The Law Center's mission under this agenda is to end discrimination and abuse against persons with disabilities and secure their inclusion and full participation in all aspects of mainstream society.
There are four components to this project including: education, community services, the criminal justice system and advancing the rights of persons with disabilities internationally.
education
community services
criminal justice system
international project
The Law Center provides legal representation to parents of students with disabilities and
technical assistance to attorneys and advocacy organizations around the country. It participates in
policy formation through reports and counseling to advocacy organizations. In addition, it
provides education via parent training and the attendance and participation of its lawyers at
programs and seminars on disabilities matters.
Within the broad context of this work, the Law Center has focused on issues of inclusion
(particularly for low incidence developmental disabilities), using the expertise of educational
experts knowledgeable about best practices and class actions to reform state practices.
LAW CENTER OFFERS NEW CONSULTATION SERVICES
As Law Center lawyer Sonja Kerr explains in a recent law review
article, found below, there are far too few lawyers to represent the
nation's 6.8 million children with disabilities, particularly in the procedurally complex administrative hearings under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. In Alaska, Sonja was the only private lawyer regularly representing children with disabilities. The lack of counsel is not unique to Alaska, however. Nationwide, most often, school districts are represented, and many families are not. In the Philadelphia area, there are approximately 200 school lawyers and about 50 parent side lawyers.
As a partial solution to redressing this imbalance, the Law Center now
offers consultation services to families. Families will be asked to gather and send in their children’s educational
records and fill out a questionnaire in advance of an in-person meeting. We
will review the records and meet with families to arm them with information
and advice about possible approaches for the education of their children.
The discussion during the meeting will be followed up with a letter
summarizing our advice.
The services are available by appointment only; with slots reserved for low income families. Families who do not qualify as
low income will be asked to make a modest payment covering the Law Center’s
costs, payable at the time of the meeting. We will discuss the rates and other procedures with
families when we set up an appointment.
A RESOURCE FOR PARENTS LITIGATING
PRO SE ON BEHALF OF CHILDREN WITH DISABILITIES
In this article, published in December 2009, Sonja Kerr, Director of Disabilities Rights Projects at the Law Center, examines the rights of parents to litigate
pro se on behalf of their children under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Ms. Kerr reviews Alaska and non-Alaska jurisprudence that predates the United States Supreme Court’s decision in
Winkelman v. Parma City School District. She then examines the Winkelman
decision itself, as well as the impact of Winkelman on IDEA-related pro se litigation. Ms. Kerr notes the difficulties that parents continue to face in IDEA-related litigation and concludes by proposing reforms designed to aid parents in protecting the interests of children with disabilities. While the focus of the article is the state of Alaska, the issues and concerns are common for parents throughout the United States and the article is a good resource for parents who are facing pro se issues.
"Winkelman: Pro Se
Parents of Children with Disabilities in the Courts (Or Not?)"
(Courtesy of the Alaska Law Review at Duke Law)
September 2, 2009 - The Law Center encourages parents, advocates, teachers and others who work with students with disabilities to submit their experiences to the National Council on Disabilities. Input will be used to develop recommendations for changes in legislation, regulations, policies, or programs, as appropriate. The Law Center is a former contractor of NCD.
More information and instructions for submitting your comments
June 24, 2009 -- After listening to testimony over eight days, an administrative hearing officer ruled on that the Lower Merion School District denied to our client, C.H., a free and appropriate public education. C.H. is a 17-year old African American high school student with learning disabilities in mathematics, reading and writing. She aspires to attend college.
The hearing officer’s opinion outlines a litany of basic failures on the part of the district to understand C.H.’s current level of educational attainment or to set measurable goals to improve. As a result, the remedial courses offered to C.H. were not tied to her actual needs. For example, while the district knew about C.H.’s learning disability in math, it failed to ascertain what skills she had attained or provide any goals for her improvement. According to the hearing officer, the district official’s explanation for this omission of math goals was “not logical”; there is a basic need, the hearing officer observed, for a baseline evaluation and then goals to measure progress from that baseline. The hearing officer similarly characterized as “sparse” the goals for reading and writing, observing that none of them was measurable. “Had the [Individualized Education Plans] been more precisely focused through reading, mathematics and written expression goals that were sufficiently broken down, and crafted with specific baselines and outcomes that were measurable, the actual remedial teaching might have occurred in such a way as to demonstrate meaningful progress. Unfortunately, this was not the case and C.H. was therefore denied [an education.]”
C.H. and her family are members of a group of students and their families who filed a lawsuit in federal court alleging that the Lower Merion School District systematically segregates African American students into below grade classes and failing to provide them with the necessary supports and services. They are joined by organizational plaintiffs the Mainline Branch of the NAACP and Concerned Black Parents. After the federal judge ruled that C.H. and her family must first proceed through the administrative process, the family did so, leading to the June 24 ruling. Other families are also initiating the administrative process as directed by the Court. In the federal case, the students and families have asked the judge to certify the case as a class action. The motion for class certification will be heard on July 20, 2009.
Read more about the federal lawsuit
In Forest Grove v. T.A., T.A.—who had attended the Forest Grove School District since kindergarten—began having increased difficulty with his schoolwork, yet was deemed non-disabled by a school psychologist following an evaluation at the conclusion of his 9th grade year, and the District refused to provide him with an Individualized Education Program (IEP). T.A.'s difficulties mounted over the following two years, however, and an independent examination resulted in a diagnosis of Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, as well as learning and memory disabilities. After a team assembled by the District met and determined that T.A.'s ADHD did not have a "sufficiently significant adverse impact on his educational performance," the District once again denied T.A. an IEP. At this point T.A.'s parents unilaterally enrolled him in a private academy, at which he completed his high school matriculation. Following a due process hearing, a hearing officer (HO) determined that the District's original examination was inadequate, T.A.'s ADHD adversely affected his performance in school, and the District was therefore obligated to reimburse T.A.'s parents for two years of private education. While the District Court accepted the HO's findings of fact, it found that compensatory education was categorically barred by the 1997 IDEA amendments when the student had not previously received special-education services. The Ninth Circuit, however, overturned the District Court and ruled that the amendments did not impose any such categorical bar, a decision which was reaffirmed by the Supreme Court.
In reaching its decision, the Court not only looked to the relevant provisions of the IDEA amendments, but also to the motivation behind the act—namely, to provide all children with a FAPE including the necessity of determining which children are eligible for special education services. The Court also reaffirmed the role of hearing officers to award all appropriate relief to children with disabilities deprived of the education required by law.
This decision is a very positive and powerful reminder to schools that Congress, the administration, and the Court will protect the rights of children with disabilities. For PILCOP, this means that not only will we be more likely to successfully advocate for children seeking appropriate remedies when the districts they attended refuse to provide them with IEPs, but also that courts in general may be more willing to consider the norms and ideals behind special education law. When courts are motivated by a desire to provide children with meaningful education, they are much more likely to take the steps necessary to ensure that disabled children are given the opportunity to realize their full potential. Forest Grove has thus brought us one step closer to achieving the goal embraced by Congress when it first passed the Education for All Handicapped Children Act in 1975; meaningful education for all children, regardless of ability or privilege.
Parent Tip: Parents considering private school placements or private school services, (such as tutoring), should be sure to give their school district 10 days notice in writing or discuss the issue at an IEP meeting before starting services.
March 10, 2009 -- Seven year old Graciella* and her triplet siblings are proficient in English and cannot read, speak or write Spanish. Their school district, Manheim Township, nonetheless placed them in an English as a Second Language course. When the triplets’ parents asked the district to evaluate them for a learning disability, the district did so, but its psychologist concluded that the triplets did not have a disability, prompting the parents in turn to request an independent evaluation. When the school district refused, our colleague Phil Drumheiser took the case to a due process hearing. Phil turned to the Law Center after the hearing was over, seeking help in sifting through the voluminous hearing transcript and writing the critical post-hearing brief.
In a potent illustration of our power to harness resources, we turned to Ben Hinerfeld, an attorney at the securities law firm Barroway, Topaz, Kessler, Meltzer & Check LLP. Coincidentally, that day Ben had travelled to our office with an offer to help. Ben took up the challenge and wrote an eloquent brief which persuaded the hearing officer that the evaluation completed by the district’s psychologist was based on the fundamental and incorrect stereotype that the children were not fluent in English, simply because they were in ESL courses. The hearing officer also faulted the district’s psychologist for ignoring the findings of a private examination commissioned by the parents; and also for making the decision in advance that the children didn’t need to be evaluated since they were already receiving services, including the English language services (which they did not need). The hearing officer called “atypical and inappropriate” the fact that at a meeting to discuss the district’s evaluation, the parents were not given a copy, while the school district’s lawyer was. Especially significant was the hearing officer's admonition to the school district to afford parents "meaningful participation" in the Multidisciplinary Team (MDT) process - the process that allows a district to determine the child's educational needs. Although parent participation is a core right under IDEA, many administrative and judicial decisions have acknowledged such violations without fully expressing the tremendous importance of making this a reality.
While the hearing officer determined that she did not have the power over the ESL courses, she cautioned that “providing of ESL must not be used as a substitute for classifying [the children] as having a specific learning disability…and must not be used as a substitute for specially designed instruction…”
* Not her real name
Read the Hearing Officer's decision
BARBARA RANSOM PRESENTS TRAINING SESSIONS AT PEAK PARENT CENTER CONFERENCE IN
COLORADO
February 14-16, 2008 -- Law Center attorney Barbara Ransom was a presenter at
the annual PEAK Parent Center Conference, held in Colorado. Ms. Ransom
offered two training sessions at the conference. The first, given with
colleagues Thom Miller and Laura Freppel, was entitled "IDEA 2004: Key Elements
for Quality Educational Support for Students. The second was entitled,
"Disability and Civil Rights: The Federal Laws that Protect People with
Disabilities. In this session Ms. Ransom provided an overview of the laws that
congress has enacted to ensure the equal and full citizenship of individuals
with disabilities, and provided participants with the skills necessary to
effectively self-advocate and to demand the enforcement of these legal provisions.
SETTLEMENT PROMISES BROADER INCLUSION OF STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES IN
EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES
The Parents of 7th grader RJ Cooney, a student with down syndrome, had to file a
request for a hearing so that their son would be invited to participate in all
the same extracurricular activities as his classmates who do not have
disabilities. Under the terms of a September 3, 2007 settlement agreement, the
Stroudsburg Area School District agreed to make it school policy that, "any
student who qualifies for special education services pursuant to any state or
federal statute shall be provided appropriate accommodations to enable the
student to participate in field trips, after-school activities, summer programs
and all its programs that are made available to student's classmates who do not
have disabilities." This policy reaffirms the requirements of the Individuals
with Disabilities Education Act and is one of the provisions of the Agreement
that can be shared with the public. Now R.J. can attend school trips with his
twin brother.
THE LAW CENTER FIGHTS FOR EQUAL TREATMENT OF STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES IN
COLLEGIATE SPORTS
In March 2007, the United States Court of Appeals reinstated a lawsuit filed by
the Law Center's Barbara Ransom against the National Collegiate Athletics
Association alleging that it intentionally discriminated against Michael Bowers
for his learning disability. Michael Bowers was a star football player at
Palmyra High School in New Jersey and was heavily pursued by top-tier football
schools such as Temple and Iowa University. However, after schools learned that
Michael had a learning disability and was enrolled in special education classes
in high school, the schools stopped actively recruiting Michael, knowing that
the NCAA would find him to be ineligible to play collegiate sports.
The case survived a challenge on December 7, 2007 when the New Jersey state
court denied the University of Iowa's motion to dismiss. The defendants argued
that we had waited too long to refile in state court after being denied in
Federal court on the grounds that the case was really a state matter, as the
University is an arm of the state. In its decision, the court disagreed and
said we had filed suit in plenty of time.
Click here to read the court's decision.
JUDITH GRAN GIVES PRESENTATION ON AVERSIVES AT NATIONAL TASH CONFERENCE
The Law Center's Judith Gran, Director of the Disabilities Rights Project,
represented the organization at this year's TASH conference, held in Seattle on
December 7th, 2007. The Town Hall discussion in which Judith was a presenter was
entitled "Turning the Corner: Progress Toward the Elimination of Aversives,
Restraint and Seclusion." Judith spoke about the Law Center's research on the
disturbing practice of Aversive Behavioral Interventions, which are still in
use, and in some states are even sanctioned, as a disciplinary option for
children with behavioral disorders. The complete paper presenting the research
will be released in early 2008 and is expected to serve as a resource not only
in litigation but for regulatory agencies as they work to set public policy.
The project was generously funded by a grant from the Samuel S. Fels Fund, which
allowed the Law Center to hire an intern, Villanova Law student Tonya Carter, to
assist with the project.
LOWER MERION SCHOOL DISTRICT SUED ON GROUNDS OF SYSTEMATIC DISCRIMINATION AGAINST AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDENTS
Five African American families from Lower Merion, a suburb of Philadelphia, are
joined by Concerned Black Parents, Inc. and The NAACP Mainline Branch as
plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed on July 30, 2007 as a class action against the
Lower Merion School District. The Complaint alleges that the Lower Merion
School District routinely segregates African American students into below grade
level or modified classes that provide them with a substandard education. The
Law Center's Barbara Ransom is lead counsel for the case. The Individuals with
Disabilities Education Act and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act,
require the District to provide these students and the members of the class
access to the same general education curriculum and quality education which
Lower Merion provides to their similarly situated peers.
The Complaint alleges that the School District's policies and practices caused
these students and the members of the class to fall behind their peers
academically. The District's 2005 Report Card of annual yearly progress ("AYP")
data for reading achievement show that the number of African Americans who score
below basic (the lowest level on the state-wide assessment) increases by grade
level in a manner disproportionate to that of their Caucasian peers. 13% of
African American students in the district scored below basic in the fifth grade,
24% in eighth grade and 36% in eleventh grade, as compared with 3%, 5% and 8% of
their Caucasian peers tested at the same increments. These data demonstrate
that an education in the Lower Merion School District can be detrimental to the
academic development and post-graduation opportunities of its African American
students. Although only 7.5% of approximately 6,800 students enrolled in the
Lower Merion School District are African American, the separate classes where
the District places Plaintiffs and class members are 90 - 100% African American.
The Complaint alleges that, "such grouping can only be attributed to the
intentional segregation of these students."
Read the Complaint here
On September 25, 2007 the complaint was amended to add new plaintiffs, the
Pennsylvania Department of Education as a defendant and the school board of
Lower Merion as defendants.
Read the Amended Complaint here.
PENNSYLVANIA AGREES TO CHANGES IN SPECIAL EDUCATION TO INCREASE
INCLUSION OF STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES IN REGULAR EDUCATION CLASSES
The state of Pennsylvania and the Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia have concluded an
historic settlement of litigation designed to change the quality of special education services
throughout the state. Pursuant to the agreement, the state will change how it helps its 501 school
districts comply with the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and how it
monitors that compliance. The settlement is designed to increase the inclusion of students with
disabilities in regular education classes with non-disabled students. It was approved by Judge
Eduardo Robreno on September 19, 2005
The settlement comes after ten years of effort in a state-wide class action, Gaskin v. Pennsylvania
Department of Education, in which the Law Center represented a class of 280,000 special
education students, twelve named plaintiffs, and eleven disabilities advocacy organizations,
including The ARC of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania TASH, and Pennsylvania Protection and
Advocacy, Inc.
The United States Department of Education reported that Pennsylvania was the 7th lowest state
in 2002 for including students with disabilities in regular education classrooms.
Judith Gran, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs, hailed the agreement. "The Rendell
Administration recognized that in too many parts of the state not enough has been done to
provide students with disabilities a meaningful education in the least restrictive environment.
Too many students and their parents have been frustrated by school districts' failure to fulfill the
promise of federal law. We are delighted that this administration is willing to make the
significant efforts necessary to make Pennsylvania a leader in teaching students with disabilities."
As one of the key new elements to refocus the state's activities, the settlement creates an
Advisory Panel on Least Restrictive Environment Practices that shall meet quarterly to review
progress in the implementation of the settlement, including growth in inclusive practices,
improvements in quality of actual special education practices, and whether teachers and other
school personnel are receiving the training and assistance needed to meet the needs of special
education students. Twelve of the fifteen members of the Advisory Panel will be selected by the
plaintiff organizations.
The agreement provides that the state will undertake a new effort to advance inclusion of
students with disabilities in regular education by:
* Increased monitoring for those 50 districts with the poorest record of inclusion of special
education students with regular education students. The state will require corrective action plans
for all of these targeted districts. The remaining districts in the lowest 250 districts will be on an
alert status. Compliance monitoring for Least Restrictive Environment shall review whether
meaningful educational benefit is being achieved, as well as for procedural compliance.
* Changes in the individual complaint resolution process to require interviews with all persons
identified as knowledgeable by parents.
* Changes in the monitoring process to require consideration of the outcomes of all of the due
process hearings and individual complaints in assessing a district's record.
* Changes in the approval process of each district's special education program to have it come
after and be based on consideration of the special education compliance monitoring process.
* Increased commitment to training and technical assistance by the state to assist districts in
assuring that all teachers have the necessary skills and knowledge of best practices appropriate to
the disabilities of the students in their class.
The settlement agreement also calls for payment of ,000,00,000 to the twelve individual
plaintiffs and payment for attorney fees and expenses.
The settlement will be enforceable for 5 years, with a dispute resolution process allowing
disputes that remain unresolved after mediation to go to a federal judge for the first 3 years.
The settlement was negotiated with the assistance of former District Court Judge Louis C.
Bechtle who acted as a discovery master and then mediator.
Historically, many teachers who are not certified in special education are uncomfortable teaching
students with significant disabilities and are not trained in the best practices for their particular
disability. A Law Center review of the state's performance found that state monitoring of school
district performance is focused on issues of procedural compliance and not on the quality of
education provided, and that the state never requires districts to actually increase the level of
integration or inclusion of students with disabilities with the general student population. The Law
Center's investigation was assisted by Dr. Beverly Evans and Dr. Linda Lengyel of Duquense
University, and by statistician Dr. James Conroy.
The lead plaintiff, Lydia Gaskin, is an example of successful inclusion. Born with Down
Syndrome, Ms. Gaskin is finishing her last year in the Carlisle School District after being
included in courses with college bound students. "Lydia and her classmates have all benefited
from the challenges she faced. She is a full and participating member of her school community
and she is a stronger, more independent person than she would have been if segregated in classes
only with persons with disabilities." said her father Joseph Gaskin.
Read the Opinion Approving the Settlement
Read settlement agreement
History of the Disability Education Project
The Law Center's attorneys have been involved with nearly every aspect of education for persons
with developmental disabilities since the groundbreaking case, Pennsylvania Association for
Retarded Persons (PARC) v. Commonwealth, the nation's first "right-to-education-case."
Thomas K. Gilhool, Chief Counsel of the Law Center, acted as lead counsel in the case.
Prior to 1971, public schools had no obligation to integrate or even educate children with
disabilities. The PARC case helped create the Constitutional right of children with disabilities to
receive a public school education. The case resulted in a consent decree that Congress ultimately
codified as the Education for all Handicapped Children Act of 1975 (renamed the Individuals
with Disabilities Act-IDEA).
Subsequently, in PARC II, the Law Center challenged the provision of custodial care for children
with severe and profound disabilities and established that schools must provide effective
education for this population. The consent decree revamped the curriculum and training of
teachers for those students, as well as other services.
These early cases culminated in the precedent-setting decision of the Court of Appeals for the
Third Circuit, Oberti v. Board of Education of the Borough of Clementon, in which the Law
Center successfully represented Rafael Oberti, a student with Down Syndrome. In Oberti, the
Court of Appeals held that before a student with disabilities can be excluded from general
education classes, the student's educational planning team "must consider the whole range of
supplemental aids and services" that will make inclusion possible, including "speech and
language therapy, special education training for the regular teacher, behavior modification
programs, or any other available aids and services appropriate to the child's particular
disabilities." The school "must also make efforts to modify the regular education program to
accommodate a disabled child."
After Oberti, a number of families were able to use the law to obtain favorable decisions from
hearing officers and courts in individual cases. However, success in individual cases did not lead
to systemic change and did not help the hundreds of thousands of special education students
whose families were unable or unwilling to engage in litigation against their school districts. And
even for individual students who won their cases, victory was sometimes elusive because of the
pervasive lack of teacher training in inclusive practices.
The limits of success in individual cases led one of the Law Center's longstanding client
organizations, the ARC, to propose as a remedy in Pennsylvania--a statewide lawsuit to enforce
not only the inclusion requirement of the IDEA but also the promising practices requirement of
the Act. The ARC and the Law Center brought together a coalition of state and local
organizations to bring the lawsuit, including the Learning Disabilities Association of
Pennsylvania, Autism Support and Advocacy in Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania Coalition of
Citizens with Disabilities, the Parents' Union for Public Schools and Disabled in Action.
In one of the first federal court decision on the rights of very young children to developmental
services, a Delaware County couple with two non-verbal toddlers found out on April 7, 2005 that
"making a federal case" of their problem can be the road to success.
Turned down in their request for an intensive immersion communication program for a 2 and 1/2
year old child with autism by the Delaware county office of mental health and mental retardation
and by a state hearing officer, the family was vindicated by a federal court decision which
ordered the county office to reimburse them for the cost of the program. The family used credit
card debt to obtain the services.
The twin boys, P.M. and R.M., had significant communication and speech delays. In P.M.'s case
the delays caused frustration, tantrums and physically aggressive behavior. At the parents'
suggestion, Delaware County's Early Intervention program provided training to the family in
communicating through a picture exchange system. The County's administrators, however,
refused to pay for a two-week summer intensive communication program, even though it was
recommended by the speech therapist and other service providers working with the child. The
administrators ignored the recommendation on the grounds that the services were "not essential"
for progress and would not be provided in the child's natural environment.
Magistrate Judge Jacob P. Hart rejected both of those defenses. He stated that nothing in the
federal laws require educational services to meet the high standard of "essential" in order to be
provided. He also noted that the right to treatment in a "natural" environment should not be used
as a sword to prevent treatment, when it had been intended as a shield to prevent un-wanted
placements in settings without non-disabled peers.
The federal court found that the county administrators had wrongly discounted the
recommendations of the parents and service providers working with the child and had unduly
relied on the testimony of a consultant who had been unwilling to testify about the children's
needs because of a conflict of interest arising from her seeking county business. Judge Hart noted
that hind sight showed the family and other providers had been correct in their assessment's of
P.M.'s needs. Testimony showed that he made tremendous strides in his communication skills
almost immediately after beginning the intensive program and experienced a significant
reduction in his acting-out behavior. In addition to using the picture exchange system, he
acquired an oral vocabulary that has enabled him to rely less on the picture system. Judge Hart
also decided, however, that the other twin, R.M. had progressed satisfactorily without attending
the intensive program, which the parents had not been able to afford.
The family was represented in the proceedings by Barbara Ransom of the Public Interest Law
Center of Philadelphia. Ms. Ransom noted that although the Individuals with Disabilities
Education Act makes it mandatory for the state to provide services to infants and toddlers, ages 0
to 3 years old, with disabilities, there are very few court cases challenging denial of these
services. "This case shows that parents can fight arbitrary decisions which reject the advice of
knowledgeable experts and service providers. It is going to be very important in making
administrators pay attention to the real needs of the children with disabilities and their families,"
Ms. Ransom stated.
Congress in 1990, Ms. Ransom noted, had found that there was an "urgent and substantial need"
for early intervention programs, in part to reduce the cost of special education programs when the
children reach school age. The early intervention in this case provides an example, where the
intervention program helped these two children gain communication skills, making their
adjustment to school easier for them and less costly to the local public school system.
The Public Interest Law Center is a non profit law center which represents families of students
with disabilities in due process hearings and court cases. Law Center attorneys frequently provide
continuing legal education courses to other members of the bar in how to represent students with
disabilities in special education and early intervention cases.
Read decision in Andrew M. and Deirdre M. case.
Other class actions filed to enforce the IDEA in other states include a suit in Connecticut brought
by the Law Center's Frank Laski, in conjunction with local co-counsel David Shaw, which led to
a consent decree, currently being implemented, to facilitate increased inclusion. The Law Center
also filed a class action against the State of Arkansas Department of Education on behalf of a
class of high functioning students with autism. Unfortunately, the Court ruled that the minimal
efforts taken by the state to monitor the district's compliance with IDEA were enough to qualify
the state as complying with the law. The Law Center is considering whether to appeal.
The Law Center's track record of success and stellar reputation in the field each year earns it
recognition and support from the local, statewide and national community. In 2004, the Law
Center was selected by the Pennsylvania Developmental Disabilities Council from a competitive
pool of applicants to receive a multi-year grant in the amount of ,000 to create Inclusive
Education Report Cards for every district in the state. In assigning an appropriate grade to each
district, the staff will examine the factors contributing to the widespread variation in inclusive
practices across school districts. The research being conducted as part of the Law Center's
Inclusive Education Report Cards will further inform its special education project of policies and
practices being undertaken in the immediate present by model districts which will, in turn,
improve upon the delivery of legal assistance and advocacy support.
