The Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates (COPAA) is an independent, nonprofit, §501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization of attorneys, advocates and parents, whose primary mission is to secure educational services for children with disabilities. COPAA is premised on the belief that the key to effective educational programs for children with disabilities is collaboration as equals by parents and educators. This is the premise of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and Section 504 of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act, the federal statutes that guarantee children with disabilities a free appropriate public education.
But IDEA and state laws all recognize that parents and educators may differ on how to achieve a meaningful education for a child with disabilities. For this reason, these statutes also provide an extensive system of procedural safeguards, consisting of a right to design an Individualized Education Program (IEP) which will provide an opportunity for meaningful educational benefit, and in the event of a serious dispute over the IEP, the statutes provide for mediation and administrative and judicial mechanisms for resolution of disputes.
Effective use of the IDEA, Section 504 and state procedural safeguards, may require the assistance of a knowledgeable advocate or counsel to develop an Individualized Education Program (IEP) that is appropriate, as well as when serious disputes arise. However, despite popular belief, the fact is that competent advocacy and legal assistance is not widely available in most states.
Few attorneys are familiar with special education law and many who have taken up the challenge are sole practitioners or small firm attorneys, unable to commit the time and invest in the resources required to gain an expertise. And even where such assistance is available, a substantial number of parents, whose economic stability is often jeopardized by the financial stress of having a child with a disability, simply cannot afford to pay for it. In sharp contrast, most school districts either have in-house legal counsel or ready access to attorneys who specialize in special education law, and the financial resources to withstand and prolong IEP disputes and litigation.
