Hi, and happy Sunday :)

If you live in the US, please take a minute to help fix a major flaw in American deaf education: confusion over the concept of Least Restrictive Environment (LRE) for deaf and hard of hearing kids.

Right now, OSERS (the federal office that oversees IDEA) is taking public comments on how states report the progress of kids with IEPs (SPP/APR.) This includes how school districts report on LRE for deaf and hard of hearing children. This is our chance to help get the feds to clarify that for dhh students, LRE doesn’t mean “keep them in the district at all costs.”

It’s going to take a bit more work than just copy/pasting a pre-made form letter, but a little effort will make a huge difference.

How to write your comment on LRE

Regulators want responses that are specific, personal, and focused on results—cookie-cutter comments won’t do it. So I stole some tips from CEASD (tweaked for us civilians) to help you write your most effective comment:

Make it personal: talk about you or your child’s experiences dealing with LRE, or what you see as a teacher of deaf children. Name your state / region and the situation there.

My name is William Fertman, and my son Oscar was born profoundly deaf. Here in Northern California, lots of kids like him are prevented from going to our local school for the deaf (CSD Fremont) because districts don’t consider it the least restrictive environment. This happened to many of my son’s peers and it is a huge problem.

Make it specific: Say exactly what should change.

When deaf and hard of hearing children are mainstreamed in their home districts, surrounded by hearing students, they are often isolated. Because most communication is filtered through an interpreter or through imperfect hearing devices, they can struggle to access the curriculum and participate in typical school activities. It can be VERY restrictive, and it seriously harms dhh student outcomes.

LRE for dhh students should be defined as the place where there are the fewest barriers to communication, education, and socializing. For kids like mine, a bilingual program or school where ASL is used as the language of instruction, and where a critical mass of students and teachers are deaf or fluent ASL users, is clearly the least restrictive environment.

Focus on results: Make if-then, cause-and-effect statements:

Because we were able to persuade our district (Berkeley Unified) that the state school for the deaf was LRE, my son is thriving, and fluent in both ASL and English. He is entered 2nd grade this year reading at a 4th grade level, and continues to excel in math and other topics, too.

Cite research (if you can): it helps, but it’s optional for normal schmoes like us.

Boston University released a study in 2024 that shows deaf kids who get access to ASL-based preschool before age 3 have later academic scores that look like typical hearing kids. This shows that for deaf kids, LRE is all about access to language: Finton, E., Hall, W. C., Berke, M., Bye, R., Ikeda, S., & Caselli, N. (2024). Age-Expected Language and Academic Outcomes for Deaf Children With Hearing Caregivers. The Journal of Special Education. https://doi.org/10.1177/00224669241257699

Comments close this Friday, May 22, so please take a moment to help out before then.

Here’s the link to the comment form.

Thanks,

Will

PS: my regular newsletter will be out this week, too, but post your comment to OSERS first!