Recently, a Gifted Legal Rights Workshop was presented by Matt Cohen, top gifted and 2e attorney in Illinois. MAGE was honored to host and co-sponsor this free Parent Education Workshop, a part of our Free Parent Education Series, with the Chicago Gifted Community Center, CGCC. Mr. Cohen went through relevant case law and discussed the recent Accelerated Placement Act. He also described guidance papers that help clarify gifted legal rights that the federal government issued to State Departments of Education with regard to gifted and 2e students. A collection of those guidance papers can be found here. Included is a key idea: it is illegal and is a denial of FAPE, it is against IDEA to deny evaluation for special ed services to students based on their high performance on test scores, good grades, etc.

Some popular questions we had, followed by answers:

-does the accelerated placement act apply to private school: no

-do special ed laws/IEP/504 apply to private schools? Again, no - unless you can prove that they receive Federal funds for anything. State funds do not count, unless you can tie them back to Federal funds directly.

-if my child will be distraught without academic acceleration/enrichment, can I use SPED laws to do anything about it? No. SPED laws are reactive, after there has already been impact on the child. They do not kick in proactively. 

In order to further your child’s rights in school, we recommend the following to stay proactive:

• join our mailing list (for free), join IAGC ($50 to help the association be well resourced to continue to educate and advocate on gifted needs and rights), and CGCC ($25). That way you will not miss important local gifted ed news and useful information, or opportunities to have your voice be heard - if you scroll through our blog you will see plenty of past opportunities and some current ones to be engaged with the local governments to make change. 

• Stay active and involved and assure that your school or district (even if your child is not enrolled in the public school there) has an accelerated placement policy, is reporting data around serving gifted to the state via the school report card. 

The other way, which is reactive, is show evidence of negative impact on the child/necessity, for the child’s emotional and social well being. It is very difficult, if not impossible, to receive an appropriate and equitable education for gifted kids in Illinois because we only talk about appropriate and equitable in the special ed law. In Illinois there is a tie to meeting the minimum grade standards, making modifications to help a child make those minimum standards. It is not possible in our state law to claim that what is appropriate for a child is acceleration of any flavor just based on IQ or achievement scores. In other words, if a child doesn’t learn anything new if they are above grade, no law is broken unless this creates emotional and social consequences for the child with the burden of proof on the family.

In the state accelerated placement law, there is very little to protect gifted children. This needs to be put in. One simple way of doing this could be a small change to the AP act. We are going to be working on this little change next. You won’t want to miss that one - sign up for our newsletter to be the change too.

If you missed the workshop, that went deep into legal and case history, there is another useful workshop ahead for you: during the Chicago Gifted Resource Fair, Illinois Association for Gifted Children (IAGC) will present about accelerated placement. We don’t know the next time we will repeat this workshop, most likely it will be 1-2 years.