Sarah Palin: If It Sounds Too Good To Be True

SARAH PALIN'S FIRST POLICY SPEECH ~ SPECIAL EDUCATION
Sarah Palin just promised parents of special needs children that there would be a law allowing parents school choice, public or private, for their children. REALLY??? Having worked in the field of special education for more than a decade as a teacher and as a private-practice advocate, I can assure you that she has NO IDEA what she is talking about. She may have a special needs child, but she has never written an IEP or attempted to keep up with the laws, paperwork, and bureaucratic red tape. I would bet my dwindling 401K that there are school board officials all over the United States running out to get some Obama yard signs right now. School budgets already have more stretch marks than I do ~ not pretty!!!!!
Palin just asserted that she is going to pay for this school choice initiative with earmark money. It's been determined that about 18 million dollars is spent on earmarks each year ~ keep in mind that all of those earmarks aren't frivilous ~ most of it is spent on infrastructure (which is good thing). Even if the whole 18 million was to be pushed into special education, that wouldn't put a dent into a school choice plan for special needs children.
She's also stated that all 50 states would have to play a role in this initiative. HELLLLOOOO!!!! The school's have no extra money to put into a billion dollar school choice plan for special needs kids because they are spending about half of their budgets on required and useless testing for No Child Left Behind.
4-6 out of every 1,000 children in the United States are diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder. Private school's that specialize in treating children with autism cost $40,000 - $60,000 dollars per year. Let's say there are 10,000 students and children diagnosed that could attend an autism school - that's $400,000,000 right off the bat. It goes without saying that there aren't enough of those schools in existence that could even handle those population numbers. That's one disorder. Under IDEA, disability includes: mental retardation, hearing impariments (including deafness), speech or language impairments, visual impairments (including blindness), serious emotional disturbance, orthopedic impairments, autism, traumatic brain injury, other health impairments (like ADHD) and specific learning disabilities (like dyslexia). Are you doing the math?????
It's also good to know that being diagnosed with a disorder does NOT mean eligibility for special education and related services and does NOT mean that your child has the right to an Individual Education Plan under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. What your child is elibigle for is a FREE AND APPROPRIATE education ... not the BEST education - so thanks to that "loophole", you can cut whatever number of special needs kids that you believe exists in half.
Listen up - I think her plans are INCREDIBLE and truly the RIGHT thing for our government to do ... but that's the whole problem with that plan ... the government. The National Education Association reports that the federal government is meeting about 20% of its 40% commitment - so they were short about 10 billion dollars to begin with and now McCain/Palin promises additional funding. Remember that earmark money? 100% of it might cover what is already promised and not provided. I hate to be a party pooper but take a minute to remember that the government already gave a trillion of our tax dollars to the treasury and we are billion of dollars in debt to China and our wars cost about 10 billion per month.
I know I sould a little frantic ... but this is a big one to me. Pandering to the families of special needs individuals is the lowest and the most dispicable thing I've seen yet in this election ~ and I think we've all seen a lot! I think having a real advocate in the White House would be awesome and I believe that Sarah Palin has the absolute best intentions, but ... as Joe The Plumber might say, "It ain't gonna happen."