I am a Licensed Psychologist and Attorney at Law in California. I serve families of children with special needs in the Los Angeles, and Ventura county area as a Special Education Child Advocate. This site contains information I have found, or written that is of value to parents of children with special needs. Please feel free to browse our collection of articles and videos, and the additional books, educational games and other products we have identified for children in our Online Store.

Rene Thomas Folse, J.D., Ph.D. Editor

Just a Bit of Frustration:
I now end my advocacy efforts for special needs children for the 2005-06 school year. Each year ends with more frustration than the last. Let me explain.

I guess ignorance is bliss. When I started advocating for children I had a steep learning curve. What do you do when a child cannot read, cannot speak, cannot behave, and so on? One by one I found literature on these topics, and the more I read the more I found out about what could be done. I am the eternal optimist, and the scientific literature on educational and psychological interventions for children supports my optimism. Yet as I added to my knowledge of what to do, I started advocating for these methods and programs, and at first I thought schools would be excited to learn of these findings. As the years went by, I learned that most of what I learned is not implemented in our nations schools, and what I had to say mostly fell on deaf ears. Most schools do not know of these methods, do not want to know, and even if you tell them really do not want to adopt anything other than what they already do. Thus, the more I learned about what could be done, the more I grew in enthusiasm, only to have the frustration of walking away from an IEP knowing that our children are not getting what they deserve. Yes, ignorance for me was bliss.

So let me vent here. I will give some examples. There are methods to improve children's cognitive functioning (i.e. raise their IQ). Take for example the work of Reuven Feuerstein who devoted his life to this subject. In Europe, he is considered as important a figure in psychology as Sigmund Freud. In America, he is hardly known. For children who are struggling with limited cognitive skills, his program of Instrumental Enrichment offers hope of success. Yet we are challenged to find any of our schools who know of this and who have staff trained in these methods.

I have many children who have difficulty reading. The State of California publishes a brief guideline on how to develop a reading remediation program. Just last week, I attended an IEP at a Los Angeles Unified School District asking them to simply apply this guideline. The guideline suggests that you first determine what is wrong, then you find the reading program best designed to repair exactly what is the root cause of the reading problem. LAUSD responded that "we only have one reading program to offer" no matter that the problem is.

A few years back I obtained a Certificate in Assistive and Adaptive Technology from California State University Northridge. As part of this process I learned of literally hundreds of technology solutions for children who have special needs. The Special Education Law specifically mandates the use of this technology, but schools are at the bottom end of the technology curve.

I can continue with many, many more examples showing what can be done, and comparing this to what is done, and my point would simply be that we are short changing our youth with an inadequate education system at all levels.

Every criticism is a hidden request. I fully believe that professional educators are not the problem. Most of them have their hearts and minds in the right place, but they are simply put in a position of trying to do a job with inadequate funding and resources. Our political leaders need to respond by making education a much higher priority that they are. We are squandering billions of dollars on wars and war toys that could be better spent. (And yes,I have earned the right to make this criticism. I earned a bronze star medal from my service in the Repubic of Vietnam in 1970). The challenges facing our children in the years to come will be astounding. If you have not read the book "The World is Flat" by Thomas Friedman, please take a moment to watch his video on the MIT website. His view of what is ahead for our children scares me to death.

I think there are ways to fund a better education for our children without raising taxes or depriving other programs. Study what efficiencies have been accomplished in nearly every industry in the last 30 years as a result of technology. Stores and banks have automated checkers and tellers, factories have automated, airplanes now fly themselves, and so on. When I first started law practice 33 years ago, one lawyer needed three secretaries to keep up with just dictation. Now one secretary can service three lawyers thanks to technologies such as word processing, paperless offices, electronic filing and more. Yet what do you see when you go to your local neighborhood school. In 100 years, they have changed from using blackboards to using whiteboards, but not much else. It is still the same teacher to pupil ratio it has always been, teachers are no more efficient at educating the masses than they were fifty years ago when I was in elementary school.

Yet there are profound technologies out there that schools can use. I will name just one, the SCORM standard. This standard was developed by the Department of Defense as a way to teach their military personnel located all over the world. They "re-use" learning objects once created by a "content expert". The objects are distributed electronically as learners are "profiled" by technology so that exact learning object is available to meet the exact needs of the learner at the exact moment in time the learner needs to learn. Yet search the California Department of Education website for one single word about SCORM. I have yet to meet anyone in our public education system that even know the meaning of the word.

Worse yet, California does not own any intellectual property of any kind that I know of. They buy textbooks from retail book publishers at outrageous prices and squander our tax dollars in the process. Let me explain a simple plan to save money. Every school in California teaches a basic course in U.S. History. The students are all supplied with a textbook. I bet that hundreds of professors have written textbooks on U.S. History, yet only a few have been able to get theirs published by a book publisher. What if someone at the California Department of Education found ten U.S. History book authors who were not lucky enough to get their history book published, and asked them if they would sell the intellectual property rights to their unpublished book? I feel certain that the unpublished book could be purchased for a few thousands of dollars and then owned outright by the State of California, and I feel certain that this book would be as good as any for the propose of a high school curriculum. Once purchased, California could have it printed cheaply, or better yet publish it online electronically at no cost. We would save millions in text book costs if we pursued a program of purchasing outright the intellectual property rights to common textbooks in basic areas such as social studies, science, math and other basic areas.

What would happen if California pursued this intellectual property (IP) acquisition program for several years and developed a competent library of intellectual property, and then approached our sister states and asked "Hey do you guys want to license our intellectual property to use in your schools?" What are the odds that other states would pay us millions for a site license to use our intellectual property in their schools and that not only would we save money on text books, we could generate money by licensing our property to others.

I feel so much better having said this. Thank you for allowing my rant. Have a nice summer and maybe next year will be better than last year.

Advocacy Training Videos
It is very important that parents understand how to properly advocate for their children at school.  Each year I conduct an 18 hour course on this topic. In 2002, the entire course was video taped and portions of this course are available at no cost below. You should be able to view these videos over a broadband Internet connection.  If you have difficulty, each video is also available in a low bandwidth version next to each link.  The low bandwidth version is slightly  lower quality, but nonetheless conveys the material adequately. 

Once upon a time the animals decided they must do something heroic to meet the problems of a “new world” so they organized a school. They had adopted an activity curriculum consisting of running, climbing, swimming and flying. To make it easier to administer the curriculum, all the animals took all the subjects.

The duck was excellent in swimming. In fact, better than his instructor. But he made only passing grades in flying and was very poor in running. Since he was slow in running, he had to stay after school and also drop swimming in order to practice running. This was kept up until his webbed feet were badly worn and he was only average in swimming. But average was acceptable in school so nobody worried about that, except the duck.

The rabbit started at the top of the class in running but had a nervous breakdown because of so much makeup work in swimming.

The squirrel was excellent in climbing until he developed frustration in the flying class where his teacher made him start from the ground up instead of the treetop down. He also developed a “charlie horse” from overexertion and then got a C in climbing and D in running.

The eagle was a problem child and was disciplined severely. In the climbing class, he beat all the others to the top of the tree but insisted on using his own way to get there.

At the end of the year, an abnormal eel that could swim exceeding well and also run, climb and fly a little had the highest average and was valedictorian.

The prairie dogs stayed out of school and fought the tax levy because the administration would not add digging and burrowing to the curriculum. They apprenticed their children to a badger and later joined the groundhogs and gophers to start a successful private school.

Does this fable have a moral?