U.S. schools fail to help disabled

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan on Tuesday focuses his quest to improve classroom performance on the 6.5 million students with disabilities, including many who perform poorly on standardized tests.imgres

As Huffington Post reports, “Duncan, who has spent his years in the Obama administration using accountability measures in existing laws to drive improvements in student performance, on Tuesday joins Michael Yudin, assistant secretary for the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, to announce a new framework for measuring states’ compliance with the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, the federal law that supports special education and services for children with disabilities. The law originally was known as the Education of Handicapped Children Act of 1975.

“After years of holding states accountable under the law for such things as timely evaluations of students and due process hearings, the Education Department plans to look at results. For the first time, the government will define compliance with the law not just in terms of what states do for students with disabilities, but with how those students perform.

“Focusing on inputs has worked on improving that type of compliance, according to information the Department released Tuesday. For example, in 2006, 84.8 percent of initial evaluations of students with disabilities were completed on time. By 2010, that number had increased to 96.9 percent. At the same time, national average math proficiency hardly budged from 33.2 percent in 2005-2006 to 35.2 percent in 2009-2010 — representing a dip from 38.7 percent in the previous year.

“Basic compliance does not transform students’ lives,” Duncan said on a Tuesday call with reporters. “It’s not enough for a state to be compliant if students can’t read or do math” at sufficient levels by the time they graduate from high school, he added.

“According to this new results-driven accountability framework, states will be responsible for students with disabilities’ participation in state tests, gaps in proficiency between students with disabilities and their peers, and performance on the National Assessment of Education Progress, or NAEP, the only national standardized test. This marks the first time the NAEP, which is often described as a low-stakes test, has been used for school accountability. Continue reading “U.S. schools fail to help disabled”

Fake service dogs

It’s one thing to park in a disabled parking space, shameful as that is, but it’s quite another to dress your pooch up as a service dog, as reports Huffington Post:imgres

“By strapping a vest or backpack that says “service animal” to their pet, anyone can go in stores and restaurants where other dogs are banned, creating growing problems for the disabled community and business owners and leading to calls for better identifying the real deal.

“Those with disabilities are worried about privacy and the safety of their highly trained service dogs, while business owners are concerned about health violations and damage to merchandise from impostors abusing the system.

“Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, it’s a federal crime to use a fake dog. And about a fourth of all states have laws against service animal misrepresentation. But privacy protections built into the laws make it nearly impossible to prosecute offenders. It’s even more difficult because no papers are legally required for real service dogs. Often, people who want to take their pets into restaurants or retail stores just go online to buy vests, backpacks or ID cards with a “service animal” insignia.

“The law says those entering businesses with animals can be asked just two questions: Is this a service dog? What is it trained to do for you?

“Efforts to make the law more prosecutable have begun, but few agree on what will work best. Ideas range from ditching privacy to doing nothing.

“Corey Hudson, chief executive officer of Canine Companions for Independence in San Rafael and president of Assistance Dogs International, a coalition of training schools, is leading the effort to get the U.S. Department of Justice involved. He started writing to the agency 18 months ago but has not received a response.

“Hudson wants to open talks and explore ways to identify the real from the phony. Continue reading “Fake service dogs”

Court rules for abused mentally disabled workers

A US jury has awarded $240m to 32 mentally disabled men who suffered decades of abuse while working at a turkey processing company in Iowa, reports the BBC today. “Jurors in Davenport heard how the men had been kicked, verbally abused and denied toilet breaks by their employers from Henry’s Turkey Serviceimages-2

“One expert said the disabled workers – who were each paid only $65 per month – had been “virtually enslaved”. The verdict is in addition to $1.3m in back wages awarded to the men in 2012.

“On Wednesday, the jury determined that the now-defunct Henry’s Turkey Service had violated the Americans with Disabilities Act. It said the company had created a hostile environment and discriminating conditions of employment for the men, who had learning difficulties and worked at the West Liberty plant under the company’s oversight since the 1970s. The award gives each worker $7.5m in compensation. The authorities say they will now seek to recover the award from the remaining assets of the liquidated firm. Continue reading “Court rules for abused mentally disabled workers”

Gillard’s disability gambit

Prime Minister Julia Gillard has pinned her government’s re-election hopes on a new welfare program for the disabled, proposing on Wednesday a new tax to better fund care for Australians with severe physical and mental disabilities, reports the Associated Press

“The tax would not be paid until July 1, 2014. Gillard said legislation to create the tax would not be considered by Parliament before general elections on Sept. 14.images-1

“Opinion polls agree Gillard’s center-left Labor Party government is unlikely to retain power. While the conservative opposition supports the concept of a new disability support fund, it opposes a new tax to pay for it.

“Gillard had rejected a new tax last year but said Wednesday the government could not fund the program through savings because company tax revenue was falling billions of dollars short of Treasury Department forecasts due to the cooling mining boom and a strong Australian dollar damaging business competitiveness Continue reading “Gillard’s disability gambit”

The radio of “Lifestyles of the Disabled”

The participants at “Lifestyles for the Disabled” do not exactly seem like naturals as radio personalities.

There is Anthony Cossentino, 29, a huge “Jeopardy” fan who for years has been arriving at Lifestyles, a daytime occupational program on Staten Island for developmentally delayed adults in their 20s and 30s, every morning with a self-written question of the day, to pose to anyone who will listen,reports the New York Times.images

“Or take Michael Halbreich, 32, who has an uncanny ability to remember the birthday of anyone he meets, and to instantly name the day of the week that any date in history fell on.

“He has yet to get one wrong,” said Burak Uzun, a staff supervisor who runs the media program at Lifestyles, which offers vocational, social, recreational and educational services geared toward independent living.And then there’s Anthony DiFato, 22, who is well known at Lifestyles for his obsession with mystery novels, films and television shows. He is known as the Mystery Man because he is never without a whodunit book.

“Ever since I was a kid, I was always into mysteries,” Mr. DiFato said at Lifestyles one recent weekday while holding a paperback copy of a book in the Mrs. Jeffries mystery series by Emily Brightwell. But these quirky skills and interests can make for good radio. Just over two years ago, Mr. Uzun, along with another staff member, Joel Richardson, began recruiting participants at Lifestyles with varying degrees of autism to record brief talk show segments on a laptop. The segments were posted online as podcasts, mostly for friends and relatives of participants and staff members to listen to.

More at: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/14/nyregion/radio-personalities-at-lifestyles-for-the-disabled-make-their-voices-heard.html?ref=nyregionspecial

The Magdalene laundry slave women

imgresAs if the Catholic Church doesn’t have enough problems.

As many as 15,000 Irish women and girls were reportedly held in slave-like conditions in nunneries, where they were held against their will and forced to work in laundries without pay under harsh conditions through the late 1990s.

Originally established to incarcerate Protestant women and girls, the laundries became prisons run by Catholic nuns to house “fallen” women or those “troubled” with problems like learning disabilities. It seems God works in mysterious ways. Continue reading “The Magdalene laundry slave women”

Rising unemployment among the disabled

Following the news last week that American unemployment ticked up to 7.9 percent came another, more sobering, statistic.

The unemployment rate among Americans with disabilities increased significantly in January, the U.S. Department of Labor said Friday, reports DisabilityScoop.

“Statistics indicate that the jobless rate jumped to 13.7 percent last month for people with disabilities, a steep rise over the 11.7 percent unemployment rate reported for the final month of 2012.

“Multiple factors appear to have contributed to the growth in

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individuals with disabilities without jobs in January. Not only were there more without jobs, but the number of people seeking work also grew, according to Labor Department data. Continue reading “Rising unemployment among the disabled”

Disabled philosophers

Disabled Philosophers is one of those off-the-beaten-path blogs that consistently yields thoughtful and original ideas.

We add the item below to accompany today’s story about the Brown health care policy shift, but also to highlight the often under-discussed topic of coexisting conditions that define and challenge so many of us.imgres

In one way or another, nearly everyone has at some point struggled with some experience of difference – ranging from trivial to huge.  In many cases society labels what is simply a difference as a pathology, or illness, or worse. So, as magicalersatz reflects:

“My disability is, for many, also a marker of identity. In the parlance of pop culture, I was “born in the wrong body.” In the words of the DSM, I have “evidence of a strong and persistent cross-gender identification.” While I am agnostic about the etiology of my disability, I began treatment before graduate school, which involved therapy, hormones, surgery, and navigating a lot of legal forms and paperwork.

“My colleagues don’t know about my gender history (in other words, I “pass” as the gender that’s finally on my identification), but I still view my physiological situation as a disability. I realize that there are others in my situation who would shirk this description, and I am do not mean to imply that any transsexual or transgender individual is thereby disabled. Continue reading “Disabled philosophers”

Acting, disability, and visibility

Michael J Fox’s continuing role on “The Good Wife” and other programs has been a singular example of an actor willing to reveal a disabling illness, testifying to Fox’s professional commitment and his openness to disclosure.imgres-2

Both things are praiseworthy, but the latter is remarkably rare in a media economy so predicated on bodily perfection and endless youth. Ben Brantley writes in a recent New York Times review of several theater groups that are doing similar work, however – as they foreground forms of disability and “difference” among actors that typically never get revealed or seen on stage or screen. As Brantley writes,

“Theatergoers generally expect actors to abide by certain longstanding conventions, and if actors fail to oblige, it usually isn’t intentional. Continue reading “Acting, disability, and visibility”

Airline pilots use iPads, not disabled passengers

imgres-2All American Airlines pilots are permitted to use iPads as they fly.

In the interest of safety on a recent American Airlines flight, an attendant required a non-verbal teenager to put away the iPad she relies upon to speak.

News of the incident –  and the irony – has created an uproar on the internet and considerable acrimony over the airline’s policies.

Carly Fleischmann, a 17-year-old with autism from Toronto, lambasted American Airlines on her  Facebook page earlier this week.
“On her way home from Los Angeles last Friday, Fleischmann said that a flight attendant told her to put away the tablet for takeoff and landing and was unwilling to bend even after Fleischmann’s aide explained that it was a communication device,” reports DisabilityScoop , Continue reading “Airline pilots use iPads, not disabled passengers”