Ok, here’s where you need to do as I say, not as I’ve done. Odds are if you go to a due process hearing with your child’s school district over special education services...you will lose. The cards are squarely stacked against the parents.

This article, Schools Beat Back Demands
For Special-Ed Services from the Wall Street Journal points out that in the vast majority of hearings, the judges find in favor of the school districts. Or if they don’t, the school districts often appeal and get decisions overthrown during appeal.

What it’s telling me as a parent who has been through this mess is that Georgia isn’t the only place where the game is “fixed”. Look at the statistics:

In New Jersey, districts prevailed in 27 of 28 hearings in 2005-06. In California, parents only won 11 of 119 hearings in that year. Districts prevailed in 77 cases, while the rest had mixed outcomes.

The article goes on to describe one judge who was caught reading during testimony and excused herself from the case...but not before establishing a record of 25 out of 25 of her previous cases being found in favor of the school districts. (I found this especially interesting since the judge who heard our case fell asleep everyday, but didn’t excuse himself.)

Ok, so what’s going on here? Well some would like you to believe that these are misguided, money-hungry parents out to get the school systems to provide services above and beyond what is mandated. Others would tell you that the parents are receiving bad legal advice, or maybe it’s because the parents want to “blame” someone for not being able to cure the kid.

Personally I believe that it’s a shift away from providing special needs children with basic civil rights. These children, the ones with extremely challenging educational needs (often austistic or other neurological impairments) are not teachable in the minds of many. Years ago it was blind and deaf people who were warehoused and not educated. More recently it was those with Downs Syndrome or CP, or those with lower IQs. Today, the ones most likely to have trouble receiving appropriate educational services are the children on the autistic spectrum or having some type of neurological or emotional impairment. My belief is that traumatized children fall squarely in that last category...and account for lots of challenging children who do not receive an appropriate education, then they drop out of school or end up in trouble with juvenile authorities, or in many cases I'm aware of become suicidal because of the stress placed on them at school.

IDEA was weakened significantly in the last reauthorization. And two U.S. Supreme Court decisions also lengthened odds against parents.

In 2005, the court ruled that parents seeking relief must bear the "burden of persuasion" in hearings. That means when both sides' evidence is equally compelling, the hearing officer should rule in the district's favor.

At hearings, parents rely on expert witnesses, such as child psychologists, to offset testimony from teachers and other school staff. But the Supreme Court ruled last year that, even if parents win hearings, they can't recoup witnesses' fees -- often $100 an hour or more -- from districts.
I know this last one well. We had LuLu’s pyschiatrist testify on her behalf. The school district attorneys had to work very hard to discredit a doctor who had been seeing my child monthly for nearly three years. They structured the trial to bring her back in a total of three days, so we were billed for three days worth of testimony. That wasn’t the doctor’s fault, but is a clear example of how parents are often treated by school systems.

In our case I am 100% sure we had no choice but to walk away and homeschool our child or turn and fight it out in court. We chose to do the latter, and admittedly, were not fully aware of how greatly the odds were stacked against us. Or that we would still be homeschooling her, only several thousands of dollars poorer.

Is it right for the system be this lopsided? Should the system routinely weigh the school officials’ opinions and evidence as greater than the parents? On the surface it doesn’t appear to be that way, but I challenge you to find one parent who has been through due process who didn’t feel like David fighting Goliath.

And hitting that giant squarely between the eyes with one tiny rock is not a very likely gamble.

David & Goliath

How to Avoid a Due Process Hearing