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5 Top Parental Special Education Advocacy Tips to Benefit Your Child!

My top 5 advocacy tips:

1. Trust your instincts. If you think, your child has disabilities in certain areas trust yourself. No one knows your child like you do, and you are the best judge of what will help your child learn. It is my experience that special education personnel may try and tell you that your instincts are wrong, but only accept this, if there is concrete evidence to back it up. You are the only advocate that your child has, and they are depending on you to advocate for needed related and special education services.

2. Important educational issues need to be handled by letters not telephone calls or e mails, so that you can begin developing a paper trail for documentation, you may need in the future, to help you in a dispute with special education personnel. As far as sending e-mails to special education personnel, I do not like to use e-mail, as e-mails are kept in an electronic record, and not in the child’s written educational record.

If you have a verbal conversation with school personnel and want to document the conversation, you can always write a short letter to the person that you had the conversations with. Try and keep the letter to one page, date it, and give a summary of the conversation. Also, keep a copy for yourself.

3. If special education personnel say something that does not sound right to you, ask them: “Please show me in writing where in Federal or State law it states you have the right to do what you want to do or not do what I asked you to do to benefit my child’s education.” In my opinion, this is one of the most important advocacy skills that parents need to learn, because of the amount of misinformation that is given to parents. If school personnel cannot show you in writing from Federal or State law where it states they have the right to do something or do not have to do something you asked them to do, you know that they are not being truthful.

Use the same procedure if school personnel state that they have to do something, or cannot do something because it is school policy-ask to see the policy in writing, and also ask for a transcript of the board meeting where the policy was passed.

4. If your school district evaluates your child for disabilities and states that your child does not have any disabilities (even though you believe they do), and is not eligible for special education services, you have the right to an Independent Educational Evaluation (IEE) at public expense (which means that the school district pays for it). You must disagree with the school’s evaluation, (could be over the actual testing, the areas tested, the interpretation of the testing, the findings and conclusion of the testing, etc) to be able to receive and obtain an IEE at public expense.

5. Educate yourself on all laws related to special education and disabilities and requirements so that when your school district tries to say things that are not truthful, you have the information to stand up to them, for the benefit of your child. Learn about State Complaints, Mediation and Due Process to help you resolve any disputes that you have with special education personnel.

By following my top five tips you will well be on your way to successfully advocating for needed services for your child!

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How Will You Start Up an Internet Home Based Business?

Many people today are looking for best alternative ways to earn money. As our economy is declining each year many companies were closed and we as employee are very much affected on it. Before it will happen we should find ways to have income at our own risk through home based business.It is an effective alternative way from an employed person at a certain company. Aside from a boss at your own business you will just invest a little capital on it. Like buying a computer set and install internet at home because it will be the main source of your internet home based business. Here are some tips and ideas on how to start it.*Affiliate Marketing
As a start you don’t have any product yet that is why affiliate marketing would be a great help of you. Because you don’t have to think of a certain product and services because they will be the one who will provide it. All you have to do is promote those products and get commissions through it. Effective affiliate companies are ClickBank and PPC (pay per click) marketing.*Blogging
It is a chronologically based website filled with articles, reviews, or journal-style writing. You can earn money through this by copywriting, social networking, affiliate marketing, web marketing. If you are more knowledgeable on how to enhance those skills then probably you will earn money more than you expected. Study, learn and gather all ideas on how to improve it. Through extreme practice you will surely become professional on this field.*eBay and Auction Selling (a web-based business ideas)
Selling or reselling products via an online marketplace like eBay, Amazon Auctions, or Craigslist. You can sell used goods, buy goods wholesale, or use a drop-shipping service. If you are knowledgeable enough in merchandising, copy writing and most important costumer service will then probably make you become successful on this field.*E-Commerce
It is a selling products or a technology-based service on your own website. Gather all the ideas you learned from the start and apply it in doing this e-commerce method for a great result.*Arts and Crafts
It is a great chance to make your own products and services. Creating and manufacturing your own product lines and selling them online. If you have passion in creativity then it will be so easy to you in making unique products that will be hit in an online market. Sales ideas and techniques is also needed in this business that is why if you are a business minded person then you will be getting closer to top.*Internet Research Business
Doing internet research for corporations, law firms and other small businesses. You will learn lots of ideas through this research and be able to meet a start up business and corporations that will help you organize well.*Freelance Services
In this kind of business, you are just not focusing on one product only you have to offer services also to expand your business and especially earn more money through it. You will provide professional services such as copy writing, design, photography, and programming usually billed on an hourly rate. Enough knowledge is really acquire in this services. Because if your clients will satisfy your services then they will always looking for more services on you again and again.*Recruiting
Recruiting candidates for companies who pay a fee when a hire is made. Again sale performance is needed, relationship building towards them, and networking of course won’t be or never be rejected.*Consulting
Providing your specialized industry knowledge to corporations, entrepreneurs, investors or other businesses. Trade specific knowledge is very much important in this method and sales performance also.*Virtual Assistant
Providing administrative and business support to other business owners and small businesses. You really need a support from them in order to avoid big problem in running your home based business.

How Do I Start A Home Based Business?

There are probably thousands of home businesses you could choose, but how do you choose the right one? Well this article should help, you see I have already done all the investigations into finding a successful home business for you, so take note as I reveal the different types, which are scams? and whether there is a business model out there for YOU!So What Suits YOU? During your research you should really ask yourself what type of business would suit your lifestyle? I mean, lets say that you have children still at school, that could certainly rule out Forex or Commodity trading, as you must be able to monitor your trading screen pretty much ALL the time, AND THIS IS OBVIOUSLY NOT SUITABLE OR CONGUSIVE to the school run is it? So start by writing down EXACTLY what it is you want from your home business, what you enjoy and how much time you can commit to it, especially in the early days.Make sure that your business of choice is in an area which is of interest to you, working with something that you are passionate about will help you to discipline yourself to do whatever is necessary to succeed, and will help you soldier on when the inevitable roadblocks appear (and they WILL).Make sure the home based business you are thinking of starting is a legitimate one. Many MLM’s for example, in my opinion are bordering on the illegal, so do your due diligence, check out the owners, find out what their motives are, talk to the users of the systems and find out what the success ratio is.There are a lots of reviews posted around the Internet these days on just about everything you could think of, so utilise this resource and gather as much info as you can BEFORE making your decision.How Do I Start A Home Based Business?What about Support? One of the fastest ways to shorten the home business learning curve is to have access to, and the support of, a mentor. There are many home business systems out there which will promise you support and mentoring, but will dramatically fall short on this very important aspect, so another positive to look for is to ensure that any home business you are looking at starting gives you all of the support and training you will need to succeed, but more importantly provides you with the proof that they do, BEFORE you commit.What about cost? Even though running a home based business can be considerably cheaper to start than a traditional bricks and mortar business, there will still be costs, and anyone who tells you otherwise is talking nonsense.For example, you will need a Website and hosting, and you will probably need a marketing budget, as the fastest way for you to get results and start making money, will be to do some paid advertising. But this will really be a decision only you can make based on how quickly you need to see a return on your investment. There are many FREE marketing strategies you can use as well, but these tend to be more long-term, and WILL NOT produce big results quickly. I recommend implementing both free and paid marketing personally.How Do I Start A Home Based Business?Finally, you simply MUST Create a business plan. You know the old adage “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail”, and this is very true. I have seen many businesses fail simply because they did not have a strategy to work with and therefore could not measure how they were doing. So set-up a plan for your home based business and follow through with it. Again when deciding what business system to invest in, check out the advice you are given on this subject and use this as part of your criteria when making your decision. Any legitimate home based business system SHOULD have within their support program, ALL the advice you would need to help you to create a good business plan to suit YOU.I would like to leave you now with a final piece of advice. Follow your plan through and take consistent daily action. Many people have the right idea and start out with the right intent, but fail to take the necessary actions. And remember that a business, whether it’s a home based business or not cannot succeed overnight.Nothing about running your own home based business will be easy, but if you take my advice and stick to it YOU WILL improve your chances of success a hundredfold.All the best.
-Jon

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