In my experience, most advocates from Brown and Associates don't know the kids or their families, are unresponsive to attempts to collaborate, and seek to push every student into a private placement. Think about it...without due process complaints, they don't get paid. So, even when results could be obtained more quickly and collaboratively through mediation or other means, they rarely agree, even when it's CLEARLY in the best interest of the child. I have had countless parents of STUDENTS WITH SPECIAL NEEDS (not "special ed kids. People first language. Look it up), complain because their advocates don't return their calls and are routinely 45 minutes or more late for meetings.

Yes, students with special needs deserve better services, and there are great advocates out there working with DCPS to make it happen. These guys are slimeballs, though.

Why is that when "good" people go to work for Fenty, they become heartless assholes?

Dan Tangherlini, one of the best people to work for/with at the Department of Transportation (DDOT), now despised (and feared) by just about every agency head in DC government. And quite honestly most can't even stand to be around the guy. The same goes for Neil Albert, Michelle Rhee and now Peter Nickles.

Further symptoms of the Fenty touch includes rudeness, arrogance, developing an allergy to the concept of affordable housing, becoming way too defensive when questioned, witholding your agency's spending data from the city auditor, and in some cases becoming a public relations-feen. (Question? Can someone remind me what has Michelle Rhee done to be on the cover of Time Magazine???)

Fenty gives his croonies never before seen salaries, and they drink the Fenty mambo sauce and become his bullpen bitches.

I'm so glad Emeka Moneme told Fenty to kiss his ass!

The cure for the Fenty touch?

Not voting for a person because they merely knocked on you and all of your neighbors' doors!

A quick google search revealed that the attorney targeted by Nickles has won some cases against DCPS and seems to mirror very well what Appleseed wrote in its report:

http://www.seo.dc.gov/seo/lib/seo/sho/hod_12.26.07_5.pdf

http://www.osse.dc.gov/seo/frames.asp?doc=/seo/lib/seo/sho/february/HOD_2-22-2008_3.pdf

It is unreasonable to request that DC Taxpayers must pay for a child's private medical evaluation. As a parent of a DCPS student I would never, under any circumstances, utilize DCPS medical evaluations. When you stop to think about what makes more sense, working with your trusted family physician who knows the child's medical history or working with an unknown, over-taxed bureaucracy to maintain the health of your children, there's one answer which is remarkably obvious. Nor is health insurance a factor in this situation, given that there are charity hospitals that work with special needs children.

At some point every parent has to make the decision whether or not to send their children to private school. Maybe it's age 3 or 4. For most of my friends it's when they left 6th grade. It's a major decision and for many of these kids not getting the education they need, the question in my mind is, really, when do you decide that there are more proactive options than suing for money after the fact?

I've spoken to a handful of parents who have told me stories of how to game the system with phony diagnoses to get special treatment. I counter that those stories have made me, as a DC Taxpayer, "frustrated, angry, full of despair, distrustful, hurt, and freaked at the process." Not in the way Jason suggests- I'm distrustful of the lawyers in these cases.

Having read as much as I can about this case, I can attest that there is something different about it that makes it frivolous. There are dozens of such suits filed that are not considered frivolous enough to counter sue. If this is not part of a landslide of countersuits then it's safe to say it's unreflective of the DCPS situation. Discovering that difference is the key to this case, not wild hyperbole about future actions.