Making Special Education Actually Work
Making Special Education Actually Work provides technical assistance for parents and professionals navigating special education. It is hosted by Anne M. Zachry of KPS4Parents, who has worked as a lay advocate since 1991 and as a paralegal since 2005. She earned an M.A. in Educational Psychology in 2013.
Episodes
They Already Know: School Refusal After ICE Raids and the Legal Duty to Respond
The recent ICE raids in Ventura County, where we are located, has prompted us to engage with other local community leaders to address the needs of the families that have been impacted. In particular, we are providing technical assistance and guidance to other activists about how public education resources can be leveraged to support the children left traumatized by the ICE raids, many of whom a
What is "Eugenics" and How Does it Relate to Special Education?
Many people don't know what the word "eugenics" means, but parents of special education students will recognize the behavior associated with eugenicist thinking. Special education is not an isolated, siloed experience with no bearing on the rest of society, and history shows us that societies don’t just collapse because of a few bad actors or terrible ideas. They collapse because their systems st
Using ABA to Identify & Deal with Misinformation
Special education and disability-related areas of civil rights law are complex systems of law and science that require an understanding of how an individual person is impacted by their unique disabilities within the unique contexts of their unique individual lives. The whole person has to be taken into account in order to determine the degree to which their disabilities impact their Activities
Talkido & KPS4Parents from Our IG Live Event
On February 7, 2025, Ege Cakaloz of Talkido and Anne Zachry of KPS4Parents conducted an Instagram Live event. See the video recording of this live event to learn more about individualizing intervention for individuals with challenging learning needs using Talkido's technology.
Learn more at https://kps4parents.org/individualized-interventions-using-talkido/
KPS4Parents on Instagram Live
Hello! This is Anne Zachry, author and moderator of “Making Special Education Actually Work,” an online publication, produced in blog and podcast form, by KPS4Parents, a nonprofit child and family lay advocacy and consultancy organization focused on learners and workers with disabilities.
I am excited to announce that, because of work I am doing on behalf of one of my direct services clients, I
Post-Election Strategies for Parents of Children with Disabilities Needing Special Education or 504 Accommodations and Supports
As the dust starts to settle, to the degree it can following the 2024 election cycle, parents of children with disabilities who need special education or 504 accommodations and supports are now searching for answers as to how the promised changes to public education in the United States will affect their children. Many of these parents had no idea prior to the election what the fallout for publi
Using AI-Generated Music to Teach Social Scripts
I have to say from the start that this is not a paid endorsement, and endorsing specific products is not something I normally do, but I've discovered a tool that has been a game-changer for how I work with one of my direct services clients as his counselor. That solution is using AI to create songs that are individualized to a specific person with lyrics based on therapeutically appropriate soc
Project 2025 and Special Education
Most people these days have now heard about Project 2025. It's now one of the most commonly searched terms on the internet these days. These fascist shysters aren't even trying to cover up what they are doing anymore, but what I want to emphasize as I start this post/podcast is that none of the Project 2025 agenda is anything new and these are the same exact people we've been up against in public
Online Trolls, Mental Health, & Social Justice
For the benefit of the majority of Americans who are capable of understanding what I'm about to say, I appreciate the opportunity to share some insights with you that might help you better frame how you think about current events and other people's behaviors. For those of you who struggle to understand what I'm about to say, just know that the point is to find a way for you to still be inclu
Locus of Control in the Classroom & the World at Large
I watch the news and read up on a lot of court cases and pending legislation these days because all of it is related in some way with the work I do in special education as an advocate, paralegal, consultant, and direct services provider. Congressional spending, public policy changes, new litigation, and all kinds of other world events have direct bearing on special education and the individual
Trauma-Informed Special Education Evaluations & Programming
Photo credit Kelly Short (colorized photo from circa 1936)
Attention is finally being given to the effects of childhood trauma on childhood development and learning, but it's still not fully incorporated into the mainstream as common knowledge. Only when trauma-informed education becomes the norm can childhood trauma be prevented and responded-to with greater efficacy.
Because trauma often
Legitimate Parent Advocacy vs. Conspiratorial Movements
Photo Credit: Nik
As much as the work we do at KPS4Parents focuses on social justice issues that include parents' legal rights in the special education process and related areas of public agency regulation, I've been hesitant until now to say anything about what has been charading as a parents' advocacy movement, lately. This is mainly because of the most recent developments involving the lead
Technology and the Intersectionality of Larry P.
Based on the professional peer-reviewed research, intersectionality can be understood as the phenomenon in which an individual person's social position relative to more than one socially defining characteristic, such as race, language, gender, disability, socioeconomic status, etc., come together to simultaneously impact a person's status in and access to society at large. Where a person fits
OCR Complaint Results in District-wide Compensatory Education
Click here for full text
I'm long overdue to post new content to the KPS4Parents blog, podcast, and social media, but it's been a busy school year. The continuing fallout from COVID-related school closures that disrupted the educations of most children, and had even more profound effects on our learners with disabilities, has kept me busy.
It's one of these COVID-related cases that brings me back
Interview of Rose Griffin, SLP & BCBA
To see the text transcription of this podcast, including links to content discussed, go to: https://kps4parents.org/interview-of-rose-griffin-slp-bcba.
Is LAUSD Run by a Fascist Mafia?
LAUSD Main Offices - Downtown Los Angeles
The school year hasn't even started yet and Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), the second-largest school district in the country, has already hit the ground running with illegalities left and right, not the least of which is the systemic policy issue that I'm focusing on in today's post. It's hardly the only violation, but its a systemic one t
Interview of Dawn Barclay, Author of Traveling Different: Vacation Strategies for Parents of the Anxious, the Inflexible, and the Neurodiverse
Pre-Order on Amazon
Anne Zachry 00:00 Welcome to Making Special Education Actually Work, an online publication presented in blog and podcast form by KPS4Parents. As an added benefit to our subscribers and visitors to our site, we're making podcast versions of our text only blog articles so that you can get the information you need on the go by downloading and listening at your convenience. We
Interview of George Bailey, President of ZPods
Anne Zachry 0:00
Welcome to "Making Special Education Actually Work," an online publication presented in blog in podcast form by KPS4Parents. As an added benefit to our subscribers and visitors to our site, we're making podcast versions of our text-only blog articles so that you can get the information you need on the go by downloading and listening at your convenience. We also occasionally cond
Pragmatic Language & YouTube Reaction Videos
Could YouTube reaction videos be used to teach pragmatic language skills?
I'm not a Speech-Language Pathologist (SLP), so I'm not pretending to be an expert in the field of language processing. However, I rely on data from SLPs to inform my understanding of the communicative aspects of individual learners' respective abilities to process information and put it to constructive use.
I'm f
Fecal Smearing, Disability, and the January 6, 2021 Insurrection
This is not a pleasant topic at all, so I want to start out this post/podcast with the understanding that I know this isn't a pleasant topic. That doesn't make it something to avoid, however. Problems aren't solved by pretending they don't exist.
For those of us who work with people with significant mental disabilities, fecal smearing, otherwise knows as “scatolia,” is a behavior we usually encou
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