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.

DIRECTOR OF THE DISABILITIES RIGHTS PROJECT TO RECEIVE COPAA'S DIANE LIPTON AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING EDUCATIONAL ADVOCACY ON BEHALF OF CHILDREN WITH DISABILITIES

COPAA, The Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, has announced that Judith A. Gran, Director of the Law Center's Disabilities Rights Project, will receive its prestigious Diane Lipton Award at the organization's annual conference on March 8, 2008 in Anaheim, California. The Diane Lipton Award for Outstanding Educational Advocacy is given to an individual who has made a particularly outstanding contribution to COPAA's primary mission, protecting the educational and civil rights of children with disabilities. Ms. Gran was a founding member of COPAA's board of Directors, along with Diane Lipton, the parent advocate for whom the award is named. COPAA cites Ms. Gran's work on the groundbreaking case Gaskin v. Pennsylvania as an example of her work for systemic change to level the playing field for children with disabilities, in addition to representing families in due process hearings, mentoring lawyers and advocates, and providing advice and assistance to parents and self-advocates. As COPAA's announcement proudly states, "Ms. Gran's impact on the lives of families cannot be overestimated."
Visit COPAA's website to read the full announcement.

BARBARA RANSOM PRESENTS TRAINING SESSIONS AT PEAK PARENT CENTER CONFERENCE IN COLORADO

Law Center attorney Barbara Ransom was a presenter at the annual PEAK Parent Center Conference, held in Colorado from February 14-16, 2008. 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.