Mike Honda: “many districts who do not have the local resources to fulfill their obligation find themselves not being as great of an…”

“many districts who do not have the local resources to fulfill their obligation find themselves not being as great of an advocate for the youngsters. They may want to, but they do not have the resources to cover it. There are other school districts who are well off, and they are still battling with parents and trying to minimize the identification of youngsters, because even in a well-to-do school district, it is still a drain on the general fund, but the mandate is still there. What it really does is pits parents against school districts, and that is not healthy for a public school system. I believe that what the gentleman mentioned, having an IEP for every youngster, should be a right of every youngster before they even start school, because what an IEP does is present all the needs that a youngster has, and you can develop an educational strategy so that the parent, the teacher at the get-go knows what they have to do. From that point, you can have great expectations. You can have accountability. You have benchmarks that we are all talking about, and we are talking about accountability. We have not had the real tools from which to judge the teaching and the youngsters. People say that developing an IEP is very expensive, but then I guess how expensive is ignorance.”