Showing posts with label Human Rights. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Human Rights. Show all posts
Thursday, July 11, 2013
Dyslexia vs Human Rights - William Bisset and Gabrielle Mathiesen - Video
An interview carried out by New Zealand news programme to highlight the issues of people with Dyslexia and the lack of support at government levels.
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
ACLU alleges Michigan school district violated students’ ‘right to learn to read’
In the first case of its kind, the American Civil Liberties Union is charging that the state of Michigan and a Detroit area school district have failed to adequately educate children, violating their “right to learn to read” under an obscure state law.
The ACLU class-action lawsuit, to be filed Thursday, says hundreds of students in the Highland Park School District are functionally illiterate.
“None of those adults charged with the care of these children . . . have done their jobs,” said Kary L. Moss, executive director of the ACLU of Michigan. “The Highland Park School District is among the lowest-performing districts in the nation, graduating class after class of children who are not literate. Our lawsuit . . . says that if education is to mean anything, it means that children have a right to learn to read.”
The complaint, to be filed in state court in Wayne County, is based on a 1993 state law that says if public school students are not proficient in reading, as determined by tests given in grades 4 and 7, they must be provided “special assistance” to bring them to grade level within a year.
But at Highland Park, a three-school district bordering Detroit, most of the struggling students are years behind grade level and never received the kind of assistance required by law, the ACLU said.
Sara Wurfel, press secretary for Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R), said it was “impossible and imprudent to comment on a lawsuit that we haven’t been served or read yet.”
But she said the administration is working to address “a long overdue fiscal and academic crisis that was crippling the district, shortchanging its students and threatening the schools’ very existence.
Everything we have done and are doing is to ensure that the kids of Highland Park schools get the education they need and deserve.”
Efforts to reach the Highland Park School District were unsuccessful. The published telephone number at the district headquarters was busy all Wednesday afternoon.
One student in the Highland Park district, a 14-year-old boy named Quentin, just finished seventh grade.
Quentin, whose mother asked that his last name be withheld, reads at a first-grade level, according to an expert hired by the ACLU.
When asked to compose a letter to Snyder to describe his school, Quentin misspelled his own name, writing, “My name is Quemtin . . . and you can make the school gooder by geting people that will do the jod that is pay for get a football tame for the kinds mybe a baksball tamoe get a other jamtacher for the school get a lot of tacher.”
[Click here for samples of writing from Highland Park students who are plaintiffs in the suit, including Quentin.]
During the school year that just finished, Quentin was enrolled in both a regular language arts class and Read 180, an online program designed to help struggling readers.
It was up to Quentin to decide whether to attend his regular class or participate in Read 180 each day, according to the complaint. This was the first year Highland Park used the Read 180 program, according to the ACLU.
In the Read 180 classroom, “the teacher did not provide any instruction while the students read books on their own, or in groups, or completed self-directed work on the computer. . . .
The longest writing assignment Quentin had to complete this year was a three paragraph summary of a book,” according to the lawsuit.
“Kids are getting plopped in front of computers with no teacher in the classroom or the teacher is just sitting there, not engaged,” Moss said in an interview.
“A couple of our plaintiffs were put in the Reading 180 program, but it’s not been made available to every kid. There’s no individualized assessment of what they need, how they’re doing or monitoring of what’s going on.”
The district’s record-keeping is shoddy and student files are incomplete, making it nearly impossible to identify which students need remedial help, the complaint alleges.
The most recent state test scores for Highland Park schools show that 65 percent of fourth-graders and 75 percent of seventh-graders were not proficient in reading.
Read the full article here: ACLU alleges Michigan school district violated students’ ‘right to learn to read’
The ACLU class-action lawsuit, to be filed Thursday, says hundreds of students in the Highland Park School District are functionally illiterate.
“None of those adults charged with the care of these children . . . have done their jobs,” said Kary L. Moss, executive director of the ACLU of Michigan. “The Highland Park School District is among the lowest-performing districts in the nation, graduating class after class of children who are not literate. Our lawsuit . . . says that if education is to mean anything, it means that children have a right to learn to read.”
The complaint, to be filed in state court in Wayne County, is based on a 1993 state law that says if public school students are not proficient in reading, as determined by tests given in grades 4 and 7, they must be provided “special assistance” to bring them to grade level within a year.
But at Highland Park, a three-school district bordering Detroit, most of the struggling students are years behind grade level and never received the kind of assistance required by law, the ACLU said.
Sara Wurfel, press secretary for Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R), said it was “impossible and imprudent to comment on a lawsuit that we haven’t been served or read yet.”
But she said the administration is working to address “a long overdue fiscal and academic crisis that was crippling the district, shortchanging its students and threatening the schools’ very existence.
Everything we have done and are doing is to ensure that the kids of Highland Park schools get the education they need and deserve.”
Efforts to reach the Highland Park School District were unsuccessful. The published telephone number at the district headquarters was busy all Wednesday afternoon.
One student in the Highland Park district, a 14-year-old boy named Quentin, just finished seventh grade.
Quentin, whose mother asked that his last name be withheld, reads at a first-grade level, according to an expert hired by the ACLU.
When asked to compose a letter to Snyder to describe his school, Quentin misspelled his own name, writing, “My name is Quemtin . . . and you can make the school gooder by geting people that will do the jod that is pay for get a football tame for the kinds mybe a baksball tamoe get a other jamtacher for the school get a lot of tacher.”
[Click here for samples of writing from Highland Park students who are plaintiffs in the suit, including Quentin.]
During the school year that just finished, Quentin was enrolled in both a regular language arts class and Read 180, an online program designed to help struggling readers.
It was up to Quentin to decide whether to attend his regular class or participate in Read 180 each day, according to the complaint. This was the first year Highland Park used the Read 180 program, according to the ACLU.
In the Read 180 classroom, “the teacher did not provide any instruction while the students read books on their own, or in groups, or completed self-directed work on the computer. . . .
The longest writing assignment Quentin had to complete this year was a three paragraph summary of a book,” according to the lawsuit.
“Kids are getting plopped in front of computers with no teacher in the classroom or the teacher is just sitting there, not engaged,” Moss said in an interview.
“A couple of our plaintiffs were put in the Reading 180 program, but it’s not been made available to every kid. There’s no individualized assessment of what they need, how they’re doing or monitoring of what’s going on.”
The district’s record-keeping is shoddy and student files are incomplete, making it nearly impossible to identify which students need remedial help, the complaint alleges.
The most recent state test scores for Highland Park schools show that 65 percent of fourth-graders and 75 percent of seventh-graders were not proficient in reading.
Read the full article here: ACLU alleges Michigan school district violated students’ ‘right to learn to read’
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Grandparents: They can damage children during divorces, claim
David Norgrove, the chairman of an official UK review on family justice which is published today, said some couples used their parents as a “weapon” during contested divorce cases.
The comments came as Mr Norgrove unveiled plans for parents to go through more “do-it-yourself” divorces to speed up settlements.
He also confirmed plans that divorced fathers would be denied a legal right to a relationship with their children.
He said grandparents could be “extremely important in a child’s life” but some made problems worse during divorces by demanding the right to have contact with the children.
He said: “Grandparents can be used by parents as a way of getting at their ex-partner. Grandparents are not always straightforward in the way they behave and the result can be damage to children.
“There is no evidence that courts unreasonably refuse the ability of a grandparent to bring an application for contact with their grandchildren.”
Mr Norgrove continued: “Not all grandparents are good grandparents. One of the separating parents can use his or her parents as a weapon against the other partner.
“We should not be putting all the emphasis on the rights of the adults. The question is wrong: it should be what is in the best interests of the child, not what is right for the adults.”
Mr Norgrove’s 220-page review did not recommend any legal right for grandparents to see their grandchildren after a couple divorced. Instead they would continue to be able to apply for access through the courts.
More information on this article from the Telegraph
Thursday, January 6, 2011
US Courts support right of Blind Woman to use tech aids to take Exams
The National Federation of the Blind (NFB), the oldest and largest nationwide organisation of blind people, today applauded a federal appellate court ruling affirming the right of a blind California woman to use screen access technology to take professional examinations required for her to receive a license to practice law.
The ruling, handed down yesterday by a unanimous three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Judicial Circuit, upheld preliminary injunctions granted by a federal district court requiring the National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE) to provide electronic copies of its legal examinations to Stephanie Enyart so that she could read the questions with text-to-speech and magnification software.
The NCBE had appealed the injunctions, arguing that the law did not require it to provide electronic copies of the examinations and that Enyart must choose from the menu of accommodations it was willing to provide.
Marc Maurer, President of the National Federation of the Blind, said: "The National Federation of the Blind welcomes this ruling, which means that testing agencies must afford the accommodations and auxiliary aids that are most likely to level the playing field for the blind and other test takers with disabilities.
The court made it clear that law and equity simply do not permit the NCBE to dictate a one-size-fits-all solution for all bar candidates with disabilities. The ruling stands solidly for the principle that the NCBE and all testing organizations must consider the individual needs of each examination candidate and that accommodation policies must change as access technology continues to improve.
It is our sincere hope that the NCBE will change its rigid and outdated accommodation policies to reflect the letter and spirit of this ruling, and that other entities that administer educational and professional examinations will take note and do likewise. The National Federation of the Blind stands ready to fight for the rights of blind students and aspiring professionals and to make sure that this ruling is faithfully followed."
According to the ruling, Ms. Enyart established that screen reader software, which speaks text on the screen out loud and/or magnifies it visually, is her primary reading method and the way she took most of her law school examinations.
The court upheld the validity of a Department of Justice regulation, promulgated pursuant to Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), requiring that "the examination is selected and administered so as to best ensure that when the examination is administered to an individual with a disability . . . the examination results accurately reflect the individual's aptitude or achievement level . . . rather than reflecting the individual's [disability]."
Read more of this article at : www.disabled-world.com/
The ruling, handed down yesterday by a unanimous three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Judicial Circuit, upheld preliminary injunctions granted by a federal district court requiring the National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE) to provide electronic copies of its legal examinations to Stephanie Enyart so that she could read the questions with text-to-speech and magnification software.
The NCBE had appealed the injunctions, arguing that the law did not require it to provide electronic copies of the examinations and that Enyart must choose from the menu of accommodations it was willing to provide.
Marc Maurer, President of the National Federation of the Blind, said: "The National Federation of the Blind welcomes this ruling, which means that testing agencies must afford the accommodations and auxiliary aids that are most likely to level the playing field for the blind and other test takers with disabilities.
The court made it clear that law and equity simply do not permit the NCBE to dictate a one-size-fits-all solution for all bar candidates with disabilities. The ruling stands solidly for the principle that the NCBE and all testing organizations must consider the individual needs of each examination candidate and that accommodation policies must change as access technology continues to improve.
It is our sincere hope that the NCBE will change its rigid and outdated accommodation policies to reflect the letter and spirit of this ruling, and that other entities that administer educational and professional examinations will take note and do likewise. The National Federation of the Blind stands ready to fight for the rights of blind students and aspiring professionals and to make sure that this ruling is faithfully followed."
According to the ruling, Ms. Enyart established that screen reader software, which speaks text on the screen out loud and/or magnifies it visually, is her primary reading method and the way she took most of her law school examinations.
The court upheld the validity of a Department of Justice regulation, promulgated pursuant to Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), requiring that "the examination is selected and administered so as to best ensure that when the examination is administered to an individual with a disability . . . the examination results accurately reflect the individual's aptitude or achievement level . . . rather than reflecting the individual's [disability]."
Read more of this article at : www.disabled-world.com/
Friday, November 27, 2009
Asperger's syndrome: Extradition a breach of Human Rights?
Gary McKinnon will be extradited to the United States on computer hacking chargesComputer hacker Gary McKinnon could be sent to the US within weeks after the Home Secretary refused to block his extradition.
Alan Johnson finally dashed hopes that the Government would intervene in the case, insisting there was no evidence that the extradition would breach Mr McKinnon's human rights.
Mr McKinnon's mother, Janis Sharp, said ministers should "hang their heads in shame" for the "barbaric" decision.
His legal team is to apply for a judicial review within days, but Ms Sharp warned that if that was not granted then her son could be extradited by Christmas.
Mr McKinnon, who has Asperger's syndrome, faces up to 60 years in jail for hacking into Pentagon computers soon after the 9/11 terror attacks. He says he was looking for evidence of UFOs.
He and his family, who have led a high-profile campaign to block the extradition, were given hope last month when Mr Johnson agreed to study new medical evidence. The Home Secretary's deliberations came after the High Court refused the 43-year-old permission to appeal to the Supreme Court against his removal.
But Mr Johnson said in a statement: "I have carefully considered the representations in the case of Gary McKinnon. I am clear that the information is not materially different from that placed before the High Court earlier this year and does not demonstrate that sending Mr McKinnon to the United States would breach his human rights.
"As the courts have affirmed, I have no general discretion. If Mr McKinnon's human rights would be breached, I must stop the extradition. If they would not be breached, the extradition must go ahead."
Mr McKinnon's family say that his health has deteriorated significantly under the pressure of the pending extradition and fears about how he will be treated by the US authorities. There are fears that he may even commit suicide.
Ms Sharp said: "To force a peaceful, vulnerable, misguided UFO fanatic like Gary thousands of miles away from his much-needed support network is barbaric. This is a cruel and miserable decision. If the severity of Gary's medical condition isn't sufficient to prevent his extradition, I can't imagine what is. God help others facing a similar fate. I'm so upset and angry."
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