TIGER
Training and Organizing
Learning Rights Law Center “Training Individuals for Grassroots Education Reform” (TIGER) Program – A Multidisciplinary Approach to Education Advocacy
The Learning Rights Law Center is concerned with systemic change—getting to the roots of the problem. It accomplishes this by coordinating the efforts of students, families, school personnel, courts, health professionals and concerned community members in a unified movement to improve education in the communities of Los Angeles County. Given the profound failure of California schools -- particularly in Los Angeles County -- to provide meaningful educational benefit to students with disabilities, difficulties, and those who are poor or represent racial minorities, it is a long time coming for legal advocates to rally around this issue as a primary priority. We hope to create a model that can be replicated throughout the state of California and eventually other states to create school systems in which all children can thrive, gain meaningful educational benefit, and become productive and independent adults.
Teaching Parents and Families
A parent is a child’s best advocate so LRLC offers “Hands-On, Self-Advocacy Training for At-Risk Communities,” an intensive program that teaches parents about education rights and provides them with practical skills to advocate for their children. A pilot program with 10 families was begun in December 2005 with and the program continues with the support from the Capitol Group Companies Charitable Foundation.
The program uses a multidisciplinary approach to self-advocacy training. Ms. Tisa Jimenez, Loyola Marymount University Special Education Professor works with Learning Rights to design and teach the program.
Feedback from parents is used to refine the materials, and at program completion parents are asked to evaluate specific ways the training affected in their child’s educational outcomes. By working directly with families LRLC educates and empowers populations that are mostly overlooked and neglected by our current educational system. We have already begun to see transformations in the participants. One mother who rarely spoke or even looked up at the onset of training, recently stood up and made a presentation at a session.
The original 10 parents invited their friends and the program has grown to 45 families.
Teaching Service Providers and Attorneys
It is an unfortunate truth that some children, especially those in the child welfare or juvenile justice system, do not have parents to advocate for them. LRLC works to educate service providers and attorneys who represent youth in the court system about the laws governing education rights. In working with the Juvenile Court system and reporting relevant educational issues in dependency and delinquency proceedings, LRLC achieves positive outcomes for represented youth and simultaneously effectuates structural reform in the way Juvenile Courts conduct their business.
Teaching Future Teachers
In order to address the needs of education systemically, LRLC also works with local colleges and universities to train future teachers about student rights. LRLC recently began collaborating with the college of education at Loyola Marymount University (LMU). The goal is to use a cross collaborative model to create a curriculum and program that utilities teacher-credential candidates to teach parents self-advocacy skills. Using the legal
expertise and knowledge and experience of educational best practice teaching methods of LRLC attorneys and advocates, we hope to bridge the gap between parents and school districts.
Among other inter-disciplinary activities, Learning Rights will conduct mock IEPs this fall at Loyola in which education graduate students role-play being education advocates and parents of special needs students.
Learning Rights participated in a panel at Claremont School of Education about education advocacy.
Learning Rights is also in contact with California State University Northridge to participate in their transdisciplinary program in the School of Education.
Teacher and Collaborating with Medical Professionals
A component of Learning Rights medical-legal collaborative with Children’s Hospital is the training of physicians, social workers, and other treating professionals. Physicians are trained to identify patients with legal issues addressed by the program. As a referral source, the program encourages physicians to screen for issues they may have previously overlooked and that could impact the child’s well-being at school and during home recovery. The goal is for the medical and legal professions to more effectively interface, and to more seamlessly mutually support each other, to ensure quality outcomes for chronically ill children.
Teaching and Collaborating with Lawyers
Lawyers employed by private firms or businesses present a seemingly unending supply of pro bono manpower. Learning Rights trains lawyers, currently practicing in other areas of law, to serve as their “extra arm” of justice. Pro bono lawyers are provided with direct, hands-on training in order to be able to advocate for students with open legal issues. Together, under the supervision of Learning Rights staff, pro bono lawyers provide many of the same services that Learning Rights interns and law clerks would otherwise provide. These services include helping parents organize their education records into a streamlined legal file, issue spot procedural violations of law, draft persuasive letters to school or administrators to express their children’s unique needs and request services, and helping parents create strategic case plans for IEP meetings or mediations. Learning Rights is currently working with attorneys from Morrison and Foerster, California Edison, Trabor and Vorhees, Legal Aid Foundation San Francisco, Disability Rights Legal Center and Public Counsel.
Teaching Individuals WhoWork with Court Involved Youth
Learning Rights frequently presents educational seminars at conferences attended by various practitioners, lawyers, CASAs, child welfare and juvenile justice staff, and school or clinical psychologists. These conferences include the annual court Partnership Conference, the Children’s Law Center Mental Health Summit, and the Learning Disabilities Association conference. Additionally, Learning Rights staff are frequent guest speakers at education rights, street law, and juvenile justice classes at the USC School of Law, the UCLA School of Law, and the Loyola School of Law.