News & Media

02.18.2013 | City Limits | Many of the schools featuring special citywide programs, including many high schools, are simply unavailable to students with disabilities. "Physical accessibility to school buildings is way limited and therefore access to model programs that other students have is also limited," says Maggie Moroff, special education policy coordinator at Advocates for Children (AFC). "Most of the high schools I've visited are inaccessible. It's not based on whether it's a good program or bad program or sought-after program. If you can't get into the building, you can't get into the program."

Disabled students seem to also suffer poor academic outcomes. Statistics are only available for all special education students, which include students with learning and cognitive disabilities as well as physical ones, but the numbers are troubling. For the class of 2011, only 27.2 percent of students with disabilities graduated from high school by June of their fourth year. (This was an improvement over the 17.1 percent June graduation rate for students with disabilities in 2005, but still far below the 2011 graduation rate for non-disabled students of 66.9 percent.) One reason for this disparity may be material that is inaccessible to children with disabilities such as visual impairments. "We fight over and over again the battle for individual families to make the material accessible, to digitalize it, for example," says Moroff. "But why not generalize it so they don't have to reinvent the wheel every time?" Read article

02.14.2013 | NY1 | The DOE said that 2,300 students are signed up for the voucher program, but advocates said that many, like Adrian, struggle to actually use it. "There are a lot of problems," said Maggie Moroff of Advocates for Children. "First, they have to find a car service that will take their child." Few companies signed up. But when NY1 called each one to see if they could take a child to school the most common answer was no.... Adrian missed a month of class before Advocates for Children helped him get on a new school bus route. It's a 90-minute ride, but at least he knows he'll get there. Read article

02.11.2013 | New York Post | The threat of a prolonged strike also has advocates calling on the city to do more to help ensure that affected students — particularly those with the greatest challenges — are able to get to and from school. Despite the city’s attempts to disperse MetroCards and reimburse parents for driving or taxiing their kids to school, attendance at special-education schools has been relatively low.

“They’ve done a couple of small things . . . but they didn’t set anything up for many families that was going to work for them,” said Maggie Moroff, of Advocates for Children. She said that one family told her they tried calling 20 car services in The Bronx from a list provided by the Education Dept. before they found one that admitted being part of a prepaid ride program. “The frustration is that it’s all being put on the families and on the kids,” said Moroff. Read article

02.06.2013 | Gotham Schools | After negotiating with the Department of Education for over a week, lawyers at Advocates for Children persuaded the department on Friday to authorize Rodriguez for all four taxi rides it takes to accompany her daughter to and from school each day.

“This is an evolving policy of the Department of Education,” said Maggie Moroff, the special education policy coordinator at Advocates for Children. “Initially it was reimbursement only. Then it was pre-imbursement, but pre-imbursement for only the two trips where the child was actually in the car. Now under certain circumstances it covers all four, but that’s on a case-by-case basis. The policy is so evolving that this is the first week we’re actually seeing parents getting all four rides covered.” Read article