No doubt, SPEAK (Special Needs Parents Educators and Kids) does wonderful things for Voorhees’ children with special needs. But much more needs to be done to assure these children benefit substantially from their public school education. As I’ve often evaluated the special education programs of children throughout the state, at the request of both families and school districts, I can confidently say that spending large amounts of money on special education, passing state reviews, and having excellent teachers and administrators (and Voorhees has many of both) is not enough to assure a quality education for children with special needs. For the Voorhees district to assure that its children fully benefit from its efforts, it needs to have an independent, impartial team of experts (e.g., professors and other special education and literacy specialists who live and work at least 45-minutes from Voorhees), evaluate the relevance and measurability of randomly selected children’s Individualized Education Programs (IEPs), shadow randomly selected children for several days to assess the quality with which the district implements their IEPs and interview representative samples of children, teachers, Child Study Team members, administrators, board members, and families. Although this 3-pronged approach requires proper permissions and costs money, it can easily save money and help assure that all children in Voorhees get the quality education they so well deserve. It can improve the quality of an already high-quality school district.
Howard Margolis, Ed.D.
