Welcome To Our Website
Our book can save you years of trial and error.
Parents do have the power to make special education work for their children. We spent 15 years working to obtain an appropriate education for our son, and we came through it with the goal of empowering other parents by sharing the knowledge we gained through our experience so that they don’t have to make the mistakes we made.
“Almost 30 years of experience has demonstrated that the education of children with disabilities can be made more effective by strengthening the role and responsibilities of parents” — U.S. Department of Education
Parents Have the Power to Make Special Education Work is like having a trusted, knowledgeable friend to guide you along each step of your journey through special education. —Pam and Pete Wright, authors of From Emotions to Advocacy
The Authors - Carson Graves and Judith Canty Graves
We are parents, not educators, lawyers, or clinicians. We spent 15 years in the special education system trying to obtain an appropriate education for our son. Through trial and error, success and failure, we managed to learn what it takes to navigate the bureaucratic maze and the often hidden agenda of school culture so that our son could receive the education he deserved and by law was entitled to. Our goal is to help other parents achieve similar results for their children.
We know the problems faced by parents, because we lived the entire experience of special education, keeping detailed notes along the way. Parents frequently don’t have the information and perspective to understand what is happening to their children in special education.
Carson Graves is the author of two books on photography published by Focal Press. After ten years teaching and writing about photography, he worked in the software industry for companies like Lotus Development, Interleaf, and Nuance, where he worked on Dragon Naturally Speaking, a speech recognition program for personal computers.
Judith Canty Graves is a photojournalist whose images and articles have appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, The Boston Globe, and The Charleston (WV) Gazette. She has also exhibited her photographs in New York City and the greater Boston area.
7% of the proceeds from purchases made through the publisher go to the Federation for Children with Special Needs.
