Education Week - February 10, 2016 - 13

Group Boosts Parents' Advocacy Skills in Spec. Ed. Arena
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

Charles Mostoller for Education Week

what they're supposed to do," said
Marcia Stringfield, a parent who
credits the group with helping her
get appropriate services for her son
James, a 17-year-old senior. "There's
a big difference with everyone's attitude."
Volunteers involved in Citizens
Who S.E.E. stress that they are not
employees of the district. They will
butt heads with school officials if necessary in support of parents.
But while special education advocates and school administrators often
view each other with suspicion, Taschner has made it clear that the organization's leaders have her ear. She
meets with group leaders regularly,
introduced Marshall to district employees during an in-service meeting,
and has adopted suggestions that the
volunteers have gleaned from their
interactions with families.

Hard-Nosed Advocacy
For example, parents said they felt
uncomfortable being asked to sign unfamiliar documents at IEP meetings,
which is where school staff members,
parents, and students draft academic
goals. Taschner directed school administrators to ease up on the pressure.
Taschner said she told Marshall, as
the program launched: "I will push
from the school part if you push from
the outside. And together we can
push our children right up to the top."
The district's focus on students
with disabilities, particularly black
students and low-income students,
came from the painful anecdotes that
bubbled up during the listening tour
from parents who felt they had been
ignored or intimidated.
But Taschner's own history with
special education makes her a particularly receptive administrator. As
a principal in another Pennsylvania
district, she received an award from
the disability-advocacy group TASH
for her work in inclusive education.
She also served for five years on a
state advisory panel that monitored
a settlement agreement between
Pennsylvania and advocacy organizations that said the state had failed
to educate students in the least-restrictive environment that met those
students' needs.
"It was career-changing when you
watch what happens to families who
work so hard and fight so hard to get
their child the education that they're
already entitled to, but can't access
because of the barriers that schools
enact between them and this education," Taschner said.
"I never dreamed there would be
an educator who would say, 'Your
child can't come here.' And what I
learned is there are parents who go
through that every day," she adds.
Marshall said the Citizens Who
S.E.E. group has worked with about
40 families so far, with nibbles of
interest from people outside the district as well. He's partnering with a
local Hispanic church to get Spanishspeaking volunteers.
"I'm really trying to keep [volunteers] in Coatesville. But I tell you,
the word is out. And it's hard for me

to tell people that, no, we can't help
you," said Marshall, who had no prior
experience with special education before embarking on this project.
"But if we can do this one family
at a time in Coatesville, I think some
things will turn around," said Marshall, the associate pastor of New Life
in Christ Fellowship in Coatesville,
which has lent meeting rooms to the
effort. "We should advocate ourselves
out of a job."

Offering a Lifeline
Coatesville is in Pennsylvania's
Chester County, among the wealthiest counties in the country by median
income. The town was built around
Lukens Steel, which supplied steel
for the World Trade Center towers in New York. Taschner's mother
worked at Lukens Steel for some 40
years, and her grandparents lived in
Coatesville.
The town of about 13,000, however,
is much poorer than its neighbors.
The steel mill still exists as a part
of a multinational company, but employment in the industry is far less
than it was in Coatesville's boom
days, and the town has struggled to
regain its financial footing.
The Coatesville district is about 49
percent white, 32 percent black, and
about 16 percent Hispanic. About 55
percent of students are designated by
the state as economically disadvantaged, and 17 percent are in special
education.
Citizens Who S.E.E. is still so new
that its members and the district
cannot quantify its impact. But for
the families, it has been a lifeline.
For years, Stringfield worried about
the educational progress of her son
James. And for years, school administrators told her not to worry, and that
her son's progress was fine.
"They were just reassuring me that
they were on top on things," Stringfield said. "They would throw this language at me I couldn't understand."
But as a junior in high school, she
said, James could not write an essay.
He struggled to count money.
With the help of a Citizens Who

S.E.E. volunteer, Stringfield's son is
getting tutoring, and will receive a
more in-depth educational evaluation. But she realizes she only has a
few months left-James has shown
no interest in staying in school to age
21, as permitted under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
The advocate "is fighting for everything she can for my son," Stringfield
said.
Michele D'Agostino-Miles said she
was told that her 17-year-old son
Miguel, diagnosed with attention
deficit hyperactivity disorder and oppositional defiance disorder, needed
no particular accommodations. She
was able to get him an educational
plan that allowed him extra time to
complete work and provided some
counseling, but she said his teachers
weren't following it.
Working with Citizens Who S.E.E.
volunteers has made a huge impact,
she said.
"The demeanor of some of the counselors and the school psychologists
really changes," she said. "They can't
just sit there and tell me what to do."
Her son, a sophomore, made the
honor roll last grading period-something he hasn't done since elementary school, D'Agostino-Miles said.
"The group is phenomenal," she
said.

Getting Prepared
Debbie Willett, a mother of 12 and a
former family-support specialist with
a local faith-based nonprofit, is the volunteer who worked with D'AgostinoMiles. Willett, who had 10 children
go through the Coatesville district,
advocated for her own children who
had special education needs. Seven of
her children attended or are currently
enrolled in the district.
She remembered how valuable it
was to have someone with her just to
make sure that the right questions
were being asked, and that she was
getting the answers she needed.
A piece of advice Willett was given
that she now relays to other parents is
that they should be able to look at any
educational evaluation that precedes

As she makes the rounds
at Coatesville High
School in Coatesville,
Pa., Superintendent
Cathy Taschner hugs
choir student Katie
Ernst, 17. Taschner
co-founded a volunteer
group that helps parents
of students with
disabilities to navigate
the system.

I feel more
empowered in
getting the school
to do what they're
supposed to do."
MARCIA STRINGFIELD
Parent of a high school senior

the development of an educational
plan and recognize their child's specific areas of strength and weakness.
"If the evaluation isn't very good,
the IEP isn't going to be very good,"
Willett said.
Could the effort in Coatesville
spread to other districts? Willett says
it's possible, if the right ingredients
are in place.
"With Rob being the CEO, he has
the heart for it," she said of the group's
co-founder. "And if we didn't have the
support of the superintendent, I don't
know how welcome we would be."
Monica McHale-Small, the superintendent of the 2,200-student
Saucon Valley district in Pennsylvania and a native of Coatesville, has
trained volunteers with Citizens
Who S.E.E. on what to expect during IEP meetings. She's also worked
directly with parents, helping them
write letters to request special education evaluations.
McHale-Small chose to put all four
of her children through Coatesville
schools despite the option of transferring them to the smaller, more affluent districts where she has worked.
She did so even though Coatesville is
still recovering from what she calls
the "trauma" of the text-message
scandal and the subsequent allegations, she said.

Sharing the Model
"I do feel that Dr. Taschner is
definitely supporting this work, but
there's a lot to do," said McHaleSmall, who started her career as a
school psychologist. "Coatesville is a
financially strapped district as it is.
She's got a very tough job."
And trust is still a primary concern, McHale-Small said. "We need to
make sure that school district people
and people in the community know
that we're working collaboratively
with the district, but we're not the
district," she said.
The problems in Coatesville are far
from over. The school system is still
working to regain its social standing
in the community. And Pennsylvania is one of the top states when it
comes to special education legal actions, which could be one avenue that
parents pursue with their volunteeradvocates.
Taschner said she is not concerned
by the specter of due process hearings.
"Here's what I worry about," she
said. "Every day that we as the adults
don't figure it out, I have children
who aren't learning. We have children
who don't learn over long periods of
time, and parents who can't communicate over a long period of time. Out
of that comes a need to have someone
who is able to help create different
decisions."
She added: "I worry about the lawsuits that would come when there
aren't enough people in the room who
care about kids."
Coverage of issues related to creating
opportunities for all American students
and their families to choose a quality school
is supported by a grant from the Walton
Family Foundation, at waltonk12.org.
Education Week retains sole editorial
control over the content of this coverage.

EDUCATION WEEK | February 10, 2016 | www.edweek.org | 13

http://www.waltonk12.org http://www.edweek.org

Education Week - February 10, 2016

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - February 10, 2016