Currently, I love my topic of the NBA’s one and done rule and I am sure that I could make a great issue brief about it. However, with the new and highly anticipated rule change occurring soon in the NBA, I’m not sure writing 10 pages about this issue will still be relevant. I’m going to do some research into some possible different topics that I might enjoy and that’s what this blog post is dedicated to.
Another topic I have a lot of interest in, aside from sports, is education. Specifically, special needs education is something I would love to learn more about. At my high school, the special needs education was fantastic. I was closely involved with their class in a club called Peer Mentor Buddy Club and I saw first-hand how great their teachers, aides, classrooms, and resources were. The students benefitted so much from the assistance they received through their education. Despite all the advancements made with the special-needs students, however, some still wondered whether giving such a small population of the school a highly specialized albeit costly education was benefitting the greater good of the high school.
No one really came out and said this to the school board as no one wishes to offend or belittle this community, yet the topics of conversation continued to be raised behind closed doors. I am not sure of the specifics of how much money goes into special education at my high school. We may not even have enough, I would not know. However, with all the advanced technology and additional teachers and aides required, I wouldn’t be opposed to at least acknowledging this complicated opinion.
I understand that many schools are not as privileged to have good services for the special needs students and some may even have the opposing problem- not enough funding.
After some research into federal funding, I found that the federal government has mandated special education services under the Individuals with Disabilities Act. With this, the states are required to provide students special education as a condition of receiving federal funding. Also, the IDEA authorized Congress to contribute 40% of the monetary expenses for each pupil with special needs, but to this point the total funding from Congress for special education has only been up to 15%.
With programs being cut left and right in schools, the money simply is not there to increase the funding for special education, but apparently it is needed. Organizations and union members continuously lobby for change to the nation’s policy makers, but little has been done.
In addition to the problem at some public schools, a large majority of private and religious schools are qualifying for federally funded special educations services, but only one percent of these schools were actually receiving them.
This topic is currently a complicated issue. I am excited to continue to look into the disparities in schooling for special education and the effects it has on both the special needs and regular students.
https://www.understandingspecialeducation.com/special-education-funding.html
I really like this topic! I think there are many different aspects of the issue that you can explore in a long paper. I think it is especially interesting to compare private and public schools. I also think looking more in depth into IDEA would be interesting. I was looking into IDEA, and I didn’t realize that there are so many categories for different disabilities. I’d be interested to know if this changes the type of aid students receive. I’m looking forward to your next post!
https://www.understandingspecialeducation.com/special-education-law.html