I don’t like the phrase: “There is an achievement gap.”

In my years of working with teachers and administrators, I have come to believe that the gap is not achievements, as this is a false analogy.

If kids start on unequal footing before they are even given the chance to a achieve, than the gap is first and foremost a causality of a services gap.

I do not dismiss this.

As a student who grew up up receiving special education services, it has always been clear to me.

All students deserve an equal opportunity.

That does not mean that resources are always identically distributed. Quite the opposite is true. Sometimes students deserve more only because they are owed nothing less.

I would not have been able to progress through school and earn my diploma if it were not for those extra services that were reserved for students within the spectrum of disabilities.

As an LSC representative, I am often making funding priority decisions.

The question becomes: where can investments make the greatest impact on shrinking the services gap.

Prioritizing buses for students with disabilities only makes sense.

There is already a great disparity of services, across all types of student populations — lets fix them, let’s not exasperate them.

They Have to be at school because they rely on it more.