Blog | Tag: Special Education

Disability Rights Florida wants to empower students and their supporters to take on their education. We hope that by making these terms more accessible and easier to understand, you’ll have the language and confidence to take on this school year.

What makes a reader proficient? Learning to read requires certain cognitive processes. At its most basic form, learning to read requires the reader to take in information and process that information. It is a mental process that requires some basic skills such as memory, attention, organization of information, retrieval of information, and interpreting information. Many students with disabilities struggle with reading because their disability affects these skills.

While the benefits from in-person learning highly outweigh those of online learning, safely transitioning students back to school for the 2021 school year must be the top priority. On July 9, 2021, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued updated guidance for COVID-19 Prevention in K-12 schools. These guidelines provided additional information regarding the promotion of the COVID-19 vaccines.

As parents and students prepare for the upcoming school year, many may be wondering about services and instruction that were missed during the 2020-2021 school year. Although we are starting a new school year, it is important to ensure that any gaps resulting from missed services or instruction resulting in a failure to implement a student’s individual educational plan (IEP) are addressed. You might ask yourself, “How do I know if my child has any academic gaps, and how can I fix them?”

As the new school year is quickly approaching, we all start to think about what the new school year will look like for students as the pandemic continues. All parents are faced with a tough decision of whether to send their children back to the traditional classroom. This can be daunting for parents with students who have disabilities, especially those with challenging behaviors that may become exacerbated by changes in their school environment.

Legislative and policy education is one of the authorized protection and advocacy tools utilized by Disability Rights Florida. Each year during the state’s legislative session, our organization closely monitors, reviews, analyzes, and seeks to provide input to policymakers and the public across a wide range of bills that impact the interests, rights, and opportunities of Floridians with all disabilities. Read about the bills that successfully passed during the recently concluded Regular Session of the 2021 Florida Legislature and have been signed into law by the Governor.

As the 2021 Regular Session of the Florida Legislature begins today, Florida lawmakers will gather for the first time since the full scope and magnitude of the COVID-19 public health crisis came into focus a year ago. Each year, Disability Rights Florida publishes its legislative priorities to guide its policy education and advocacy efforts. We strive to cover a broad range of issues important to people with disabilities in our state.

As this is the 45th Anniversary of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), I have been thinking about how this law has impacted the lives of the students with disabilities I have advocated for over the past 20+ years. I have had the pleasure of watching students who previously struggled receive the appropriate supports and services they need to progress, graduate, and move on to college, vocational training, and employment. But even with this law there is still one major barrier to overcome.

When President Ford signed the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (Public Law 94-142), later known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), in 1975, all children were given access to the public school system to receive a free and appropriate education in the least restrictive environment. From that time forward, students with disabilities had the right to receive an education with their non-disabled peers with all the same resources, teachers, and classrooms.

With the new school year rapidly approaching and the unpredictable and ongoing impact COVID-19 has on education, Disability Rights Florida reached out to every school district in the state to gather information about their school re-opening plans.