Excerpt from: Special Education Law Blog (click for full article)
It pays to read those footnotes! I came across a doosey in a recent court decision. The topic involves acronyms.
In B.R. ex rel. K.O. v. New York City Department of Education 60 IDELR 102 (SDNY 01/26/2012) footnote number one was a real killer. The court said as follows:
" Unfortunately, '[t]his opinion, dealing as it does with the IDEA and practices thereunder, is replete with acronyms.' M.H. v. N.Y.C. Dep't of Educ. (M.H. II), 685 F.3d 217, 223 n.l (2d Cir. 2012). One suspects that regulators and bureaucrats love such jargon because it makes even simple matters cognizable only to the cognoscenti and thus enhances their power at
the expense of people who only know English. Nevertheless, acronyms
have so invaded IDEA practice that this judge, like others before him,
is pretty much stuck with having to use them." OUCH!
This indictment of acronyms reminds me of a panel I saw at one of the
fabulous CADRE conferences a few years back. The panel was a success
story type of panel - young successful adults who had previously
been special education students. One criticism that was unanimous among
the panel members was that special ed professionals use too many
acronyms.
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