I'm happy to see that a newspaper in Santa Barbara, Calif., is willing to expose the severity of the problems facing special-education students in its local school district.
If every newspaper would make the effort to listen to the concerns of parents of children with special needs, perhaps the scandal would not have grown so severe over the years.
When I was investigating a local school district in the San Diego area in 2002, my research extended to Sacramento and Washington, D.C., and my contacts told me that problems with special ed across the state of California as well as the nation were second only to the national economy.
My editors and publisher chose to ignore the facts and perpetuate the myth that all is well by simply publishing a story that a school board member toured the district with the director of special ed and reported at a board meeting that all was well.
Seeing such reporting made me nauseous. It's sad that daily puff or fluff pieces and simply quoting public officials to churn out quicky stories and fill the space around ads appear to be the primary concern of too many newspapers.
Anyway, here are links to a story and a column, respectively, from The Daily Sound that tell it like it is:
http://www.thedailysound.com/070109school
http://www.thedailysound.com/cherirae/052809cheri
My compliments to the reporter, columnist and editor/publisher of The Daily Sound.
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