We’ve had the good fortune to have special education attorney Wayne Steedman provide us with high quality, professional answers to complicated
special education law questions (IEP, ESY, LRE, AYP, MET, NCLB … if all these letters are leaving you feeling l-o-s-t, check out our “Special Education Terms” section of the Education tab) on our show as part of our “Wrightslaw Tip Of The Week” feature since shortly after the show started.
After a bit of tweaking with our schedules we were finally able to get him on the show live for a more in depth discussion…
Mr. Steedman is a practicing educational law attorney and founding partner of Callegary & Steedman and special education law trainer for Wrightslaw Special Education Law Training, more from his official bio:
Wayne Steedman is an attorney and founding partner in the law firm of Callegary & Steedman.
Mr. Steedman’s practice is devoted primarily to the representation of children with disabilities. He has represented his clients in administrative due process hearings and state and federal courts.
In addition to a law degree from the University of Maryland, Mr. Steedman has a Masters Degree in Social Work. For several years, he served as a Due Process Hearing Officer in special education cases. He is an active member of the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates (COPAA).
Mr. Steedman is the author of “Advocating for Services: Legal Issues Confronting Parents and Guardians” in Growing Up with Autism: Working with School-Age Children and Adolescents
.
Wayne and Pete Wright (Wrightslaw.com) have worked together since Wayne’s successful decision in Gerstmyer v. Howard County Public Schools. In Gerstmyer, the Judge found that a Montessori School was the appropriate placement for a child with dyslexia, a language learning disability. Read about this case in Parents of Dyslexic Child Reimbursed for Tuition at Montessori School.
We first met Wayne at a Wrightslaw Special Education Training that he was conducting in Toledo, Ohio a couple of years ago. Not only did we learn a lot from him that weekend but we were also impressed with his down to earth ability to help parents (like us) understand what the law means (in non-legalese) for our children.
On January 24th, 2010 we interviewed Mr. Steedman and spoke to him about the importance of tracking your child’s progress towards their educational goals over the course of the year, and what to do if your child ISN’T making appropriate progress.
While he’s a special education attorney, much of the advice he gave is useful for the parent of any school age child – special education or not.
While this country’s special education system has many weaknesses and deficiencies one of it’s great benefits (at least potentially great), is the emphasis on closely monitoring student progress. I say “potentially” because for many children this “progress monitoring” is done in such a generic, biased, sloppy manner that it has little value. However, for the children whose parents are educated and advocate strongly for their children this monitoring has tremendous potential for real understanding and progress.
Disappointingly though, this same degree of monitoring and exploration is not done with ALL of the children in the school. However, by using some of the practices and methods we discuss in our interview you can improve your child’s educational experience and insure that they’re truly making the progress that they should be (and know what to do if they’re not).
In addition to tracking your child’s progress we also discussed requirements for Extended School Year services and how to insure that the professionals working with your child are properly trained and qualified (automatically assuming that they are isn’t a good strategy).
In the second part of the show we spoke with Matt LaFontaine from the LaFontaine Automotive Group about automotive safety and automotive tips including getting the answer to a question we’ve had for a while about those “hydrogen” inflated tires.
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Articles Written By Wayne Steedman
- 10 Tips: How to Use IDEA to Improve Your Child’s Special Education Program
- Independent Educational Evaluations: What? How? Why? Who Pays?
- How to Request a One-to-One for Your Child
- Going on a Discovery Mission Behind “Enemy Lines
More Links For Wayne Steedman
- Wrightslaw Training Program Speakers – Bio of Wayne Steedman, Esq.
- Callegary & Steedman, P.A.
- Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates (COPAA)
Nitrogen Tires
- Pros, cons of using nitrogen in tires
- Consumer Reports Cars Blog: Tires – Nitrogen air loss study
- Consumer Reports Cars Blog: Nitrogen in tires – Q&A
- Nitrogen in Tires : Information about Nitrogen Tire Inflation News, Benefits, Generator Dealers, Location Finder & More
- The Straight Dope: Is it better to fill your tires with nitrogen instead of air?
We use Nitrogen in our tires and I’d say it does seem to make a slight difference, however, we also are members of Costco and get it done for free. Would we do it if we had to pay for it? Probably not ….. unless it was really cheap.
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