Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm looking for a special education advocate and wanted to see if anyone had a recommendation.

Can you share what district? Or whether you are in DC, MD, or VA? And also the disability? Are you looking for an attorney or a special education consultant?

+1 Can't make a recommendation without this info.

Joan Proper.

We heard good things about Belkowitz Law and did a consult. Liked who we met with, and rates were competitive. However, the attorney was definitely pushing us into the due process hearing process before discussing alternatives. This was a bit of a red flag bc we know that process can coat $100k or more and results aren’t guaranteed.

Did not have a good experience with Brownley Group, but could have been limited to our situation bc we know they are recommended often. Expensive, lack of transparency with billing and lots of charges with no results.

I'd recommend Laura Solomon, who we've used and is fantastic, but she is fully booked up and not taking new clients right now. Weinfeld Ed Group has some good folks there who can help. I've heard good things about them.

Michael Eig, lawforchildren.com

Anonymous wrote:Extremely passionate about her job. She will get your child everything s/he needs: https://www.sped-consulting.com/

I looked up her website. It's weird that it states that educational consultants have the ability to diagnose. That's just flat wrong. No they don't.

Anonymous wrote:I'm looking for a special education advocate and wanted to see if anyone had a recommendation.

Can you share what district? Or whether you are in DC, MD, or VA? And also the disability? Are you looking for an attorney or a special education consultant?

Extremely passionate about her job. She will get your child everything s/he needs: https://www.sped-consulting.com/

What is your kid's DX? I find some of them are better for certain things. We needed one familiar w/ kids with ED, for instance.

Be careful hiring a so called advocate. Anyone can call themselves an advocate and go into business. There's not an official qualifying body or certification to be an advocate. Our advocate didn't know the law so she didn't know how to advise us on protecting our kid's rights. If we had listened to her, we would have lost our kid's IEP. Thankfully I had enough sense to double check her advice, and learned it was wrong. So we dropped the advocate and hired a special ed lawyer instead. What a difference! Don't waste your time with an advocate unless they have specific expertise in your child's area of need or something like that. And even then be very careful. Non lawyers just don't know the law, as we learned the hard way, and they can do real damage. Hire an attorney instead.

If it is for MD- highly recommend https://educationteamallies.com

We have had great success with Bridget at Belkowitz Law in VA. We know others who have used other advocates at Belkowitz with success as well.

I'm looking for a special education advocate and wanted to see if anyone had a recommendation.