether

they would have done better as well. What we\'re

learning about usually is quite common categories of

learning disability.

Approximately the same thing is true when

we compare students who are in the regular public

schools who did not get to attend because they didn\'t

win the lottery. And students who did go to the

charter school, we see that after about two years,

the disabled students who are attending the charter

schools are doing significantly better.

Now, this is interesting because what

we\'ve generally seen is that this isn\'t just disabled

children who have an IEP. But it is children in

general who were coming from the regular public

schools with learning deficits just based on their

achievement test scores who were not doing very well,

who tend to start doing better in the charter

schools. And that the charter schools are actually

not as good for students who were doing really,

really well in the regular public schools I think, in

part, because charter schools are too small to offer

lots of extra bells and whistles.

We also have seen that some children with

more profound disabilities go to charter schools and

return to the regular public schools. And that

appears to be because the charter schools just do not

have the financing or the funding to be able to

implement their IEP\'s effectively.

So, that\'s the evidence that we know. I

can tell you, I can give you the list of people who

are evaluating charter schools at this point. But

there is not a lot of public evidence out there.

MR. GILL: Thank you.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Nancy Grasmick.

MS. GRASMICK: Yes, I\'d like you to help

me resolve this issue of jeopardy. In a state like

Maryland, the federal contribution is very small

compared to the state and local contribution for

students with special needs. The motivation of the

state policy makers, general assembly, governor, et

cetera, to contribute more money to public education

encompasses an interest in providing services for

students with special needs.

This is a state where there\'s absolutely

no interest in charter schools. There\'s no interest

in vouchers. And so going back to something that

Cherie said, we, if this were part of the design of a

federal requirement, would diminish the motivation on

the state and local level for additional

contributions of dollars to these students. So

that\'s a jeopardy I see in a state like Maryland.

DR. HOXBY: Can I rephrase your question ‑

‑

MS. GRASMICK: Yes.

DR. HOXBY: ‑‑ to see whether I got it

right. So, what you\'re concerned about is that if

the federal government tries to say that receipt of

federal funds for special education would be

contingent on the state allowing state and local

funds to follow students to choice schools, that the

state would have less motivation to put money into

special education.

I think that\'s a reasonable concern. I

think it would be probably not advisable to write a

policy in such a way that one attempted to force

states that were not interested. We do always have

to face the fact that states are the major players in

education in the United States. They provide most of

the funds. So we can never ignore the states and

pretend that their interests are not going to be

central.

That being said, one can try and encourage

states that are already implementing charter school

or voucher plans to make sure that those charter

school and voucher plans are also usable and

accessible for children who have special needs. I

think that\'s something you could hope to do. Do I

think you could force a state to have a charter

school plan if it didn\'t want to. I don\'t think

that\'s very realistic.

But I think one could say if you\'re going

to have a charter school plan and you\'re going to

receive federal funds both for charter schools and

for IDEA, then you really need to allow this plan to

be accessible also to children with special needs.

MS. GRASMICK: Thank you.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Dr. Hoxby, in your

paper entitled, Ideal Vouchers, that you said that

maybe it would be more appropriate to talk about

ideal fees, you talked about a market sort of

approach towards this. Are there any models out

there that approximate this?

DR. HOXBY: You said market sort of approach to

do this. Yes, there are. Most of them are not in,

most of them are not in education. So, I hate to

even mention them because they sound so bazaar. If

we\'re talking about something like a pollution

credits or auctions for information technology

spectrum rights, but many of these things are closely

related to one another. In fact, sort of had a

basic, at a basic level, most of the mechanisms like

this that operate in education are in higher

education and they\'re particularly used for trying to

insure that students are well matched to programs at

the post doctorate level.

So, for instance, medical residents are

allocated by a system like this. Interns are,

medical interns are allocated by this system. I

think that interns in many of the other medical

related fields including psychiatry and a variety of

other things like that. But that tends to be where

they\'re most used in education. But these systems

are not unknown because they\'re used in a variety of

other circumstances as well.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Thank you. David

Gordon.

MR. GORDON: I\'ll pass, Chair.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Okay, Katie Wright.

MS. WRIGHT: First of all, I want to

commend you for your presentation and to commend this

Commission\'s staff for bringing forth the best and

brightest such as yourself. I just got goose pimples

about it. And I will be going to Google dot com,

typing in Caroline M. Hoxby to look at all of your

stuff because I know it\'s there on the web.

My question right now is I know that you

have done some work in teacher unionization, the

affect of it on funding. I want to know the affects

on special education. Has it affected special

education funding particularly. And I know that I

can go to the Internet and get some of this.

DR. HOXBY: Has teacher unionization

affected special education funding?

MS. WRIGHT: Yes, I noticed that you had

done some work, some investigation work in the

effective teaching unions on funding.

DR. HOXBY: Are you interested in the

question of whether teacher\'s unions have affective

special education funding or ‑‑

MS. WRIGHT: Yeah, yeah.

DR. HOXBY: Well, teacher\'s unions have,

are, have advocated higher funding in general for

schools and have long been advocates of higher

funding levels and, in fact, do tend to achieve

higher funding levels. When a school district is

unionized funding tends to rise by about ten percent.

Have the unions been advocates for special education

or not I think really depends a bit on the state and

the state\'s formulas.

I guess I would say more or less that

schools, teacher\'s unions are interested in teachers.

And they\'re interested in the well being of their

teachers. And if they perceive, if they think that

their teachers would be better off if there was

additional funding available to their teachers who

are certified a special education teachers, then,

yes. I think some unions have been sponsors.

But that\'s going to be consistent because

in some cases teacher\'s unions have been worried

about special education programs because they

allocate money away from regular classroom teachers

and towards other programs. So, the support of

teacher\'s unions for special education funding I

don\'t think has been consistent. I don\'t know of any

hard evidence on it. I\'d like to be able to say I

know of it but I just don\'t think it exists. We

could get it for you but I don\'t think it exists

right now.

MS. WRIGHT: Thank you.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Doug Huntt.

MR. HUNTT: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Wisdom would say that I shouldn\'t ask question of an

economist. I\'m just from Landgrad University. But

I\'d like to go into this. Commissioner Chambers

brought up an interesting point. I didn\'t have goose

bumps when he talked but I do have this question for

you. And this may be too simplistic but in creating

an artificial baseline for funding so that funding

will follow the student, why couldn\'t you look at

what the optimal costs for disability category would

be and then look at the actual costs of what funding

is now. And then look at those who have successful

outcomes and what their actual costs were and create

a baseline based on that data?

DR. HOXBY: Well, I think you could. And

I actually think we probably want to have an approach

that, that\'s what I would call an expert based

approach. So you would take all the data that we

have out there. We would take data on students\'

success. We would take data on what the funding is

available to them now and then what people have

recommended the optimal funding for this individual

education program be. And you would take all of

these three sorts of data and try and combine it to

come up with a number that you felt to be a

reasonable number that could assure success if the

child were well matched with school and the school

were to use the funds efficiently. It wouldn\'t be

enough if you wanted to waste all the money but it

would be enough under good circumstances.

I think that expert based approach has a

lot of merit. And I think it, especially for

children who are in relatively unusual categories of

disability, that is the only approach that is likely

to have very much merit. I think when you come to

students with relatively common IEP\'s, it\'s probably

best to use a combination of what we\'ve just

described as the expert approach and what we describe

as what schools think they need to implement the IEP.

Schools, if you take a range of schools

and you ask them to all look at the same IEP and say

what would it cost you, that information is important

information for us to get back and try and use as

well. And that\'s essentially what an auction like

mechanism attempts to use. It\'s attempting to use

the information that the schools have.

But I think we want to use information

from all the sources about what fees should follow

students. I think one of the interesting things now

is that we\'re so far away from actually doing that

that almost any direction, as long as we\'re moving in

that direction, we are probably moving in a positive

direction because we are just not even close.

And the school choice programs that we

have right now in general don\'t have any additional

funding following the student. So, that tells us how

far away we really are from something that would be

ideal.

MR. HUNTT: So has anyone incorporated the

expert approach yet in creating a baseline? Is there

any data out there?

DR. HOXBY: There\'s lot of data. In fact,

the data situation has gotten incredibly better for

people like me recently because of the states being

very keen on accountability right now. Many states

are testing all of their students. And although

often students with IEP\'s don\'t count in their

accountability programs, they are testing them often

in one way or another. So, we do have much better

data.

I will say this though, the data that we

don\'t have that\'s very available to people who would

like to help with this exercise is we have very

little information often about the details of a

student\'s IEP. We only know something very vague

about what a student\'s special education category is.

And that just does not help sufficiently with trying

to understand the relationship between cost and

success and disability.

MR. HUNTT: Thank you.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Dr. Hoxby, thank you

for your enlightening presentation and your distinct

answer to our many questions.

We\'re going to take a break right now, I

think, till 11:10. So, it\'s about 10:40 right now.

So, we\'re right on time. I want to thank everybody.

(A break was taken at 10:40 a.m.)

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: We had a long session

this without a break this morning. I want to thank

all of you for your attention through that. I think

we had some excellent presentations. We have a

couple of ad hoc task forces that have met via

conference calls in the last few days. And I want to

ask the chairs of those task forces to report to the

panel or to the Commission members. So, Alan

Coulter, I\'ll turn it over to you. And then the

other one will be Doug Huntt\'s group, okay? So Alan

first.

MR. COULTER: Thank you, Governor. We had

a conference call last week actually to discuss the

ad hoc task force that was approved by the Commission

in Houston. And we provided a title which we\'re

going to share with you as well as we have a bit of a

mission description. The title of this task force is

the OSEP Task Force. It\'s the Commission task force

on OSEP Role and Function. And the members of that

task force currently are Bill Berine, Jack Fletcher,

Katie Wright and myself.

And we have scheduled or we have asked

Commission staff to schedule a hearing in Washington,

D.C. on April the 26th, which is a Friday. And we

hope to have some time over the next two days to

discuss the witness list for that hearing. Todd will

tell you that we\'re a little limited in our

resources, actually probably seriously restricted in

the resources. So we\'re going to be asking for

witnesses; and that\'s part of the reason, I should

say, also for scheduling it in Washington D.C. We\'re

going to be asking witnesses either from the Beltway

area or witnesses to pay their own expenses because

of those restricted resources.

We\'re very much interested in; we studied

carefully the transcript from the Houston meeting and

the comments that were made by Bill Berine and the

comments that were made by Mr. Sontag, Dr. Sontag and

also Brian Hassel and Jack Fletcher. So, we think we

have a very good sense of what we\'re going to look

at. We\'re going to be looking at those areas of OSEP

functions that are not covered in any of the content

of the other hearings.

So, and it\'s, to a certain extent,

scheduling it for April the 26th is advantageous

because almost all of the hearings will have been

conducted, task force hearings will have been

conducted by then. And we anticipate and would

invite any commissioners that are interested to join

us or to give us any questions or recommendations for

witnesses.

Thank you, Governor.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Okay. Any other

members of that ad hoc task force on Special

Education Policy, Role and Function would like to

comment?

MS. WRIGHT: I\'d just like to comment how

helpful ‑‑

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Katie, go ahead.

Please speak into the microphone so we can hear you.

MS. WRIGHT: I would just like to comment

how helpful that teleconference was to me and how

much I know that we need this particular ad hoc

committee to meet. I will not be able to meet on the

26th, but I\'ll get information for my chair. And

this is very, very helpful and much needed.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Thank you, Katie. Any

other comments or questions of Alan or his task

force? We\'ll recognize Doug Huntt to report on the

other ad hoc task force.

MR. HUNTT: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We

don\'t have such a fancy title. We are the task force

on the transition from school to adult life. Maybe

we can work with Alan and try to be a little more

creative.

We also had a task force meeting. It was

a very productive meeting. We had set April 30th to

have a hearing in Washington, D.C. And like the OSEP

Committee, we are limited in our funds available to

outside speakers. But we do have a list of about

eight folks now to come out and present to the

committee. I would encourage the rest of the

Commission, if they have any suggestions for us, to

get those to us right away. And also to encourage

you to come out to the event on the 30th.

The committee is composed of Bob

Pasternack, Bill Berine and Cherie and myself. And

again, it was a very productive meeting and if you

have any additional questions, we\'d be happy to

answer those.

MS. GRASMICK: ‑‑ other than Washington ‑‑

MR. HUNTT: Do we ‑‑

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: I\'m sorry, Nancy, you

need to speak in the microphone.

MS. GRASMICK: Oh, I was asking about a

specific location for that meeting.

MR. JONES: Actually, literally it was

finalized on Friday that we\'re going to do it in

Washington officially. And we started looking about

a week before that for a location but we haven\'t set

a hotel. It will likely be a hotel in the Washington

area.

MR. HUNTT: We additionally agreed, Mr.

Chairman, to ask for public comments specifically

toward transition from school to adult life. So, as

we print this material up or put it on the web site

we\'re going to encourage folks to come out and give

their input as well.

MR. BERINE: If I may, we specifically

asked for, make sure we had consumer input and from

parents, family groups to be representative.

MR. HUNTT: That\'s correct, thank you,

Bill.

MR. JONES: Mr. Huntt, if I could also

point out, just to re‑emphasize that. The public

comment, with both of these meetings in Washington

within a few days of each other, the public comment

period for the transition group is being specifically

limited to individuals who are speaking on the issue

of transitions. That\'s a distinction from all the

other public comment periods. But it\'s consistent

with the policy that was adopted to have public

comment back in January, which is the task forces

have the authority to limit the topic of public

comment to the topic of the task force. And this

task force has chosen to do that.

MR. HUNTT: That\'s correct, thank you.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Any other comments or

suggestions about that task force? Yes, on another

topic, Michael?

MR. RIVAS: Well, it\'s on the task force

but it\'s in general. And I\'m talking about like the

San Diego task force or the New York task force. I

would like to recommend the day after we have the

hearings if we can have the Commissioners who are

able to stay and maybe 8:00 to 10:00 o\'clock in the

morning kind of discuss, you know, a little bit more

of what transpired the day before, ideas and how we

interpreted what we heard, if that can be done.

MR. JONES: I do know as a practical

matter with the New York hearing, it\'s going to be

difficult for some our commissioners who, I know,

some are leaving that night but also we have, I

believe, one commissioner, I believe it\'s Jack

Fletcher, who\'s leaving New York and going to

Nashville, as are all of the staff because of those

hearings being just two days apart.

MR. RIVAS: Okay.

MR. JONES: The San Diego option might be

viable. In San Diego we have, I believe, both of our

Californians. Are you in San Diego? I believe we

have our Californians. So, that may play an issue.

For the rest of us, as a practical matter, difficult

to leave San Diego and return to our homes that

night. So, I know most folks are staying and that

might be viable after the meeting that day. But

we\'ll have to check on the travel schedules of folks

who are coming in and out of those two meetings.

MR. RIVAS: Yeah, I didn\'t realize the New

York and the Nashville task force were so closed.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Jack.

MR. FLETCHER: But I do think it\'s

possible to meet in New York in the morning

afterwards because I suspect some of us will not be

able to get out that night.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: I think the best thing

would be to have people report to Todd what your

schedules look like and see if there\'s enough folks

that it makes sense. I think the suggestion is a

very good one if there\'s enough people that can stay.

I would say also I think there\'s some questions, I

think we have quite an interest in the presentation

from the public this afternoon. And I have

indicated, as we did with the public hearing in Des

Moines that if we\'re not able to cover everybody in

the hour that\'s been allotted that I\'m willing to

stay longer so that others that otherwise wouldn\'t

have been able to make a presentation will have that

opportunity.

And I guess we can leave it optional to

the other commissioners. Some people may have to go

on to the reception or whatever. But I thought we

would just, at least I\'m going to be, make myself

available.

PARTICIPANT: I\'ll stay.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Yeah. So, and I guess

I would leave it up to each of you and as many as

that can stay, I would encourage that because I think

it\'s real important we try to keep this process open.

And we want to make sure that people feel that they

have an opportunity to be heard. And I know that the

time is limited. But I think the turnout here today

is an indication of the interest and I think parental

participation and the involvement of parents in this

process is one of the most important issues. And

that\'s become obvious to me as we\'ve gone through the

process.

So, I just wanted to make that

announcement at this time so that those of you that

weren\'t able to get in that first hour, there will be

an opportunity to present and several of us will be

able to stay.

Now, we have reports from the other two

task forces? Well, actually, Steve Bartlett, do you

want to give a report on task, I think it was

Accountability Task Force that met in Des Moines.

MR. BARTLETT: Yes, sir, I\'d be happy to.

And the other task force members should shine in.

First of all, let me say, Mr. Chair, we have not met.

We have met a couple of times as a task force and

just sort of discuss some of the observations of the

task force members and questions and ideas that we

have. But my report is not designed to make a report

today as to what our conclusions are because we

haven\'t met and reached those conclusions.

But I will offer some preliminary ideas

that I\'ve heard from other task force members and

from, and based on our witnesses. So I quickly say

to other task force members that these are ideas and

the task force will still come back with our

conclusions that we reach as a group.

One is that we, there\'s a good deal of

thought in a positive way towards some type of a high

cost reimbursement system. A lot of the ways this

funding system just simply doesn\'t work is because of

the large degree of cost differences between LD

students or there are a very low incidents of

students. So, we\'re thinking that through some.

The second is is that we have a general

belief that there has to be replacement for the

current sudden death of sanctions which is to take

away the school district\'s money in the event of non‑

performance because that\'s, we\'ve all discussed at

some time. That\'s kind of a non‑started. It\'s that

kind of a punishment that simply doesn\'t work. So,

we\'re thinking in some ways in which the federal

government can provide a high level of technical

assistance and perhaps in the point of directing the

funds in the school district if it just simply falls,

continues to fail on the accountability measure.

We are thinking through accountability

measures in which, as has happened in many states

with the overall of, the general education system, in

which the school is ranked right to the school house

based on their performance, academic performance.

And those rankings, and most states use quentiles but

there are various kind of rankings that you can have.

Those rankings are published annually and are

required to be sort of generally available at the

same general time every year and in a highly visible

form so that this community and the parents can begin

to understand how their school ranks against standard

accountability.

We have talked a good deal about the need

for a unified accountability system between special

and regular ad. Quite frankly, none of us like what

we saw in Houston, and that was one accountability

system for regular ed and then nothing at all for

special ed. So we really do see the need for a, at

least preliminary for a unified system in which

special ed students are in the same assessment model.

We got some good testimony in Des Moines

about the need to have a loop or an annual

satisfaction survey so that every year or on some

periodic basis a school district is required to ask

their parents and others involved in the system for

some kind of feedback on how well they\'re doing and

then compare that to the previous year.

We heard a good deal, as I\'m sure all the

task forces have about the urgent need to reduce

paperwork in the classroom with the IEP\'s, with the

whole, the whole thing. We haven\'t heard anyone tell

us yet on how we would do that as a commission. So,

one of the ideas that\'s floating around is some kind

of a requirement that the secretary bring back to

Congress within some period of time, a paperwork

reduction plan.

On accountability, we really do think that

the model we heard in Houston, particularly for;

well, principally for learning disability side of the

equation of services first and assessment later.

Really makes a lot of sense because in terms of

accountability, the accountability system is directly

into the services and assessment model because you

offer services to see if you can bring reading scores

up. And if you bring them up, well, then that\'s also

the clear accountability.

And then from my perspective and again, I

don\'t know that this is, we haven\'t talked about it

as a task force or reached any kind of conclusion,

but I\'ll just share as one Chair. My conclusion from

this morning so far, from all that we\'ve heard at the

three different hearings I\'ve been in attendance is

that parental choice is the ultimate accountability

system. And I\'m increasingly convinced that at the

end of the day we need to have some kind of a system

where the money can follow the child and use that as

the basis for our accountability model. If we

proposal that likely will be somewhat of a

controversial recommendation. So, I\'m not speaking

for the task force at this point but from my

observation over the last three hearings.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Anybody else who would

like to comment on the accountability task force?

Cherie?

MS. TAKEMOTO: With regards to the reduced

paperwork, it seemed to me that Iowa had some good

models for reducing the paperwork in the IEP that had

to do a little bit with standardization and outcome.

At the same time I\'ve heard not only in Houston from

teachers but also from parents and others that a lot

of that paperwork has to do with lack of automated

format. That if there was an automated format it

would be much easier to put through. So, that\'s a

piece of what I\'ve heard so far on that.

The other thing that I was surprised about

is that the assessment instruments used for student

accountability, particularly the NAP, is that what

it\'s called?

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: NAEP.

MS. TAKEMOTO: NAEP? Are not necessarily

‑‑

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: National Assessment of

Education Progress, NAEP.

MS. TAKEMOTO: ‑‑ are not accessible for

all students. And it bothers me that we are testing

our students nationally with a tool that doesn\'t

allow for many of the standard accommodations that

students with disabilities commonly use, nor is it

norm for all students. So, I guess that\'s a surprise

and a concern and also a frustration that I also

heard that. And there\'s no, they are not held by the

same standard because of, something about ADA and

federal accountability. Can someone explain that to

me again so I, so we have that information?

MR. JONES: Well, again, the NAEP is not,

because it is a federally operated program, and again

I\'m going back to my understanding of it, the

obligations for providing accommodations in its

operation do not have to comply with another

mechanism that is operated from within the federal

government. In other words, Congress has constructed

an ADA in a way and NAEP in such a way that the

structure of NAEP is not driven by how ADA is

enforced by any enforcement agency.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: The Congress basically

exempted the federal government from ADA.

MR. JONES: Well, with some exceptions but

I think that\'s one of the, you know, one of the

concerns.

MS. TAKEMOTO: But it seems to me that if

IDEA money is going out that that one piece that we

could consider is that no IDEA money will be spent on

any kind of testing that is not acceptable. Now,

that\'s, it\'s just wild to me and surprising and

disappointing and frustrating that a national

accountability system is not accessible to all

students. And I don\'t, I don\'t think that\'s what

Congress intended. You were part of that, Mr.

Bartlett.

MR. BARTLETT: But I\'m daily surprised by

the implementation of ADA. So, the federal

government is not exempt from ADA but ‑‑

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: I guess the Congress

itself is exempt ‑‑

MR. BARTLETT: No, no. The Congress tried

mightily to exempt itself from ADA but the Congress

is specifically included in ADA.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Okay, well, thank you

for correcting me.

MR. BARTLETT: Page 719 in the bill.

MS. TAKEMOTO: So, I would like to see ‑‑

MR. BARTLETT: They didn\'t like it, Mr.

Chairman, but ‑‑

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: It\'s nice to know

somebody that really does know.

MS. TAKEMOTO: So, I would like to see

recommendations also dealing with accessibility for

the assessments, accessibility for assessments should

be ground zero in there.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Okay, other comments?

We have two more task forces. Doug Gill, do you want

to report on your task force?

MR. GILL: Well, I\'ll certainly say the

same thing that Commissioner Bartlett said and that\'s

anyone who\'s a member of the task force that was

there and feels like they would like to chime in,

please feel free to do so. As everyone knows finance

certainly is a thread that runs through all of the

hearings and all of the information that we\'ve heard

so far.

We did specifically dedicate the 21st of

March in Los Angeles on this particular topic. And

we had certainly, as we\'ve had in all of our

meetings, I think some very informative panels. One

of the things that I do think is that Dr. Hoxby this

morning certainly would have enhanced the

conversation in Los Angeles to some extent.

There seems to me to be probably about

three issues associated with finance and cost that

keep coming up. And we have not had the opportunity

to debrief after our task force either. But I think

this notion of high cost reimbursement is certainly

an issue that we heard in Los Angeles. The notion of

being able to clarify what, in fact, is excess cost

and establish a baseline for cost determination in

special ed is clearly an issue.

Another issue is around the use of federal

funds, how states, districts might choose to use

those monies. I think those are probably three areas

which some of the recommendations might center on.

We have tried to establish at least through some

testimony in Los Angeles at least some filters for

recommendations that come through regarding finance.

And I would say first of all that finance

is a very complex issue and is variable as there are

states and districts in this nation. But I think

what we decided to use or at least thought about and

introduced into testimony is kind of a three part

test for the recommendations is that first of all,

any recommendation be definable. Secondly that the

recommendations be defensible and third of all that

those recommendations be equitable so that those who

are spending more, not penalize those who are

spending less or not some how rewarded by some sort

of change to the allocation system or whatever we\'re

able to come up with.

So, I think the recommendations that might

flow out finance are sort of influx at this point in

time. They\'re starting to emerge. They haven\'t yet

crystallized, I guess would be the best way for me to

describe that. But I think the themes of use of

funds, high cost reimbursement systems, models, et

cetera, and clarification of what is excess cost and

subsequently what would that 40 percent of that

number be seemed to be thematic, at least in what we

heard in Los Angeles.

If any of the other task force members

would like to comment ‑‑

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Any of the other task

force members like to comment? Jay?

MR. CHAMBERS: The only question I have is

whether we are going to have time besides just those

fleeting phone calls to sit down and really kind of ‑

‑

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Try to pull this

together?

MR. CHAMBERS: ‑‑ hash through these

things out. A one hour phone call is nice but it\'s,

I don\'t think it\'s going to be satisfactory to really

come to some conclusions.

MR. JONES: Maybe it would be worth going

over a little bit about the process from here as we

go forward. Over the course of late April and early

May, the task forces are going to have a series of

phone calls that\'s staff, over the next couple of

weeks, are going to start scheduling with regularity.

And you\'ll be talking on the phone, frankly, more

than you can imagine. Just please understand that

staff have to be on all of those calls and our

torture is just an expediential level beyond that for

at least our ears where the head piece goes on. Not

the content is torture. It\'s the physical implements

of communication.

And the purpose of that will be to work

around, to work around the content of what the task

force recommendations to the broader committee are.

Once those are brought to the floor, committee, the

whole committee will have a chance to look at the

recommendation of the task force. And those are the

pieces that are going to be made public for further

public debate. Those will be the recommendations

that are put forth to the Commission because the

process of task forces under the Sunshine Laws is

that you must report to the Commission. Those

reports are public.

The form of our reports as a Commission

will be, or as task forces will be the content, the

meat in those reports. And then that will be the

course of our conversations in May and if necessary,

in June.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: So that everybody

understands, what you\'re saying is there will be a

series of teleconferences for the different task

forces in late April and early May. Is that right?

Is that the time schedule on that?

MR. JONES: Yes, it is. And then through

May. And then the meeting in May is where things are

brought together for further discussions. And if

discussions need to be beyond that, that\'s what

occurs in June.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: SO, at that meeting in

May, we will have written recommendations from the

task forces that will be presented to the full

Commission?

MR. JONES: You\'ll actually have them

before that meeting, before that meeting for your

discussion.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Anybody else have any

questions because I think this is kind of really

critical. We\'re at the point of now trying to pull

this together. And I think, at least I have a little

bit of concern, you know, it\'s a lot of material to

try to bring together and to try to have

recommendations from the task forces that are a true

consensus of the members of those task forces. So,

is there any further discussions? Cherie Takemoto?

Or Jay, you still had the floor?

MR. CHAMBERS: I hope so. I lost it once

earlier this morning.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: I\'ll try not to let

that happen again.

MR. CHAMBERS: Thank you. I think the

thing I\'m concerned about, I know the phone calls,

we\'ve got to do something to try to use money

effectively. And phone calls can be very helpful but

it\'s tough to brainstorm, in my view, on the phone.

It\'s a lot easier if you can see people, we can react

to the body language and all the other nuisances.

And the silence that sometimes can occur on a phone

call.

And I really do feel like before some of

this, these recommendations become written, I almost

feel like I would like to have those brainstorming

sessions where we could spend, you know, two to four

hours with our fellow task force members and kind of

hash out some things and think about some issues and

help you formulate what will be your written

recommendations.

And then following that have us be able to

review it and come back and say, did this really

reflect our sessions. I know you\'re trying to do

that with the phone calls but I\'m not convinced that

the phone calls will permit us to accomplish that.

MR. JONES: Well, I will make a comment.

These won\'t be staff recommendations. These will be

driven by the written and oral recommendations of the

members of the task forces as the first drafts are

created. But as a practical matter, we have the time

frame and budget the President\'s given us. And we

are stretching it. We have trimmed in one area

that\'s allowing us to have the task force meetings in

Washington that we\'re having. But frankly, we\'re

running at, close to or if not a little above budget.

And travel is our single largest expense.

And aside from the expense side has also

been the logistic side. Getting people to commit

time to come to the meeting has been very difficult.

And while we have some folks who have been able to

commit, we, you know, we right now have three

commissioners who weren\'t able to attend this

meeting. And we\'ve had a number had to miss their

task force meetings. Not many but a couple. And

it\'s been related to the other commitments involved.

And it\'s frankly been difficult to get those

commitments. So both budget and time commitment

issues have strain this.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Other questions or

comments about this? Yes, Steve.

MR. BARTLETT: Perhaps Todd could give us

some time today or this evening or in the morning,

maybe a preliminary draft of when you\'d expect the

task forces to meet.

MR. JONES: Actually ‑‑

MR. BARTLETT: There are only 45 days left

between now and May 31st so you don\'t have many dates

to choose from.

MR. JONES: No, actually I can\'t do that

and it was partly because we had to wait until

literally the ad hoc task force conference calls were

at 4:00 o\'clock and 5:00 o\'clock or 3:30 and 5:00

last Friday. And until we had those in the bag and

when those meetings would occur, we couldn\'t from

there schedule. So when I say to my staff about

scheduling, we\'re going to talk on Thursday and

Friday about that schedule and hopeful have a draft

schedule out this week.

But as a logistical matter, it\'s simply

not been possible prior to yesterday. We spent

yesterday the same place you did or all of you did,

which was up in the air.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Doug Huntt.

MR. HUNTT: Mr. Chairman, what is the May

agenda then taking into account Commissioner

Chamber\'s concern? Isn\'t that something where we

could brainstorm in person based on the

recommendations and tweak those according to issues?

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Yes, I think his

concern is they will be in writing by that time and

they will be public. And I think, I don\'t know.

Jay, is your concern is that you would like this

brainstorming occur before these recommendations

become public from the task force coming to the

Commission. I think that\'s what your concern is.

You\'d like to see the Commission members to be able

to have more face to face refinements maybe, working

on their recommendations.

I suspect that our meeting in May, the

full Commission, by that time we\'re going to have

prior to that meeting the written recommendations

from the task forces which we\'ll have a chance to

review and then come in with our ideas to try to see

if we can build a consensus along the lines of the

recommendations from the task forces, what changes or

adjustments we feel need to be made. And that will

determine whether there needs to be another, which I

suspect there probably will be.

MR. HUNTT: Mr. Chairman, why couldn\'t the

task forces meet in the morning of the May meeting,

tweak their recommendations before bringing it to the

floor with the whole Commission?

MR. JONES: I would recommend against that

logistically for two reasons. One is any content

revisions that need to occur have to be put forth.

And second is to have, and we\'ve had, I won\'t point

to the members here but they all know who they are,

people who have told me I want to make sure the

public can comment on these recommendations. And

part of the reason that we\'re going to press to have

task force recommendations existent by mid May is to

allow them to be out for public consumption and

review and allow public written comments to then be

fed back to the Commission.

It will be a very compressed time frame.

There\'s no doubt about it. But this Commission has

been given by the President five and‑a‑half months to

do its work. And this Commission is interested in

hearing from the public and being out in the field

and having these meetings. When you make those

certain assumptions about the nature of the process,

that leads to certain other assumptions about the

time involved.

The month of June exists. We have a

meeting scheduled on your calendars for the second

Thursday and Friday in June, which is two weeks after

we meet at the end of May. I will also tell you, and

this will go out for broader public assumption later

this week, again we can get on the Internet, but I

would ask you and I\'ll ask you now to block the last

Thursday and Friday of June for your schedules as

well.

If that occurs, if you believe you need to

meet, logistically this is what you need. I say that

because the logistics of that happening as a

practical matter are driven by what you want to do in

terms of time. And if you all decide you need more

time, that\'s where it has to come.

So, I appreciate your thought, Doug, but

that was part of what was driving it was (a) public

comment and (b) just the physical logistics of re‑

writing things. Merely a task force saying, I don\'t

think we should say x, we should say y. And it\'s

much easier to scrap things and we\'ll be able to do

that quickly. But if you want newly created

concepts, the physical writing of that will take some

time.

MS. TAKEMOTO: What did you say about

June? I didn\'t get those dates.

MR. JONES: And again, I would simply ask

that you block them in case you ‑‑

MS. TAKEMOTO: What are those dates

though?

MR. JONES: ‑‑ decide it\'s necessary.

MS. TAKEMOTO: What are those dates?

MR. JONES: Let me back it out. It is the

27th and 28th of June.

MS. TAKEMOTO: Thank you.

MR. JONES: Thursday and Friday.

MR. BARTLETT: Did you say something about

the second ‑‑

MR. JONES: I\'m sorry ‑‑

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Yes, you said

something about earlier in June.

MR. JONES: That\'s correct. One of the

original block days we sent you are the two, Thursday

and Friday two weeks before that. So, to back that

out, that would be the 13th and 14th. When we did

our original schedule back in January we asked you to

block those days as the potential fifth meeting of

the Commission. And that should be on your schedule

now.

MS. TAKEMOTO: Are you saying the second,

I have the second Thursday and Friday in June and

also the last Thursday and Friday in June?

MR. JONES: I would like to ask you to add

that, yes.

MS. TAKEMOTO: Okay.

MR. JONES: Again, this is to provide you

with more flexibility if you choose to have the

meeting then. If you don\'t, and I will tell you, I

will greatly encourage you to wrap up by that

meeting, to give us two weeks to actually put this

into print and do all those things. But ‑‑

MR. CHAMBERS: To wrap up by which

meeting?

MR. JONES: The second meeting. The ‑‑

MR. CHAMBERS: 13, 14th?

MR. JONES: ‑‑ 13th, 14th because

otherwise we will have about 72 hours to meet our

statutory deadline from when you adjourn on Friday

the 27th. But that\'s a matter for your wisdom to

decide.

MR. CHAMBERS: Another option would be to

move your few days up in June to the first part of

that week which would give you a little bit more time

to ‑‑

MR. JONES: If you all would like to do

that, that\'s an option as well.

MR. CHAMBERS: Well ‑‑

MR. JONES: I\'m sorry, we can\'t meet

actually the previous week in May because that\'s,

Memorial Day is earlier in the week of the 30th. And

as a logistical matter your schedules, I know,

prohibited meeting the Thursday and Friday before

Memorial Day.

MS. TAKEMOTO: What I\'m trying to tell Jay

is that we would be meeting the last week in May, the

first week in June. Is that ‑‑

MR. CHAMBERS: The second week.

MR. JONES: The second week in June. It\'s

the 13th and 14th of June.

MS. TAKEMOTO: Okay.

MS. WRIGHT: Will we still be meeting in

May, May the ‑‑

MR. JONES: Yes, 30th and 31st.

MS. WRIGHT: Okay.

MS. TAKEMOTO: I\'m sorry, Jay, can you

clarify what it is that you\'re scheduling?

MR. CHAMBERS: Well, I guess I\'m just

concerned personally because I know for a fact right

now I cannot make the last two, the last two days in

June. And I\'ve participated this far in this process

and miss kind of the concluding meeting.

MR. JONES: One thing we can do is, and we

can do this by staff scheduling, to look, compare our

calendars. But I know, for example, if we move to

the beginning of that week, Commissioner Grasmick has

her State Board meeting at the beginning of that

week. And again, that\'s, I know there will be

conflicts if you do that. But I will tell you the

statutory deadline or the executive order deadline is

firm. It\'s July 1. I know we\'re not going to get an

extension on that. Well, maybe this give greater

incentive for the Commission to come to a consensus

on the 13th and 14th.

MR. CHAMBERS: Sounds like a fun weekend

for the last week in June for you.

MR. JONES: I\'m looking forward to it.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: So, what you\'re saying

it is potential to have two meetings in June.

MR. JONES: That is correct. There\'s the

one that\'s currently on your calendar and the one

which Commissioner Chambers just mentioned that he

would not be available for. But I ask you for that

schedule if, again, in your wisdom you decide it\'s

necessary to have that further meeting in June.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Any other questions

or; yes, Cherie Takemoto.

MS. TAKEMOTO: I guess this is a general

concern of mine that, and this is eluding back to my

previous comment earlier this morning, is that I know

that members of the Commission were selected because

of their knowledge expertise in different areas. And

I just don\'t feel we\'ve had a sufficient opportunity

for those members who have that expertise to share

with us their expertise. We\'ve

listened to expert witnesses but we haven\'t really

had a chance to talk about, to more than listen to

testimony. At this point, maybe you know more than I

do about how this is all going to work. But it seems

to me that all we\'ve had an opportunity to do is to

ask experts to provide input to our report. But we

haven\'t really operated as a commission of people who

were selected based on their separate expertise who

together may have knowledge and ideas that fill some

of the gaps that remain for me.

I was kind of jotting down some of the

questions that I have and I think Doug added some

other things to that. If we are going to be making

meaningful recommendations, I mean, anyone can say

more parental input, less paperwork. But that\'s not,

that hasn\'t gotten us any further than the executive

border. That hasn\'t gotten us any further when we

talk about general recommendations.

So, when we talk about specific

recommendations, in order to hear, I\'ve heard some

excellent ideas about student choice, meaningful

financial portability. At the same time I want to

make sure that what ever we\'re doing is not going to

be negatively affecting public schools for children,

you know, I don\'t know. Are children going to be

left behind if we take that money? I don\'t have the

answer to that.

We talked about IQ tests and alternatives.

But I\'m not sure what the repercussions are from the

practitioners that are on our task force about what

that means.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: I think we had some

really good discussion about that in Houston. And

several of the Commissioners, I think, did speak up

on that IQ question. My sense is there is a

developing consensus in that area with some of the

expertise that we have on the Commission that it

probably doesn\'t make sense because there isn\'t,

there\'s significant amount of resources being spent

on the IQ test and it isn\'t really having the kind of

effect that it was intended to.

MS. TAKEMOTO: But when we went to go take

a vote, do we have consensus here? Do we have a

vote? I heard or I saw people start to back away

form the table. And again, it\'s an issue that I

don\'t know necessarily what the answer is but I also

don\'t know why there were commissioners that seemed

to be backing away from the table at that point and

say, wait, wait, wait. That\'s not what we\'re doing

right now. So, I guess ‑‑

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: I think it was

premature to try to come to a conclusion at that time

very early in the process. But my sense is there is

at least a developing consensus about some change.

And that may be one of the more controversial areas.

But, so I guess I will disagree a little bit with

your; I think the Commission members, especially in

Houston, there was a significant interaction on that

subject and on some others. And I think there will

be more opportunity for that, obviously, in May and

June when we get together and over the next, the rest

of today and tomorrow.

MS. TAKEMOTO: So, I guess what I\'m asking

for is that opportunity to discuss with me fellow

commissioners what that backing away from the table

was because, again, it sounds good to me but I don\'t,

I don\'t have enough information there. That\'s one

issue, just how do we operate as a commission of a

bunch of folks who are committed to excellence in

education for kids with disabilities.

My other question is the public input part

of it that I will go on record as being someone that

I am very much concerned about making sure that

there\'s public input. What I mean by public input

though is not, here, we\'re going to flash these

recommendations up to you but not give you time to,

again, consider these carefully and respond. But

meaningful public input that the public has had a

chance to look at this, digest it and give us

comments as, well, that was a great idea but you

forgot to think about this.

MR. JONES: Well, if I could answer those

two comments in reverse order. On the later one, the

practical matter is the President designed this

process. This is to be a process that ends by July 1

and starts on, and when the July 1 date was selected

it was with the knowledge that we would have our

first meeting on January 15th, although it was

announced shortly thereafter. That was because the

process had to go forward.

By selecting that date, there are a whole

host of implications of doing so. Among those is

that this is a process that will involve the ability

to put this out before the interested public. And

the interested public will have time to respond. But

that time for response, quite frankly, the time that

it takes you all to develop it, will be limited. And

it\'s limited, by limiting it in that nature it\'s

going to limit it to those who are most interested.

And those who have their resources marshalled to

quickly review, consider, analyze and then respond to

the process.

The President decided to be a five and‑a‑

half month process. And one of the things we have to

defer to is his charge to us on that side. And how

that affects the process is, again, the President\'s

discretion.

On the issue of interaction, that\'s partly

addressed by my first answer and that is it\'s a time

limited process. But the interaction among

Commission members; I\'ve actually looked back at

other commissions that have met and frankly the

amount of time you\'re having together on a formal and

informal basis rivals what many other commissions

have when they have a much longer time together.

Every member of this Commission is going

to be together. When you combine a day in Los

Angeles, three in Houston, two days for hearings and

another two days in Washington plus some optional

interaction beyond that and informal interaction,

eight days. It also includes the dinners, the

breakfasts. It\'s the time that we get public input

from folks in the field. It\'s actually a lot of time

to have that informal input.

And I want to make sure I\'m getting at

your concern about the ability to have a more formal

system of feedback where we have a public basis can

have that. There is some element of that but I will

be honest, it\'s fairly limited.

MS. TAKEMOTO: It\'s two. One is the

public input. The other is the interaction among

commissioners that we have had, I believe, minimal

time where we, as a Commission, have had a chance to

interact. And that I, as a Commissioner, have had an

opportunity to learn from individual commissioners,

what is it that you know and how does this jive with

what it is you know can work.

MR. JONES: I don\'t want to minimize your

concern about this. But I will tell you from

comparing it to other commissions, we can look back

at things like the Nation at Risk Commission. They

actually had more time and they had bigger meetings.

But they also met for a year and‑a‑half. And their

charge was to meet for that length of time.

The President has given us five and‑a‑

months to produce recommendations. And there are

many; I won\'t question the President\'s rationale but

I can tick off, for example, one very right reason

the President wanted that is that there is going to

be a reauthorization potentially this year by IDEA.

And it is simply, this Commission becomes far less

relevant if it met for possibly even one more month.

That\'s one consideration.

So, when the issue is minimal time, I\'ll

tell you all it may seem minimal but you actually

have more time than, together than many other

commissions have and the time is fairly robust when

we have it.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Katie Wright.

MS. WRIGHT: Can I help out a little bit

here?

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Yes, sure.

MS. WRIGHT: I can tell you what I have

found helpful. Can you hear me?

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Yes.

MS. WRIGHT: Because I know that the

President has given limited time and we do have to

live within the frame work of the time and of the

budget. And I\'m willing and able to do that.

However, what has helped me is with interacting with

commissioners over the Internet. Al Coulter and I,

he\'s got some good stuff on that Internet, man. It\'s

so good. It\'s so good. This Bill Berine, and I\'ve

got some good stuff on there too. So, if

we can interact with each other via e‑mail, through

the Internet, that\'s going to be very helpful. I

have found that so helpful. I have picked his brain,

this Al Coulter\'s brain off the Internet. So we have

done e‑mail and stuff together. And that is really

helpful because I know we cannot extend the time of

this, we cannot extend the money. We have to work

within the frame work. And I think that going to the

web and the Internet will help us. It has helped me.

And that\'s my comment for that.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Okay. Alan Coulter,

after that build up we\'re going to recognize you.

MR. COULTER: With what little brain I

have left after Katie got through with me, you know,

I am absolutely committed to producing, you know, an

effective product by July the 1st. And I understand

about our time allocation. I think what I\'m hearing

is that while we\'ve allocated a lot of time it\'s

primarily to receive input and not so much as a

commission to talk about it.

And I would really like to encourage the

staff to take a look at the schedule so that prior to

some telephone calls or at least before we meet to

formally look at things that we have some face to

face time. Whether that\'s adding a day, you know,

somewhere in May or something. I think what I\'m

hearing from folks, and I would join in that, is that

we have not had sufficient time among ourselves to

speak to each other not in a public meeting but in

work groups, et cetera.

And I think as task forces we can have

some private meetings that are not a part of the

public record. And I think if we could schedule some

of that, that would allow us to work some things out

so that our level of comfort, I think that\'s what

Cherie\'s talking about, our level of comfort will

increase if we can talk among ourselves at least in

small groups. So, that has to be face to face. It

can\'t be all Internet or all telephone.

MS. WRIGHT: But we do have to work within

the frame work. You know ‑‑

MR. COULTER: We can do that.

MS. WRIGHT: We really have to do that.

And I was putting forth another way that would help.

You know, I don\'t have to look at you, Al. I don\'t

have to look; you\'re good looking, you know, I love

to look at you. But I don\'t have to look at Dr.

Grasmick to pick her brain and to find, to interact

with her is all I\'m saying.

MR. COULTER: I understand that.

MS. WRIGHT: We have to live within this.

MR. COULTER: But Katie, I guess, I

appreciate the fact that you can communicate that

way. I think what I\'m hearing from Cherie and what I

am supporting is the fact that some of the rest of us

want some face to face time. And you can see the

head nods around the room. That to me is absolutely

essentially. And if we have to change the way in

which we\'re going to do some other things, I think we

as a Commission are going to have to direct the staff

to do that.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Jay, and I want to try

to get this ‑‑

MR. CHAMBERS: Go ahead.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: I\'m going to go to Jay

and then I\'ll come to you, Todd.

MR. JONES: Okay, go ahead, Jay.

MR. CHAMBERS: I just wanted to kind of

reiterate what Michael said earlier. I mean, that\'s

exactly the kind of thing, I think, that he was

talking about. Whether it\'s the next morning or that

evening after our discussions in San Diego, to have

that time to kind of not just be debriefed, but kind

of pick each other\'s brains and really understand

where we are on some of the issues that we\'ve been

dealing with. So I think that would be very

important to make sure we have something like that on

the schedule, at least for one task force. I wish we

had more time on the Finance Task Force to debrief

with one another.

MR. JONES: I will gladly look at our

ability to do that and pull the members of the task

forces to see the actual enthusiasm for that. And we

will, as staff, facilitate that as best as you all

are willing to do it. I\'ll go back to how Katie

described it though, and this is towards Alan

comment, one of the limits we have to work here is

budget and time. And as a practical matter the only

solution I see on the table for face to face meetings

is either ad hoc ones where people just happen to be

coming together, and given schedules, that has a

level of difficulty, or the post hoc meetings that

we\'re talking about here.

It could mean, and if this is where you\'re

interested in going, it could mean in New York City

on the night of that meeting, we sit down from 7:00

to 10:00 and have that conversation.

MR. COULTER: Or the following morning

because Jack and I are leaving, I think, at ‑‑

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: And I think that\'s

good when it\'s still fresh in your mind after having

had that meeting because I think that can help in

developing that consensus that you want to bring out

from those task force hearings. If that can be

facilitate, Todd, I think that\'s, my stance is that\'s

what people would like. Michael brought that up and

I think it\'s a good suggestion.

MR. RIVAS: I have a late flight out of

New York also.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Cherie.

MS. TAKEMOTO: For the OSEP Task Force and

the Transition Task Force, and this is really up to

the chairs of those task forces, but would there be

an opportunity to have a meeting that was shorter in

duration where we had the public, the expert

testimony and public comment in a shorter duration of

time but allowed time for the task force to meet as

well as an opportunity for those folks who cannot be

a part of the task force and can actually operate

without looking at faces to be available via

telephone call? Would that help with this process at

all? And again, the chairs of those two committees,

I mean task forces would have to ‑‑

MR. JONES: Actually in both cases I can

offer, we\'re designing those hearings in that manner

right now. Based on the conversations we had had

with the two of you about the nature of those task

forces, they were not going to be as lengthy as the

other task force hearings.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: We\'re about ten

minutes into the lunch time.

MR. JONES: We don\'t need to eat.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: We don\'t need to eat.

Okay. I\'m not sure that has a consensus. Are there

any more comments or what we\'ll do is recess for

lunch. And I think we\'re scheduled to reconvene at

1:30.

MS. WRIGHT: And during lunch there might

be some face to face ‑‑

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: That\'s right. Good

suggestion, Katie. Thank you.

(Whereupon, a lunch break was taken

at 12:10 p.m.)

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Please take your seats

so we can get started with the afternoon session.

May I have your attention? Please to reconvene the

Presidential Commission on Excellence in Special

Education, this afternoon\'s session. We will be,

again, discussing options for Parental Involvement in

Special Education, Part 3; the McKay Scholarship and

School Choice for Students with Disabilities. The

panel will review the origins and the implementation

of the McKay Scholarship Program here in the State of

Florida. And among our panelists this afternoon we

have Diane McCain, Director, Choice Office for the

Florida Department of Education and John Winn,

Assistant Secretary for the Florida Board of

Education.

Yes, Todd made a good suggestion. We want

to ask people to turn off their cell phones. That

could be disruptive. So, please turn off your cell

phones. That will help, I think, facilitate our

meeting and avoid unnecessary interruptions. So,

with that I\'ll turn it over to our panelists for this

afternoon.

MR. WINN: Good afternoon.

AUDIENCE: Good afternoon.

MR. WINN: Thank you. My name is John

Winn. I\'m the Deputy Secretary for the Florida\'s new

Board of Education. With me here today is Diane

McCain, who is the Director of the Department of

Education School Choice Office. On behalf of

Governor Bush, Secretary of Education, Jim Horn and

Education Commissioner Charlie Crist, we welcome you

to Florida.

Chairman Branstad, Commissions members,

Assistant Secretary Pasternack, and Director Jones,

we are pleased to have the opportunity today to share

information on Florida\'s A+ Plan and our school

choice options for families, specifically for parents

of children with disabilities.

Governor Bush has taken a special interest

in the plight of parents of children with

disabilities. The daily struggles to give the best

possible opportunities life has to offer are

sometimes more than many of us can imagine. Juggling

work, regular daily schedules is a full plate for

anyone. The added demands of children with special

needs often make parents more strong, focused on the

promise that a high caliber education can bring.

Governor Bush has reached out to help many

parents who have e‑mailed him with requests to help.

He has become a personal advocate for children with

disabilities and for children who have been left

behind in our rapidly growing student population.

The expansion of options for parent

involvement is a very appropriate topic for this

Commission to address. Parental choice is not a

dirty word in the State of Florida. In fact, it is a

prominent centerpiece in the Governor Bush\'s A+ Plan,

which was passed by the legislature in 1999. The A+

Plan for education placed in motion the setting of

high standards for student achievement, regular

assessment of academic progress towards widely

accepted Sunshine Standards and rigorous

accountability for performance.

This system of accountability includes the

grading of schools which, for the first time, sent

clear and unmistakable messages to parents on how

well their schools are performing. As a result,

we\'ve seen a dramatic improvement in school grades

over the past three years. The improvement has been

most pronounced in our lowest performing or lowest

achieving students. Schools have performed well and

receive financial rewards for doing so.

The A+ Plan is based on a fundamental

principle that students should not be trapped in

failing schools. If a school receives an F for two

years, then parents are allowed to choose to send

their children to a higher performing public school

or a private school of their choice. At the care of

this principle is the respect for parents who want

the best for their education, education for their

children, allowing them to find it elsewhere if

schools cannot provide it.

One thing that we\'ve learned is that there

is not a school whose students are so poor, so behind

that dramatic improvement and high achievement are

not possible. Our schools have responded to this

principle with unprecedented focus on academic

achievement and improvement.

Another, even more daring choice option,

was the creation of the John McKay Scholarship

Program for Students with disabilities in 1999. This

program started very small, as a pilot in one of our

67 school districts, but now includes over 4,700

students with disabilities participating. Diane

McCain will be providing you with details on our

implementation of this program but first I would like

to provide some background.

In Florida we have this history and

commitment to parental involvement in education;

specifically for parents with students disabilities.

Our Department of Education maintains one of the

nation\'s largest lending libraries for parents of

students with disabilities. We distribute many

informational materials developed specifically for

parents of children with disabilities. We believe

that parents are a child\'s first teacher. The

parents have a right to choose where their child will

be educated based on their preferences and the needs

of their children.

School choice options, such as home

education/home school programs, magnet schools,

school district open enrollment programs have been in

existence for some time already. Programs that

include scholarships to private schools provide

parents with an additional option.

Just as when you are not satisfied with

the services of a tutor or a college or a physician

or an attorney, parents of students with disabilities

are allowed to choose another provider. Respect for

parent knowledge and caring for their child has been

the mainstay of IDEA legislation. It has given

parents the right to sign off on individual Education

Plans, changes in placement and instructional goals.

Parents of students with disabilities have

enjoyed this respect that has led, for the most part,

with very fruitful partnerships between parents and

public schools. It is this respect and consideration

that led Florida to give free choice of public or

private education for their children if they feel it

will provide a better education opportunity.

In Florida, we also have a strong history

of partnerships with private schools. School

districts have the option to contract with private

providers for the provision of services to its

students. In fact, in 2000‑2001 local school

district contracts with private schools or community

facilities for programs for students with

disabilities, dropout prevention, juvenile justice

education programs exceeded 40 million dollars. For

young children with disabilities, many states already

exercise this option as an effective method for

providing services in community settings such as

preschools.

I\'m sure that the Commission has already

realized that IDEA and its implementing regulations

for school aged students are not entirely supportive

of the implementation of school choice. While the

Act certainly encourages and strengthens parent

involvement, its structure seems to sometimes pit

school and parents against one another.

The Act is even constructed so that if

there\'s a disagreement between the school and the

parent regarding the child\'s placement, either party

can exercise various complicated legal options to

resolve the disagreement. This is in contrast to the

IDEA\'s provisions in Part C, Programs for Infants and

Toddlers with Disabilities. In that portion of the

Act, the law clearly recognizes that parents are the

child\'s first teacher and that they can make informed

decisions regarding their children\'s services.

We believe that Part B of IDEA should be

revised to clearly recognize that families must have

the power to make education decisions regarding their

child, including school choice settings without

putting in place complicated barriers that may have

the effect of pitting school and district personnel

against parents.

In the same vein, the Act must ensure that

states afford parents of students with disabilities

access to the same choice options as provided to

parents of students without disabilities while

keeping in mind that not every school is equipped to

meet the needs of every child. The Act also needs to

be clearly and closely aligned with no child left

behind where the focus is on student performance and

accountability. All students, including students

with disabilities, must be expected to make adequate

yearly progress. And if not, the parents must have

the right to exercise their choice options.

I want to emphasize this point. If IDEA

is not aligned with HR1, school districts, parents

and parents across the nation will be faced with the

proliferation of federal programs that do not support

one another and do not reinforce similar principles.

Let\'s begin a new era, an era in which principle

prevails over process, choice prevails over control

and partnerships prevail over power struggles.

In closing, I hope you see that Florida\'s

school choice programs are designed to provide

parents, especially parents of children with

disabilities, with expanded options so that they can

provide, so that they can decide where their child

will be educated. We must respect the parents\'

special place in guiding their children toward

opportunity. We should joint with them i n trust to

provide the best possible education, wherever it may

be.

Thank you and I hope you enjoy your stay

in our fine State. With that I would like to

introduce Diane McCain, who will follow up with

specific information on the John McKay Scholarship

Program.

MS. MCCAIN: Good afternoon. Can you hear

me at my microphone?

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Speak right into it.

MS. MCCAIN: Speak right into it? Okay.

Welcome to Florida. I echo Assistant Secretary of

Education, John Winn\'s comments that we are very

pleased to have this opportunity to share information

about parent choice in education and Florida\'s McKay

Programs for Students with Disabilities. On behalf

of the thousands of students being served in both

private and public schools through this program, I

thank you for your attention today.

I was in this very spot before this hotel

was built, I think, about 25 years ago with a

legislative panel. And the topic for that day was

education and public policy and what we were going to

do without our state in the future. Large numbers of

business people had assembled together with

legislators and educators to forecast how we could do

things better for our children knowing that we were

not going to be able to exist as a state just raising

or growing oranges and having a wonderful tourist

haven for people to visit.

Employers coming to our state, the first

thing they were going to ask is what is our education

program and how well are students able to be taught

in our universities and schools. So it is

particularly pleasing for me to be here today. And I

sincerely thank you for focusing on our program. We

are very proud of all of the choice programs that we

have in Florida.

And particularly I wanted to point out, as

you know, that this program is not about us versus

them or public versus private. But it is merely an

option for parents. And we have created in the

Department of Education a Choice Office. I\'m told

that other states are doing similar things. We may

be the first state to do it the way we have done it

where we have brought under one umbrella, so to

speak, the choice programs available to parents. We

are still learning. This has been about a year where

we have assembled all of this together. We have a

lot to learn, a lot to improve upon. But we are

hearing daily from parents about their concerns and

their needs. And every opportunity that we have to

help facilitate their desires and make it possible,

that is our mission in the Choice Office, from the

Governor\'s Office on down, for us to put students

first in the truest sense of the word.

We have some distinct advantages, I think,

in Florida with regard to implementing all of our

choice programs. And that is with regard to our

local school districts. We have been, I think we\'ve

had a great advantage in that the school districts

have supported us and very much gone out of their way

to serve parents knowing that this program may have

come about with or without input from individuals or

from perhaps someone in special ed. And yet many

people in special ed did have input into this

program.

That said, everyone sort of put aside

their personal thought pattern in many ways and just

decided we were going to do the best we could for

parents. And the majority of the students who

participate in this program are choosing the public

school option and I\'ll talk more about some specific

numbers and I\'m sure you probably have some questions

as well.

As John mentioned, vouchers or choice or

services by contract is not new to our state. I

won\'t repeat some of those statistics but we\'ve spent

millions of dollars to educate children. The

difference between what we had done in the past and

what we\'re doing now is that parents are the ones

that are also included in that decision making

process or primarily are the ones that make the

decision with regard to the McKay Program and the

Opportunity Scholarship Program.

For the McKay Program, public schools; who

is eligible are public school students in grades K‑12

with disabilities. The parent of a public school

student with a disability who is dissatisfied with

the student\'s progress may participate. Disabilities

include mentally handicapped, speech and language

impaired, hard of hearing, visually impaired, dual

sensory impaired, physically impaired, emotionally

handicapped, specific learning disabled, hospitalized

or homebound or autistic children.

The program provides, as I mentioned, both

public and private choices. And for the first year,

well, for the real first year we had a pilot program

and just a few students participated. But with the

first year of this program being statewide, we had

nearly had a thousand students participating. And at

that time we had 139 private schools that agreed to

participate in the program and provide services for

these children. For year two, the number that I had

when I left town has grown since this morning. We

have almost 5,000 students that are actually

participating in this program.

And the majority of the students have a

matrix level of 251 to 252. And I can explain more

about that. I am not a special ed expert. You all

are. And we\'ve got them that have come from the

Department with us in the audience today. So, I do

want to make that clear. But I did want you to know

what the majority of the students are and I\'m sure

you\'ll have some questions about other statistics

about the participating students.

We have a toll free parent hot line or an

information line. And the calls have exceeded 30,000

in number. The Department of Education, by statute,

sends notification to all of the parents of children

enrolled in public schools and receiving exceptional

ed services. And sometimes we get it wrong and

sometimes we get it wrong. We do not intentionally

offend anyone by having a wrong address or

misspelling by any means. But the districts have

been very cooperative in working with us and sharing

data with us so that we can do the best we can about

notifying parents of the possibility of this program

and the option they may be interested in for their

children.

Something that happened between year;

actually, the implementation Year 1 and Year 2 was

that the people that were involved in the program,

those actually implementing it, meaning the private

school administrators, teachers, parents, legislative

personnel and district representatives came together

in Tallahassee for us to talk about how we could do

things better. What was working, what was not

working, what was pro‑parent, what was not very user

friendly and how we could relieve some of the

confusion that seemed to abound with a new program

like this that if not told accurately could be

misinterpreted.

And that I think was, in many ways, sort

of a ground breaking event, if you will. We took the

results of that two day meeting and compiled what we

refer to as an action plan. It was submitted to the

legislative staff and, in fact, did become most of

the amendments that were made to the statute. That

did take some steps to make the program, I think,

easier for everyone to participate in and to know

more about the program and ultimately help students.

We also have a non‑public school advisory

council. That\'s another advantage, I think I would

be remiss if I didn\'t talk about and that is that

these are private school administrators. Many of

them are accredited through various bodies but they

serve as a very strong voice when it comes to parents

and students in public education and private

education. We\'ve relied on them both to participate

in this program and to make recommendations.

We also have two very strong parent

advocacy groups. And I don\'t know if Dr. Heffern has

been introduced yet or if he\'s still in the audience.

I don\'t see him. There he is. Dr. Patrick Heffern,

who is the Head of Floridians for School Choice and

affiliated also with Florida Child. These are very

strong, as I said, parent advocacy organizations and

they have worked very hard with the Department and

with the districts to make information, correct

information available to parents.

A number of states, and you may be

representing some of those states today, have been in

touch with us since the beginning of this program

wanting to see how the program is progressing, if in

fact it is progressing. How we are setting about to

implement it, problems that we have experienced and

recommendations that we would make. Among them,

Arkansas, Texas, I believe Pennsylvania has been in

touch with us and I think Arizona. I hope I didn\'t

overlook anybody but usually once a week a get a call

from someone who\'s very interested in hearing about

the program, how it\'s working and what parents are

perceiving or if they believe it is a benefit for

them to have this option.

I have provided in my testimony that was

past out the technical information. And I could read

that to you if you\'d like but I suspect that what you

would really like to do is to ask me some questions

and perhaps pose some questions to John as well. Or

I would be happy to walk you through the process

about how we register private schools.

I will say that in Florida, similar to

other states, we do not regulate or license private

schools. We do have a process by which they indicate

that they\'re willing to participate in the program.

We have, I believe, it\'s five requirements. The

primary requirement is that they be listed with the

Department. And that is a requirement and law

separate from this program that private schools that

operate in the state are to be, quote unquote, listed

with the Department and receive an actual school ID

number.

I don\'t see any change coming down in

terms of our actually licensing private schools. But

I know over the past year, in particular, we have

taken great note on how we can perhaps provide more

aggressive information to parents about what they may

be getting and what they may be possibly giving up

when they leave the public school system and go into

the private sector. Some of it is very good. Some

of it might not be right for that particular child.

So, from a policy perspective we are

taking steps now to be much more aggressive as are

the private schools as well. They do a wonderful

job, I think, in our state of only the best private

schools have opted to participate in this program.

Those that know that they will be able to serve these

students and have a strong desire to do so. That\'s

another reason why, I think, the program has been so

successful is overall parents are very pleased with

what they\'re finding.

In closing, I want to share the words of a

parent participating in this program and

unfortunately she couldn\'t be with us today. But she

happens to live in south Florida and she is one of

the most courageous women I have ever met. And every

day, as I\'m sure you do, I talk with lots of parents

who believe that just to be able to make a choice, to

be able to have an option is perhaps their most

important right when it comes to their child.

Nothing\'s more important to them.

And these are her words. This is not a

fight between our family choosing a public school

versus a private school. It is about my child and

what\'s best for her. I\'m all for inclusive classes,

but it wasn\'t right for my daughter. When a child is

lost in the classroom, that child is losing a year of

learning. Something had to be done. We are grateful

for the McKay Program and the ability to be able to

make a choice.

As her child progresses and gets older, it

is very likely that the child will be returning to

the public school system. And if the services are

available and she believes that that would be right

for her child at that time, I think that this is a

mother that will have both the perspective of the

public and the private special education services

that have been provided to that family. And overall,

we\'re going to do everything we can to see that she

is served and served well.

And with that, I\'d be happy to answer any

questions that you might have or ‑‑

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Thank you, Diane and

John, thank you very much. We have a number of

people requesting to ask questions. Doug Gill is

first.

MR. GILL: Thanks, I didn\'t realize I\'d be

first. So, help me understand exactly what the McKay

Scholarship is. Is that like a risk management

school? Is that a scholarship of funds that people

apply for? I\'m not sure I quite understand the McKay

Scholarship.

MS. MCCAIN: It is funding basically, not

to use a clique, but it is a funding that follows a

child from the FTE money from the public school

system either to another private school, I\'m sorry,

to another public school in that district or

adjoining district or to a private school. And so

essentially money that would be allocated to educate

that child follows that child.

MR. GILL: In other words, money that a

child would generate anyway.

MS. MCCAIN: Yes, sir.

MR. GILL: So I don\'t understand what the

scholarship piece is.

MS. MCCAIN: Well, the word scholarship

is, I believe, something that the legislature put

into the program language as they were writing the

law itself. It\'s a scholarship in terms of money is

following the child and then money is made payable to

the parent. Therefore, in some respect, it\'s tax

payer dollars following the tax payer in a manner in

which they choose to spend those dollars for

education.

MR. GILL: So, would it be better

described as a voucher or a fee as we heard this

morning? I guess I\'m not quite following the

scholarship ‑‑

MS. MCCAIN: Many people do refer to the

program ‑‑

MR. GILL: ‑‑ unless it\'s just a matter of

semantics.

MS. MCCAIN: Many people do refer to the

program as a voucher program. They refer to it as

the McKay Voucher Program. In the law it is written,

though, as McKay Scholarships.

MR. GILL: Okay. And the other question

that I have for you, Assistant Commissioner? Is that

right?

MR. WINN: I\'m sorry, what was your

question?

MR. GILL: Well, I haven\'t gotten to it

yet.

MS. MCCAIN: Wants to know your title.

MR. GILL: I want to make sure I\'m

understanding what you said about the relationship

between Part B and Part C of IDEA and then you made a

comment about no child left behind. I\'m assuming

that you think there are inconsistency between Part B

and Part C in IDEA. And I\'m interested in what

specific recommendations you might have to reconcile

those indiscretions, if you will, between Part B and

Part C in IDEA.

MR. WINN: Well, I think the, I don\'t have

a specific proposal before you. I have been working

with the National Governor\'s Association and Chief

State School Officers to develop some

recommendations. This is one of their top

recommendations in terms of ensuring as you go

through the reauthorization, ensuring that provisions

are very supportive of states like Florida who have,

who have moved away from process oriented

accountability to outcome oriented accountability and

have combined that form of accountability with

parental choice to make sure that the provisions are

friendly to the principles and the policies in the

state and to allow the states to pursue their

accountability system.

Florida\'s accountability system is very

closely aligned with no child left behind. The

accountability system we currently have assessment in

grades three through ten. Currently have

opportunities for choice based on how the schools are

performing against commonly accepted benchmarks for

performance. And we believe that this is a good

principle to follow.

And as you\'re going through both the IDEA

law and the regulations, we would look for

opportunities to encourage states who have policies

like this to ensure that the choice programs in

respect to the federal guidelines and the federal

funds are allowed to make an easy implementation of

those state policies.

MR. GILL: And I\'ll give you an easy yes

or no one. Do you see an IFSP or an Individual

Family Services Plan, which is characteristic of Part

C, being more effective than the individualized

education program Part B, System to Service Delivery?

MR. WINN: Well, insofar as I think that

the playing field is not as level in Part B for

parents in terms of their, what they have to do in

terms of exercising their part of that partnership

should disagreements occur on an evaluation of

whether or not students are making progress. We

receive many, many concerned letters and e‑mails from

parents who essentially feel like they\'re unable to

pursue, to withstand a long drawn out legal battle

and essentially be on a level playing field with

school districts who have the resources to maintain

that sort of legal process that parents wouldn\'t have

the process to maintain. Under a school choice

program option, those that is supported with funds

for that choice, then parents would not have to be in

that position.

MR. GILL: I guess I wasn\'t clear. I\'m

simply asking if IFP is a more effective way to

deliver services than an IEP in your perspective.

MS. MCCAIN: Well, I\'m not a special ed

expert but I do think that overall, yes.

MR. GILL: And your answer is yes as well?

MR. WINN: I\'m not an expert ‑‑

MS. MCCAIN: If he doesn\'t say yes, I\'ll

leave.

MR. GILL: For consistency, I\'ll agree

with what she said, right? Okay, thank you.

MR. WINN: You know, you have us at a

disadvantage because we\'re not experts on the

evaluation of those two systems in terms of, you know

‑‑

MR. GILL: I understand, but you did, as

part of your testimony you mentioned Part C

differences from Part B. And that\'s the reason I was

following up on that.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Cherie Takemoto.

MS. TAKEMOTO: I\'m going to follow up with

some questions that I had from earlier and also some

lunch conversations. Commissioner Grasmick and

Commissioner Acosta over lunch were trying to help me

through what is this money that follows. Is it, now

I hear possibly \$6,800 that comes, that is the per

pupil expense or is it the \$3,500 that comes to the

school system? For purposes of calculating that, are

you taking the, also the money that\'s part of the

administrative, buses, heating schools? That money

also?

MS. MCCAIN: No, it\'s the FTE amount,

which is the Full Time Equivalent, is that right?

For the child; and I believe, well, I know, I don\'t

believe, I know that the average payment amount for

these students, and again the payment amount is based

on the child\'s matrix level, If you all are familiar

with that, I don\'t know if we\'re the only state that

does or not. I\'m not a special ed person.

But there is an amount tied to the matrix

number. And the average payment is \$5,572.57.

MS. TAKEMOTO: What is the range?

MS. MCCAIN: The range can be from

anywhere between, I believe it\'s \$4,800. Is that

right, Shan? And about \$15,000 I think is the

highest.

MS. GOFF: It\'s 19.

MS. TAKEMOTO: But does that, that\'s only

the state and I\'m assuming federal IDEA money, not

the locality\'s money. Is that the way it works?

MS. MCCAIN: Yes.

MS. TAKEMOTO: Okay, that\'s question one.

Question two, and Commissioner Wright, I am not going

to go over two questions here. Question two is the

IDEA accountability issues for private schools, do

students who have McKay Scholarships have IEP\'s?

MS. MCCAIN: Yes, a child, in fact, that\'s

one of the requirements or the provisions for

eligibility is that the child has an IEP and has

attended the public school for the prior year. And

we define prior year as present for the October

survey count and February survey count so that IEP

can be used by the private school in determining what

services they have available and how that child\'s

needs can be met or not. And we discussed at our

lunch about the enormous importance of the

relationship that a parent has with the school

district being the same at a private school where

there is, if not daily, then very active interaction

and communication between the parents and the teacher

and the administrators with regard to that individual

child.

So, the short answer is yes, children do

have an IEP.

MS. TAKEMOTO: And with regard to report

cards, school reports, as Commissioner Bartlett was

talking about, is it the private school that has the

report card for the, I mean, this theoretical report

card or is it ‑‑

MS. MCCAIN: In terms of assessment in the

future do you mean?

MS. TAKEMOTO: ‑‑ is that student part of

the LEA count? Where does that student, were do

those students count? Who\'s looking at overall

accountability?

MS. MCCAIN: They\'re counted in the

district as a child that is participating in the

McKay Program.

MS. TAKEMOTO: Okay.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Adela Acosta.

MS. ACOSTA: Good afternoon. Mr. Winn,

you talked about encouraging the Commission to trust

parents to respect what they want for their children.

And I keep hearing about scholarships and money and

choice. I was here in the \'80\'s during the Mario

Boat Lift. And I was intimately involved with the

Haitian and Latino community. And my question is

simply is there bilingual assessment team that is

part of the choice program? Historically people who

are disenfranchised linguistically or ethically or

politically don\'t come to the table even though they

have special needs children. They\'re not the

greatest advocates because the disparity that they

carry with them.

So, that\'s simply my question. Is there

an aggressive movement? I know that there are more

people in Florida than just the Haitians or the

Latinos. Is there an aggressive ‑‑

MS. MCCAIN: Not within the Choice Office

per se. We do have people on staff that are

bilingual and are familiar with ESOL and a little

familiarity of the SE. But the Department prior to

the McKay Program being enacted was very aggressive

about providing services and communicating with these

parents and assisting the districts in providing

those services.

Shan Goff is here as our bureau chief for

the Bureau of Community Involvement. Is that the

correct title? And Shan can, if you\'d like, she can

elaborate in more detail. We recognize in Florida

that as no child, each child is an individual. We

have, if you will, a very high populations of both

hispanics, haitians, there was another one, Chinese

even. And these parents as they relocate to Florida

or are in Florida and their children become of school

age, they do have not a different need perhaps, but

the services that we provide to them is also going to

be able to respond to their, their culture, their

background and what the services are available and if

we need to change that a little bit.

MS. ACOSTA: Now, do you direct their

choices based on what you know of their needs and

their families? For example, if I choose A school

and it\'s not the correct choice for my child, will

there be some guidance within the process to get me

to the right place?

MS. MCCAIN: Well, the short answer is

yes. It may or may not come from the Department

level. We have what we refer to as Local Control in

the Education of Florida. And the districts are very

good. And that is their role. That is their primary

responsibility is serving those parents and those

students. So they are the best one to provide that

kind of counseling and advice. And they can speak to

what\'s available in that school district for that

child and to meet those needs.

From a state perspective, however, in the

choice office, when we have a parent that has worked

with the county or perhaps not, and they have

questions, we will share what information we have.

We don\'t try to talk them into anything by any means.

We are, don\'t want to be in that position. That is

not our role. But we do want to see that every

parent gets the kind of information that they need so

that they can make that decision. And it really is

sort of a tri‑partnership between the district and

those experts and the parents. And even perhaps the

teacher, the prior year teacher, and then the

Department. And then seeing what is best and what\'s

available for that child.

This program is not the solution to every

problem. We have, in some regards, it\'s a very

successful program. But we have just 5,000 students

participating in the program. So 5,000 families are

having their needs met and we do expect, I believe

the prediction is for the program to double next year

and I think that that will very much happen. But

that still does not mean that all children are going

to be served by this.

There are districts where there are

parents who are not interested at all. They are

quite please with the services that they\'re

receiving. Their child is doing just fine.

It\'s a long answer and I apologize. If I

didn\'t hit it on the point I\'d be happy to.

MS. ACOSTA: Thank you, thank you. That\'s

fine.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Bryan Hassel.

MR. WINN: Could I add a comment?

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Go ahead, you go

ahead.

MR. WINN: It\'s my experience that public

schools I think do an outstanding job in trying to

communicate. Your question sort of struck a cord

with me because if a parent may choose, you know, an

A rated school. But it may not be, that school

environment may not be the school environment that

that student responds best to. And I believe that

the teachers by and large are good barometers of kind

of a front line for us in evaluating how students are

responding, whether or not they\'re responding well to

an environment and an excellent source of information

for parents.

You know, in the kind of busy day to day

maybe we don\'t always reach out as much as we could.

But I think that teachers by and large are committed

to providing that guidance to parents. Not as a

mandate but as a recommendation and certainly willing

to hear more information about the child\'s particular

needs and try to help parents make those kinds of

placements.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Bryan Hassel is next.

Bryan?

MR. HASSEL: I\'ve got a few numbers

questions. The 4,700 students, are they all

attending private schools?

MS. MCCAIN: Yes, those are monetary

scholarships. We do not have, I do not, at a state

level, have a firm number on the number of children

that have selected another public school. Some of

the districts have had staff and been able to do

that. I\'m hoping in the future and the thought

processes there, the heart is willing, so to speak,

that we will have much better numbers with regard to

the selection of public schools because we know that

the majority of people who are participating in this

program are choosing just another public school.

Well, really the true majority are staying

right where they are. But they like the idea of

being able to have a thought process about it and

make that decision as opposed to being told perhaps

from downtown or whatever.

We\'re also, I can\'t elaborate too much

because nothing is definite, but we have wanted to do

for some time survey parents and have a very clear

picture about why parents are participating in this

program, what motivates them to make a change because

the change is very important and it has an impact on

that child. And if they are not happy with the

private school and return say to the public school

system, what motivated that. Was it what was offered

at the private school? Was it just that particular

environment and those kinds of things. Did the child

progress though that the parent wanted to then return

the child to the public school because of what was

available there.

So, we\'re hoping to do that in the coming

year. We\'ve had some discussions about it. And

parents have very willingly offered to us a desire to

tell us how their child is progressing and what they

think about this program.

MR. HASSEL: Do you have information about

the characteristics of students who are among the

4,700? You mentioned that a majority are in matrix

level ‑‑

MS. MCCAIN: I have some. The, our matrix

system and both Shan and Dr. Brown can speak to this

much better than I can since they\'re the experts.

But the low end matrix is a 251. And that is the

majority of students that are participating in the

monetary scholarship.

MR. HASSEL: Low end meaning, you\'re

meaning low cost?

MS. MCCAIN: They are mildly disabled and

the funding is of the lesser amount. That\'s 46

percent of the children participating this year come

in at matrix of 251. I\'m sorry, 34 percent of the

children are at a matrix level of 252. 11 ‑‑

MR. HASSEL: What does that mean?

MS. MCCAIN: Shan, you\'re going to have to

help me on this one. A child\'s level of disabilities

is, is greater the right word for the graph? Matrix,

when we assign a matrix number to a child and the

services that are to be provided on the IEP. This is

our funding formula. Trust me, people spend their

entire career knowing this and Shan knows it off the

top of her head.

But for 251 and 252; can you ‑‑

MS. GOFF: Sure.

MR. WINN: Could you introduce yourself to

the Commission and let them know who you are?

MS. GOFF: Yes, John. My name is Shan

Goff and I am the State Director of Special Education

in Florida. 251, 252 and 253 is really our funding

terminology, and Jay may remember that when we worked

back in the late \'90\'s, which basically allows us to

quantify services on individual children based on

their IEP\'s irregardless of what their category of

eligibility is of disability.

251, as Diane mentioned, are children

typically identified with specific learning

disabilities, that have a mild level of service need.

Typically most of our children who are speech

impaired and language impaired, you may have a few

children in that category that might have been

diagnosed with having mild mental retardation.

The next level of funding is kids that

typically get services in multiple domains. So it

might be behavioral services along with curriculum

and instruction. But looking at the gambit is that I

believe it\'s still typically more mildly disabled

children. But we do have kids participating in the

McKay Scholarship who have more moderate to severe

disabilities. And those have, obviously their

funding is more commensurate with a higher intensive

level of service.

MR. BARTLETT: So, what\'s the level of

funding?

MS. GOFF: Pardon me? The level of that

funding?

MR. BARTLETT: Yeah, 251 equals?

MS. GOFF: 251 is approximately about

\$4,500 going to a level of severity; and these are

approximates because our funding formula has a few

other little twists based upon districts and their

financial status. 252 is approximately \$6,800. 253

is the mid range, a little bit of \$10,000. 254 is

around \$13,000. And 255 would be our maximum level

of funding, state funding, state and local funds for

children with disabilities, around \$19,000. And

those dollars change dependent upon, like I said, the

nuances in our funding formula in the state.

MS. MCCAIN: And if I could just to put a

picture on that. The children that are at a 255

matrix level, we have 108 children. So almost 5,108

are matrix level of 255. So, it\'s just two percent

of those that are participating as compared to 46

percent at the 251 matrix level. And that number is

2,299 students.

MS. TAKEMOTO: Is that roughly reflective

of the general population of special education.

MS. MCCAIN: Yes, yes.

MR. JONES: Cherie, if I can remind you,

for the transcript we need the mike.

MS. MCCAIN: And one of the things we\'re

hoping to learn more about when we survey parents and

we have more data from the school districts and from

participating parents in front of the private schools

is, as I said, what is the motivating thing for the

parent. Is it the student to teacher ratio? Is it

the learning environment? Is that it or is it a

particular service, a particular teacher?

We have, as I mentioned, when we talk

about the close relationships between counseling and

communication with the school district and the

teacher and the parent. In a private school, one of

the things parents are learning or that we\'re

learning along with them is that sometimes where they

are may be the very best place to be. Or it could be

that there\'s something else available in the

district. And through this program they\'re able to

make that switch, and as John mentioned, without, you

know, months and months of wrangling

and disagreement. But, in fact, just make the switch

and be placed in another public school that the

parent believes that the children can be better

served in. We\'ll known soon enough if that is true.

So, as we begin to have more hard data, if

you will, about why parents are choosing this program

and what\'s happening, how they\'re progressing, then

we\'ll be able to certainly to share more with you.

I will quick talking if somebody has

another question. But I think you may also be

interested in the numbers with regard to the state

grade totals. The children, the majority of the

students in this program, 17 percent are in Grade 6

as opposed to four percent that are in first grade.

MR. HASSEL: Can a private school reject a

student who applies ‑‑

MS. MCCAIN: Yes, yes. We\'ve encouraged

private schools to be very honest and very frank in

their discussions with the parents that if they

believe they cannot serve that child, do not accept

that child no matter what that parent says.

MR. HASSEL: Do you know how prevalent

that is? Do you have any data ‑‑

MS. MCCAIN: We have an awful lot of

discussion that goes on, very frank discussion about

services that are provided at the school. And so

many parents, you know, when they learn the

possibilities for their child or the lack of

possibilities, then they will go to another school.

So it happens, I don\'t have statistics for you but I

know from the parents that I\'ve talked with, and we

have a group, a staff that, you know, daily are

talking to parents. And they call back and let us

know how a particular visit or communication went.

And so there\'s quite a bit of evaluation

and discussion that takes place at the front of this.

These are not parents, and I don\'t mean to tell you

something that you know as well as I do, if not

better, and that is these parents are perhaps are

most informed, most aggressive and they are opting

for this choice because they believe, they\'ve

researched the situation and continue to research and

believe that the choice they\'re making is best for

their child.

MR. HASSEL: My final question is about

the schools that are participating, the private

schools. Do you have any sense of what proportion

are, were pre‑existing schools versus new schools?

MS. MCCAIN; We have very few new schools.

And why I believe that is is one of economics. For a

school to participate they have to have been in

business for a year. And they have to prove that

they\'re fiscally sound. And while that appears

somewhat loose, there\'s also this element of when you

communicate with a parent as you would with any other

services, if you\'re a dentist or a doctor or

whatever, the parents going to ask how long have you

been doing this and what can you provide.

So, I\'m not going to tell you that we

don\'t have schools that are brand new or a year old,

and that to me is a very young school. However, the

majority of the schools are, have been around for a

very long time, have very strong reputations, are

accredited and have an awful lot to offer these

parents.

MR. HASSEL: And what proportion of the

schools are specifically for students with

disabilities versus general private schools that have

a variety of ‑‑

MS. MCCAIN: Well, the school indicates to

us in their participation both in the survey to be

listed as a private school and then to participate in

this program, what special ed services they provide.

That does not necessarily mean that we categorize

them as a special ed school. So, I don\'t have

perhaps the numbers that you\'re looking for. But of

the 300, approximately 350 schools that are

participating, the majority of them do have on staff

a special ed person, people, teachers, that kind of

thing.

And the teachers or, I\'m sorry, the

parents; that\'s what the parents are interested in.

We have a few, and there\'s some people in the

audience that can speak to this. We have parents

that are merely looking, say the child is a matrix of

251\. What a parent believes may be best for that

child is just another environment, perhaps a smaller

teacher to student ratio. No special ed services are

necessarily provided, but the child is progressing

with the set of circumstances. That can make you a

little nervous, you know, and that\'s not right for

every child. But we are hearing some very positive

stories from parents that they might have been

hesitant, the private school might have been hesitant

to say we\'re not sure what we can offer your child

and if your child will be best served here. But that

seems to be working.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: David Gordon.

MR. GORDON: Thanks, Chairman. A question

for Mr. Winn. We\'ve had conversations before about

the interaction of IDEA and ESEA. What specific

things do you think need to be aligned between those

two programs?

MR. WINN: I guess my comments were, not

being a specialist in exceptional student education,

I\'m not familiar with all parts of the law. My

comments are related more directly to the principles

or guiding principles that I would call, that should

be operational in that, in the reauthorization of

IDEA. And those principles in this case would be

principles that would be aligned with the HR1 and

with, promote parental choice.

MR. GORDON: Okay. Question on the

operation of the program. I assume that in the past

before this program came into being districts simply

placed the children in the private schools per the

IEP. Is that the case?

MS. MCCAIN: Well, maybe just, they

clearly have always had that opportunity. Probably

uniquely in Florida is there\'s not a lot of placement

of kids with mild disabilities, for instance, in

private schools through IDEA. But there has been a

substantial amount of contracting with community

facilities for services for Pre‑K population. But

they\'ve always had that option, yes.

MR. GORDON: Okay, well, let\'s say for the

children with more severe disabilities. I assume the

private school placements have been going on.

MS. MCCAIN: Yes.

MR. GORDON: So, my question is when would

the need for the scholarship crop up? Would it be

when the district and the parent disagrees on the

need for the private school placement, a particular

private school placement, that they would come for

the scholarship?

MS. MCCAIN: My guess is I don\'t think

we\'ve had such a situation because typically; well,

looking at those particular contracts I don\'t know if

any child who has been placed under IDEA in a private

school in consultation with the parent has now come

back and said they want to opt for a McKay

Scholarship. I\'m not aware that that\'s occurred.

MR. GORDON: Okay, final question, you

have this scaling and waiving of the costs. What

happens if the private school charges more than the

district is paid or the scholarship affords?

MS. MCCAIN: Good question and we had, that

was sort of a bonif contention, if you will, during

the first year because it limited the number of

private schools the parents were able to select

because it is very expensive as the school districts

know to provide services. And the first full year of

the program, parents were not able to pay a

supplemental fee. And so their choices were limited

to only those schools that had their tuition range

was just about equal to what the state funding amount

was.

Which meant that, and it was fine when we

had a thousand students. It worked out pretty well.

When the students were mildly disabled and it was a

251 and 252 because we\'re just talking about four or

\$5,000. But for children who may be at a higher

level, more schools participating and with the new

amended legislation, providing the parents could pay

a supplement, that opened up many more choices for

parents.

For instance, here in Day County there is

a school, specialized school in autism. And the

first year of the program, if I\'m incorrect, the

school did accept, I believe it was three students,

and supplemented the tuition with their own

scholarship donor base privately. The second year of

the program, because of parent demand and then the

legislation making it possible, more parents wanted

their child to come to this school and were willing

and able to provide that difference so that their

child could, in fact, attend and receive those

services.

Long answer to your question but

supplemental payments are allowed for these parents.

And many of them, again, it expands their options. I

tell parents almost weekly, however, when they may be

displeased that there are only three schools in the

district that is willing to accept the scholarship or

there doesn\'t happen to be a school that specializes

in autism in their county. The program provides

options. It\'s not a solution to everything. And we

cannot mandate that a private school participate or

that they provide services that they\'re not trained

and ready to provide. That would not serve the

student well.

MR. GORDON: Final question; so, is it the

case that like with the scholarship for a high cost

child, the districts liability is capped at the

\$19,000? Or would the district potentially be, would

the district potentially be able to be requested to

pay even more than that?

MS. GOFF: I think under the McKay

Scholarship it\'s capped at the same amount of dollars

that the state would be ‑‑

MS. MCCAIN: The funding.

MS. GOFF: ‑‑ the funding that child if

that child was in a public school.

MR. GILL: The question is if a parent

wants say a \$40,000 program, they would have to go

through the district to get that. And the district

could potentially be liable for more than the \$19,000

depending on ‑‑

MS. GOFF: Not under McKay, not under

McKay.

MR. GILL: No, but I mean under ‑‑

MS. GOFF: Under a regular placement, for

example, a residential program that I would go

through an IEP process with the district to have my

child placed in a residential program. We, as I

mentioned, we\'ve not had kids participating in a

residential program, even those parents express an

interest in McKay. But you are correct if it\'s a

placement under IDEA by the district. They assume

all of the responsibility regardless of the cost.

MR. GILL: So then the final question,

with the McKay capping at \$19,000, does that tend it

to drive down the cost of the private school programs

or stabilize them?

MS. GOFF: I would probably say no given

that our population is around 380,000 children with

disabilities and the 5,000 participants. The

expenditure level data hasn\'t changed.

MS. MCCAIN: And there are, and I\'m not

sure if I understand your question correctly, but

there are very few schools in the state that are able

to provide those types of services. And even fewer

that would be willing to participate in this program.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Thank you. Alan

Coulter.

MR. COULTER: Once again I\'m just trying

to kind of, I appreciate the numbers because I think

all of the Commissioners are interested in getting a

better description of exactly what we\'re talking

about here. The 1,000 children that participated the

first year ‑‑

MS. MCCAIN: Yes, sir.

MR. COULTER: ‑‑ how many of those children

participated in the second year?

MS. MCCAIN: I don\'t have that figure in

front of me but I would say probably around 900.

MR. COULTER: Okay, so ‑‑

MS. MCCAIN: We did not have a very high

drop out rate, if you will, that\'s not the proper

term. But all in all, parents were satisfied.

MR. COULTER: So, of those 1,000 during

the first year, how many of them would have returned

to regular school during that first year?

MS. MCCAIN: I believe we had 148 students

and they, the numbers we have, there are four options

that are established in Statute 4 opting into the

program. So a parent conceivably could choose to

continue the child in public school in the fall with

eligibility being determined by participating in the

prior year in the public school and decide that

that\'s not working. And then opt into the program

for the remaining three quarters.

So, it\'s sort of a fluid, I\'m not sure

what the economic term is but they ebb and flow. We

had, I believe overall it was 148 students that

through the course of that first year did return to

the public school or may have opted to choose another

public school then return to their home school.

MR. COULTER: So, that\'s about 15 percent

of the kids, of the families that decided to return

in way or another.

MS. MCCAIN: For that first year, yes.

MR. COULTER: Where do you stand on the

second year of the 4700?

MS. MCCAIN: Well, I will know those

numbers in June. Right now what we\'re seeing is that

for the most part parents, because we are more

aggressive and the district is much more aggressive

about providing information to that parent at the

very beginning what all is involved in this and how

important it is to not make this decision in a casual

way. I believe that we are having, and I don\'t have

the numbers to prove it, but we\'re hoping that we

will have, that the parents are making a much more

conscientious decision before they move that child.

So we have less of the returning to the public school

system. And if they do return, it\'s early on.

We had, I believe it was more than 100

students that in the fall, began in the fall in a

private school. Decided that this was not right

maybe because free and reduced lunch was not

provided. I mean there was a multitude of reasons.

Transportation, their closest friend, they miss a

teacher, you know, those things. There are reasons

that they did return.

MR. COULTER: Now, if they return, what

happens to the funds that were transferred?

MS. MCCAIN: The funds follow the child

back.

MR. COULTER: The funds follow them back.

MS. MCCAIN: And that\'s one of the

motivations in the statute for having the four

quarters. We pay quarterly so that money is not lost

and that the money is able to follow the child.

MR. COULTER: Now, for the children that

are on the scholarship program, what\'s the

accountability for results for those kids? How do

you know that the program that they\'re receiving is

effective?

MS. MCCAIN: The parents make that

determination. And I don\'t mean to give you a cliche

back but it is the parents that ultimately decide

whether or not their child is progressing.

MR. COULTER: So these are kids that are

flying beneath the accountability rate.

MS. MCCAIN: Well, we don\'t rate private

schools. We don\'t grade private schools. We don\'t

license or regulate private schools in the state.

The Department; I don\'t go in and do some sort of an

evaluation or a search or any kind of monitoring.

That is done by parents and they can make a very

quick determination as to whether or not their child

is benefiting from that learning environment.

MR. COULTER: Okay, let me just ask one

other question because I see that Dr. Winn wants to

respond as well. For the ‑‑

MS. MCCAIN: Half the room jumped up too,

I might add.

MR. COULTER: For the kids that are simply

making a switch within the public system, you don\'t

know how many of those kids are making the switch?

MS. MCCAIN: No, sir, we don\'t, no, we

don\'t. We ‑‑

MR. COULTER: Why not?

MS. MCCAIN: Well, we have not captured

that data. We had two staff people initially and

that\'s the true and honest answer. But the districts

have, were in a similar situation that they also did

not have designated staff for this program until just

about now. So they are just now beginning to capture

financial data and the tracking of those students and

be able to realize why a parent may be leaving and

what can be done about it. If particular parents are

all leaving one particular school, that\'s something

that could be possibly be visited. So the very

simple answer is staff was not provided for it.

MR. COULTER: Thank you.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: David Grasmick. I\'m

sorry, Nancy Grasmick. You\'re sitting next to David.

I\'m sorry, I\'ve got to wake up here.

MS. GRASMICK: Two questions. Oh, I\'m

sorry, did you want to respond?

MR. GORDON: That\'s okay.

MS. GRASMICK: Two questions; one, have

your appeals by parents on placement been reduced as

a result of this option?

MS. MCCAIN: Shan, you\'d have to answer

that. We don\'t have an appeal process in the McKay

Program. But Shan would be the expert on the

district appeals.

MS. GRASMICK: No, but I\'m talking about

just general ‑‑

MS. GOFF: I assume you mean complaints

filed against or due process hearings. It\'s been a

negligible impact.

MS. GRASMICK: Negligible impact.

MS. GOFF: Right.

MS. GRASMICK: The second is the

accountability issue because I did see and I think

you responded to that. That is simply the parent\'s

choice if they want the child to participate in the

statewide assessments. What if the child really has

not profited from being in the private school,

returns to the public school and the child\'s progress

has obviously been negligible. What is the

responsibility then of the public school based on a

defined accountability system in the public school

with no child left behind to provide the resources,

then, to try to retch it up to performance for the

child?

MS. MCCAIN: Shan, will you take that one

on for me?

MS. GOFF: I think you would find that we

address that, as we would for any child who comes

back into our school system, whether they\'re re‑

entering or enrolling in school for the first time.

They\'d go through the IEP process, take the present

level and then commit the level of resources so that

the child meets the annual goals that the committee

agrees to.

MS. MCCAIN: And we may have those

students and we\'ll know more probably in a year, less

than a year we will know more.

MR. WINN: If I may, again, on the

accountability aspect, the qualitative side of

accountability for, particularly for parents who are

participating in this program and for parents o

students with disabilities really occurs within the

interaction, I think, between the parent and the

school and the IEP process and a joint evaluation of

whether or not the child is making progress, academic

progress, progress in other areas where the child is

flourishing.

That parent who\'s exercising that level of

interest and accountability that may lead the parent

to choose the dramatic, essentially dramatic choice

of removing their child from the public school, going

through the process of applying for the McKay

Scholarship, having the child placed and also we\'ll

be learning more about this, that the dynamic of this

as we go through the program. But I think we have

every right to expect that parent to exercise the

same due diligence in evaluating the quality of the

program and of the progress of the child that led the

parent to make that decision in the first place.

So, although we have not put in place

processes that puts government in the process of

requiring private schools who are willing to serve

students with disabilities, although we\'re not

transferring a specific process to them, we believe

that within the dynamics that led to that choice,

that those same qualitative activities will be going

on once the child is placed into a private setting.

And that same level of accountability may

very well lead to dissatisfaction in the subsequent

placement and a further choice. But that\'s, so, I

don\'t want to characterize, I don\'t think it\'s proper

to characterize that there\'s no accountability

because if there was no involvement of the parent in

that setting, you would likely to not have the child

removed from the public school.

MR. FLETCHER: Mr. Winn, if there\'s no way

for a parent to have some data, formal objective data

on how well the child is performing, how can the

parent perform that evaluation?

MR. WINN: It\'s my experience that ‑‑

MR. FLETCHER: I\'m not interested in your

experience. I\'m asking if the parent doesn\'t have

data, formal objective data by participating in your

state accountability system, how can they have that

information about whether the program is working or

whether the child is progressing?

MR. WINN: Well, you\'re assuming that the

parent has no data. And I don\'t accept that

assumption. Private schools provide data on the

progress of children to all parents who participate

in private schools. And so the parent may have, they

may not have a specific state assessment data but

they would certainly have access to data that would

reflect the child\'s progress.

MR. FLETCHER: Well, how do you know that

if you don\'t regular private schools and how can you

evaluate whether those programs are effective or not

if you don\'t have a common metric for comparing the

progress of all children?

MR. WINN: The private schools are market

driven. Private schools are very ‑‑

MR. FLETCHER: That\'s not my question. My

question is how can you evaluate whether the program

is working if you don\'t have a common metric that\'s

the backbone of the state accountability system?

MR. WINN: The parent evaluates whether or

not that placement ‑‑

MR. FLETCHER: That\'s not responsive to my

question. My question is if you don\'t have a common

metric, how can you compare how well your program is

working relative to what happens with other children

that receive public support for education?

MR. WINN: Well, I think, again, the

assumption that you have to exactly the same measures

in order to evaluate whether the program is working

or not is not a necessary assumption.

MR. FLETCHER: ‑‑ be illuminated because

I\'d like to know how it is you evaluate if you don\'t

have the same metric.

MR. WINN: Well, I believe that\'s a work

in progress at this point but right now the

evaluation is on the part of parent satisfaction.

MS. GOFF: And if I could just ‑‑

MR. FLETCHER: And I will stipulate ‑‑

MS. WRIGHT: Mr. Chair?

MR. FLETCHER: ‑‑ that parent satisfaction

is a totally ‑‑

MS. WRIGHT: Mr. Chair?

MR. FLETCHER: ‑‑ important index but is

not the same ‑‑

MS. WRIGHT: A point of order.

MR. FLETCHER: ‑‑ as participation in the

state accountability system.

MS. WRIGHT: A point of order, Mr. Chair.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: We\'ve got a point of

order.

MS. WRIGHT: Do we wait to get called upon

or do we just jump in and go to questioning? Had you

called upon him or is it my turn or whose turn is it

or do we just jump in?

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Well, you make a good

point. I think your point is well taken.

MS. WRIGHT: That\'s right.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Actually, the next

person is Bill Berine and then Katie. You would

follow Bill.

MS. WRIGHT: Okay.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: So Bill Berine\'s the

next one to be recognized, then Katie.

MS. WRIGHT: Thank you. I\'ve been here.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Your point\'s well

taken and I would ask each members of the panel to be

recognized by the Chair for this.

MS. WRIGHT: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Thank you.

MR. BERINE: Thank you, Chair. Most of my

questions have been answered. I was interested in

some of your numbers, particularly with regard to

disabilities, Mr. Winn. Clarification, the 40

million dollars that\'s involved with this program, in

your written testimony, you indicated that in 2000‑

2001, the program exceeded a little over 40 million

dollars. And then I think one of the three of you

said that was state and local money. No federal

money? That\'s all state and local or is that, is

IDEA involved in that funding, in that revenue

stream?

MS. GOFF: I think part of Mr. Winn\'s

testimony included giving you some, some helpful data

on how much state dollars have been committed to

contracts with private schools and community

facilities already. That did not include any of the

expenditures under the McKay Scholarship.

MS. MCCAIN: Right, essentially the

existing voucher programs separate from McKay.

MR. BERINE: All right, so that\'s existing

moneys. All right. Now, you discussed the

disabilities have been involved in the program but

you\'ve not mentioned the drop out prevention or

juvenile justice. What percentage of the McKay

Scholarships are going to drop out prevention or

juvenile justice programs?

MS. MCCAIN: None.

MR. BERINE: None.

MS. MCCAIN: No, part of the eligibility

is that the child not be part of the ‑‑

MR. BERINE: Well, it says here, in fact,

in 2000‑2001 local school districts contract with

private schools and community facilities for programs

for students with disabilities, comma, drop out

prevention programs, comma, or juvenile justice

education programs exceeded 40 million dollars.

MS. MCCAIN: Yes, sir, but that students

that are otherwise on a third party contract or a

voucher program separate from McKay. I\'m sorry, we

could have worded that perhaps better. Are you

reading that from Mr. Winn\'s testimony?

MR. BERINE: Exactly, right.

MS. MCCAIN: Well, I apologize for that

confusion but that 40 million is tied to

approximately 8,000 students that were receiving

vouchers, for lack of a better word, separate from

McKay. And those children may ‑‑

MR. BERINE: So it does not include any

juvenile justice clients or drop out prevention.

MS. MCCAIN: McKay does not.

MR. BERINE: Thank you.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Katie Wright, it\'s

your turn.

MS. WRIGHT: Thank you, Mr. Chair and

Commissioners and presenters, too. I have two short

questions. One, and I\'m just curious, the other

people might know the answer. Is John McKay a

legislator? Is he a philanthropist who gave money

for this scholarship?

MS. MCCAIN: He is the president of the

Florida Senate. He is a parent of a child with

special needs and he was, I believe he was a member

of the House before he ran for the Senate as well.

He\'s a long time member of our Legislature. He\'s the

current sitting President of the Florida Senate.

MS. WRIGHT: Okay.

MR. WINN: Actually the House moved to

name it in honor of him. He didn\'t make that motion

himself.

MS. WRIGHT: Okay, thank you. Then my

last question, and it is the last one, is there a

parent advisory group to the John McKay Scholarship

Program? And if so, how strong is it?

MS. MCCAIN: The very simple answer is

yes. We have the non‑public school advisory council

and we have a very loosely organized parent group.

But predominantly we rely very strongly on Florida

Child and Floridians for School Choice and other

parent advocacy groups that are willing to give us

information about how we can make this program better

for them.

And when I say we make it, we take all of

the things that they give us, whether it be

substantial data or just a comment or a report on how

their child is progressing and what they think can be

done. And we turn it over to whoever needs to hear

it, whether it be our Finance folks and how quickly

we process payments or private schools and how they

are, the participation process. Or legislatively we

actually turn over comments and written data and

things like that. And, as I said, we met last year

and met again this year with representative parents

and we paid for their transportation to come and give

us their feedback about how we could do it

differently and how we could do it better.

MS. WRIGHT: Thank you.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Jay Chambers.

MR. CHAMBERS: Well, as you can see we can

be a feisty bunch when we want to be. I say hi to

Shan. It\'s been a while. I\'ve got a couple of

questions. I heard you say that the money attached

to the matrix is the state and local, which is

essentially is attached to a, kind of a foundation

plan. Is that right? How do these children benefit

from the federal money? Where does the federal money

go for these children under the Scholarship Program?

MS. GOFF: We have the requirements

specifically for districts that are consistent with

IDEA, that they have to calculate a certain amount of

their federal dollars to ensure that they\'re expended

on children with disabilities in private schools. On

another way I would probably say is we use a lot of

our state discretionary dollars under IDEA to do

system projects. When you heard the Charter School

Resource Center, that is funded through state

discretionary. We have instructional materials for

hearing impaired, visually impaired kids. We have a

whole series of centers that are for evaluation, have

parent materials, our Fiddler Center in Florida

Diagnostic Learning Resource System.

So, all of those federally funded projects

really through the Department of Education, we try

very hard to make sure the private schools and

parents participating in the McKay Scholarship know

of those resources so they can access them just like

any other parent can.

MR. CHAMBERS: But in terms of the dollars

that actually would be sent to the local district for

these children, you\'re describing the funds that are

retained at the state level, if I\'m understanding you

correctly?

MS. GOFF: Correct, correct.

MR. CHAMBERS: The money that normally

would go to the local district, do those funds impact

the children who are under the McKay Scholarship

Program?

MS. GOFF: They typically don\'t. The

district, in knowing that our funding formula has

changed under IDEA, those dollars do not follow the

child specifically, no.

MR. CHAMBERS: Okay. Thank you. One more

question. I am, as you know, was fascinated by the

matrix structure a few years ago when I visited here.

Have only heard rumors of it since and I think the

Florida system is unique in that regard, at least in

the structure by which you determine the weightings.

I\'d like to hear a little bit more about

that, if you will, in terms of its implementation and

how, as we start thinking about attaching dollars to

the backs of children, whether they be federal,

state, local, whatever. We heard a little bit this

morning about magic equations that we economists want

to do in ways of determining the cost of children.

This offers another approach. I\'m curious how well

this has been received. How well it\'s worked at the

state level. What the perceptions are at the local

level of the structure.

MS. GOFF: And you may hear the perception

from the local level this afternoon from the local

folks that are in the audience. But we\'ve taken a

few twists with the matrix service and maybe; and we

can provide you, Jay, with lots of information that\'s

probably more detailed than the rest of you would

like. But we do have ‑‑

MR. CHAMBERS: You may be surprised.

MS. GOFF: ‑‑ but, yes. The Florida

Education Finance Program, which is a long standing,

we believe, an equitable and fair system of funding

education in Florida. And is based on a weighted

system for kids not only with disabilities but, for

example, English, limited English proficient kids

that we also recognize that they need additional

dollars too.

The legislature in the last two years

decided to collapse three of those funding levels.

You\'ve heard Diane and I mention 251, 252 and 253,

which really is the funding levels for 95 percent of

all children with disabilities in Florida. And they

collapsed that into a categorical. And that means

just one big pot of dollars that goes; you know that

from districts and schools and states, equated to, on

a formula to school districts.

However, to be able to carve out what

piece of that billion dollar pot belongs to an

individual child in an individual district, the

agreement across all bodies that we have retained the

matrix of service level for those kids when we

haven\'t necessarily retained it for other kids in

public schools because it is a fair why to determine,

quantify what services were committed on an IEP

regardless of the kid\'s disability into a kind of

leveling standard so I can equate to a level of cost

so that you can basically allocate fairly what

amounts of money would that child have generated if

they would have remained in the public school system

but in a little different funding model now.

MR. CHAMBERS: So, you\'re blending the

funds of the alternative categories. Is that

correct?

MS. GOFF: No, those are all still

separate. But what they did is, what you would see

is weighted funding for public schools. Really in

special ed is only 25, it\'s the two deep ends, 254

and 255. We have some other ways we capture the data

on those kids but they get a large pot of dollars

that before we distribute it in the three additional

cost factors. But for the McKay, we still retain

those five very specific cost factors to know how

much money should be provided for the services for

that kid.

MR. CHAMBERS: Are the districts, have you

concerns with their comfort level regarding the

amount of funds they\'re getting for these children?

MS. GOFF: I think ‑‑

MR. CHAMBERS: I know the answer from your

‑‑

MS. GOFF: ‑‑ we all in special ed have

concerns about the funding level. I think one of the

issues, when you look at the matrix from district

perspectives that, and some of them have continued to

do it. It helps them do some allocation and staffing

models at schools and things of that nature. And

probably the biggest concern echoed across the board

has been the 253 kind of kids that aren\'t quite mild

kids. They have some multiple needs and multiple

services and their funding is a little different. So

we may visit that again legislatively.

MR. CHAMBERS: And the high need kids? I

know you talked about it earlier but I\'m not sure I

followed the discussion. What happens to the very

highest needs ‑‑

MS. GOFF: They still have, regardless of

where they\'re served, public schools or through the

McKay Scholarship, they still retain a separate cost

factor or a weighted cost factor. For us it\'s 254 or

255\.

MR. CHAMBERS: And that\'s the 19,000 or ‑‑

MS. GOFF: That\'s the \$13,000 and 19. I

did probably need to clarify. Those are minimum

numbers because we also add on certain categoricals

for instructional materials, technology so it\'s

probably another hundred plus or \$200 on top of that

for each child.

MR. CHAMBERS: Thank you.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Okay, Steve Bartlett,

this will be the last one because we\'re running over.

MR. BARTLETT: Mr. Secretary, most, we

heard at previous hearings that most states do not

include special ed students in their general academic

testing when you report on the schools as on their

progress on academics. I\'m curious if Florida does

or not.

MR. WINN: We have been working on a

program to ensure that Florida\'s Children with

Disabilities participate at the level in an

appropriate assessment instruments as children

without disabilities. Students who are receiving

resource and additional services that are on regular

curriculum take our assessment, state assessment

examines. We have Shan and her folks have been

working on additional measures for students who are

not in what we call the regular curriculum programs

to evaluate their assessments as well.

So, we are moving forward and hope to have

in place next school year a full accountability

system that addresses all children with disabilities.

MS. MCCAIN: If I could for just a second,

and I know you said we were running over time. May I

just; we discussed a lot about accountability and I

know that many of you have great concerns about it.

But I would be remiss if I didn\'t share, I believe,

what may be some parent perspective. And that is,

although we have a small, relatively small number of

parents who are participating in this program and

their students are, I think it\'s important to note

that with accountability in our state, and they\'re

seeing some very positive changes in terms of

students, schools being graded and children being

assessed and public schools being accountable.

The parents were not willing to wait,

continue to wait for more information to be made

available. They determined that day or that month or

whatever, that something needed to be done and opted

for this program whether it be to another public

school or private school. So when we talk about

accountability, I know that not all parents have the

same level of expertise perhaps as our school

districts or even our legislatures and sometimes

they\'re a lot smarter.

That said, I think it is unfair,

personally unfair, forgive me, to not, to know that

accountability factor because the parents do; in a

perfect situation the parent very much wants to know

what that private school is doing in terms of

accountability in an assessment of their child. And

they want to know it perhaps quicker and faster than

they could have gotten it before from the district.

MR. BARTLETT: I might say that, of

course, differences of opinion is what makes the

world go around and the difference of opinion on a

commission like this in the marketplace of ideas is

what will help us to come up with a good public

policy. I, for one, believe from what you\'ve told us

today and looking at the results, that with the McKay

Scholarships you have true accountability with

recourse. You have accountability and you have

recourse of the ability to do something about what

you\'ve learned. Without the McKay Scholarship it

sounds like what you have is what most states have

and that is some limited reporting of results with no

recourse as to the consequences of that reporting.

One last question, what have been the

biggest problems that you\'ve encountered as reported

to you by either parents or school districts or

principals or teachers? After this has now been in

effect and it\'s in its second year, what do people

tell you that they don\'t like about it now? What are

the biggest problems, if any?

MS. MCCAIN: Lack of information, lack of

information.

MR. BARTLETT: So, you haven\'t seen any

school districts close down, no schools have had to

go out of business for lack of budget or anything

like that?

MS. MCCAIN: No, in fact, I mentioned the

perfect situation and that would be, and we do have

this evolving, in that for the first year everybody

was scrambling to implement the program and to

provide information to parents in less than 40 days.

I mean, it was very interesting between the bill

being passed and signed into law and the date of ‑‑

MR. BARTLETT: So, it\'s the lack of

information for how to get into it.

MS. MCCAIN: How to get into the program,

what all is involved, what decisions need to be made

in terms of progress and assessment and those kinds

of things. But in a perfect situation, and we do

have them coming, the parent in consultation with the

district, and we have this happening, the district

advisors, the district staff as well as the teachers

are saying, this is what\'s available at the school.

This is what is available at other public schools in

our district. But we recommend or we feel that we\'re

not able to provide what your child may need. But

this private school may very well be able to provide

it. And so with an open heart ‑‑

MR. BARTLETT: Public school teachers are

saying this?

MS. MCCAIN: Yes, yes. And if a parent

has that relationship with a teacher and that teacher

has the freedom to be able to say, I\'ve worked with

your child and this is what I\'m seeing, that is an

ideal situation when it comes to providing better

education.

The same thing is true with a teacher

being able to say, I\'ve worked with your child.

Perhaps another school in our district could better

provide services.

MR. BARTLETT: Any other big problems

you\'ve heard about?

MS. GOFF: Probably logistical

implementation. We\'re a very large state with 2.5

million kids and only 67 districts. And our large

districts like Miami Dade are very large. Just being

able to report kids, identify kids, verify that

they\'re eligible, do the matrix of service if it

wasn\'t already done and trying to get all of that

rolling because parents are obviously looking for

what their options are within a very short window.

And just the logistics of, and we\'re a very

sophisticated state, but just transferring that data

electronically to one office to another office, to

how to make an online system available for private

schools, how parents have good information.

I think it\'s really, it\'s basic

implementation issues that deal with data pieces and

how do I get from Point A to Point B. And lack of

information sometimes in ‑‑

MR. BARTLETT: But the world didn\'t come

to an end and the southern half of Florida didn\'t

sort of saw off and go off into the Atlantic Ocean or

anything.

MS. GOFF: No, we have, I believe 1,200

students are participating in Dade County alone,

Miami Dade County alone. And I think that number is

going to grow.

MR. BARTLETT: Thank you.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Thank you, Steve. And

Diane McCain, John Winn and Shan Goff, thank you for

jumping in and helping answer a lot of questions as

well. We appreciate all of your participation.

We\'re going to, we\'re going to shorten the

break here and we\'re going to try to get back on

schedule and come back at 3:10. So, it\'s only going

to be a ten minute instead of a 20 minute break. So,

I ask you to be back here at 3:10. Thank you.

(Whereupon, a break was taken at 3:00

p.m.)

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: May we have your

attention? Okay, I\'m pleased to reconvene the

Presidential Commission on Excellence of Special

Education. Our presentation this afternoon will be

about Options for Parental Involvement in Special

Education, Part 4, Advocacy Organizations and Related

Services.

The panel will review the role that

advocacy organizations play in their communities and

with local schools and will examine ways to improve

consumer directed services for parents and their

children with disabilities. The panel will also

discuss the importance of related services,

coordination for children with disabilities.

Our panel members are Santiago Garcia,

Jr., of Homestead, Florida, who\'s a disabled parent;

Alice Harris, a parent with and the Executive

Director and Founder of the Parents of Watt\'s Working

with Children and Adults, Incorporated; and

Representative Elizabeth Coulson, former chairman of

the Department of Physical Therapy, Chicago Medical

School, an Illinois State Representative.

Santiago, would you like to go first?

MR. GARCIA: Yes, Mr. Chairman. And may I

have an assistant to bring the microphone stand over

here?

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Sure.

MR. GARCIA: Do I need to stand?

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: No, you don\'t need to

stand. Just use the microphone.

MR. GARCIA: No, I need to stand up ‑‑

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: You need to stand up,

okay.

MR. GARCIA: ‑‑ to talk properly.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Okay.

MR. GARCIA: I\'m sorry about this.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Oh, no problem.

That\'s all right. We want to accommodate to make

sure we\'ve got a microphone stand that will work for

you. Is that okay?

MR. GARCIA: Yes, thank you.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: I think maybe we need

to have the microphone higher yet. Yeah, and turn it

on. That would be even a better idea.

MR. GARCIA: Thank you. Can you hear me?

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Speak directly into

the microphone, please.

MR. GARCIA: Technology has left me

behind.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Well, listen, we all

have that problem here so don\'t let that bother you.

Go ahead, it\'s your turn.

MR. GARCIA: Thank you.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Thank you, Santiago.

MR. GARCIA: I wish to greet the

Commission by welcoming them to Miami. Unfortunately

I couldn\'t show you the hospitality of the folks in

Homestead. They\'re a little bit more country in

heart and spirit. They don\'t like to travel to Coral

Gables. The distance is too far. And the urban ‑‑

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: It\'s not that far. I

was just there yesterday.

MR. GARCIA: Mr. Chair, Commission

members, I am very honored to be here, to be an

invited guest. Unfortunately because of my MS I am

very nervous. My body feels like a vibrated. I am

unfortunately also, because of the MS I know my voice

is affected by it. So I may not be very clear on

some of the words that I am speaking, just like that.

But I hope that you take the time and get the message

that I\'m trying to convey from my heart.

I am very grateful for the education and

information training centers that have invited me

here to be a speaker today. We call those individual

PPI\'s Community Based Parent Resource Centers. I

locked horns with them about six years ago when I was

trying to provide services to the migrant farm worker

families in the Homestead and south Florida region.

They didn\'t have appropriate materials for me to be

able to share with the farm worker families.

However, they were able to provide

guidance so that I could use my education and writing

skills to incorporate the knowledge, the best

knowledge of information on parents and the rights of

children who have disabilities in public schools. I

found myself relying quite heavily on the patience

and kindness of the PPI\'s, especially the one here in

Florida, the Family Network on Disabilities. They

were able to provide the service that I needed to

work with my parents.

But I feel like the June Bug that stumbled

into the chicken coop with a bunch of hungry chickens

because I am the only one that is able to speak from

the heart and experience of a migrant farm worker,

which I was until the age of 21, a parent, which I

was and still am. My daughter sends me letters, two

page letters with two words. Send money. She has a

learning disability. And unfortunately I think it\'s

related to the amount of money that I have in my bank

account.

Carmen is 22. She has struggled

constantly to have short term memory. That\'s the

only individual I know that knows verbatim over a

thousand songs yet can\'t tell you when five minutes

have passed. She can\'t tell you what her teacher\'s

name is. She can\'t tell you what is two plus two.

But she is able to be a top salesman for Steinmark in

Indianapolis. But she is able to balance her

checkbook. I\'m having her give me an e‑mail

dictorium on how to balance your checkbook. That\'s

how good she is. But her short term memory is no

good. It\'s gone.

I found myself struggling with how to

provide an educational service for Carmen. My ex‑

wife and I paid for tutorial assistance. We paid for

a private school, supplemented by the public school

special ed program. The PPI in Indiana was able to

provide the educational background that we needed as

educated parents to be able to fight and advocate for

her.

We struggled to make sense with all the

laws and all the rights. I used that experience when

I moved to Florida to continue to work with the farm

worker families. I started workshops. I asked them

to bring their children\'s records. They showed up

clutching little plastic bags with their student

records. I felt this was inadequate. I needed to

have the parents do a little bit more technical

assistance for their schools.

So, I asked them to bring file folders.

That was inadequate. The files were extremely large.

So, I provided them with a portfolio. This was

adequate for a few. Most parents that travelled

needed an expanded file like this to be able to carry

their children\'s record. And unfortunately something

was still missing. They didn\'t have the information

on parent training and information centers of the

right and responsibilities for their children.

Fortunately, the Florida Development

Disability Planning Council was able to fund a model

development project which developed a multi purpose

binder not only having the parents and information

center backgrounds of parents\' rights and

responsibilities but we also provided for them low

literacy high interest items that they could write

on. More important, they were able to put their

children\'s records in it.

All of this came about through the

generous of the parent and training and information

centers. But unfortunately something was missing.

As migrant farmer worker children moved north, the

schools up north were not ready to accept their

records. We had prepared them for everything

possible in order to provide them with the

appropriate information. Unfortunately the schools

that were receiving the children were not ready to

accept them. There was no reciprocating

relationship.

I have used my experience as a parent and

as an adult with a disability to continue to advocate

for the rights of the farm workers. In Florida, we

have over 60,000. At last count, 17 percent of those

individuals enrolled in schools were classified or

receiving exceptional student program services. Now,

on the other hand, a recent study by the University

of Florida Agricultural Services indicated that 41

percent of the Florida farm worker population was

undocumented.

The chilling effect of knowing that you\'re

here illegally and trying to get services from a

school kind of keeps you quiet. You need the money.

You don\'t want to make waves. You keep your children

at home. You don\'t send them to school. They don\'t

want you in the summer. So you\'re actually an

isolated individual, an invisible individual in this

land of plenty. You are able to provide the labor to

harvest the crops but the only future that your child

has is to continue that legacy.

The grassroots ‑‑ on disabilities was

created to provide the kind of support that I needed

as a small community based parent resource center.

We need to consider how we can support and maintain

this continued individual project. The

responsibility is awesome, that I have. But it\'s

much greater because you\'re the ones that have to

convey to the President the best options to maintain

the parents\' training and information centers as well

as the community based parent resource centers.

I won\'t take any more of your time. I

know I have other distinguished individuals that are

able to speak on this subject. So, I thank you for

allowing me the ten minutes of pain.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Thank you very much

for your presentation, Santiago. Now ‑‑

MS. HARRIS: My turn?

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: ‑‑ your turn, go

ahead.

MS. HARRIS: All right, my time. All

right. Good morning and, well, thank God, I have to

say that. And I always slip that one in. But to the

President and the Commissioners and all of my friends

out in the audience I am honored and grateful to be

here. I would like to tell you about the reason that

I started the Parents of Watts was I had three

children that had special needs. And one of them was

a chronic ad medic and the doctor said she wouldn\'t

be able to get 12. The other two had seizures. And

then I had one that had no need and we could never

talk about that one because the three of them was so

great.

And so because of that, and my husband got

laid off of work so that brought the welfare in and

they said, when they got in they said, well, it\'s too

many sick children in the home. It must be something

wrong with the home. And for that I had a run for my

money trying to keep from losing my children because

they had special needs.

Well, I won. That\'s the reason I have to

always give thanks to God because I didn\'t have the

knowledge and I didn\'t know what to do. But I know I

wasn\'t going to lose my children, not standing up.

So, anyway, I didn\'t want anybody else to go through

with that. I had no knowledge. I just didn\'t know

what to do. But then I had to learn. And in

learning I felt I have to share this so another

family won\'t have to go through with this. And

that\'s how I got started with the Parents of Watts.

And I live in the community where I work at. And so

every time a parent would have trouble, I\'d see one

living in cars and see the children, seven, eight

years old, never been to school. I would go to them

and I would say, I can help you. And I will. And

that\'s how I got the name started Sweet Alice. So

everybody now knows me as Sweet Alice. It\'s been a

long time. I\'m not tired yet.

So, with starting that and going through

to conferences, and I had a chance to meet all my

colleagues out there in the audience and all I didn\'t

know I would ask them. And I would go back and take

it to the community. And so one day I had a notice

from the President of the United States and said I

had been chosen for this Parents of Light. I think

he had, at that time they were going around finding

1,000 people and I was the 703 Parents of Light.

But I had a chance to talk to him and I

had a chance to talk to his wife. And I was telling

them what I had gone through and what I was doing.

And I promised them that I wouldn\'t give it up. And

the President promised me that he wouldn\'t give me

up. But it wasn\'t long before he had left the seat.

And I kept mine since now to today, now today I am

here now seeing that his son has taken up where he

followed at. And I tell you, Commissioners, the man

don\'t play. He\'s right on time because we, in

working now, I am, instead of teaching parents, I\'m

also teaching teachers how to work with parents. Do

you not know teachers didn\'t go to school to learn

how to work with parents. Parents didn\'t go to

school to learn how to work with teachers.

And I found that was a big need that we

need to do and stop assuming that the teachers don\'t

want the parents at school. They don\'t know what to

do with them when they get them there. And neither

do the parents understand what to do with the

teachers. So they only go when they get upset. And

when the parent get upset or something going on

wrong, she goes in to get the teacher. When

something happens to Little Johnny, the teacher

writes a note home to the parent and the parents are

sick of these bad notes. So, I teach them, send some

good notes home sometimes.

My job now is to bring in a relationship

between the teachers and the parents and work with

the superintendents to give both of them a break.

And I found that was one great need that\'s really

needed because I\'m getting more invitations to go now

and speak in different schools and districts for

that. And I find out from the questions they ask, it

is a great need.

So, with working with that, I thought I

would continue to work with that. But then the

neighborhood ‑‑ came through. Now, I live in a

neighborhood where there is ‑‑ projects sitting

around the community. No where in the United States

has that ever been and it\'s called Watts California.

Now, when a grant comes in it\'s called South Central.

But South Central is not Watts. And now you ought to

take notes of this because it\'s not Watts. Watts is

Watts.

But anyway, during the riots and hispanic

and African American start, teenagers fighting one

another because jobs was coming in and they were

fighting over the jobs. So then my job was to bring

them together and stop the teenagers from fighting.

And then working with teenagers, I found out that

most of our teenagers, they\'re in high school but

they\'re reading on a second and third grade reading

level.

And it don\'t belong, and then in camp,

they\'re there because they can\'t read. They have a

education handicap that nobody seems to look at too

much because if you behave yourself, you was passing

on your age anyway. So when they get to college they

drop out because they can\'t keep up there. Then the

community, they\'re mad with everybody. So what do

they do? Fighting, shooting and killing. And so we

had to put a stop to that.

And what we did, we started our community

school. We have a house where the teachers come

there and teach. They have to be 14 because it has

to go through community adult school. But we have

123 in different colleges now. We just had one the

other day who has finish pharmacy school, a technical

pharmacy school. And he had a 4 point grade average

and now they said he could go on to be PA, that\'s a

practitioner physician.

But these, and they say nobody good comes

out of Watts. That\'s not true. They can learn and

they will learn. The President said he wants every

child to be reading by the time they get three years

old. We\'ve already started working on it. We\'re

starting a community readiness field center. Now, if

we said child care, that\'s all they\'re going to get

is child care. Play all day long. And then when

they get to kindergarten, the teacher then has to

train them how to sit still.

We have to start that, if it can\'t start

in the home, it has to start in the community. If

the parents is walking around selling diapers at

night, you know that belongs to the child. So you

think they\'re going to teach the child how to read?

No, we have to do that. We have child care across

the street from the office we started to see if this

would work. We have a 15 month old child; now you

all come. Don\'t even call me when you come. Just

come on and see this for yourself. The child is 15

months old is reading Green Eggs and Ham out of the

book. They\'re already working on the computer.

Children learn better at an early age than they do at

a later age. And so I\'m grateful for the President

for making that announcement publicly. And we want

to use that as model to prove that children can be

reading at the age of three years old. That don\'t

start at Head Start. It starts before Head Start.

It starts in the home. And if it don\'t start in the

home, it starts in the community.

Another good thing is Watt Grassroots

Organization. Why? Because they live where they

work. Number one, when you\'re a grassroots

organization and you\'re waiting on a parent, you are

the counselor, you\'re their best friend, you are the

one that they trust, confidence. You are the one can

go in the home and you are the one that can tell that

mother, I don\'t want to see this child dressed like

this again. You can\'t go in there and do that. But

her friend can do that.

So, in the morning time I get to be the

teacher and the counselor. But at 5:00 o\'clock, I

get to be the neighbor; two hats. And I tell them

when I knock on the door I\'m the neighbor this time

so we\'re going to sit down and we\'re going to

business. And we can do that.

Nobody showed me a hand. You all let me

know when to quit because see I\'ve been doing this a

long time. I talk a long time. But I want to give

you some what work and what doesn\'t work. And one

part I want you to know, when it comes to parents, I

teach them. You might have a PhD, but the parent has

a Ph Do. The difference in that, you read the

theory, they have experienced the theory. And when

you put both of them together, it works.

Thank you.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Thank you, Sweet

Alice. Thank you very much. I think you maybe went

a little over but it was worth it.

Representative Elizabeth Coulson.

REPRESENTATIVE COULSON: Well, I don\'t

know if I even need to speak because I\'m going to

take your PhD and Ph Do, if you don\'t mind, and use

that in other categories.

Well, I feel a little bit out of place on

this panel because we have these two people who are

speaking from obviously good experience. But I will

stick to some of my testimony and probably throw a

few examples in.

I thank you for the opportunity to testify

regarding special education excellence. And as a

physical therapist and a state legislator, I feel

that I am in an unique position to talk about ideas

with you. I\'m going to target four areas in my

testimony, many of which you\'ve heard over and over

today. So, I won\'t dwell on them. I\'ll be very

short so that we can try to get back on our schedule.

One is accountability; two is prevention

and early intervention, which I haven\'t heard as much

about as I think I would have liked today; personnel;

and then transition planning, which is another area

of interest of mine. But after this compelling from

Sweet Alice and Santiago, I\'m feeling that it\'s a

little bit hard act to follow.

My first reason for being here is I

started as a physical therapist in 1976. I was one

of the first physical therapist hired in the school

district to set up related service under the Public

Act 94‑142. I worked for two years in special

education. And then you know what happens, we all

sort of go on from there. It\'s a tough business to

be in. And I went on to be a professor at Chicago

Medical School. I taught pediatric physical therapy

as well as many other courses in health care policy

and became chairman. And then I became a State

Legislator after I had worked on public policy for

about 20 years in special education as well as other

educational areas.

In addition, I have served as an educator

advocate for at least 12 years, if not longer, for

the wards of the state because I felt with my

background and expertise children who didn\'t have a

parent to go their IEP meetings should have someone

who had some understanding of the system and knew the

rights of parents, which our state does have special

training on.

So, I\'ve been involved in IEP meetings, I

figured out this morning, for over 20. On and off,

not every year. And I\'ve seen them change. And I\'m

going to address my comments based on some of those

changes but also what I think could be better about

them.

We\'ve come a long way since 1975 in our

thinking and in the way we deal in special ed. But

so much more needs to be done to make the programs

what they were meant to be and to allow children with

disabilities to be able to take advantage of all the

educational opportunities that all children have.

Related to accountability, I think there\'s

a couple of issues. And I\'m not going to read my

testimony because I know you have it there in front

of you. And one of the things as a legislator, I

hate it when people read what they have in front of

them. But I\'m going to address two issues. And one

of those; there\'s a huge variety of student needs in

special education. Remember we have learning

disabilities, we have physically handicapped

children, we have all different kinds of categories.

And I think in accountability you need to keep that,

take that into consideration.

We spoke earlier today about whether or

not students should take the standardized test. And

I\'m going to give you one example from my experience

as an IEP that will tell you maybe you need to be

careful how you word it so that not all students have

to take a standardized test just because they have to

take the test. And that example was a young man, I

won\'t give you his name because of confidentiality,

but he was nine years old. He was brilliant. He had

wonderful, like Mr. Garcia\'s daughter, wonderful long

term memory. He could sing any song from memory but

he had no short term memory. And they made him take

a standardized Westler test. And you know what? He

failed it.

We sat down and talked to him and he

couldn\'t remember anything for five minutes. They

gave him several other tests and he couldn\'t pass

them. One of the reasons was he couldn\'t put paper

to pencil, pencil to paper, excuse me. So, I think

what you have to think about in standardized testing

is what fits that child. Don\'t tell me, yes, school

psychologist told me on another child that this child

would never walk, a four year old child. He was not

yet able to walk but they told me he would never be

able to walk. That had nothing to do with what he

had been tested for by the school psychologist. And

as a physical therapist, I knew what he was being

tested for and what he would maybe be able to do as

far as walking.

So, just enough said about accountability.

Be careful that it\'s flexible enough and there are

measurable tools that we can tell what the student

level is. And because I\'m not going from my

testimony, I was just going to; the other issue on

accountability as far as current research, I know

there\'s a lot more research out there than there was

20 years ago. But we need to make sure that we have

valid and reliable for all different types of

students, all different diagnosis or categories,

whichever word you prefer to use. I like to call

them students with special needs and we need to make

sure that they\'re appropriately tested.

I\'ll give you another example and then

I\'ll go on to early intervention. I have seen IEP\'s

written for similar students that have the exact same

information on them even though the students have

very different needs. Not because the students are

the same and not because the teachers aren\'t good but

because the teachers don\'t have time. And the

paperwork, the amount of paperwork that is required

is excessive and we cannot always take the time to

write a special IEP, Individualized Educational

Program. Sometimes they become 90 percent of this

and 80 percent of that. And they are very rote.

And we need to make sure as public policy

makers that we don\'t make it so that all they\'re

doing is rotes and that they\'re not actually

individualizing those programs. Again, we need to be

careful in the wording.

And last but not least on accountability I

want to mention that parents should always have input

into their IEP\'s. But I would also like to suggest

that students have input into their IEP\'s. They know

what they need. They know what is best for them in

many cases. Now, I know the question, I think it

was; well, I can\'t tell from the front. I only saw

you from the back in the audience. Well, what age?

Well, it depends. It\'s individual and it depends on

the child. But we have got to take that into

consideration. If they want to be an auto mechanic

then they should be able to voice that at 13 or 12 or

14 or 16, whatever time is appropriate. And then we

should be able to help them. If they want to go to

college, we should be able to do that too.

On prevention and early intervention, I

can\'t say enough about this. I don\'t want to spend a

lot of time but one of the things that all the

research shows, all the neurology research talks

about for all children is that the earlier the

better. Children learn best very young. If they do

not have the resources in the home, they need them

elsewhere.

I think Sweet Alice put it very well, it

shouldn\'t be playing in child care. It should be

early childhood education, it should be early

intervention. We need to identify these children

very early that might need some services because

many, many times and what we\'ve found in Illinois,

many times we can give services and then that child

never needs special education in the school district.

Cost effective, you know, that\'s a bureaucratic word

but it is cost effective. But even more it\'s child

effective and I think that\'s very, very important.

‑‑ innovation and flexible use of

resources. Therefore, it\'s my recommendation to

encourage local school districts to be able to do as

much early intervention as part of the system. And

it must receive special attention. It\'s a part of

IDEA but I think it needs to be an even broader part.

I\'ll answer questions on that later.

Personnel, there\'s a critical shortage of

personnel and properly credentialed people to deal

with students with disabilities. Partly because it

is a lot, there is a lot of paperwork. Partly

because we just don\'t have enough training programs

in the state. And I would like to, again, not read

through my recommendations but to remember that we as

states and federal government need to work with our

universities and our schools to try to set up better

programs, to make sure there\'s reciprocity, to make

sure there\'s ongoing public, professional development

for teachers both the regular education teacher but

also the related health services person.

And as one of those related health

services person, a physical therapist, the hardest

thing for a physical therapist to do when they come

into a school district, they may not have had

anything about IDEA in their curriculum. They need

to be able to learn that information, know what the

parent\'s rights are, know what they need to do. And

we need to address that at the curricular level. As

a chairman of the Physical Therapy Department, of

course I made sure that was included in our

curriculum. However, I know it\'s not included in all

curricula.

The last idea that I have and I think one

of the; my dissertation and my PhD is on recruitment

and retention. So, forgive me if I go overboard on

recruitment. But I think we need to make it a really

exciting thing and develop a public image type,

national campaign for people to be willing to be

special education teachers because it\'s one of the

most important thing that we can do as far as better

training for our students and our teachers.

And last but not least, I\'m going to talk

about transition. And that\'s because my most, my

biggest frustration right now is I\'ve been in special

education for 22 years. Some of my kids, and I call

them my kids even though I don\'t have any of my own

children, they\'re my kids, have aged out. They\'re

22\. They\'re 25. They\'re 26. And we don\'t do very

much. As a matter of fact we do almost nothing to

help them transition into real life.

Life skills at the high school level

dealing with balancing their checkbook, making sure

that a child that can go to college goes to college

or, for example, my friend\'s son, Daniel, who is

developmentally delayed and he just reached 21. And

we looked around for four years to try to find

something for him to do, a job for him to go to and

we had to end up creating our own program. Luckily

his mother is a physical therapist. I\'m a physical

therapist. I\'m a state legislator and we created our

own program, a Bell Transition Program in the State

of Illinois, a pilot program to try to help these

kids.

The most amazing thing about Daniel, he

was in the schools until he was 21 and he couldn\'t

read and he couldn\'t add and subtract. And you know

what? He now, after a year in that new program, is

able to read some words. He\'s 22. Now, we don\'t

know if he might have been able to do that before or

if it\'s just that he\'s now reached the level where

all of a sudden he\'s able to develop those skills.

We don\'t know that because none of us measured that.

But it really has opened up our eyes in the last

year. And now we\'re fighting for funding for that

program and it\'s only a pilot program. And that

leads me into my last comment, that I promised I

wouldn\'t spend a lot of time on.

But one of our biggest concerns is

obviously the issue of funding. In the State of

Illinois we don\'t fund special education enough

through the State. But we\'re not helped a lot by the

federal government either. And as a legislator I

have learned a lot more about how little we actually

do help to fund special education. And I applaud the

President and his program to improve funding for

special education through his general education, I

have the bill right here, the new education program

that he present, No Child Left Behind.

But I will reiterate that it\'s very, very

difficult. And one of the reasons we\'re having

problems with IDEA implementation is because of the

lack of funding. In Illinois we are still at the

1985, \'86 levels of funding for teachers. Obviously

schools are supplementing that program greatly.

My only other comment that I\'d like to

make, and this is something that came to me just two

days ago from a parent, and I didn\'t include it in my

testimony, is about dispute resolution. And I\'ve

done a lot of legislation related to arbitration for

other things. And what this parent said to me is, I

wish, I wish I didn\'t have to go to do process right

away. I wish there was a way to have a mediation

system so that if we\'re not getting what we need we

can go to a mediator and work it out, because this

person happened to be an attorney, rather than

immediately going to an adversarial position.

I talked to some teachers. I talked to

some special education people and they said the exact

same thing. So, I did not hear that today and I

thought I would add that.

And my last comment is prevention,

prevention, prevention. Prevention is cost

effective. Prevention is child orientated. And

prevention, early intervention is a key. Thank you

very much.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: And our first question

is from Doug Huntt.

MR. HUNTT: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I

wanted to get in early because I was shut out of the

last round. First of all, I want to thank staff for

determining which ones of us are PhD\'s and not. That

was good. I appreciate that. I would say, though,

that the Assistant Secretary of OSER is a PhD, Bob

Pasternack, so.

MR. PASTERNACK: Is that a Ph Do or is

that ‑‑

MR. HUNTT: The jury\'s still out, Bob.

I\'m going to try to wade out of that one. Mr.

Garcia, my ears perked up when you said that your

daughter is competitively employed even though she is

a person with a disability.

MR. GARCIA: That\'s correct.

MR. HUNTT: And in fact that she is a

sales person for a major company. And I was

wondering, did I hear you say that you chose not to

send her to public special ed, that you did go

through private school?

MR. GARCIA: It was a difficult choice but

the reason was based on the IEP and the support of

information on what would be the best program for

Carmen, she needed a small classroom environment.

The alternative for her was to go into a middle

school with about 1,500 students. And then in high

school, the alternative was a high school with about

4,000 students. And I just didn\'t think along with

the people that work in trying to develop the

appropriate IEP in that environment, Carmen would be

lost.

MR. HUNTT: What would you have done

without that option then? Do you think that she

would have succeeded at the same level?

MR. GARCIA: Well, fortunately I was able

to afford to send Carmen to a private school. I\'m

still paying for it. Now, the option was to move to

a smaller community, which was considered.

Unfortunately, the economics of my life situation at

that time, going through a divorce, having MS

diagnosed, then losing my job, that option was not

there.

MR. HUNTT: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Jay Chambers is next.

Jay?

MR. CHAMBERS: Well, we\'re getting in

early, aren\'t we, Doug, after being shut out earlier.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: We\'re trying to make

it up to you guys.

MR. CHAMBERS: Thank you, we appreciate

it. In my discussions with parents, some of whom are

on the Commission and others, I\'ve heard a great deal

of frustration with the IEP process. My image was,

you know, husband and wife, if you\'re lucky, going

into a situation with something like five to seven

educators, maybe only one of whom is a teacher or a

direct service provider, others administrators.

I guess my image of that process, again

not having been through it, is it appears to me to be

very adversarial in nature. And yet the

relationships that are described to me between the

teachers and the parents aren\'t that way. My

question is is there a way that we can revise the

wording of IDEA or the regulations to reduce the

adversarial nature of the IEP process?

REPRESENTATIVE COULSON: You know, having

been in IEP\'s for 20 years, it didn\'t use to be

adversarial. They started out as relatively

collaborative. It\'s only been more recently that the

IEP has become a them against us type situation. And

I\'ve been in, I\'ve been on both sides, actually,

because as a physical therapist, I end up being the

mediator many times because I\'m not the person who,

even though that\'s not my specialty I do have a

little background in that.

I think that whole issue of mediation, not

that it should start at the IEP. The IEP should be a

collaborate, and I\'m not sure exactly what words to

use, but collaborative, I\'d love to work on it with

you. Collaborative process that we can talk about

the student and their goals and the parent\'s goals

and what the teacher\'s goals are and what could be

provided. That\'s the way it needs to be talked

about.

And then allow for a mediation process if

it becomes adversarial. And then, not to get rid of

due process by any means, but to have that as a next

step after mediation where you have someone is a

qualified mediator or has an ability to be able to

try to get the two sides to talk to each other

without the adversarial.

Unfortunately, right now and what this

parent said to me is she feels like she has to bring

her attorney to the IEP meeting. And I said, I can\'t

believe that. I mean, that\'s absolutely awful that

you would feel that way. And some how we need to

address that.

MS. HARRIS: Let me speak to that also.

In the Watts neighborhood, the IEP, seemingly when

the parents don\'t know what it\'s like going to court.

And usually when you go to court, they\'re going to

take the child out of the home. So, parents are

afraid of it. But once they go and understand it and

someone is with them, then they understand the

importance of it because it\'s not a court session.

That should be a friendly session because this is

that child\'s life.

And without the parent, you don\'t have a

complete program because there\'s some things that\'s

happening with this child. The teacher don\'t know if

the child wet the bed. You\'re not going to tell the

teacher. But if the parent is there, she can tell

them he might need to go to the bathroom more often

than the rest of the children. And the teacher won\'t

let him go but it\'s because she don\'t know. And so

when the parents are sitting there, they get

everything that they need. And I tell them all the

time, you need to have the parent there but on that

slip, it says the parent can come if they like.

MR. GARCIA: Let me respond. My

experience that I had, it became an adversarial

meeting when we started talking about private school

placement and the support services that would have to

follow Carmen. At that point the issue became

funding. And not what was best for Carmen. I tried

to convey to the staff of the school district that

the IEP should have been a process that we needed to

engage in almost on a monthly meeting instead of

waiting until May when we had to be forced and make a

rushed decision.

This IEP process should be like a child

going to school, a systematic follow up, maybe on

occasional by‑monthly meeting. It shouldn\'t be a

process where there is a line on the sand and you

cross it, you die.

MR. CHAMBERS: Can I follow up on that?

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Okay, quickly.

MR. CHAMBERS: I mean, I find that your

comment, that\'s very interesting, the idea of a

process. I was trying to look for something to help

make this whole thing more collaborative. I like

that word as well. And I heard you say a process

over time. I mean, that\'s kind of a note I wrote to

myself, as opposed to a process that ends up in a

document that has a life span of a year. And then

you come back again in a year and fight over it

again.

Is there something about the way we could

write this that would reasonably make it more of a

process? Something that happens over that period of

time?

MR. GARCIA: Unfortunately, if you do

create a process that is systematic and over a nine

month time period, the legislature is going to tell

you it\'s going to cost more money because they have

to hire more staff. And the school districts are

going to tell you, it\'s going to require not only

more staff but additional paperwork. And that means

more money.

It comes down to funding. And that\'s the

biggest drawback that I can see for creating a

process. But it doesn\'t have to cost money. I\'m

sorry, I just don\'t have the appropriate answer for

how do you create something without costing an arm

and a leg.

MR. CHAMBERS: Thank you. I think your

comment is right on target. And I think there\'s

something to be talked about further among the

members of the Commission. Thank you.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Steve Bartlett.

MR. BARTLETT: Representative Coulson,

continuing on Mr. Chambers about how do we make this

more collaborative, one suggestion we\'ve had from a

parent group in New Jersey was that we allow the

parents to bring a non‑attorney advocate instead of

only an attorney is the parent\'s option. Would that

be a good idea? A bad idea? Your thoughts.

REPRESENTATIVE COULSON: I think that it

depends on where the parent is in the process. If

this is their first meeting and there\'s somebody that

could be a mentor to help them along, that would be

okay. But as soon as you get a, if you get into that

situation where you bring this other person, I think

the parents, and you guys are parents, is going to

immediately think oh, oh, this is an adversarial

situation. So, I could see a mentor, like another

parent in a mentoring relationship, something like

that. But I would be very careful that it doesn\'t

become just another person who\'s there to be

adversarial. Some how ‑‑

MR. BARTLETT: Well, I guess the

suggestion was in lieu of an attorney.

REPRESENTATIVE COULSON: Yeah, in lieu of

an attorney but depending on who that person is, they

need to have the attitude that this is not

adversarial. So perhaps a mentor situation where you

could have people who know what they\'re parental

rights are go with that parent so they\'re not so

scared. I can\'t tell you how many parents have told

me how afraid they are because of all these PhD\'s and

no Ph Dos sitting there that they don\'t even want to

speak up.

So, yes it would be helpful but it needs

to be someone that is a very helping person who can

mentor them, not necessarily ‑‑

MR. BARTLETT: An attorney or another

person with a good attitude ‑‑

REPRESENTATIVE COULSON: Yeah, I mean, I\'m

not sure ‑‑

MR. BARTLETT: ‑‑ write that in the ‑‑

REPRESENTATIVE COULSON: I\'m not sure it

should be an attorney. My husband\'s an attorney and

I\'m not sure that they have a mind set to not be

adversarial. I think you need a mediator. They\'re

trained to mediate. They\'re trained to help put

things together, not to be in an adversarial

situation.

MR. BARTLETT: Last question. In your

testimony you stated our mission force, which we

agree with or the Commission agrees with and that is

that local school districts should be held

accountable for student achievement. Question; how

would that accountability look if you were in our

shoes? Right now the accountability is you, if you

don\'t achieve school achievement you lose all your

federal money, which is a sanction that\'s virtually

never used.

REPRESENTATIVE COULSON: Right.

MR. BARTLETT: What should the

accountability look like?

REPRESENTATIVE COULSON: One thing I

didn\'t talk about is that I think it needs to be

outcome base based on the child.

MR. BARTLETT: Right.

REPRESENTATIVE COULSON: So, if it\'s, if

it\'s the, I don\'t know, the Florida test, we call it,

our\'s is an ISTAT. If the child or the student is

able to take that test appropriately, then I think

they need to be asked to take those tests. If

they\'re not, then it needs to be based on the

outcomes that should be set up by the teachers in

those IEP meetings with the parents. If that could

be, the outcome be that Jimmy wants to be able to be

an auto mechanic when he\'s finished, then we can set

up measurable goals that he can achieve that. If he

wants to go to college, he\'s got to achieve certain

goals. And those might be the ACT or the SAT test.

So, I think it needs to be individualized.

That needs to be worded in there properly. But I

think that most students can, with some

accommodations, have an outcome orientated test.

MR. BARTLETT: The accountability for the

school district; how do we hold the school district

accountable if Johnny is not taught to ‑‑

REPRESENTATIVE COULSON: The school

district\'s accountable because the child either has

reached those outcomes or has not reached those

outcomes.

MR. BARTLETT: And when the children don\'t

reach the outcomes?

REPRESENTATIVE COULSON: Yeah, well,

that\'s, that means they\'re not setting them properly,

I would think. You know, teachers should be able,

and one of the problems is our educational system.

Teachers need to be able to tell what is appropriate,

an appropriate outcome for a child with a certain

disability. Not, for example, on reading by third

grade, is that an appropriate goal or not for this

child?

MR. BARTLETT: Thank you.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: I want to recognize

Doug Gill for the last question in order to be able

to start the public comment.

MR. GILL: And that will be an easy

question, the same one for all three of you. If you

could pick one thing that you think would improve

parental involvement in special education, what would

it be?

MS. HARRIS: It would be lend a hand out

of that community, that that parent knows, work with

that parent because it helped me. All of mine, I

have two attorneys and the one went as a social

worker. And now they go in for the parent because

they\'re not looked at as lawyers.

MR. GILL: Okay, so what would the one

thing be; increase opportunity.

MS. HARRIS: Yes, yes.

MR. GILL: Is that what you\'re saying?

MS. HARRIS: Yes.

MR. GILL: Mr. Garcia?

MR. GARCIA: Sir, I would pay them. I

would pay them for their time. I would pay them for

their child care. I would pay them for their travel.

I would pay them for being there as a consultant to

the school district. You would get parent increased

involvement.

MR. GILL: Okay. Miss Coulson?

REPRESENTATIVE COULSON: I would follow

the early intervention model and that is have the

parents as the child\'s major teacher. And we need to

help them be that teacher. They\'re with the child

most often. So if you can have a child start early

enough and the parents are part of the process, like

it is in the early intervention model, and just carry

it through the school system instead of when they

reach whatever age in your state it is, in our state

it\'s five, all of a sudden the parent\'s yanked out of

the model.

MR. GILL: Thanks.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: I want to thank Mr.

Garcia, Miss Harris and Representative Coulson, thank

you very much for your participation.

Yes, Steve.

MR. BARTLETT: Chairman, I have a brief

announcement. The Accountability Task Force, in

light of the comments just before lunch, will have an

informal meeting of the task force at 7:30 in the

morning. We thought about 6:30 but since we don\'t

start until 9:00, in a room to be determined. We\'ll

notify your room tonight. And we\'ll start to kind of

walk through some of our thoughts about the

positions. All members of the Commission are invited

to attend but it will be the task force that will be

required to attend.

MR. JONES: Mr. Bartlett ‑‑

MR. BARTLETT: The Accountability Task

Force.

MR. JONES: Mr. Bartlett, I just want to

make it clear, a task force meeting are or aren\'t

public meetings. Is this intended to be a task force

deliberative session which would be private or you\'re

thinking ‑‑

MR. BARTLETT: It\'s a deliberative

session.

MR. JONES: Okay.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Which means it\'s not

public. Okay, just so there\'s clear understanding.

Okay, the next part of the program is the

public comments. And we\'ve had people sign up for

this. I think we have actually 30 people have signed

up, 20 that within the first hour. But those of you

that can stay, I will stay. And those of you that

can stay, we will hear the other ten that are signed

up as well. This is limited to three minutes. And I

know that\'s a pretty tight time frame but we like

that. And it\'s going to be timed.

So you can look at the time keeper here to

check to see if you\'re on schedule. And having been

a political candidate and participated in a number of

debates, I know what that\'s like to be timed and to

have somebody cut you off. But that\'s the way it\'s

got to be in order to follow the rules and the

procedures that have been spelled out.

Again, we want to thank you all for being

here today and for being willing to participate as a

presenter. The first person on the list is Barbara

Taub‑Albert. We want the presenters to come up front

here. I think it\'s going to be at the front mike.

MR. JONES: Mr. Chair, what we\'ll do is it

might be easier to have them at the front microphone

given the proximity of the podium right now.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Can you move the

podium? I think it\'s easier for people to stand

behind a podium.

MR. JONES: But what we are going to do,

Mr. Chair, is have you call the speaker and the

person who\'s on deck. And that way that person can

be prepared and you all don\'t have to stand in a line

waiting for everyone to come.

By the way, a note for all speakers, the

young woman sitting here, Marissa, can you hold up

your hand? This is Marissa. She is our time keeper.

She\'ll show you little cards that you can keep an eye

on as we go through. And she\'ll ding the glass when

you\'ve reached your three minutes. And then she\'ll

ding it more aggressively when you finish a sentence

after that.

We did have somebody try and filibuster a

few weeks ago. And we did not break the glass. But

in a courtesy to your other speakers, if you could

please wrap up when you hear the glass, that would be

helpful.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: In order to try to

expedite the procedures, Barbara Taub‑Albert is first

followed by Charlotte Temple followed by Paul Liles,

followed by Renee Whaley, then Larry Keough, then

Julieta Gigante. Those will be the first six. Then

I\'ll announce them as we go. Brucie Ball is next,

Number 7, and then Connie Hawkins, Peter Caproni,

Denton Kurtz, Amy Van Bergen, Paula Goldberg, Rita

Byrd.

Okay, we will start with Barbara Taub‑

Albert. Barbara?

MS. ALBERT: Good afternoon. I guess I\'m

being first to offset the fact that I didn\'t get to

spend my husband\'s birthday with him last night.

Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen of the

Commission. Thank you for taking the time to listen

to us and to hear our concerns. My name is Barbara

Taub‑Albert. I\'ve been a speech language pathologist

at H.L. Johnson Elementary School in Palm Beach

County for 14 years. Before moving to Florida, I

worked in a suburban school district in Chicago for

five years. I also worked two years at a private

parochial school for handicapped children. And

before that, five years at the infamous Willowbrook

in New York, in Staten Island.

Having worked at all these various

settings, I can tell you public schools are better.

Two years ago I was asked to participate as part of a

newly formed NEA IDEA Special Education Resource

Cadre. It\'s been my pleasure to serve as a Cadre

member because I\'ve always envisioned myself as an

advocate for children with disabilities. And my

participation in this Cadre has enabled me to

actively do just that.

With the training and the information that

I\'ve received, I feel I can better advocate for the

50 children that I work with every day who have

speech and language problems with ‑‑ disabilities

including autism, emotional handicapped, mentally

handicapped, hearing impaired, specific learning

disabilities, et cetera.

NEA strongly believes that active parent

participation is critical for student success. When

parents, teachers, administrators and related service

providers all work together and plan together, they

can focus on matching the educational environment and

appropriate support with learning needs of students

with disabilities and with disabilities. The IEP

process yields programs and services that maximize

the success of every child.

I would quickly like to tell you the four

recommendations that NEA has in the parent

involvement area. The first being enhancing parents

as partners, to work together on learning what an IEP

is supposed to have in it, how to evaluate their

child\'s progress and how to collaboratively

participate as a team member. The second being

building educator parent communication skills. The

third being creating time so that we have time to

really assess what needs to go into an IEP. And the

fourth being clarifying reporting requirements to

reduce paperwork.

I thank the Commission for their time and

listening.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Thank you very much

for your presentation, Barbara.

Charlotte Temple is next.

MS. TEMPLE: Thank you for the opportunity

to be here to speak before you today. I\'m Charlotte

Temple and I\'m with the Florida State Advisory

Committee for the Education of Exceptional Students.

If you\'ll take one second, if you\'re a member of the

State Advisory Committee or a member of the Executive

Committee, would you just please stand? We\'d like

for people to see who we are. This is a portion of

our Executive Committee and some of the members that

were here for a meeting we had yesterday.

On behalf of the Florida State Advisory

Committee for the Education of Exceptional Students

we appreciate the opportunity to comment before you

on the Individual with Disability Act and its eminent

reauthorization. We have eight consensus items that

are recommendations of the committee and they are as

follows.

Provide full federal funding for IDEA,

Part B, Assistance to State Grants, including Section

619, the Preschool Portion. Number two, provide

increases in federal funding for other IDEA programs,

including support for prevention services and

programs, early intervention and preschool services

through Part C, Early Intervention, and support for

personnel development, effective models of programs

and service delivery and research for improved

student outcomes through Part D, Discretionary

Programs, currently authorized Parts C and D.

Continue to support effective partnerships

with parents and their involvement as full partners

in education of students with disabilities including

decision making processes at all levels of

implementations of IDEA, both individual, school

level, district level, state and federal level.

Support more effective and coordinated services for

students with disabilities through policies and

funding incentives to ensure interagency

collaboration.

Support a seamless system for children and

students with disabilities including coordinated

programs and services at all levels and interagency

involvement in funding support necessary to ensure

effective transitions both from Part C to Part B and

also from Part B out to the secondary or adult life.

And support improve student and system outcomes and

program quality through incentives for achieving or

exceeding expected outcomes.

We look forward to continuing to work on

the elaboration of a resolution of these and other

issues related to the implementation and

reauthorization of IDEA and improved educational

programs for students with disabilities.

I\'ve got about 30 seconds or less. I\'m a

parent of a child with a disability. Let me give you

a statement. IEP\'s work. My child is in the fourth

grade. She has Down Syndromes. She\'s in a regular

education classroom. It\'s only through the process

of the IEP and parent involvement that she has that

opportunity to participate in the science fair, to

bring together reports and book reports and other

things like typical students go home in the

neighborhood and play with her peers who have those

same experiences in school that day and can talk

about the relationship of the opportunities that they

have had to harass their teacher and other things in

the classroom that day.

But thank you for the opportunity to have

parental involvement both in the interest of my

daughter and all levels. Thank you.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Thank you, Charlotte.

Paul Liles.

MR. LILES: Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman,

Committee members. My name is Paul Liles. I\'m a

private attorney. I represent children with

disabilities and their parents who are looking to get

services from the school district. And let me tell

you it is the worse experience a parent can have to

come to my office. It means that the system has

failed.

The first thing that I tell a parent when

they come to my office that you do not, do not want

to go through a due process hearing. Your child

loses, the school district loses and I lose because

I\'m not going to get paid and you can\'t afford me.

Nobody wins with due process hearings. But they are

necessary, unfortunately.

Let\'s talk about to get around that. And

let me talk about the parents\' voice you aren\'t

hearing today. And those are the parents who don\'t

know enough about IDEA to even show up for an IEP

meeting. That the IEP meeting is held within 15

minutes of the time that the committee gets together,

a form is filled out, people sign it, then they

leave. One teacher told me that the IEP goes into a

vault and she never sees it again until the next

year. And that\'s the reality of a number of children

whose voices you don\'t hear here today.

The teachers who are entrusted with

helping to develop an IEP do not know how to prepare

an IEP. They don\'t know how to write present levels

of performance. They don\'t know how to write annual

goals. They do not know how to write short term

objectives and the parents don\'t know any better.

They rely upon the school district to provide

services and you folks are living proof right now

that the school district has miserably failed in that

regard otherwise this meeting would not even exist.

Are they being held accountable? No.

Teachers do not get training. They\'re not required

to have training. The regular education teachers who

are going to have children that are mainstream are

put out there without the necessary training. And

when the parents wind up having to get into due

process hearings, they are faced with an

insurmountable task. All the resources that the

school district has to bear are brought in.

Let me give you one antidotal. From 1997

through 2001, Couyer County spent over three million

dollars litigating against five families in that

county. That\'s how much it cost them to not provide

special education services. We need to change it.

It needs to be a level playing field. Secretary

Winn\'s comments were very available and we would

encourage you to adopt some of those ideas.

I look forward to working with any of you

to help develop such plans. Thank you.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Thank you very much,

Mr. Liles. Renee Whaley.

MS. WHALEY: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Commissioners. I am Renee Whaley and I

direct the Parents Training and Information Center

for Florida. We are called Family Network on

Disabilities. In my role, it\'s my responsibility

today to speak to you about the issues that are

important to parents.

When I do that, I can tell you at the top

of my list for priorities for families are the

retention of IDEA safeguards and a full

implementation at 40 percent of the funding that

should go to special education. That is not to say

that Florida families do not have concerns for

special education implementation and outcomes.

You\'ve heard some of them already.

Because my son was in the first group of

students to be served under IDEA and because I\'ve had

more than 20 years of working in parent centers, I\'ve

seen success and I\'ve seen failure. IDEA has been a

road map to services for families and for

professionals. It is an accurate map with the

ability to take us to excellence in special education

options.

Sometimes, or every time I should say,

every time we reauthorize IDEA we readjust our focus

and redefine our direction and we begin the journey

again. We have often taken that journey with

inadequate gas and unlicensed drivers. We are at

another stopping place and again inspecting the road

map.

The answer is not to be found in what is

wrong with the road map. It is not the reason we are

not reaching our destination. The fact is, the map

is just fine and we have never committed to a

destination or funded the trip. The fact is when we

have used IDEA appropriately we have excellent

outcomes. My son had autism and did not speak until

he was five years old. This is a child who went on

to attend a regular high school; that throws me when

I see that number there, okay? Went on to attend a

regular high school, speaks Spanish, was being

prepared to live in the community independently and

was working toward employment in public television.

He was a success.

I have been told all through the time that

parent training and information centers have existed

and since the law existed, that I had no right to a

Cadillac when a Chevrolet would get me there. Today

I hear the idea that I should have the right to

choose a Cadillac and get help paying for it with

public money.

Well, I do not have the cash to pay the

difference or is there a dealership interested in

dealing with the kind of kids that I deal with? Do I

have choice? No. I\'m also hearing that there\'s a

new car dealership in town and it can give me a re‑

painted Chevrolet at the same price. I want a brand

new red one. But guess what? There\'s only 30 and

I\'m customer 31.

I don\'t see this as having a choice. As a

parent and a tax payer, I am to believe it will not

cost more for parent choice. At the sound of the

bell, thank you.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Thank you, Renee.

Julieta Gigante?

MS. GIGANTE: Julieta Gigante.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Julieta?

MS. GIGANTE: Welcome to Miami.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Thank you.

MS. GIGANTE: First thing you have to

think when you go to a city there are 60 percent of

the students that are Hispanic and you have to have

someone to translate. And I wish that was announced

before the meeting. I will try to speak in English,

although it\'s my second language.

I am the parent of Montina Gigante. She

is seven years old. She has Down Syndrome. She

attends a public school in Dade County, which after

having Montina there is known as the Inclusionary

School in the system. And I wish all the other

schools are also considered the same.

But I am very proud of the IDEA. ‑‑ I was

able to help Montina get into the regular classroom

and she\'s able to learn and write some words in

English and Spanish because she also has Spanish

class there. So, please don\'t take that away from

kids like Montina and support the public education

because in public school, at least in my city, she

won\'t have the same type of education.

Yes, I have two minutes. She, as I was

telling you, she has therapy there. She has

accommodations, some qualifications that let her

learn a lot of things that she won\'t be able to learn

in a special class. She\'s fully included. I also

forgot to say that I\'m also part of the PTA in

Florida. Because of Montina, I choose to help other

families because ‑‑ and also there\'s another thing

that you have to learn about the cultural difference

that hispanic families cannot question authority.

They don\'t know how to make those choices

because we are used to receive education from the

school without questioning, without making questions

to it. Am I right?

MS. ACOSTA: Yes, you did. You don\'t need

me actually, but go ahead.

MS. GIGANTE: Thank you. So when I tell

hispanic families that they have to question what the

school decides about their child\'s education, they

don\'t know how. They say, no, you went to the

university. You\'re the one educated to decide what\'s

best for my child. I just leave my child here and

you educate my child. So, we also have to help those

families to understand that we need their input to

make this better.

And definitely you are lacking that input

here. I suggest that if you go to ‑‑ I think you go

to ‑‑ try to get some accommodations for those

hispanic families because we are becoming the biggest

minority in the country soon, I think in four or five

years.

So, I think that\'s it. I want you to

accommodate that necessity that we just; we want to

keep this law. It\'s good. And we need to have good

IEP\'s. And don\'t care if it takes more than two or

three hours to write a good one because we use IEP\'s

with my daughter. And if my teacher has the

appropriate training and support, she will do the

best for my children, for all children.

Thank you.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Thank you very much,

Miss Gigante. Larry Keough.

MR. KEOUGH: Hello, I\'m Larry Keough.

Although I\'m a professional advocate for children,

I\'m here today as a parental advocate of five

children, two of whom have special needs. I am

speaking on behalf of my children who have been

enrolled in both public schools and non‑public

schools. I believe the time has come to revise IDEA

so services are based on need, not what school system

a child attends.

As many of you probably now, children

parentally placed in private schools do not have a

specific entitlement to service. This begs the

question; why should children be penalized simply

because their parents, in addition to paying taxes to

support the public educational system, also pay

private school tuition? It is axiomatic that the

cornerstone of academic achievement is continuity.

This is especially so for children with special

needs.

It is in that spirit that I recommend the

location of services issue under Citation 300.456 be

revised is that the LEA is required to provide

services in the least restrictive environment, which

should actually be the school the child attends,

whether it be public or private. Providing services

can include onsite services by the LEA, a

proportional calculation or through a third party

vendor or provider.

There\'s an old adage that funding drives

policy. In order for IDEA to be truly equitable for

all children, I recommend that you consider that

funding for non‑public school kids be separate and

apart from for funding for public school kids. This

change would allow some of the problems to be

resolved in respected child find.

As some of you probably know, concerning

child find, there is a discentive for LEA\'s to locate

and identify children in religious and private

schools because for every child they identify in

religious and private schools, that\'s one less child

they can serve in the public school system.

I believe that stronger language is needed

for parental rights, the due process system. This is

especially so when parents are in a disagreement with

the IEP team. Even though IDEA expressly indicates

that parents have a right to advocate on behalf of

their children so their children receive the services

they\'re entitled, oftentimes there are disagreements.

One example, I am aware of situations in

which children with bearing exceptionalities are

placed in what is known as a VE Class. Often times

parents very poignantly, vehemently believe that\'s

not in the best of their children. I ask that the

IDEA reauthorize that we begin to think out of the

box for new solutions to old problems. Thank you.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Thank you very much,

Larry. Brucie Ball. Connie Hawkins is next then

Peter Caproni.

MS. BALL: It\'s a pleasure being here

today. My name is Brucie Ball. I\'m with the

Division of Exceptional Student Education with the

Miami Dade County Public School System and we welcome

all of you to our wonderful town.

We are the fourth largest school system in

the nation and our population for students with

disabilities is approximately 42,000 students. I\'m

here to speak with you today about the McKay

Scholarship Program and to bring up some concerns

that we have in reference to that program currently.

I\'d like to also, though, give you some

information about how that program has effected our

school system. We currently have 1,052 students who

are participating in 54 private schools on the McKay

Scholarship Program. We have 196 of other students

who are in the public school system who now receives

transportation although not fully funded by the

state.

We have returning from our private schools

on the McKay Scholarship, last year 53 students and

this year 145 students who have returned. The total

cost currently that is leaving our system in the

McKay Scholarship Program for the private school is

approximately \$8,252,000. And as those dollars

leave, schools must still maintain operational cost

and teachers.

We value the parents and students right to

make a choice. We adamantly endorse that. But we

also have grave concerns about the accountability

concerns with the McKay Scholarship Program.

Parents, advocates, school personnel have worked

diligently to raise the bar for students with

disabilities. At this point there are no

accountability measures for the private schools

participating in the McKay Scholarship Program.

As we raise the bar at these point, the

children have no data that is required to be reported

to the state having to do with their achievement or

progress. There is no mandated state assessment or

alternate assessment for those students with

disabilities. There is also no mandated individual

educational plan once they are enrolled in the

private school.

There\'s no accountability for the

provision of services. It is up to the parents to

meet with the private school personnel and determine

what services, if any, the student will receive while

participating. There is no evaluation or monitoring

system in place. There is no financial

accountability. And private schools are not required

to disclose how the state money is being spent.

As the demands for achievement and

accountability increased for the public school system

children, the sovereignty of the private school

remained in tact. You are urged, as a Commission on

Excellence, and we join you, to assist students with

disabilities to fly above the accountability radar

that was pointed out earlier and to develop a

national, unified accountability system for all

children as you consider choice and voucher programs.

Thank you.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Thank you very much.

Connie Hawkins.

MS. HAWKINS: Thank you for the

opportunity to speak to you. My name is Connie

Hawkins. I\'m from the great state of North Carolina.

And my comments come today from over 20 years of

experience. First 27 years as Michael\'s mother and

Michael is a young man with severe learning

disabilities. And 20 years, and I hate to admit

that, as the Director of the North Carolina Parent

Training and Information Center, one of the 105

parent centers funded by IDEA.

Based on these experiences, I would like

to make several brief comments and my friends in the

audience will laugh at the word brief and they will

also tell you that I\'d be glad to expound on any of

these comments at a later date.

First and foremost, when Dunwell, in

collaboration with families and special ed, does

work. My son Michael started school as a completely

non‑verbal child and with a severe diagnosis of no

academic possibilities or progress. Because he was

in a school setting that was willing to work with his

sometimes very assertive, and I will have to admit

irrational mother, and would consistently set high

expectations for him and provide him quality special

ed programs. He is now a college graduate. Michael

always will be a person with severe learning

disabilities however he has the academic skills and

the coping skills necessary to be a productive adult.

My second point is the rights of families

must be clearly stated in the law if parents are

truly to be considered equal partners in the special

ed process and to have choices. Our hope would be

that school system personnel would realize that the

substantial parent participation is best practice and

it is also researched based. However, this is not

universally accepted and the rights of families must

be legislative and unfortunately, that\'s true.

When parents and professionals understand

that the IEP process is an instructional planning

document, not just paperwork for a compliance tool,

this process can solidify the parent professional

team approach for students with disabilities. This

yearly process is the foundation of parent choice and

needs to be improved and not dismantled.

Finally, and I\'ve got a couple of other

things I\'m going to skip, parents need information

and skills and support in order to make informed

choices for students. The collaboration between the

community based and state wide parent organizations

and OSEP, that over the last multiple years, has

grown from five centers in 1977 to 105 centers in

2002\. It\'s really the basis for modeling parent

professional collaboration starting at the federal

level.

Parents need to be involved in monitoring.

Parents need to be involved in technical assistance.

Parents need to be involved in personnel prep. And I

think as we infuse parent participation at all levels

we will possibly see some of this contentiousness

that we now see go away. We are a forced activity

now. If we were true partners; the President is real

committed to his four pillars. One is parent

involvement. The roof falls in if all pillars at the

same size.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Thank you. Peter

Caproni.

MR. CAPRONI: That\'s Peter Caproni, but

it\'s okay.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Okay, Caproni. Thank

you.

MR. CAPRONI: All right. My name is Dr.

Peter Caproni. I live in Miami Dade County with my

wife and three school aged children. I\'m a licensed

clinical psychologist, certified school psychologist

and I currently work for Dade County Public Schools

with students who are classified as severely

emotionally disturbed. I\'ve done this for the past

12 years.

I\'ve come here today to tell you about a

program at one of our vocational centers called Steps

to Success. It is a highly successful school program

for students with severe emotional disturbance

located at Robert Morgan Educational Center. As you

probably know, students with emotional or behavioral

problems fail to negotiate the transition from school

to work and independent living more frequently than

other student with any other disability.

The University of South Florida\'s

Transition to the Independence Process, or TIP model,

provides the frame work and practices that have been

shown to improve transition outcomes for these

students. The convergence of our program of

progressive inclusion in a vocational setting with

the TIP Model led to our designation three years ago

as one of their pilot sites in the State of Florida.

I\'m going to leave you some brochures to tell you

about those.

But I basically wanted to just emphasize

here that if we are serious about clearing our jails,

about keeping homeless folks off our streets, about

having people come out of our schools prepared to be

responsible citizens, we know how to do that, even in

the cases of students who are classified as severely

emotionally disturbed. We have the statistics to

prove it.

If we can do it with these students, we

can do it with our general population and other

disabilities. However, we have not seen the

commitment in terms of manpower and money to do that.

And if there\'s a message that needs to be taken back,

it\'s this. Our fathers, the forefathers of this

country knew that the key to a democracy is an

informed electorate. We can\'t have people failing in

our schools at rates of 60 percent drop out, which is

the general rate for emotionally disturbed kids. We

can\'t have them unemployed at a rate 55 percent,

which is the general national rate. We can\'t have

them incarcerated at 25 percent. One out of four of

our kids in the United States who were classified

emotionally or behaviorally disordered are

incarcerated or in jail.

But this is expensive, folks. If we put

out the number of well trained teachers as we\'ve

heard talked about today, if we incorporate those

wonderful parents that have come up here today to get

their suggestions, to get our programs changed to

meet the needs of their kids, and if we had other

professionals involved and weights that are

recommended by national organizations instead of one

third of the rate of school psychologists, which are

employed in our county and which is in the case of

many cases, we\'ll do a lot better.

Thank you.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Peter Caproni, thank

you very much. Denton Kurtz.

MR. KURTZ: Thank you. I\'m Denton Kurtz.

I\'m from the Orlando area. I\'m a licensed and

nationally certified school psychologist as well as

mental health counselor. I have a son that was

identified as specific learning disabled many years

ago. My oral comments are mostly additions to the

written pages you have before you. And I want to

give some of what works. That was a statement asked

earlier.

Our son was identified as SLD in reading.

Hundreds, even thousands of hours of special public

school LD services left him still reading disordered

at high school graduation. His mother is an

educator. Between us we decided we\'d start a clinic

and figure out what was wrong and how to do it so we

could remediate him and all the other kids that are

stuck in those programs and are not getting the help

that they need.

So, a long time ago we started and we

began to find the ways to successfully treat the

various academic learning issues of those who are

SLD. Many people have been getting this remediation

for many years. Remediation or significant

improvement is possible in all areas. The best model

that works for mediating any of the type of SLD

academic disorders is well described by NIH

researcher, Joseph Torgison, in his January, February

2001 article in the Journal of Learning Disabilities.

That model incorporates all of the important elements

of chronological awareness and phonemic awareness,

presents them intensively, explicitly and engages the

student in discovering each element as the training

follows a scaffold approach.

Over the past 11 years, this is another

find, we have discovered that the development of

vivid, accurate and concise internal mental imaginary

is key to remediating reading and listening

comprehension as well as math reasoning problems. We

have found more, we have found more. Special

education teachers, aids, other paraprofessionals,

even volunteers in the school need to be trained as

outlined by HR1. The special ed teacher can

coordinate the help to these kids so that they can

get a maximum number of one on one instruction.

To do it rapidly, we need to train more

master trainers first. Good comments to Stephen Bird

from North Carolina, ditto. To Governor Bush and the

State Legislature for the most part you\'re on track.

Remember be consistent in your measurement, scuttle

the A to F rating of schools, don\'t punish and

humiliate kids who can\'t read well be retaining them.

Retain the system or something but don\'t mess with

them because you\'re making emotional and behavior

problems out of them if you do that because the

system has failed them.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Mr. Kurtz, thank you

very much. Amy VanBergen followed by Paula Goldberg,

followed by Rita Byrd. Amy VanBergen.

MS. VANBERGEN: Good afternoon. The

Florida Coalition for the Education of Individuals

with Development Disabilities ‑‑

PARTICIPANT: I\'m sorry, what\'s your name?

MS. VANBERGEN: It\'s Amy VanBergen,

V‑a‑n‑b‑e‑r‑g‑e‑n.

The Florida Coalition for the Education of

Individuals with Development Disabilities, known as

Florida CEID, is a young grassroots movement of

parent support groups, the Parent Training and

Information Center and the Protection and Advocacy

Agency that\'s dedicated to the vision that all

children can learn.

As a parent of a son with Down Syndrome

and on behalf of Florida CEID, which represents

thousands of Florida families, I\'d like to offer the

following comments. Number one, the Individuals with

Disabilities Education Act, IDEA is critical to

improving educational outcomes for all students.

Indeed, it is the key for families to meaningful

collaboration with teachers and administrators.

We\'ve heard repeatedly today, stories

after stories by parents who innovatively worked with

schools to address their child\'s needs so that their

child is receiving appropriate education that they\'re

entitled to. These success stories have happened

because parents have dedicated themselves to learning

the laws and working in partnerships with educators

and school districts. Both Dr. Hoxby\'s and Sweet

Alice\'s data further show the advance level of

knowledge and expertise that parents of children with

disabilities bring to the table.

Number two, parents have great ideas to

share and all participants, parents and educators,

need equal knowledge about special education rules

and procedures. Florida continues to undertake the

public hearing process for review of the revision of

its state rules and its attempts to better align

state guidelines with the 1997 federal statute.

Florida CEID conducted workshops around the state on

how to testify effectively. And we\'ve heard from

hundred of families.

The underlying theme to most stories

shared by parents from the Panhandle to the Keys was

that the problems they are facing are not about IDEA

itself but rather the inconsistent and sometimes and

nonexistence implementation of IDEA in their local

schools.

Finally, number three, parents of children

with disabilities understand that general special

education issues must be addressed together. The

schools with the best practices for inclusion of

students with significant disabilities are good

schools for all students because of their use of

research base supports and intervention.

Florida CEID recommends continued and

expanded implementation of IDEA, especially with

regard to the desegregation of special education

students into the least restrictive environment, full

funding, parents as partners and positive

intervention.

On behalf of Florida CEID, thank you,

Commissioners especially for your time and your

dedicated efforts to truly leaving no child behind.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Thank you Amy

VanBergen. Paula Goldberg.

MS. GOLDBERG: Thank you. I\'m Paula

Goldberg. I\'m Executive Director of Pacer Center,

Parent Training and Information Center in

Minneapolis, Minnesota. I want to share three points

with you today.

One, the Parent Training and Information

Centers and the Community Parent Resource Centers,

which you\'ve heard a fair amount about today, are

federally funded by IDEA. There are 105 throughout

the country. You know Cherie Takemoto is Director of

a PTI. I would like to invite all Commissioners, if

you have not had the opportunity to visit with your

PTI or your Community Parent Resource Center in the

state that you live, I think the thousands of phone

calls that they receive every year and the help that

they give families throughout this country is vital.

So, I\'m going to pass these around. Some of you

already have them. But I would like to issue that

invitation to each and every one of you.

Second, I want to say that IDEA is an

important civil rights law for the 6.2 million

families in this country. It is important parent

participation, parent involvement is something that\'s

written into the law and it\'s a critical partnership

that we have to have.

I want to share two quick stories with you

of a parent who called our office last year. This is

a mother who called a couple of times asking for one

of our staff people who wasn\'t in. When she finally

reached Dixie Jordan, the mother said, I am homeless.

I do not have a telephone. But my child is not doing

well in school. The schools are not providing the

education that my child is entitled to. I know I

need help.

And do you know what the mother said? She

said, I believe so strongly that my child has to have

this education that I sold empty pop cans to get the

25 cents to go to the pay phone to call Pacer. So,

imagine what she did and how important parent

involvement was. We told her to use our toll free

number in the future. We went to her with the IEP

staffing and we got appropriate services for her

child.

The second point is the parent of a young

couple. How many of you are parents in this room?

How many of you remember what it was like when you

left the hospital with your newborn baby? Many of

you have different feelings. Last summer a young

couple stopped on their way home from the hospital at

Pacer after having given birth to a baby with Down

Syndrome. They wanted information for their child.

Do you know how wonderful that is that

they wanted the information and where we are because

of this important law, because we can help families.

I thank you for being there. The law\'s critical. I

know you\'re going to make sure that we keep those

protections for families. Thank you.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Thank you, Paula

Goldberg. Rita Byrd.

MS. BYRD: Good afternoon, members of the

Commission and guests. I am Rita Byrd, President of

the Kentucky Council of Special Ed Administrators.

On behalf of Kentucky, I want to express our

gratitude for the opportunity to voice some successes

and express our concerns.

First of all, we feel Kentucky has made

significant strides in the area of special education,

especially since the 1990\'s when the Kentucky

Education Reform Act was passed. Now all students

are included in the accountability system, students

with moderate to severe disabilities are in the

assessment process. All students are involved in

general curriculum. By 2014, all schools are

expected to reduce the number of students in the ‑‑

level. There is an expectation that all students can

learn and at high levels. While we

are proud of our accomplishments, we still know that

we\'ve got a ways to go. And we, as a member of, an

affiliate of the Council for Exceptional Children,

share in many of the concerns that they have in their

papers to you regarding funding, teacher shortages,

early childhood education and paperwork.

We do have a couple of areas that we would

like to address. One is discipline. Kentucky CASE

does not advocate a dual discipline system as it

exists now. On the other hand, we do not believe

that disciplinary action should result in the

suspended of services for any student. We believe

that the special education premise is the best

approach for all. Therefore, we recommend a limit on

the number of days that any student can be suspended

or expelled.

We also want to see a requirement that

other agencies work in concert with schools to

develop programs and services that will meet the

individual mental health needs and educational needs

of students. With regard to general curriculum and

IT development, we believe that all students should

have access to the general curricula of their

particular state and that school districts should be

held accountable to make sure that students make

success. However, schools need flexibility to work

with parents and students to explore options and

develop plans for life long learning opportunities.

We recommend the elimination of the

complexity of the current IEP requirement and the

development of a system that facilitate parents,

teachers and students working together to develop an

education plan that meet individual needs. Because

of fear of litigation, we feel too much emphasis is

being put on non‑instructional activities. To this

end we recommend an adoption of a statute of

limitations of no more than three years in cases

where parents have been a part of the IEP cases and ‑

‑ has been provided.

In summary, we believe in the tenants of

IDEA and we want it to continue. However we feel it

needs to be simplified. We want to move to one of

outcomes, not compliance, where administrators can be

instructional leaders, not compliance officers. We

want teachers working with students, not papers.

Last, but certainly not least, we want a system where

parents, teachers, administrators and students can

work together for the benefit of the individual with

disabilities and a positive environment, one that is

not ladened with due process procedures. Thank you

very much.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Rita Byrd, thank you

very much. Dr. D. Aizennan.

DR. AIZENNAN: Aizennan.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: What? Aizennan?

Thank you. This is a humbling experience trying to;

thank you very much.

DR. AIZENNAN: Good afternoon,

Commissioners and Mr. Chairman. My name is Dr. Dolly

Aizennan and I am the Academic Director of a private

Exceptional Student Education School for Severely

Emotionally Disabled, Emotionally Handicapped

Children. I did my dissertation on teaching

methodology designed to overcome emotional and

sociocultural areas that prevent multicultural and

multi‑language students from learning in the nation\'s

classroom. And since this is ‑‑ school, I\'m going to

take a moment to tell you a little joke.

Little Johnnie is three years old. He\'s

not talking. He\'s developing normally. His parents,

concerned parents take him to every doctor in town.

There is nothing wrong with him developmentally.

Little Johnny is three years old. He is not talking.

His concerned parents take him to every psychologist

in town. All the appropriate testing is done. There

is nothing wrong with him cognitively. Little Johnny

is four years old. He is still not talking. He is

playing appropriate games. He is socializing

appropriately with his age peers only he\'s not

talking.

Little Johnny is five years old. He\'s

sitting at the dinner table with his family. His

mother serves him soup. He takes a spoonful of soup

to his mouth, spits it out and he says, mom, this

soup is too hot. And the whole family is in shock.

And the parents say, wait a minute. Johnny, you\'re

talking. Why didn\'t you talk before? He said,

before the soup wasn\'t too hot.

That gives you a profile of a student in

my school. These kids can achieve academically and

they do. We are at the crossroads of the two

critical shortage areas in teacher education and

services provided to the students and parents. We

are catering to the severely emotionally disturbed,

emotionally handicapped children who are

multicultural and multilingual.

In my school, kids and their parents speak

in nine languages. What I was hear to ask of you

commissioners and all concerned people here is we

need teacher training. We need support. We need

funding, funding, and funding again. We are very

much in support of the IEP\'s and we\'re very strongly

in support of accountability. My kids have just

whizzed through the FCATS, although we were not in

any way required to do FCATS. They do and they can

achieve when the emotional barriers that prevent them

from achieving are removed.

Thank you very much for your attention.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Thank you very much,

Dr. Aizennan. Rosemary Palmer is next.

MS. PALMER: Thank you. I appreciate the

opportunity to speak to you. I\'m the parent of four

disabled children and by necessity I became a special

ed attorney.

MS. WRIGHT: Excuse me, I didn\'t get your

name.

MS. PALMER: Rosemary Palmer. If you want

to make a difference for special ed children, the one

thing that you need to do is write into the statute

an expectation that when a child has attended 12

years of public education, or for that matter private

education, the child will have 12th grade skills

unless the disability actually prevents them from

getting those skills or unless the school district

has provided research based instruction for all of

those 12 years and the child still didn\'t get it.

The single most important thing that you

could do is to state that expectation. There\'s a lot

of fights about what FAPE stands for. And those

fights exist because the expectations for disabled

children are so low. We all want that for our kids.

We all expect it. As parents, we thought that was a

given. But it has not been a given for disabled

children.

I support school choice but it has

limitations because it\'s only as effective as the

parent who knows that they have a problem. My child

was graduating from high school before I discovered

that she had a problem. She couldn\'t pass the

college placement test. She couldn\'t pass the SAT

test. She couldn\'t pass the high school competency

test. But I thought she was doing just fine because

she was getting good grades. And that\'s the problem

with school choice as a definite solution.

There\'s some other ones as well and that

is not every private school provides research based

instruction. The child who goes to that other school

because the parent is frustrated with the public

school who does not get the research based

instruction will be no better off than had they

stayed in the public school.

When you do the funding, please structure

the formula so it accounts for long term decisions.

We say \$40,000 for an ABA program for an autistic

child. Well, if that means they can join a regular

school class and need no more special ed, then I say,

okay, it\'s a cheap \$40,000. But we don\'t fund on

life cycle cost. We don\'t fund on the short end to

make sure that every child can read and add by third

grade.

If we don\'t do that, however, the schools

will keep asking for more money because the child

will get further and further behind. So, please

structure your funding so that the incentive is to be

effective by third grade.

Finally, when you compensate prevailing

parents, if you want an even keel, you have to

compensate them as much as the school attorney got

because if you do not, the schools do not take

parents seriously in due process. Thank you.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Rosemary Palmer, thank

you very much. Rabbi Kalman Baumann.

RABBI BAUMANN: Good afternoon. My name

is Kalman Baumann. I\'m the principal of a Jewish Day

School in Miami with 400 students. I want to thank

the members of the Commission for the opportunity to

speak with you.

The special needs children with whom we

deal, we are a mainstream school but we do have

special needs children, fall into three categories.

One, those who apply to our schools. Two, those who

never dare approach us and three, those who are

already enrolled.

First, with the limited ability to help

children with learning disabilities that we have as a

private school, we too frequently find ourselves

unable to accept these children whose parents desire

our type of education. Two, many others never even

approach us, especially parents without their own

resources to adequate advocate on behalf of their own

children. Three, those already in our school are the

ones we should be able to help the most.

However, for parents to arrive at the

realization and ultimately to accept the fact that

the child has an emotional disability is a process,

one that takes time, education and guidance. It

requires confirmation through a professional

evaluation and conjures up fears of enormous bills

for the evaluation and subsequent ongoing services.

The financial worry clouds the parent\'s perception of

the reality of the child\'s problem and causes denial,

thereby making delays in seeking help, causing untold

and frequently permanent damage to their child\'s

education and future.

This in turn leads to trouble in the

classroom, in which the child is a failure,

contributing teacher\'s stress, frustration and

burnout and impedes the educational progress of the

other children in the class. You may well ask, the

school should send the parents to the LEA for the

evaluation. In response I will tell you our

experience is that an entire year lapses from

request, testing to the delivery of the written

report, an utterly useless and frustrating exercise.

Private evaluations have a six to eight week turn

around.

When a child fails in our system and is

forced to the public school for the education and

emotional help he or she needs, the child becomes

estrange from the religious community through a

feeling of failure and rejection. One 13 year old

with a severe learning disability was bounced from

school to school within our community, all unable to

help him, commented, I don\'t belong anywhere.

Religious education is integral to the

children in our community. If they do not stay in a

Jewish school, the child becomes estrange, not only

religiously, but culturally and socially as well.

All this could be prevented if the federally mandated

systems to children with special needs actually reach

the children in the educational setting that parents

have chosen for their own children. Thank you.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Rabbi Baumann, thank

you very much. Eldalee Cook?

MS. COOK: Hello, my name is Eldalee Cook.

I have a little boy by the name of Robert William

Cook that is recently now in due process. I hear a

lot of people talking about parents have a choice.

IEP\'s have given the child or the parent a choice. I

hear that public schools are up there trying to help

the parent. Well, I have bad news for you and I\'ve

written probably a lot of you.

I have been through ten IEP\'s. I have

been alleged that I had done something wrong in order

to control what I did. My daughter was stuck in

storage room. I attempted to talk to the principals.

They ignored me. IDEA is awesome. I do not knock

that down. But the teachers implementing what is

supposed to be there, I have tapes of the actual

principals not even knowing what 504 and what the

IDEA was.

They were trying to convince me that the

kids that were covered under 504 were not covered

under the IDEA. Now, you tell me, who needs to be

educated? My heart breaks for many. And my eyes are

bloodshot because I\'ve been trying to figure out;

even in my IEP recording, I state, I don\'t want to be

advocacy for nobody. I want my child to have a

proper education. By the grace of God, I had to pull

my children out of the school system. And my child

is now homebound.

Within a five year period, my son has been

in a public education setting, okay? He has learned,

in his IEP in \'97 they put that he was supposed to

receive excessive technology. They ignored the IEP.

My son cannot read. He has the mentality to receive

information but because the IEP was not implemented,

all of a sudden my son, now that he\'s at home, two

hours a week, I have taught my son to count from one

to a thousand where in five years they couldn\'t teach

him from one to 20 or their alphabet from A to Z.

Now, I\'m not down passing all educators

because there are some hearts, some teachers that

want to speak out but because of the fact that the

system had its way of down holding parents, down

holding teachers, and they cannot speak their peace

because it\'s the funding, let\'s find out where those

fundings are going because from what I understand, I

had to fight. I had to write a petition. And I

didn\'t get attention until I wrote that petition.

Like I said, I\'ve been through ten IEP

meetings. Nothing has been resolved. I\'ve gone

through mediation. Nothing has been resolved

because, yes, they said I will give it to you. But

when it got to that point, it wasn\'t given. Please,

look at what\'s going on with the funding. Understand

that the choice, it should be there because; we were

saved because I had the home school. Please, look

at; the choice is good, the choice is good and IDEA

is great.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Thank you. Rosalina

Valladares?

MS. VALLADARES: Valladares.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Valladares. A little

practice, maybe I\'ll get it yet.

PARTICIPANT: No, I don\'t think so.

MS. VALLADARES: Good afternoon. My name

is Rosalina Valladares. I am 36 years old. I am ‑‑

MS. WRIGHT: You said your name fast and I

didn\'t hear it.

MS. VALLADARES: I\'m sorry ‑‑

MS. WRIGHT: I\'m writing it down.

MS. VALLADARES: Don\'t start counting.

MS. WRIGHT: I still didn\'t get your name.

MS. VALLADARES: Rosalina Valladares.

MS. WRIGHT: Thank you.

MS. VALLADARES: You\'re welcome. You may

begin. I\'m a 36 year old mother to a ten year old

daughter who has been diagnosed with multiple

disabilities. I am also an advocate for students

with disabilities and I am also a area training

coordinator for Family Network on Disabilities in

Florida. I\'m also a law student.

Today I\'m here as a parent. That\'s the

most important job I hold. I have recently heard a

commentary that individual educational plans are too

lengthy, too much paperwork, and remove teachers and

administrators from the classrooms. The reality is

that IEP\'s are the only contractual written documents

with which to protect our children. It is important

to delineate related services and supports and to

establish measurable goals and benchmarks with which

to accurately and appropriately measure our

children\'s process.

A systemic problem is that general

curriculum teachers have not been appropriately or

thoroughly trained to provide children with

disabilities access to the general curriculum.

Therefore, there is no implementation of the IEP\'s,

which our children require to be successful not only

today in school, but they will ideally provide our

children with the ability to be successful,

responsible and independently functioning adults; the

skills that they will require in order not to become

a burden to society but rather an integral part of

it.

No one, not at any level, have I found

willing to make themselves accountable for the lack

of education being provided to students with

disabilities. No one at any level have I found that

holds themselves accountable and who is willing to

follow the letter of the law as stated in IDEA when

considering the least restrictive environment,

supplementary aids and services for a child with a

disabilities legal and God given right to be afforded

the best possible education that he or she might

receive.

Teachers blame the school administration.

The administration passes it off to the region, the

region to the district and the district to the higher

ups. Funding is the key, not the excuse. The law,

in its reauthorization, needs to be provided with the

necessary remedies that will ensure accountability is

no longer an issue.

It is the key to related services and

support and so much more. The common excuse, we do

not have funds for that. Although IDEA states that

funding should not be considered a contributing

factor as to whether a service is offered or

considered, but that the child\'s need should be the

driving force. We need districts to funnel the money

to ensure that they reach each student to provide the

student, receive all the related services and

supports they need.

Districts must also be held accountable

and be able to provide to the public an accounting

for when, where and how much is allotted for each

specific child, thus ensuring that the moneys funnel

actually benefit the child and not the districts.

And finally, in order to enforce

accountability and implementation, we need a

monitoring system that works. The Florida Department

of Education\'s monitoring system is not effective in

identifying and correcting non‑compliance with

requirements that focus on improved results for

children with disabilities. Enforcement must be

turned over to an entity with no conflicts of

interest.

Without enforcement for implementation and

accountability, children and parents of students with

disabilities will continue to struggle. We will

continue to lose our children to the juvenile justice

departments and we will continue to foster societal

dependency as well as lack of education and

illiteracy. Let us truly leave no child behind.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Rosalina, thank you

very much. Sandra Wong.

MS. WONG: Those pictures are the faces of

the children the system has failed. Please wake up

and smell the coffee. This is where the rubber meets

the roads and these are my recommendations.

Provide information in a timely manner,

the correct information, please. Have you questioned

why there is not more independent parents here? That

was because we were not informed.

The second one, hold reliability to those

who are withholding information. Respect my input as

a parent. When I say no, I mean no. Please set an

overseer over your IEP. They\'re not working.

Another thing, and this is my final to you all, make

child\'s programs more available, maybe create them.

The other thing, Commissioner, have a parent among

you, one that has no affiliation. An independent

parent that could tell you what is really going on in

the system.

I was forced to home school. Three of

those kids are home schooled. One the system has

failed so badly because it took on the challenge of

taking him into the school but all be it without

having the knowledge of taking care of him. My child

almost died in the system. Was six times

hospitalized. Had three life threatened emergencies.

It was finally decided to home bound this

child. This is the second year he\'s home bound.

Within one year my child, with the three years he was

in the system, he became a failure to try. Within

one year of being home bound, my child is now 15

pounds more. He has never had any more emergencies

or hospitalization.

When you take up a challenge make sure

that you have the money to do what you say you can

do. Make a difference. You have in your hand the

chance and the opportunity to change the future of

these children. I don\'t have the money to home

school my kids, but in order to protect the life of

my kids; one of my kids in that picture was

threatened to be raped in the school system. Was

removed from class and two months after that was

decided to put her back in that same class. I had to

remove her.

Is that correct? Is that right. Where\'s

the money? Where\'s the money following my children?

Where is the money going. Choice is good but I have

no choice but to home school my kids. Thank you very

much.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Sandra Wong, thank you

very much. Ward Sphisco. Okay, we\'re going to go on

and do the other ones who signed up later. So, we\'re

going to just keep continue to roll here. Menashe

Sopirman? We\'ve gone through the 20 and now I think

we\'ve got about ten more on the list. So, if you can

stay, please do.

Go ahead, Menashe.

MR. SOPIRMAN: Thank you. Good afternoon,

ladies and gentlemen, members of the Commission. My

name is Menash Sopirman, Executive Director of

Agudath Israel of South Florida, National

Representative of Agudath of America. We are a

national orthodox Jewish organization that advocates

the interests of the hundreds of elementary and

secondary schools affiliated with the National

Society for Hebrew Day Schools as well as those of

the children and families they serve.

Among the approximately 150,000 students

attending these schools, there\'s a significant

percentage, upwards of about ten percent of children

with some form of educational, emotional or physical

disability. The IDEA embodies a powerful idea that

if proved, if provided with the means to do so,

children with disabilities can meet the challenge of

obtaining their academic potential and becoming full

product members of their communities.

Unfortunately the IDEA does not, at

present, hold out that promise to the millions of

non‑public school children in this land to the same

extent as it does to public school children. If I

could just point out some of those. The IDEA

incorporates a fundamentally inequitable concept in

that every disabled public school student possesses

an individual entitlement to the full range of cost

free special educational and related services. But

denies that basic right to other students with

identical disabilities solely because of their

enrollment in non‑public schools.

If I could propose a solution. Every non‑

public school student with a disability should be

entitled to special educational and related services

an a par with public school students.

Number two, non‑public schools throughout

the country report a wide spread failure by LEA\'s to

comply with the IDEAS\'s requirement of timely and

meaningful consultation regarding provision of

services with appropriate representative of disabled

non‑public school students. I would propose a

solution to vague statutory language regarding the

timing and substance of these consultations as well

as who must attend should be replaced by specific

verifiable standards regarding these consultations.

Number three, IDEA permits but does not

required the provision of services on the premises of

a religious school. As a result, LEA\'s often insist

that the services they provide to non‑public school

students be rendered only at a public school or a

mutual site, which could disrupt that child\'s school

day. I would propose a solution that the statute

should make the student\'s educational interests the

determinant factor in an LEA\'s decision regarding

location of services. I don\'t think it\'s

presumptuous to suggest that it is educationally

appropriate for services to be provided at the

student\'s regular school of attendance.

We believe that through the incorporation

of some of these changes as well as others that have

been mentioned set forth, the IDEA will indeed become

a vehicle for providing all of America\'s children

with the educational opportunities they need and

deserve. Thank you.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Menashe, thank you

very much. Terri Brewer. Mildred Boswal is next

followed by Ralph Cash.

MS. BREWER: Ladies and gentlemen, members

of the Commission. Can you hear me?

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Yes, speak into the

microphone, thank you.

MS. BREWER: Okay. Thank you for taking

the opportunity to hear the opinion of a classroom

teacher. I teach high school age Profoundly Mentally

Handicapped students as well as regular diploma

seeking students who want to learn to work and

communicate with my students.

I came here today with many things to say

about behavior and discipline. But I decided I would

let you just read this letter on your own that I had

prepared for you and talk a little bit about IEP\'s

and programs that have worked for Clay County. We

work in conjunction with Fiddlers, which is Florida

Diagnostic Learning and Resource Services. Thank

you.

They offer classes for parents, for

teachers, for teacher aids to teach them how to write

IEP\'s, to teach parents about IEP\'s, know the right

for IDEA Act, how to be advocates for the parents,

for the teachers and for their special need students.

They train new teachers that are in special ed how to

write IEP\'s.

In my county, which is Clay County, we

have open houses at our schools that provide

information for our parents about post secondary

planning and things that are related to services

provide to ESC students that they\'re not receiving

once they graduate. Accountability I believe should

be not only on the parent, the special ed teacher,

the aids, the support staff but also the

administration.

We offer training in my county and write

collaboratively with them among the teachers to train

new teachers and also old; not old teachers but

teachers that are experienced. I didn\'t mean that

the way that sounded. I like all our old teachers.

I also had something to say about, I did

want to read my behavioral statement. I feel that

functional behavioral assessments conducted in the

educational and home setting will allow for more

effective implementation of positive behavioral

interventions in the classroom, in the community and

other social settings. I feel that special education

students who do not receive regular diplomas but

special certificates of completion are often

overlooked and regarded as not as important because

there\'s no academic base to measure their progress.

I would like to offer my services and

anyone that would like to come to Clay County. I

know that the money goes in Clay County where it

should in the classrooms. We have a set of

technology, computers, vocational training, community

based instruction money and vehicles for all of our

students that are in special ed programs. And we

also have peer tutors that take our class to learn

how to work with special ed students.

So, thank you for your time.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Terri Brewer, thank

you for your presentation. I also note from your

letter that you are a National Board Certified

Teacher in the area of Exceptional Needs Specialist.

MS. BREWER: I am.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: And I congratulate you

on that as well. Mildred Boswal.

MR. BOSWAL: Thank you. It should be

readily apparent ‑‑

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: It\'s Michael, I guess

I made a lot of mistakes today. This is probably the

classic of all of them. Thank you very much,

Michael.

MR. BOSWAL: That\'s a perfect way for me

to introduce myself as an attorney and by my count

I\'m the third one and I will attempt to address that.

But I have dyslexia and I have processing

difficulties and I went to law school under the ADA.

And so I am a product of these laws.

I say that I\'m the third lawyer to appear

before you, the third lawyer that represents parents

because I don\'t want you to have the perception that,

as many do, that the IDEA is the full employment for

lawyer\'s act. By my count and in conferring with my

colleagues, there are about ten of us that represent

parents in Florida, ten of us for the entire state.

And we do that not because we make a lot of money and

we don\'t. We do this because the issue is one that\'s

personal to us.

As I said, I have dyslexia and by the

grace of God and Denton Kurtz, who appeared before

you, Denton was the person who did my assessments and

helped me go to law school after, at 38 years of age.

But the, so, the lawyer\'s aren\'t getting rich doing

this and lawyers are not part of the program, at

least from the parent\'s standpoint. But that\'s not

why I\'m here to speak to you.

I\'m here to speak to you in support of the

McKay Scholarship Program. We believe that the McKay

Scholarship Program that we have here in Florida is

the answer, and is not the answer, but is an answer

to many parents\' difficulties. In the limited number

of people that you have heard, parents that have

testified to you today, you\'ve already heard two

examples of parents who ultimately became frustrated

with the system and/or out of necessity bailed out of

the system and chose to home school their children.

That is probably quite representative of

what happens in our state prior to the McKay

Scholarship Program. Our parents now have the

opportunity if they are dissatisfied with what the

education that their child is receiving within the

public school system, they give notice and they move

on to a private school.

Now, many of you may not feel that there

is appropriate accountability or regulation. But

parents of disabled children are very vocal. And

this is a parent driven system and it is a market

driven system. And if the parents who have their

children at a private school under the McKay

Scholarship are dissatisfied, they move that child.

And the accountability is with the parents where it

truly belongs.

Thank you very much.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Michael Boswal, thank

you. Ralph Cash.

MR. CASH: Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman,

Commission, press, guests. My name is Gene Cash.

The Chairman did not make a mistake. It is really

Ralph Eugene Cash. Welcome to Florida where the

official bumper sticker is, if you don\'t like the way

we vote wait until you see how we drive.

Some of you may wonder why I\'m here. I\'m

here because this is Miami and every party needs its

pinata. Actually, I\'m here because I\'m a licensed

psychologist. I\'m a nationally certified school

psychologist. I work with special ed kids on a

regular basis and I\'m a representative of the Florida

Association of School Psychologists and the National

Association of School Psychologists.

I have three brief points that I\'d like to

make on behalf of myself, the kids whom I serve and

those associations. One of those points is about

flexibility in special education. We are very much

in favor of the reauthorization of IDEA and strong

safe guards in the reauthorization. The flexibility

in IDEA, in my opinion, is currently backwards.

The reason for that is currently we have

very stringent structure and categorization for

eligibility in IDEA and very much flexibility in the

way that services are delivered, which leads to many

varying exceptionality classes about which you\'ve

heard earlier. In my opinion, it should be non‑

categorical, flexible evaluations, which of course

places a premium on highly qualified evaluators like

school psychologists, and I certainly admit I have a

bias in that regard.

But with categorized service delivery

based upon not the diagnosis of the student but the

needs of the student. That\'s what we need to focus

on, in my opinion, with regard to the delivery of

services and diagnosis.

Second, with regard to family involvement.

Family involvement may be the key in making IDEA

work. It\'s beyond the scope of my brief presentation

here to talk about the research in family

involvement. I refer to OSEP. OSEP for two decades

has been doing research on family involvement in

special education. They have an excellent research

connection in special education. Number 942001

Special Edition on Family Involvement. I hope that

you\'ll look at that.

And finally, we oppose cessation of

services for any student, particularly for special

education students because that doesn\'t solve the

problem of violence in schools, of difficulties;

thank you, of difficulties that those students pose

for other students. It merely transfers the problem

to the community. What we need is a legitimate

continuum of services so that those kids can continue

to be served in the schools in which they are

currently enrolled.

Thank you.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Thank you very much.

Mary Annice Heinle.

MS. HEINLE: Good afternoon and thank you

for allowing me to present to you. My name is Mary

Annice Heinle. I am here as a parent of a 13 year

old middle schooler who has Attention Deficit. I\'m

here as a teacher for the Miami Dade County Public

Schools, Adult Ed teacher working with disabled

adults who range in age from 19 to in their 50\'s.

There is no age limit. I work in a special program

at the Epilepsy Foundation trying to teach them

computers and office skills.

And I\'m going to ask you, are all of you

computer literate? What\'s the main thing you have to

do to operate a computer and learn a new program?

Read. And I\'m working with individuals, I\'m going to

work backwards. I\'m working with individuals who

have a third grade reading level and yet we want to

have work force here in Florida.

We pass through many individuals because

they have not gotten the services in the public

school system or the private school system. I think

we need funding for that population. And I want you

to consider it. The insurance company, and recognize

the insurance companies say that a 25 year old is

beginning to have that maturity, responsibility to

handle having lower insurance rates. Why do we stop

at IDEA at 22?

I also want to point out to you that the

maturity level seems to come at a slower pace for

those people with disabilities. I\'m also a member of

the Transition Task Force of Miami Dade County Public

Schools. And we need to have more corporate sponsors

and work towards that element of funding the program

where they\'ll hire individuals with disabilities

where there are tax incentives.

As a parent, I want to speak to and

reiterate and enforce lots of things that were said

today. My son was recently suspended from school

because he has attention deficit and there were four

substitute teachers in the gifted program. He has

good conduct but they did what they call zero

tolerance and put him out of the school.

There are a lot of issues under IDEA that

need to be addressed. I can tell you 20 years ago I

worked for the State of New Jersey, Department of

Health and Human Services. I worked in conjunction

with Deloit Hoskins in looking at discharge outcome

orientated service plans. We have not been looking

and training teachers how to write those plans. We

can computerize it. We should computerize it. We

should give them goals and short term objectives that

they are able to utilize and adopt to the school

situation for that individual on an individualized

basis.

I have more to say but limited time. So,

I\'d be happy to meet with anybody at the back of the

room. Thank you.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Thank you very much,

Mary Annice Heinle.

Yanick Fulgueira. Rosa Rodriguez.

MS. FULGUEIRA: Hello, everyone and thank

you for being here. My name is Yanick Fulgueira and

I\'m the mother of a child who ADHD and PDD, which is

Provasive Developmental Delay. And it\'s a spectrum,

an autism spectrum disorder.

I\'m a Haitian American and we speak three

languages at home because my husband is Hispanic.

Please remember that Dade County is not; I\'m sorry,

I\'m kind of short so I have to put this down.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: You\'re doing a good

job of speaking right into the microphone.

MS. FULGUEIRA: Okay, thank you. Please

remember that Dade County is now a tri‑lingual

county. There are about four million Haitians in

Miami and about 10,000 Haitians ESC kids in the

system.

When my daughter was in school I was told

after about six months in Kindergarten that she

couldn\'t read. My husband made a book with the ‑‑

words that she was supposed to read. And she was

taught in two weeks by my husband. This is a copy of

the book that we still have. Once upon a time there

was a little princess in a big house. In the house

was a little garden where lived a fat yellow cat with

a red hat. And she was to color this. My daughter

happens to be very visual and this is how she learns.

I didn\'t know that at the time.

Why this happens I don\'t really know. The

only thing I know is that I\'m really at the end of

the service chain. So, all I can recommend is this.

I feel that more rights should be given to parents.

I would like to be the one to write my child\'s IEP

and use the team as my resource. This way, when I

get home I don\'t have to say, what is this? You

know, I didn\'t talk about this. Where does this come

from? And I know enough about the IEP to do this.

Parents should get more involved and learn how to do

this also.

High school kids should check their own

benchmarks. Why not? Each nine weeks, to help

teachers with paperwork and simplify the IEP. Why

can\'t the IEP only contain the accommodations and

modifications needed? I would like to see the

teachers free to teach more. I feel that a ADD ADHD

exceptionality is needed so that kids with medication

side effects are not put in SED classes. My

daughter is in the SED class. She has ATDH and PPD.

What happens in the SED classes? Well, children with

behavior problems are hand cuffed by the police and

taken to mental hospitals to be drugged without

parents\' consent or without following IEP guidelines.

Because Florida is a tri‑lingual state, we have a lot

of problem with reading. And I feel remedial reading

classes are in critical need. Remedial reading

classes should be an additional class or period for

students with disabilities and should be provided

until 21 years of age or until grade level has been

achieved. You can have a child in fourth grade

reading level in 11 grade.

Thank you very much.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Yanick, Thank you very

much. Rosa Rodriguez. Is Rosa here? Gretchen Vega.

Is Gretchen here? Karen Clay? Nila; Karen Clay?

And Nila Benito?

MS. CLAY: Good afternoon. And thank you

for this opportunity to speak. My name is Karen Clay

and I am Michael\'s mom. We live in Tampa and I serve

on the Florida State Advisory Committee for the

Education of Exceptional Students, the Florida

Developmental Disability Council and FAST, Florida

Alliance for Assistive Services and Technology.

I would like to give public comment

regarding assistive technology and transition. The

way IDEA is now written, an agency\'s responsibility

to transition a student from school to either some

type of post secondary education, employment, or in a

greater sense, integration into the community

supersedes that of the school or the LEA. IDEA also

states that if an agency comes to the table and fails

to provide or if an agency fails to come to the

table, it\'s ultimately the responsibility for the

school or LEA to provide the services needed for

students to successfully exit the school system.

In reality, written interagency agreements

are non‑existence. Agencies time and time again fail

to come to the table in a timely fashion or simply

fail to implement any services they may have

committed to. Assistive technology devices provided

to students in school are routinely and customarily

taken away upon exiting the school system.

The failure of agencies regarding the

provision of assistive technology has seriously

impacted success and basically robs the student of a

successful transition into the community. For the

students who do exit to other agencies and their

assistive technology transfers with them, a far

greater chance for success exists.

For students who do not exit to other

agencies, particularly students who require

communication devices, whether that device be an

augmentative communication device or other forms of

assistive technology that facilitate communication,

their transition into the community cannot possibly

succeed.

What I would like to see is one,

strengthening of the language regarding inter‑agency

agreements creating definitive time lines for the

inter‑agency agreements to be in place and two, a

creation of a language that would specifically

provide for the transfer of assistive technology

devices as part of the transition process.

This mechanism currently exists in other

states and results in a higher rate of transition

success. Assistive technology creates possibilities

that otherwise would not exist. I\'m a very proud mom

of a young man who has proven that assistive

technology creates life long learning, a level of

independence and employment. My Mike is a tax

paying, voting citizen and he is also a writer,

editor and recognized by Apple Computers as an Apple

master. Without assistive technology, none of these

things would be possible.

What we want for our children is the same

as what all parents want. Our children aren\'t

different. They simply do things differently. Thank

you.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Karen Clay, thank you

very much. Nila Benito.

MS. BENITO: I\'m Nila Benito and I wanted

to thank you for giving me this time to be heard. Am

I the last one, by the way?

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: There\'s one more, one

more.

MS. BENITO: Okay.

MS. WRIGHT: Excuse, I didn\'t get your

name. I couldn\'t hear it over the applause.

MS. BENITO: Nila Benito and I\'m from

Tampa, Florida. And, again, I wanted to say thank

you. And I wanted to start off by saying thank you

because I really mean that. I thank you, Commission,

and everyone who\'s in here for choosing to be here

and choosing to stay this late to hear us because I\'m

here representing more than anything my two sons;

Vincent, age 11 and Joseph, age 10, who have autism.

And I didn\'t choose for them to have autism.

As I know anyone in this room who has a

child with a disability wouldn\'t choose that and

those of you who don\'t wouldn\'t say, sure, go ahead

and give my child a disability. So, I really

appreciate the fact that you\'ve chosen to accept your

appointment from the President, to try to make

special education the best it can be.

But to digress for a moment, I want to sum

up very simply in a crass way what I think about

autism. I think autism sucks. And if I had a bumper

sticker I could put on the back of my car that says

Autism Sucks, I would because that\'s what I think.

But, you know, thank goodness there\'s a law like IDEA

that is great. That helps me get what my boys need

to learn.

The reality of IDEA is, yes, sometimes it

fails but not because it\'s not a good law. It fails

because one, families do not understand their child\'s

right under IDEA and two, the definition of family

involvement in IDEA is interpreted in different ways.

So, for this team it may look like this. For that

team, it may look totally different. And also

because of the inconsistent monitoring of IDEA at the

state school district and classroom level.

I just want to share with you something

personal about Vincent and Joseph. Their autism is

quite significant. I love them with all my heart but

you would know they had autism if they walked in this

room right now. And my husband and I have made many

choices for them. And one of the most important

choices we\'ve made is that we wanted them to attend

their neighborhood school with the peers in the

neighborhood.

That was seem as kind of radical to my

school district and I knew it would be. But I knew a

collaborate team was critical for the success of my

boys. It took four years for that success to happen.

When Vincent started Kindergarten, it took until he

was in fourth grade.

Now they are being successful. And one of

the reasons it took so long is because I thought for

a while that IEP team really hated me, that they

thought I was an evil mother trying to make them do

something that didn\'t make sense. I was pushing my

boys too hard. But you know what? That wasn\'t what

it was. I found out what it really was is my

definition of how I wanted to collaborate with them,

which was to be a partner and do it hand in hand. It

was very different than their definition of how they

wanted to collaborate with me. It was because they

wanted to call me only when they needed me. That\'s

how they\'re use to collaborating with parents, when

we need you we\'ll call.

But I was, you know, I\'m a professional.

I work at the Center for Autism and Related

Disabilities at UFS. And I\'m also the Chair for the

Florida Developmental Disabilities Education Task

Force. So I have some professional knowledge to

share with them but there was still resistance. We

finally sat down at the table together. We were able

to say, hey, we have different perspectives here.

Let\'s figure out how to make this work.

So, as adults, we figured out how to get

along. We figured out how we could move forward.

And I\'m grateful that I\'ve learned that and that IDEA

backs up the family collaboration involvement

component so now I can help other families and other

teachers help other kids with significant

disabilities more effectively. Thank you.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Thank you, Nila, thank

you. And now the presenter we\'ve all been waiting

for who\'s our last presenter, Paul Marchand.

MR. MARCHAND: I stand between you and

drinks. CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Thank you for being

here.

MR. MARCHAND: Mr. Chairman and members of

the Commission, I am pleased to be here representing

the ‑‑ of the United States and the Contortion of

Citizens with Disabilities, which is the national

group working on IDEA policies back in Washington.

Thank you for your patience today. You\'ve been

excellent.

Two quick issues. I want to talk about

your process and I also want to talk about the two

day meetings going on right now. You should know

that your pre‑lunch discussion was interesting not

just to yourselves but to us out in the audience.

From an outsider\'s viewpoint, there appears to be

confusion and concern among you on the end gain, the

end product and the lack of dialogue among you.

Imagine how the interested public is even

more confused and apprehensive. Rumors on the street

are rampid. I want you to know I started none of

these. But they include the final report has already

been written by the staff and/or OSEP\'s and/or the

White House. The agenda is top heavy with

presentations leaving no time for real debate on the

issues. The Commission will be a rubber stamp.

Parents are asked to come at 7:00 a.m., pre‑dawn to

sign up to testify on week days when they\'re busy

preparing their children for school. The federal

government works very slowly. We all know that.

This deadline will be missed and thus we will prevent

the IDEA reauthorization to be done in this Congress.

It\'s time clearly for you to send out a

signal to all of us about what is this end game and

all of you and all of us deserve no less. I say this

in the hope that this Commission will help, truly

help launch a good reauthorization of IDEA.

Point 2; these two days. This meeting was

eagerly looked forward to by many, many parents

around the country who saw two days to be devoted to

the parental role. Unfortunately three quarters of

this agenda is on vouchers, scholarships, charter and

parochial schools. They\'re interesting issues but

they are not the issues that parents around the

country expected.

Can I retain my time for that applause?

The real agenda for the 90 percent, the 95 percent,

the 98 percent of our parents were parent training,

how will they understand their rights and

responsibilities under this law. Assess to their

neighborhood schools, which they can\'t get. A real

IEP with the services in the IEP truly delivered.

Assess to the general curriculum and finally how you

will make and enhance due process rights, not reduce

them.

Hopefully you can address all of this

before it\'s time for your final report. Thank you

very much.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Paul, thank you.

Katie, Katie Wright.

MS. WRIGHT: Name? I can\'t hear for all

the applause ‑‑

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Paul Marchand.

MS. WRIGHT: What?

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Paul Marchand.

MS. WRIGHT: Paul Marchand?

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Yes. Okay. Todd, do

we have any announcements? First of all, I want to

thank all of the commissioners for your patience and

for staying in being here to hear all the

presentations. I want to thank all our presenters.

I think it\'s very evident, very obvious that parents

and not just parents, the parents and the education

committee, all of the people that we\'ve heard from

today cares deeply about the children of this country

and especially children with disabilities in seeing

that we do the very best we can.

And I want to insure you of our commitment

to this process in maintaining an open process and a

deliberative process. The report has not been

written. We know there\'s a lot of work and I think

you saw a little apprehension before lunch today

because we know we\'ve got a big task ahead of us.

But I\'m very proud of these commissioners and the

knowledge and the experience that we have around this

table and with the commitment that each and everyone

of you has to this process and in giving the very

best report and recommendation we can to the

President of the United States, who gave us this very

significant and awesome responsibility.

So, with that, Todd, do you have any

announcement here?

MR. JONES: No.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Everybody knows what

time we get together in the morning? I think the

next is a reception. I think we\'re a little late for

that but thank you for staying for the business part

of the meeting. Thank you very much.

(Whereupon, the above meeting was

concluded at 5:50 p.m.)