Disability Rights, Access to Education Vary Around the World

By Nirvi Shah from On Special Education

This blog rarely ventures beyond the borders of the United States, as it seems there are ample issues to discuss about special education on American soil. But today it seemed worthy of note that it's the International Day of Persons with Disabilities.

For starters, the U.S. Senate is still debating whether to approve the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

The Council for Exceptional Children calls the document landmark and has been urging the Senate to ratify it, noting that 90 percent of children with disabilities in developing countries have no access to school, in sharp contrast to educational access for children with disabilities in America.

Although the treaty has bipartisan support, the National Review notes, and it has been signedby President Barack Obama, some senators oppose the measure because they believe it would not have any effect on people in the United States.

Read more HERE.

Military Families Overseas Struggle to Get Services for Children With Disabilities

By Nirvi Shah from On Special Education

While families in the United States sometimes struggle to get the right diagnoses and services for their children with disabilities, a new report from the Government Accountability Office highlights the special challenges families in the military face.

Overseas, Department of Defense schools offer widely varying services, the GAO said. For example, DOD schools in Ramstein, Germany, can serve children with severe disabilities of any type, but schools in some other overseas locations don't have any special education programs at all.

Although the Department of Defense recently created an office of special needs to help these families, the office is still working on improving screening and overseas assignment of military families with special needs, the GAO said. The office has limited authority to force different branches of the military to act, and the Defense Department doesn't have benchmarks and performance goals for how programs created for these families should work. "Without overall performance information to proactively identify emerging problem areas, some of the branches have had to conduct investigations to address problems after they have arisen," the report says.

Read more HERE.