Taking Action: Higher Education, AUCD, and NCSL

Published March 30, 2009 @ 04:00PM PT

The Association of University Centers on Disabilities has put together an action to Urge Congress to Fund Higher Education for Students with Disabilities. Background:

Last year Congress passed legislation to reauthorize the Higher Education Act--the Higher Education Opportunity Act. This law includes sweeping new provisions intended to expand access to higher education to students with disabilities, including students with intellectual disabilities. In addition, the law contains provisions to improve the preparation of K-12 general education teachers and college faculty who prepare new teachers in special education and other shortage areas. However, these exciting new provisions require funding to be implemented.

The deadline for action is Wednesday, April 1, so if you're interested, act quickly!

The AUCD has a number of resources related to intellectual and developmental disabilities in policy, including a section on autism.

For additional autism-related policy information, the National Conference of Sate Legislatures has put up the NCSL Autism Legislation Database (link to database as well as background article and legislative glossary).

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Comments (1)

Dora, give me some anecdotes about how better funding is helping autistic people. I'm not challenging you. I just need to feel confident that the extra money will be spent wisely.
My lack of confidence comes from years only clueless, sometimes harmful programs for my kids.
When my daughter was in school, she had such a miserable time, I took her out. This dismayed a parent with a grown kid, telling me that her generation had worked so hard to get our kids to be able to exercise their rights to school so I needed to hang in there. I didn't have the temperament to hang in there and keep protecting my kids.
Now my son is having great success but it's not because anyone in the system "gets it." They just happen to be open minded enough to forget about their policies and programs, to allow my son to move forward on his terms. It doesn't cost anymore. It just takes school officials who put people first, not policies. We lucked out with this particular school.

Posted by B B on 03/30/2009 @ 04:50PM PT
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Author

Dora is committed to improving quality of life for individuals on the autistic spectrum--including herself! She is Co-director of the Academic Autistic Spectrum Partnership in Research and Education and a member of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network's Board of Directors.