Thank you very much for such an articulate, well thought-out contribution. Given, my limited, but horrific, direct involvement in truancy proceedings, if a SARB mechanism was provided just as you’ve described, it very well may do the trick. Certainly a much greater degree of oversight and monitoring needs to occur to prevent abuses of power such as the gross displays I’ve seen.

I think that if we were to impose such controls on the SARB process as you’ve suggested, I’d like to see the data reported monthly on each LEA’s website so the public can have fairly immediate access to the data and can make informed decisions as constituents as to what to do about alarmingly high referrals and interventions that consistently fail. They can look to the interventions that appear to be working and look for trends that lead to decreased referrals.

Anne

Senator Leno would do better to strengthen California’s system of Student Attendance and Review Boards (SARBs). SARBs are composed of representatives from various youth-serving agencies. The SARB is supposed to act as a sort of safety net to study each child’s/family’s issues and needs (i.e., to diagnose & understand the contributing factors) and to brainstorm ways to support the child/family so that persistent attendance and behavior issues can be satisfactorily resolved without involving the juvenile justice system. However, SARBs do have the power to refer students and their parents to court.

A few ideas come to mind:

1. Make SARBs mandatory, not optional.

2. Require SARBs to document steps taken to diagnose and understand the factors that contribute to the problem behavior or excessive absences, as well as factors that were ruled out.

3. Require SARBs to document interventions that were considered, reasons for rejecting interventions, and reasons for success or failure of interventions that were attempted.

4. Require SARBS to meet multiple times to monitor progress of interventions, and if necessary, to try other interventions.

5. Require local SARB members to appear at court hearings to explain their efforts and failures to help the child and family. (If school district representatives had to appear at court hearings, they would rethink the ease with which they dispatch referrals.)

5. Require the state to monitor SARB outcomes and to require additional training for SARBs that refer more than 10% of students/parents to court.

A SARB that is meeting its obligation to serve as a safety net should have a very low referral rate. Schools, school districts, and SARBs that blame the student and/or parent for the child’s issues become part of the problem, not part of the solution. Parents accept help from allies, not from bullies. Collaboration is essential to the school-home partnerships touted by schools.

You’re so awesome!!!! I know you’re in it for the right reasons. Most parents are. If you need it, the link to the seminar is at http://kps4parents.org/Goals.

Anne

Aren’t you in LA Unified? They’ve been under a consent decree from the federal courts for special ed violations since the 1980s. They’ve never once passed audit to get off of it in all that time (see http://sped.lausd.net/sepg2s/mcd/mcd.htm). It’s utterly tragic. LAUSD has made due process a normal part of getting an IEP.

Trying to get LAUSD to follow a compliant process is about as easy as herding cats. I usually just “narc” on them to CDE the minute they do something unlawful because the people I’m usually dealing with on the “front lines” have no authority to do anything about it even they want to and are usually just as frustrated as I am. The people at the top honestly don’t care.

Regardless of what district you’re in, you’re right to be concerned. You could send copies of everything you have on these policies to the California Department of Education, Procedural Safeguards Referral Service, 1430 N Street, Sacramento, CA 95814 along with a cover letter explaining your concerns. If they think something smells rotten, they’ll open an investigation and check it all out.

What sounds like the district is doing is imposing cost control measures without regard for its compliance with all other aspects of the IEE process or the provision of a FAPE. And, if what they’re doing creates more unnecessary litigation, they aren’t really saving any money, either.

They are totally not exempt from the assessment timelines on IEEs. I can’t believe that they would even be so bold (or stupid) as to put that in print. However, this may actually be a clever twisting of words. I’d have to see it to know for sure. At most, they can ask parents to voluntarily waive the timelines to accommodate the independent assessor or decline to agree to the assessor if the timelines can’t be met and the parents won’t agree to a waiver.

There are regulations that require that independent assessors meet the same standards that district assessors should meet. Specifically, 34 CFR Sec. 300.502(e) reads:

“Agency criteria. (1) If an independent educational evaluation is at public expense, the criteria under which the evaluation is obtained, including the location of the evaluation and the qualifications of the examiner, must be the same as the criteria that the public agency uses when it initiates an evaluation, to the extent those criteria are consistent with the parent’s right to an independent educational evaluation. 2) Except for the criteria described in paragraph (e)(1) of this section, a public agency may not impose conditions or timelines related to obtaining an independent educational evaluation at public expense.”

See the rest of 34 CFR 300.502 for the criteria consistent with the parent’s right to an IEE. With respect to the assessment timeline issue, if the independent assessor is unable to comply with the timeline and the parent is not willing to agree to a timeline waiver, then it would be unreasonable to ask the district to knowingly put itself out of compliance with the assessment timeline, in my opinion. It’s my suggestion that if the quality of the assessment is more important to the parent than how long it will take to get it done, the parent should offer to waive the timeline by as much time as needed to accommodate the independent assessor’s availability, but figure out how much time that would be and limit the waiver to a pre-specified deadline.

As for the location of the examiner, this only becomes important if the examiner is not willing to travel to a district location to perform the assessment. That doesn’t mean that he or she actually has to. The real question is “What is the agency criteria for location used by the district for it’s own assessors?”

The issue with pricing is a slippery slope, as well. School districts on the East Coast have been successful in pulling this off, but it’s my understanding that this is because state law permits it – and I still question the validity of the practice under the federal regulations. We don’t have any state laws in California that explicitly state that the costs of assessment can be limited. Federal law prohibits the use of cost criteria to govern whether or not a child gets a FAPE, which includes proper evaluation. However, cost can be used to decide between assessors and service providers who are all qualified to render an appropriate degree of assessment or service. There’s nothing that prohibits a district from choosing the least costly option so long as that option remains appropriate.

There’s also no law that says that school districts in California get to dictate who performs the IEE. They can refuse a particular assessor if they give prior written notice pursuant to 34 CFR Sec. 300.503, but they can’t tell a parent that the selection of the independent assessor is totally the district’s call. There’s nothing independent about that. I get the feeling that this is exactly what your district is trying to do, though. They’re trying to control who the “independent” assessors are so they can limit IEEs to those folks who have gotten in bed with the district and who are more likely to say what the district wants them to say, even if it’s not the truth.

Of course, there’s no real way to know that without a full-blown investigation. That’s why you probably want to seriously think about filing a compliance complaint, as described above. You can also call PSRS and talk to them about what you’re seeing, first, before going to the trouble of sending them all the evidence. Their toll-free phone number is 800-926-0648.

Anne

Thanks for the constructive feedback. One of the reasons we now also record our big articles in podcast form is for those parents who would rather download and listen instead of sit and read. This isn’t necessarily about literacy issues so much as it’s about limited available time for reading. The feedback we’ve received is that busy parents and educators truly appreciate the podcasts because they can listen to them while driving, folding laundry, cooking dinner, etc.

I wasn’t aware of any statistics indicating that the reading rate has declined for those 40 and under. In fact, with so much information now out on the internet, it’s been my understanding that people of all ages are finding reading an absolutely practical necessity in order to get by more than ever before. Are you encountering an increased number of parents aged 40 and under in your local area who don’t read a lot? Have you run across demographic data indicating that reading rates are declining for those 40 and under?

As for being old enough to have done this for 19 years, you’re too kind. I started working in this field when I was still in college. I also probably need to update my profile pics before too long. They’re not that old, but they’re not that new, either. My hair is a little different, now. Still, it’s funny how when I first meet folks for work, they can often pick me out of the crowd at a restaurant because they’ve seen my picture on our website or Facebook first. That took some getting used to.

Anne