Access to education

It is refreshing to see the Bangor Daily News give space to the issue of education issues that are only just beginning to have devastating consequences.

Special education students qualify for that status under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). They must be assessed to be significantly underperforming relative to their peers. The law, requiring the least restrictive environment for these special children, seeks to protect them from being marginalized and segregated from their peers, insofar as that is possible. The goal is to insure they have the same access to a free and appropriate public education, just like their nondisabled friends.

Well, if IDEA protects them as being significantly different, how is it that No Child Left Behind can strip away the protection their identification establishes? Under IDEA, special education students are tested at ability level. Under NCLB they are tested at grade level. That situation guarantees that these children will in fact be left behind.

Parents of special education students should consider asking the courts if the rights of their children are being violated. Someone somewhere needs to address this issue. As was stated in the BDN recently, this affects those in the graduating class of 2007 and out. Some Children Left Behind is unacceptable.

Paul Beane

Talmadge