Qualities to Avoid in Choosing a Special Education Advocate

Are you the parent of a child with autism or other disability that is considering finding an advocate to help you with your child's education? Would you like a short list of qualities to avoid when choosing a special education advocate?

This article will help you avoid certain negative qualities in a prospective advocate, so that you can help your child receive a free appropriate public education.

Quality 1: Stay away from an advocate who has not received formal training in federal and state laws, and case law. Good advocates will have a working knowledge of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (federal law), and your state laws governing special education. Effective advocates do not have to memorize the law, but should know where to find any information that they need. Advocates must also know what due process hearings and court cases have already occurred, so that they can use the information to benefit your child.

Quality 2: Stay away from an advocate, who has little to no experience helping parents navigate the special education system. Unfortunately there are people who call themselves advocates, who do not have the experience that they need, to be effective. You do not want the advocate learning at the expense of your child's education. Try finding an advocate at a disability organization like a Parent Information and Training Center (PTIC).

Quality 3: Stay away from an advocate, who guarantees you a certain outcome. While most advocates work hard and do their best, there are no guarantees in special education. You would rather work with an advocate, that has a realistic view of what can be accomplished for your child.

Quality 4: Stay away from an angry advocate, who seems to have there own agenda. I have heard of advocates that target certain school districts, due to their own anger. Every person including parents in special education, become angry at some point. But the important thing is that the advocate can continue to be professional, even if the school personnel are not.

Quality 5: Stay away from an advocate, that is not willing to challenge special education personnel, when the need arrives. Advocates must be willing to stand up to school personnel, for the good of the child, in an assertively persistent manner. This is the reason why it is so important to understand Federal and State special education law; you have the information you need to effectively stand up for the child.

Quality 6: Stay away from an advocate that does not promise you complete confidentiality! Advocates must not share any information that they learn about parents and their children; and unfortunately this does happen on occasion. You want your advocate to keep things you tell them confidential, as well as any strategies that they will be using.

Quality 7: Stay away from an advocate, that appears to be a know it all! No advocate including myself knows everything. You need an advocate, who is willing to find out the information that will help your child, if they do not know.

Advocacy is an art and involves trying different strategies to help the child receive a free appropriate public education (FAPE). By knowing what characteristics to avoid in an advocate, will help you make an informed decision about any advocate that works with you to help your child. Good luck!

How a Balanced Scorecard For Education Evaluation Should Be

As the number of enrollees increases and educational inputs become more demanding each year, an educational organization must find ways to make its goals and strategies work. Measuring, as most experts say, is one of the top ways to know whether an institution trails on the right track. The balanced scorecard for education evaluation is the fitting method to evaluate how far and how effective the school has gone in terms of educational inputs.

This balanced scorecard is actually a strategy management system. Colleges and universities across the continental US and around the world use this tactic to improve an already established institution-wide planning process. Just like most scorecard systems, the education evaluation scorecard system interprets the goals and strategies of the institution into a comprehensible and measurable set of indicators. Most of these indicators, nonetheless, have direct link to the strategies and goals. The balanced scorecard system actually serves as the transportation channel between decision making and effective implementation of performance communication, goals tracking, and strategy measurement.

Most education evaluation managers would wonder why experts call it a "balanced" scorecard. What does actually make a scorecard truly "balanced"? Well, as a starter, an education evaluation scorecard system utilizes a group of core yardsticks or indicators that characterize and gauge institutional effectiveness. In order for the scorecard system to become objective, it needs to cover four important areas of the educational organization: external stakeholder, internal stakeholder, innovation and growth, and operational-financial performance. When there is presence of all these areas, only then can a scorecard become truly "balanced". It is the only way that it can identify what the school should apply or use in order to improve performance. It is the single way also to know which indicators tell the effectiveness of an input.

The internal process of an education evaluation balanced scorecard involves the process of inputting, managing, processing, and analyzing data. The right term for a collective amount of raw data is benchmarking. It is the result of the collaboration in research, negotiation, and analysis of each college department or administrative section. Each section in the organization should have its own set of goals, especially those who are involved in the academic side. In order to meet these goals, the benchmarks will serve as keys to adjusting and assessing strategies.

For a manager to be effective in creating partial and practical benchmarks for evaluating educational performance of the institution, he or she must give focus on every area of the organization.

For instance, in the external stakeholder perspective, the benchmarks that the manager can most likely use are student access and success, outreach, marketing, and connections to the academic communities. In the internal stakeholder perspective, the manager may include effective communication, secure and safe campuses, and integrated planning and performance measurement.

Under the financial and business perspective, the possible benchmarks are as follows: updates on facilities, appropriate replacement of school equipment, updating of the school facility, and practical and comprehensive resource planning strategy. For growth and innovation perspective, the manager may cover coordinated and unified programs for teaching staff development, and innovation in delivering education modules, services, and programs.

Schools can use other possible benchmarks in their balanced scorecard for education evaluation. The idea is to cover every important area of the institution and to come up with indicators that are timely, balanced, measurable, and practical.