As the U.S. Department of Education web site titled “Building the Legacy: IDEA 2004†(http://idea.ed.gov/) says – “The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) is a law ensuring services to children with disabilities throughout the nation.†The original law, titled the Education for All Handicapped Children Act was passed in 1975. Then in 1990 the [...]
Nestle caving in (and removing artificial coloring) … but only in Australia (and Britain)
The Age – Business News, World News and Breaking News in Australia reports in an article “Smarties to lose a little of their lustre†by Kelly Burke (December 20, 2008) that apparently Nestle Australia has caved in, and despite years of insisting that artificial coloring in candy and other food products is safe, has decided [...]
Gifted and Special Education in Texas
Going over the news I’ve bookmarked a while ago I found a brief story from FortBendNow.com “FBISD Gifted and Talented Academy Students Connect with Real World,†by John Pope that talked about gifted students “learning about the nutritional perspectives of various cultural food items, including those representative of the Latino, Indian and Asian cultures.†FBISC [...]
Food dyes and the Center for Science in the Public Interest
This isn’t exactly news – I found this information months ago, when the press release just came out, but I had no time to blog during the summer, so here it is: An organization calling itself the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) petitioned the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to ban artificial [...]
Biomedical Treatments for Autism
Saturday, November 1, and Sunday, November 2, 2008 there will be a conference in Weston, Massachusetts titled “Successful Inclusion in School & Community†organized by Autism Conferences of America. It looks interesting and I would like to see “Learning Social Skills Through Play: Life’s Most Important Skill Made Fun!†by Rick Clemens, MA, and would [...]
Eagle Hill School’s graduation speech delivered by Dr. Edward M. Hallowell
Dr. Edward M. Hallowell, a former instructor at the Harvard Medical School, one of the foremost experts on ADHD in the world, and the founder of the Hallowell Center for Emotional and Cognitive Health, was invited by the Eagle Hill School in Hardwick, Massachusetts to deliver this year’s graduation speech. (March 2, 2011 – Eagle Hill [...]
Bartlesville, OK – Gifted/Talented Committee members fail to show up for meeting
I found the following story quite amusing – A Bartlesville Public Schools Gifted and Talented Local Advisory Committee meeting […] didn’t take place because the only person who showed up was Vicki Walker, BPS director of special services. (see Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise “Gifted/Talented Committee members fail to show up for meeting,â€) Interestingly, according to the Bartlesville [...]
What do you say to a kid who’s rolling around, punching, biting, kicking? (the story of Gabriel Ross)
It seems Alex Barton is not the only five-year-old verbally abused by his teacher. While Gabriel Ross has not been voted out of his classroom, he also heard his peers being forced to say they don’t want to be his friends, and he heard much worse things from his teacher . I first found Gabriel’s [...]
Report on Medications and Choices
PAL, the Parent/Professional Advocacy League, and Institute for Community Health (both based in Massachusetts), have just published Medications and Choices: The Perspective of Families and Youth: What Parents and Children Tell Us about Psychiatric Medications which they call “a ground breaking, family-driven study of the decision making process families go through when they choose to [...]
No Autistics Allowed? (the story of Alex Barton)
Everyone has already heard this unbelievable story – a teacher in a kindergarten classroom “led†her pupils “to vote […] out of class†a five-year-old being evaluated for Asperger Syndrome. The first coverage of this story (or one of the first) appeared on TCPalm.com (May 23, 2008 “St. Lucie teacher has students vote on whether [...]