Listen to Interview on NJ IDEIA
Rights - Racial Disparities in Sp-Ed
by Bob Witanek
http://StudentAdvocate-NJ.org 908-881-5275
I was fortunate to meet through an internet discussion group George Cook who owns and operations the “Let’s Talk Honestly” website:
http://www.letstalkhonestly.com
When I checked out his site, I saw that he has an internet broadcast weekly talk show. When I contacted him about the idea of doing an interview on the issue of racial disparities in special education in relation to rights of children in special education and their families being currently diminished in NJ, he immediately offered to interview me on the topic. He also immediately signed the petition we are circulating to protect the rights of students and parents in the special education process in New Jersey.
Our Student Advocate effort is organizing parents of and supporters of children with learning disabilities and in special education to call upon NJ to maintain protections for parents and children with disabilities. See: http://StudentAdvocate-NJ.org .
While the interview focuses on issues of racial disparities in special education, it also helps spread the word about the efforts to maintain protections for all students in special education and their families. The interview offers commentary on the NJ gubernatorial election and other aspects of racial disparities in public education. In the course of the interview, Mr. Cook expressed solid support for our efforts to protect the rights of children with disabilities and their parents.
In the interview, I try to lay out the importance of this issue to those not only face the challenges of having a child with disabilities and navigating the special education processes, but also need to deal with the issues of critical racial disparities in the area of special education, particularly in New Jersey.
In order to begin to address these serious racial disparities in special education – and we need to call upon the New Jersey Department of Education to address them on an emergency basis – we need to further empower parents in the complex special education process, not to disenfranchise parents further.
The interview is at this link:
http://www.letstalkhonestly.com/page/page/2474894.htm
Hopefully you can sign on to the petition at this link: http://studentadvocate-nj.org/IDEIA2004_Petition.htm
For more on the topic of racial disparities in special education:
http://studentadvocate-nj.org/NJSA_V001N001_RacialDisp.htm
http://www.njddc.org/sep-uneq.htm
If you would like more information about these issues, visit http://StudentAdvocate-NJ.org . If you would like to get involved in addressing these issues or inviting a Student Advocacy speaker to your town to meet with parents and community folks, please call 908-881-5275 or write advocate@StudentAdvocate-NJ.org .
If you are not from New Jersey, this topic could still be of interest to you since the systemic issues here are prevalent throughout the US, albeit somewhat more pervasive here in New Jersey.
I also appreciate any feedback you might have about the interview (contact me at advocate@StudentAdvocate-NJ.org and Mr. Cook at letsbook@aol.com and invite you to circle back to http://www.letstalkhonestly.com weekly for the interesting information and commentary presented on the site's weekly show.
For All of Our Children,
Bob Witanek
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