NH sees greater need for special ed services -I wonder why!

Saturday, November 28, 2009
By SARAH PALERMO Keene Sentinel

AMANDA BOROZINSKI / Sentinel Staff Teacher Allison A. Carr reads a book to her class in the Symonds School learning center in Keene. She is working with the students on vocabulary and story structure. Enlarge


AMANDA BOROZINSKI / Sentinel Staff Using dice, Jonathan Durrant works on adding two numbers. Using her hands, teacher Nancy Elliott demonstrates how to count the sum of the dice. Last year in the Granite State, 13.8 percent of students needed special education services. . Enlarge

AMANDA BOROZINSKI / Sentinel Staff Teacher Allison A. Carr reads a book to her class in the Symonds School learning center in Keene. She is working with the students on vocabulary and story structure.
Enlarge

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story is part of a three-day package by the Keene Sentinel about special education in the state’s southwestern corner.

Peek into the big room off the main hallway in Symonds Elementary School in Keene.

Two beanbag chairs slouch in one corner, ready for quiet reading time. Someone drew wild circles on the paper tacked to the easel in the middle of the room.

This is Symonds’ learning center. Every elementary school in Keene has a learning center; it’s where students with special educational needs work in small groups with teachers such as Allison A. Carr and Nancy A. Elliott.

Roughly one in five students in the Keene School District receives special education services, slightly more than the national average, which has steadily grown since special education became law in 1975.

Some students’ reading troubles might leave them bewildered and overwhelmed in a large class.

One of Carr’s students needs a squishy rubber cushion on his seat during reading time, so he can fidget by shifting his weight, without moving his whole body around and disrupting the other students. Another has a ball to hold and squeeze under the table, to keep his hands busy so they don’t wander and cause distractions.

What unique services these students need in order to learn is something Carr, Elliott and other special education teachers try to work out over time.

Why these children are part of a growing population is a more complicated question. Education officials have theories, but are quick to point out that they don’t know for certain.

Changing diagnosis dynamic

In 1975, the federal government passed the first special-education law, which would eventually become the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

At the time, most people assumed it would affect only the most dramatically disabled children, the ones living in state institutions or kept home their entire lives.

The first year students with disabilities were included in public schools, they represented about 8 percent of the nation’s school population.

That increased to 10 percent by 1980, 11 percent by 1990 and 13.6 percent by 2006 – an increase of nearly 3 million special education students over 35 years.

Last year in the Granite State, 13.8 percent of students needed special education services like those provided in the Symonds learning center, one of several in the district. That’s up from 12.9 percent in 2000.

Between 17 and 20 percent of students in the Keene School District receive special education services. On the first day of school, 776 of the district’s 3,700 students received some kind of special education services, according to Reeves.

It’s not that the laws or regulations are rewritten every time a new disorder is identified.

Conditions such as Attention Deficit Disorder, autism and emotional problems have always been covered under the law.

Schools have also always been required to provide related services – things like speech and language therapy, occupational therapy and physical therapy – to help kids meet their educational goals.

“What’s changed is society’s attitude toward disabilities, and the school’s ability to pinpoint a problem,” said Catherine L. Reeves, director of special education for New Hampshire School Administrative Unit 29, which serves Keene, Chesterfield, Harrisville, Marlow, Marlborough, Nelson and Westmoreland school districts.

A better understanding

The past three decades have brought a “broadening and clarifying of definitions” of student disabilities, Reeves said. And as evaluations have improved, she said, “we know more and we are better able to diagnose disabilities.”

In the past, learning disabilities were often diagnosed based on statistical discrepancies. Students were given tests in isolated, quiet rooms, and if they scored within a certain range, they were diagnosed with a certain disability.

Under those conditions, kids fell through the cracks, Reeves said.

For starters, children usually perform better during formal testing, where they’re one-on-one with the tester in a distraction-free room, than they perform in the everyday classroom, Reeves said.

“So, students who have problems in a regular classroom were performing just well enough (in the testing situations) to disqualify themselves for services. The process didn’t take into account their actual performance in the classroom.”

If students scored too high on the test, educators were unable to provide services to them, even though they obviously needed help, she said.

Evaluations today take into account whether a child can learn in a classroom setting, or whether there’s something holding him or her back.

Tests are still administered, and precautions are taken to be sure the problem isn’t just a situation, like being bullied.

Other factors can influence the numbers of students needing services, and some start years before the students set foot in a classroom or an evaluator’s office.

The United States’ infant mortality rate has fallen dramatically over the past several decades, from 26 per 1,000 live births in 1960 to 6.9 per 1,000 in 2005, the most recent year for which statistics are available.

“A decreasing infant mortality rate means many things,” Reeves said. “It means mothers are receiving better prenatal care and giving birth in cleaner facilities than in centuries past. It also means more disabled babies are surviving when in the past, they might not have lived more than a few hours or days.”

Dr. Geraldine Rubin, chairman of the pediatrics department at Cheshire Medical Center/Dartmouth-Hitchcock Keene, agrees.

Some infants, especially those born months early, wouldn’t have survived if they were born a generation ago, she said. Today, they eventually show up at preschool.

Beyond the classroom

Increased awareness of disabilities makes parents and teachers more likely to refer a child for evaluation, experts say.

“Once you develop clinical language and it becomes part of the culture, then you’re going to start to see more and more of it,” said MacLean Gander, a professor and former vice president at Landmark College.

Landmark, founded in the early 1980s in Putney, Vt., bills itself partly as the “premier college for students with learning disabilities.”

Today more than ever, parents are alert to the possibility that their child’s fidgeting, poor concentration and low grades might not be the results of laziness or a lack of motivation, but symptoms of a neurological, developmental or emotional disability, Gander said.

In years past, a learning-disabled student might have been yelled at and disciplined until he dropped out of school. Today, he might have one session a day in the learning center, or with a counselor.

Emotional or behavioral counseling is, to some, unrelated to education. Behavioral problems should be treated at home, they say. But it’s a special education service that’s been part of the law for 35 years.

A federal measure passed in 1975 required each state to establish guidelines for public school special education.

Previously, New Hampshire’s special education law said schools had to help students with “serious” emotional disturbances. Today, the law includes all children with emotional difficulties that impede their ability to learn.

The new language doesn’t change the eligibility criteria, though.

The emotional problem in question still needs to be severe enough to interrupt a child’s education. He or she still follows the multi-step eligibility process before an “individual education plan” is written and services are provided on a regular basis.

Keene Co-Superintendent William B. Gurney remembers being in school and seeing students who misbehaved being sent to the principal’s office time after time for disrupting class.

Some of those students found school so alienating they dropped out as soon as possible. Now that New Hampshire state law says students must stay in school until they’re 18, leaving isn’t an option.

Today, parents and school officials know better how to apply the protections of special education laws to all students who are entitled to them.

“Kids with a behavioral problem were marginalized. Now the understanding is these kids should have an equal chance to be productive members of society and if it’s a matter of us giving them more services, that’s what we owe them,” he said.

“We only have them 6 hours a day, but we have a responsibility to keep them safe in an environment to learn to the best of their potential. Hopefully we’re doing it.”

Finally, there’s the effect of the recession. Stress outside the classroom – Did she get a good breakfast? Does she have warm, clean clothes today? How was the morning bus ride? – can be enough to tip a young child’s emotional state from “ready to learn” to “shutdown mode.”

More and more kids are at that tipping point this year, said Elliott, one of Symonds’ special education teachers.

http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/news/456196-227/nh-sees-greater-need-for-special-ed.html

NH DCYF Court and Legal Handbook

Well worth reading. Especially for the people who have no clue what parents are up against when thrown into the arena with DCYF and the court system.
http://nhdcyf.info/PDF%20Documentation/DCYF_CT_and_Legal_Handbook.pdf

The New World Disorder

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THE NEW WORLD DISORDER
United Nations' threat: No more parental rights
Expert: Pact would ban spankings, homeschooling if children object

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Posted: February 05, 2009
12:00 am Eastern


By Chelsea Schilling
© 2009 WorldNetDaily


A United Nations human rights treaty that could prohibit children from being spanked or homeschooled, ban youngsters from facing the death penalty and forbid parents from deciding their families' religion is on America's doorstep, a legal expert warns.

Michael Farris of Purcellville, Va., is president of ParentalRights.org, chairman of the Home School Legal Defense Association and chancellor of Patrick Henry College. He told WND that under the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, or CRC, every decision a parent makes can be reviewed by the government to determine whether it is in the child's best interest.

"It's definitely on our doorstep," he said. "The left wants to make the Obama-Clinton era permanent. Treaties are a way to make it as permanent as stuff gets. It is very difficult to extract yourself from a treaty once you begin it. If they can put all of their left-wing socialist policies into treaty form, we're stuck with it even if they lose the next election."

The 1990s-era document was ratified quickly by 193 nations worldwide, but not the United States or Somalia. In Somalia, there was then no recognized government to do the formal recognition, and in the United States there's been opposition to its power. Countries that ratify the treaty are bound to it by international law.

Although signed by Madeleine Albright, U.S. ambassador to the U.N., on Feb. 16, 1995, the U.S. Senate never ratified the treaty, largely because of conservatives' efforts to point out it would create that list of rights which primarily would be enforced against parents.

The international treaty creates specific civil, economic, social, cultural and even economic rights for every child and states that "the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration." While the treaty states that parents or legal guardians "have primary responsibility for the upbringing and development of the child," Farris said government will ultimately determine whether parents' decisions are in their children's best interest. The treaty is monitored by the CRC, which conceivably has enforcement powers.

According to the Parental Rights website, the substance of the CRC dictates the following:

Parents would no longer be able to administer reasonable spankings to their children.
A murderer aged 17 years, 11 months and 29 days at the time of his crime could no longer be sentenced to life in prison.
Children would have the ability to choose their own religion while parents would only have the authority to give their children advice about religion.
The best interest of the child principle would give the government the ability to override every decision made by every parent if a government worker disagreed with the parent's decision.
A child's "right to be heard" would allow him (or her) to seek governmental review of every parental decision with which the child disagreed.
According to existing interpretation, it would be illegal for a nation to spend more on national defense than it does on children's welfare.
Children would acquire a legally enforceable right to leisure.
Teaching children about Christianity in schools has been held to be out of compliance with the CRC.
Allowing parents to opt their children out of sex education has been held to be out of compliance with the CRC.
Children would have the right to reproductive health information and services, including abortions, without parental knowledge or consent.
(Story continues below)




"Where the child has a right fulfilled by the government, the responsibilities shift from parents to the government," Farris said. "The implications of all this shifting of responsibilities is that parents no longer have the traditional roles of either being responsible for their children or having the right to direct their children."


Michael Farris


The government would decide what is in the best interest of a children in every case, and the CRC would be considered superior to state laws, Farris said. Parents could be treated like criminals for making every-day decisions about their children's lives.

"If you think your child shouldn't go to the prom because their grades were low, the U.N. Convention gives that power to the government to review your decision and decide if it thinks that's what's best for your child," he said. "If you think that your children are too young to have a Facebook account, which interferes with the right of communication, the U.N. gets to determine whether or not your decision is in the best interest of the child."

He continued, "If you think your child should go to church three times a week, but the child wants to go to church once a week, the government gets to decide what it thinks is in the best interest of the children on the frequency of church attendance."

He said American social workers would be the ones responsible for implementation of the policies.

Farris said it could be easier for President Obama to push for ratification of the treaty than it was for the Clinton administration because "the political world has changed."

At a Walden University presidential debate last October, Obama indicated he may take action.

"It's embarrassing to find ourselves in the company of Somalia, a lawless land," Obama said. "I will review this and other treaties to ensure the United States resumes its global leadership in human rights."

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been a strong supporter of the CRC, and she now has direct control over the treaty's submission to the Senate for ratification. The process requires a two-thirds vote.

Farris said Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., claimed in a private meeting just before Christmas that the treaty would be ratified within two years.

In November, a group of three dozen senior foreign policy figures urged Obama to strengthen U.S. relations with the U.N. Among other things, they asked the president to push for Senate approval of treaties that have been signed by the U.S. but not ratified.

Partnership for a Secure America Director Matthew Rojansky helped draft the statement. He said the treaty commands strong support and is likely to be acted on quickly, according to an Inter Press Service report.

While he said ratification is certain to come up, Farris said advocates of the treaty will face fierce opposition.

"I think it is going to be the battle of their lifetime," he said. "There's not enough political capital in Washington, D.C., to pass this treaty. We will defeat it."

UN Population Fund Leader Says Family Breakdown is a Triumph for Human Rights

February 3,2009
United Nations Population Fund Leader Says Family Breakdown is a Triumph for Human Rights


By Matthew Cullinan Hoffman

MEXICO CITY, February 3, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A leader in the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has declared that the breakdown of traditional families, far from being a “crisis,” is actually a triumph for human rights.

Speaking at a colloquium held last month at Colegio Mexico in Mexico City, UNFPA representative Arie Hoekman denounced the idea that high rates of divorce and out-of-wedlock births represent a social crisis, claiming that they represent instead the triumph of “human rights” against “patriarchy.”

"In the eyes of conservative forces, these changes mean that the family is in crisis," he said. "In crisis? More than a crisis, we are in the presence of a weakening of the patriarchal structure, as a result of the disappearance of the economic base that sustains it and because of the rise of new values centered in the recognition of fundamental human rights."

"Day after day, Mexico experiences a process of this diversity and there are those who understand it as a crisis, because they only recognize one type of family," one of the speakers on the panel also told the audience.

The comments followed close on the heels of the World Meeting of Families, which was held in Mexico City in January, and which strongly reaffirmed the importance of the traditional family and its indispensible role in transmitting values to the next generation. It was opened by Mexican President Felipe Calderon, who observed that high rates of divorce and out-of-wedlock births were contributing to the rise of violence and crime in Mexico.

Leonardo Casco, a member of the Pontifical Council for the Family and a citizen of Honduras, told LifeSiteNews that he wasn't surprised that the UNFPA was denying the crisis in the family.

"They definitely have to deny that there is a crisis in the family, because they have created the crisis," he said.

Calling the UNFPA "bureaucrats at the service of death," Casco observed that "after 45 years of birth control, the pill, disrespect for marriage for the family, for children, etc, this is the result. Because of that we have violence, war, lack of respect of women, children."

Through their promotion and distribution of contraceptives the UNFPA has become "a birth control agency at the service of the most powerful countries" said Casco. "They have destroyed the family, values, this is undeniable, it's what everyone says ... but they always have to deny it."

Regarding Hoekman’s comments about “human rights,” Casco responded that UNFPA bureaucrats “have invented a series of new 'human rights',” that did not exist when the concept was defined in 1948, “with which they wish to justify all of their actions.”

The UNFPA recently celebrated the restoration of US support after seven years, during which they were denied funding by the Bush administration. UNFPA has cooperated with and even helped to subsidize China's One Child Policy, which persecutes and performs forced abortions on women who have more than one child.

In addition to its support for forced abortions, the UNFPA has helped to administer forced sterilizations in South America and is involved in the distribution and promotion of contraceptives and sterilization worldwide, with a focus on poorer countries.

Related Links:

UN Complicit in Forced Sterilizations
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1417
UNFPA: A Runaway Agency
http://www.pop.org/main.cfm?EID=427
Related LifeSiteNews Coverage:

United Nations Agency Involved in Forced Abortions in China Celebrates New Funding from Obama Administration
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/jan/09012913.html
UNPFA Loses $235 Million Due to Pro-Life Group's Efforts
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/jul/08070206.html
UNFPA Population Awards Honor Abortion Advocates
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/may/08052910.html
UNFPA Pitches Abortion as a Means to Reduce Child Poverty
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/jul/05070404.html

CPS is Socialism

Examiner Bio CPS is Socialism
November 27, 2:52 PMFamily Rights Examiner Leonard Henderson

CPS agents are implementing European Socialism to tear the heart and soul out of the very fabric of America by destroying the FAMILY.

This is why passing the Parent's Rights Amendment is so CRITICAL.

CPS agents ARE America's Domestic Terrorists.

We fight the pandemic corruption in the legal system every day. Family Courts are unconstitutional, and no semblance of Constitutional Due Process exists there.

We are dealing with a system that is incompetent, corrupt, malfeasant, and utterly evil.

"There is something bad happening to our children in family courts today that is causing them more harm than drugs, more harm than crime and even more harm than child molestation." Judge Watson L. White Superior Court Judge, Cobb County, Georgia

“There is no crueler tyranny than that which is exercised under color or law, and with the colors of justice.” -United States v. Janotti, 673 F.2d 578, 614 (3d Cir. 1982)

American parents are sabotaged, undermined, and utterly abandoned by virtually every institution and by the culture itself.

American Families ARE the "general interest group" all the "special interest groups" want to knock chunks out of.

Don't spank a spoiled rotten princess- She will grow up to be a fine CPS worker, judge, psychiatrist, Democrat or prostitute some day.

UPDATE: One of our AFRA folks says-

In all fairness, you could have just as well said, "don't discipline the boy for shaking his schoolmates upside down for their lunch money, he could grow up to be a fine family court judge, social worker, republican, tax collector or pimp some day!"

Nashua Telegraph-Reader Takes Issue With Work of DCYF

Wednesday, November 25, 2009 Reader takes issue with work of DCYF This letter is about the state Division for Children, Youth & Families:

I would like to know if your workers are investigated before working for you, as they seem to have trouble telling the truth.

I understand the federal government pays the state $5,000 for every child in foster care. I read the papers and watch the news and talk to people.

You have a record of breaking up homes and lying about it. The boys are going to the same home; then that night they are put in separate homes.

You get an anonymous tip accusing someone and you go in and remove the child without checking anything. Or you go in and leave the child to be beaten and abused, saying you do not have enough workers or money.

A lot of the times the child you do take out of the house is returned without any findings – just a waste of money.

Pearl Besk

Merrimack

http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/opinion/letters/452779-263/reader-takes-issue-with-work-of-dcyf.html

Time For NH DCYF Workers and Former DCYF Workers to Come Foreward

I am asking NH DCYF workers and former NH DCYF workers to come forward and speak up about the deceitful practices used on families in the illegal taking of their children. DCYF/CPS workers from other states are speaking up. It's time for NH workers to speak up also.
I am aware that Nashua DCYF workers have resigned, due to the illegal removal of so many children in the Nashua area, due to orders given by unsavory Supervisors. The former caseworkers have spoken up, but not to the people who can put a stop to these illegal practices.
If a Federal Class Action Lawsuit is started, none of you will be immune. The deceitful Supervisors will NOT protect any of you, as they will be defendents in this lawsuit also.They will be too busy trying to protect themselves. If you really want to help the families of NH, as you have already proclaimed, nows your chance.
We will NOT stop until the truth comes out and our illegally stolen children are returned.