About Us
ACE is a California Non-Profit Public Benefit Corporation.
OUR MISSION
THE PROBLEM
Disabled students have a 40% national drop out rate and are not graduating with the skills that American compulsory public education promises every child. Disabled children are all too often left behind despite the promises of No Child Left Behind. Many students face unique sets of disabilities requiring individualized services and systematic treatment to ensure success in school and produce functional adult behavior. All too often, special needs students are thrown into one-size-fits-all programs providing instruction that many students are not able to benefit from and systematically denied procedurally lawful treatment in order to save school district money.
School failure often results in drop-outs. School failure and dropping out of high school are the highest ranked correlates of crime, imprisonment, welfare recipiency and poverty. Jean Stewart and Marta Russell report that “Rates of learning disability are spectacularly high among prisoners; in studies conducted among incarcerated juveniles, learning disabilities have been estimated to occur in up to 55 percent of youth nationwide; in one single-state study, 70 percent of youth qualified for special education. As for mental disabilities, in California anywhere from one-sixth to one-fourth of prisoners are believed to have diagnosable “serious mental disorders.” Most stunning of all is a four-state study which examined juveniles imprisoned for capital offenses; virtually 100 percent of those studied were multiply disabled (neurological impairment, psychiatric illness, cognitive deficits), having suffered serious central nervous system injuries resulting from extreme physical and sexual abuse since early childhood” (2001, Volume 53, Issue 03 (July-August)/Disablement, Prison, and Historical Segregation). Furthermore, According to Caroline Wolf Harlow Ph.D., Bureau of Justice Statistician, 68% of state prisoners do not have a high school diploma, 59% of all prisoners have a speech disability, and 66% have a reported learning disability.
Are schools are creating future prisoners and welfare recipients? When children attending compulsory education insitutions do not get the help they need from the adults entrusted to lawfully deliver a Free and Appropriate Public Education to children with disabilities, futures are shaped that funnel children into adult roles as participants in government corrections and social services institutions.
WORKING TOWARD CHANGE
On an individual level, some relief is provided to some families through advocacy. However, working parents, very low-income parents, and parents lacking educational skills fall through the cracks because they either can't afford advocacy or can't utilize their rights. Our approach side-steps income and educational issues by:
OUR BOARD
ACE Consultants provide:
We do this by
ACE Special Education Consultants
GETTING STARTED
Our Executive Director and Lead Advocate: Brenda Rogers MA/ABD | Executive Director / Advocate
Brenda earned her Bachelors Degree in Criminology, Law and Society in 1998 from UC Irvine, a Masters Degree, from UCI, in 2001 and advanced to candidacy for a Ph.D. in sociology in 2003. Brenda has taught at several Southern California colleges and universities between 2001 and 2009 and has been advocating for disabled students since 1998. After founding Access Center in 2004, Brenda expanded her specialization from learning disabilities and hyperactivity, to emotional disturbances, developmental disabilities, speech and language disorders and Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). In 2005, Brenda created the IEP Game and has been training professionals and parents around the country in socio-legal educational advocacy with the IEP Game case analysis method.
Brenda has trained professionals and parents at: at the Consortium for Appropriate Dispute Resolution in Special Education, the International Learning Disabilities Association, The National Organization for Disorders of the Corpus Callosum, The Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, Orange County Social Services, LA County Housing Authority, UCLA Teacher Training Program, Orange County Foster Care Association, Yorba Linda School District, Costa Mesa Girls Inc., and the Americore Teacher Training Program.