By Christina A. Samuels in Education Week (subscription required):

With a heightened focus on Down syndrome and autism this campaign season, some advocates are worried that attention is being pulled away from efforts to find common ground among disability groups.

The issue is of particular concern in education, because many of the accommodation, inclusion, and differentiated-instruction efforts in schools have the potential to cut across several diagnostic boundaries.

… Grouping by disability categories is important, but so is working together, said Barbara Trader, the executive director of TASH, formerly known as The Association for the Severely Handicapped, an advocacy organization in Washington that represents people with many different disabilities.

People may not be aware of how much they have in common with other families. “The navigation of the service system is something that is shared by everybody,” Ms. Trader said.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 16th, 2008 at 1:30 pm and is filed under advocacy, autism, Campaign 2008, Down syndrome, law. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.