Education Law Center
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Improving Pennsylvania's Education Policies

The Education Law Center interacts every day with families throughout Pennsylvania asking how to protect the rights of their children to receive an opportunity to learn and succeed in school. We focus our efforts on helping to improve educational opportunities for children facing the greatest barriers in school — students with disabilities, learning English, living in poverty, or in the foster care or juvenile justice systems.

 

ELC has operated statewide for more than three decades as a nonprofit legal advocacy and educational organization. Our work falls into three major areas:

 

  • Making sure that all children have access to school and school programs
    We work to eliminate practices that make it difficult or impossible for a child to enroll in school, or that deny children access to school programs on the basis of disability, English language learner status, homelessness, or other factors.

  • Providing families (and those who work with them) reliable, understandable information about education laws and policies
    Through publications, training materials, and training events, we try to de-mystify the rules and help people understand how to deal with common problems.

  • Improving schools
    We work with local and statewide groups on getting more funding for our neediest schools; making sure that teachers are prepared to meet the needs of diverse learners; promoting programs of positive behavior support in schools; and more.

Some of our current initiatives include analysis of Governor Corbett's 2013-14 state education budget proposal; testimony on the quality of Pennsylvania's existing cyber charter schools; and work at the federal level to ensure school stability for student in foster care.

 

If you have further questions, contact either Brett Schaeffer (bschaeffer@elc-pa.org or 215-238-6970 x 3334) or Sandy Zelno (szelno@elc-pa.org or 412-255-6414).

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