Need to Read: Legal Aspects in Special Education by Kurt Hulett

After reading the article Special Ed at TAC faulted it still amazes me how some professionals still fail to comply with the law concerning special education students. Some of the things mentioned were suspension without due process, nonexistent IEPs, and failure to meet time requirements. Many requirements were either modified or ignored and this comes from the top down, so why expect teachers to follow the rules? I wrote a previous post called Following Special Education Regulations – it’s not an option; it’s the law! and I stressed that complying with the law is just that, a law and we can’t ignore it or make it fit how we want it to fit. I have worked with too many people who call themselves “professionals” that think they can do what they want to just because they disagree with the law or they don’t understand it.

Recently I was fortunate to meet Kurt Hulett, the author of Legal Aspects in Special Education. He was the keynote speaker at a reception that I attended and he spoke about his interview with Joe Ballard, a pioneer in the IDEA movement. As I flipped through the book I knew that this was a book that I had to read. It seemed an easy to read book but chock full of wonderful information, not just for special education professionals but also for general education teachers and administrators. When I see articles that tell how special education laws are ignored, I want to tell them that they need to read this book! In fact, after reading this article, I don’t think these people can afford not to read this book.

Here is some information from the back cover of the book:
“Legal Aspects of Special Education was written by a practitioner to help teachers, administrators, and advocates understand special education law in everyday language– without excessive legalese or extraneous case law. …all of the elements of this text are intended to help its students obtain the most critical information about special education law and how it is applied in the real world. …Additionally, the book provides case studies and application questions, critical thinking questions, the most current information on the laws including No Child Left Behind and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 2004, a discussion of Response-to-Intervention (RTI) and the implication of IDEA 2004 for school districts, and the major trends changing the laws including that of autism.”

Will someone please wake up those people and give them this book to read?!