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School Vouchers, Medications, and Special Education

This week, the Special Needs Blog focused on topics such as the school voucher program in Ohio, information about the IEP, problems with bussing, and lots of news about medications. This Week In Review is quite the variety pack! Here is a quick review of the blogs that appeared here between August 28, 2012, and September 1, 2012. An Update on Ohio’s School Vouchers Ohio has a school voucher that is called The Jon Peterson Special Needs Scholarship. It can be used by any student, who has any type of special need, and who is a public school, private school, … Continue reading →

Assistive Technology Now Includes Children’s Voices

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Children who have certain types of learning disabilities may be non-verbal. This can happen with kids who have an autism spectrum disorder. Recently, schools have started using iPads to help students with autism communicate. Now, Proloquo2Go will let them “talk” in a child’s voice. The iPad is an amazing piece of technology. The versatility of it allows it to be used as anything from a way for a person to check his email, to a tool that can assist children who have special needs to cope, communicate, and practice social skills. Schools have started using iPads with the students who … Continue reading →

The Pros and Cons of Special Ed Vouchers

Ohio has expanded its school voucher program to include all special education students. This means that parents of kids who have special needs, of any kind, can get financial support to put their child into a private school. The public schools may face financial difficulties as a result of the voucher system. According to Dictionary.com, a school voucher is “a government cash grant or tax credit for parents, equal to all or part of the cost of educating their child at an elementary or secondary school of their choice”. It may also be called an “educational voucher” or a “scholarship”. … Continue reading →

Family Game Night: Wits and Wagers

“”A Family Edition of the Most Award-Winning Party Game in History!”” Summary from the North Star Games: Wits & Wagers Family simplifies the rules and scoring system of the popular Wits & Wagers. Now families and kids can get into the Wits & Wagers action! First, every player writes down a guess to a fun question. Then players try to score points by choosing which guess is closest to the right answer without going over. That is it! The game features 300 new family-friendly questions. And even better than that, Wits & Wagers Family includes Meeples– fun, cute, human shaped … Continue reading →

The ABC’s of Special Education

The beginning of a new school year brings an alphabet of abbreviations for parents of children who have special needs. If this is the very first school year that your child has been connected with a special education program, things can get a little confusing. Here is a quick list to help you understand what all the abbreviations mean. Special education teachers, and the paraeducators that work with them, tend to shorten many of the terms that are used in “Special Ed”. This is because they use them so often, that it it becomes easier to put these terms into … Continue reading →

Start Preparing Your Child for School Now!

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The new school year will be starting in just a few weeks. Most children will experience some excitement, or anxiety, about what this year will be like. Kids who have special needs are going to need some extra preparations in order to have a successful first week of school. Now is the time to start preparing your child for his or her first day. Your child might have been attending an extended school year, or Summer school, program. If so, then this usually makes it easier for kids who have special needs to transition into a brand new school year. … Continue reading →

Procrastination With Special Education Could be Expensive

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The Department of Education in New York could be creating a very expensive problem for itself. Education officials have delayed finding placement for 15,500 kindergarten students who have special needs. This could result in having those students sent to private schools, with the public school system being required to pay for it. The delay is also causing anxiety for the parents of these children. The New York City Department of Education is struggling to figure out where 15,500 kindergarten students who have special needs will attend school in the coming school year. They must find placement for all of these … Continue reading →

Getting Your Special Needs Child the Best Education

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It is time to go back to school. You want your child to have the best year yet and to learn and grow. Perhaps your child needs more than pens and paper to get through the year. You’ve heard of plans to help children with special needs succeed in school but perhaps you thought they were only for kids with learning disabilities. The truth is, if your child has a chronic condition that can affect their performance and attendance at school, he or she can qualify for one of the two plans. First there are individualized education plans (IEPs), legal … Continue reading →

Shocking Separation: Al and Tipper Gore

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It seemed to come as a shock to everyone this week when it was announced that former Vice President Al Gore and his wife Tipper are divorcing after 40 years together. The couple told friends via email, “We are announcing today that after a great deal of thought and discussion, we have decided to separate. This is very much a mutual and mutually supportive decision that we have made together following a process of long and careful consideration. We ask for respect for our privacy and that of our family, and we do not intend to comment further.” Gore met … Continue reading →

Teaching the Youth the Importance of Education

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We are taught that while we can’t take any of our earthly possessions with us when we die, we can take our intelligence and our understanding with us as we progress past the veil. This knowledge has always inspired me to get a good education and to seek learning throughout my life. We recently watched the education segment of the church’s “Brand New Year” DVD with our youth, and I loved many of the aspects of the video. We watched and then talked about education, and I was really impressed with the way the video taught the youth about the … Continue reading →