{"id":5211,"date":"2011-09-19T12:04:22","date_gmt":"2011-09-19T16:04:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wrightslaw.com\/blog\/?p=5211"},"modified":"2011-09-19T12:19:08","modified_gmt":"2011-09-19T16:19:08","slug":"same-circumstances-different-outcomes-is-money-the-key","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wrightslaw.com\/blog\/same-circumstances-different-outcomes-is-money-the-key\/","title":{"rendered":"Same Circumstances &#8211; Different Outcomes: Is Money the Key?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_pop\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/gallery\/share-button-gray.png\" style=\"border:0px\" alt=\"Share\" \/><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Google Plus\",\"Pinterest\",\"Linkedin\",\"StumbleUpon\",\"Digg\",\"Reddit\",\"Bebo\",\"Delicious\");var hupso_icon_type = \"labels\";var hupso_background=\"#FFFFFF\";var hupso_border=\"#FFFFFF\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_twitter_via=\"wrightslaw\";var hupso_url=\"\";var hupso_title=\"Same%20Circumstances%20-%20Different%20Outcomes%3A%20Is%20Money%20the%20Key%3F%20\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div><blockquote><p>When parents have money, you probably won&#8217;t have as many issues with the school.\u00a0 These parents can hire an attorney, fight back, or pull their children out of public school.<\/p>\n<p>In smaller rural areas, where the poverty rate is high, you will find more IEP issues. Schools are pushing Special Ed Diplomas, misleading parents, and retaliating against others.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" style=\"border: 1px solid black; margin-left: 5px; margin-right: 5px; float: left;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.wrightslaw.com\/nltr\/img\/families\/looking.up.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"119\" height=\"150\" \/><span style=\"color: #000080;\"><strong>The key is parents who educate themselves and are willing to learn advocacy skills.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p>While having money helps if a family decides to withdraw their child from public education, having money doesn&#8217;t give them an easy ride if school leadership is corrupt or believes they must fight parents on everything.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ve trained tens of thousands of parents on their rights but, more important, in<strong> advocacy skills<\/strong> &#8211; how to create paper trails, how to measure their child&#8217;s progress objectively, etc.<\/p>\n<p>Many \/ most of these parents don&#8217;t have deep pockets but they  succeeded in getting good quality special ed services for their kids.<\/p>\n<p><strong>School leadership and Culture<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>A big factor, often overlooked, is school leadership and school culture.<\/p>\n<p>Many large affluent school districts that have a greater than average percentage of highly educated, high income parents draw lines in the sand, won&#8217;t negotiate on anything, and spend huge amounts of money on attorneys fees to fight the smallest request.<\/p>\n<p>We live in a rural county, population about 10,000, about 1,000 kids attend three schools. About 1\/3 of these kids get free or reduced lunch, parent education level and income is below the state average.<\/p>\n<p>Yet, kids who attend the three county schools consistently <em>score higher<\/em> on the &#8220;high stakes&#8221; tests than kids who attend school in the high income counties. The cost to educate each child is lower and teacher salaries are lower, but the <em>kids are getting a better education<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>So much depends on the attitude of the administrators, their willingness to educate teachers, and the belief that we have a responsibility to educate our kids, as best we can.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When parents have money, you probably won&#8217;t have as many issues with the school.\u00a0 These parents can hire an attorney, fight back, or pull their children out of public school. <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.wrightslaw.com\/blog\/same-circumstances-different-outcomes-is-money-the-key\/\">Continue Reading \u2192<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,161],"tags":[799],"class_list":["post-5211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-advocacy","category-teachers","tag-the-power-of-advocacy"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrightslaw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrightslaw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrightslaw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrightslaw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrightslaw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5211"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrightslaw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5211\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5758,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrightslaw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5211\/revisions\/5758"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrightslaw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrightslaw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrightslaw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}