Making School Work, P.L.
A Private Law Firm
Make School Work for Your Disabled Child
Did you ever wish you had someone to sit on your side of the table? Not just a lawyer. Not just someone with first-hand experience teaching kids with disabilities. But also a passionate advocate for your child’s needs. Well, you’ve finally found me. Allison Hertog, the firm founder, is one of only a handful of lawyers in the country who has a Masters degree in Special Education.
I founded Making School Work, P.L. because I struggled throughout my school years with multiple undiagnosed learning disabilities. I was retained in second grade and my disabilities were not accommodated nor even understood until my adulthood. My parents were told early on that I would never attend college. How wrong they were.
The mission of my law firm is to help South Florida children and young adults with autism, ADHD, learning and other disabilities to 1) obtain more and better services in public school, as well as accommodations for standardized tests; 2) choose the right school and; 3) navigate the process of attaining significant private school McKay Scholarships (special needs vouchers) for their disabled children. When parents work with me they get personalized attention and a passionate advocate who does not get intimidated and will not give up on your child. A huge part of what I do is to bring the vast resources and expertise of the nation’s fourth largest school district – Miami-Dade – to the disposal of your child at special education meetings.
To find out more about Ms. Hertog, read the November, 2012 interview in the 2E Newsletter, a national publication for parents of twice exceptional children which won the National Parenting Publications Award. Also see reviews by former clients on Avvo.com here.
Don’t Let Your School Get Away with Denying an Evaluation to Your Child
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Every so often the government takes a powerful stance on the side of the less powerful. January 21, 2011 was one of those moments. On that date the United States Department of Education released a memo to the State Directors of Special Education stating that [...]
Can A Child with Behavior Problems Survive in a Typical Classroom?
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This issue is really getting to me lately. It seems I have several clients right now who have bright kids who are perfectly capable of doing well in a general education classroom but for their behavior problems. The schools I’m dealing with often want to [...]
Bullying May Violate Disabled Child’s Civil Rights
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Bullying is a hot topic in the news lately as well it should. And as a special education attorney I hear about students with disabilities being bullied frequently. See this article from StopBullingNow.com and this site EyesonBullying for good advice about what [...]
Even If You Could Get a 1:1 Aide, Here’s Why You May Not Want One.
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I hear it less now than I used to, but parents still routinely ask whether I can help their child get a 1:1 aide (meaning a paraprofessional who is ostensibly hired only to support a single child). My first response is that it’s always been very difficult, but [...]
Can that IQ be Right? Autism and IQ
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More and more often I am advocating for children on the autism spectrum who are achieving at or above grade level, but whose IQ scores show them to have below average or even mentally deficient intelligence levels. The IQ score is supposed to represent a person’s [...]
Finally, Some Good News for Gifted and Disabled!
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One of the most challenging and infuriating areas in which I practice is advocating for the gifted and disabled (called “twice exceptional”) these days. I feel particularly passionately about these cases because I fall into the category of twice exceptional (I [...]
Charter Schools Have a Great Opportunity to Serve Sped Students Well
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As many of you may have heard, last spring the U.S. Government Accountability Office issued a study concluding that charter schools enroll a lower percentage of special education students than traditional public schools. The latest is that the U.S. Department of [...]
Testing Makes McKay Scholarships Accountable to Parents – a post from the redefinED Blog
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In Robyn Rennick’s post on Florida’s McKay Scholarships for Students With Disabilities last week, she argued that standardized testing measures are “inappropriate,” even “cruel,” for disabled children due to their diverse levels of achievement and in some cases [...]
Can the ADA Help Your Child in School? Yes, Now More Than Ever!
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If you’re reading this blog, you’ve probably heard of the ADA – Americans with Disabilities Act – that’s the landmark piece of civil rights 1990 legislation which requires wheelchair accessible bathrooms, for instance. But what you may not know is whether the ADA [...]
