About Us:Achievements
After 30 years of work, it's not easy to select just a few highlights - but here's a brief summary of ELC's achievements.
Access to school. What happens inside a school doesn't matter to the child who can't even get through the door. From the beginning, ELC has been committed to eliminating barriers to school enrollment. Only a couple of decades ago, for example, Pennsylvania law actually allowed schools to shut their doors to a child living in a foster home if (as was often the case) the child's birth parents lived in another district. ELC got that law declared unconstitutional, together with another one that discriminated against children living in institutions. Later, we persuaded the state to adopt new rules speeding up the enrollment process for all children, and eliminating discrimination against immigrant students. Most recently, when we found that over 10,000 children in mental health "partial hospitalization" programs were getting little or no instruction for months on end, we demanded action from government agencies; a solution is in the works.
Children with special needs. The federal Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975 promised a new day for children with disabilities. Turning words into reality, however, has been a struggle. ELC brought some of the first cases to challenge the practice of putting children on "waiting lists" for service. As the years passed, new issues arose - the right to inclusion, the availability of therapies and support services, the right to an extended school year, early intervention for children below school age, access to vocational education, the problems faced by families of children with complex needs. ELC has litigated precedent-setting cases and fought for policy changes in every one of these areas - and many more.
The needs of children whose native language is not English are, obviously, different - but here too, change has involved a lot of hard work. ELC brought the second case in the nation on behalf of Asian refugee children who needed special services in school. More recently, ELC became concerned about Pennsylvania's failure to ensure that all English language learners have access to the services they need. Because of advocacy by ELC and others, the requirements are now clearer, "English as a Second Language" teachers must have training, and some funding is available for services to these children.
School funding and "achievement gaps." Pennsylvania's antiquated school funding system has the result that wealthy districts typically have all the facilities and staff that their children need - while property-poor districts operate with high class sizes, poorly-supported teachers, outdated technology and crumbling buildings. In the mid-'90s, through our Pennsylvania School Reform Network project, we began a massive effort to galvanize public concern about this problem. We have issued reports, persuaded newspapers to run editorials, got candidates for office to speak to the issue, supported new legislation, and joined with many other organizations to keep up a steady drumbeat for change. While the problem is not yet solved, it is now at least "on the radar screen" in Harrisburg and around the state; and some steps have been taken to provide more funds to poor districts.
As academic standards and statewide tests were put in place in the 1990's, the fact that many of Pennsylvania's children are achieving at low levels came into sharp focus. In response, ELC has been active in helping numerous citizen and community groups make sense of the data and advocate for changes at the local level. At the state level, ELC has been a voice in favor of strengthening preparation requirements for teachers, and ensuring that all teachers learn the skills necessary to serve a wide diversity of children. And, of course, ELC has continued to join groups from around the state in advocating for the funds that schools desperately need in order to narrow achievement gaps.
And much, much more. ELC has stood up for fair treatment of children who get into trouble at school, bringing cases to establish the right to a fair hearing, the right not to be punished by school authorities for behavior that had nothing to do with the school, and so forth. ELC has also litigated the rights of children in juvenile and correctional facilities to educational programs. In the child welfare system, ELC helped to establish that a child having difficulty in school cannot simply be declared "dependent" - i.e., without proper parental supervision - if the difficulties may be connected to special needs that the school should be addressing. And we could go on - but we're out of space.
It has been a rewarding 30 years. We are grateful to all of those who have worked with us on these and other issues, and we look forward to many more years of work together.