RespectAbility’s Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi on Empowering People with Disabilities

This week on “The Learning Curve," co-hosts Gerard Robinson and Cara Candal talk with Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi, President of RespectAbility, a nonprofit organization advancing opportunities so 57 million Americans with a disability can fully participate in all aspects of community. She shares her personal story struggling with dyslexia and ADHD, and what drew her to this cause. She reviews the various kinds of disabilities that people live with, and the strides our society is making to integrate and accommodate disabled citizens into everyday life. She offers thoughts on how well K-12 education generally serves students with special needs, and improvements she would like to see. She discusses how disabilities contribute to students’ achievement gaps in schools and colleges, and what can be done to educate people about and help remediate this. They also explore how assistive technologies and artificial intelligence can be used to help people with disabilities, and the importance of showing students with disabilities examples of great historical figures, heroes, and celebrities with disabilities who were able to accomplish remarkable feats and overcome their challenges.

Stories of the Week: 50CAN's Derrell Bradford connects the dots between election outcomes in New Jersey and Virginia and parents' dissatisfaction with their children's in-person learning time in those states. A Wittgenstein Centre report covered in EdNext shows just how significant a role educational advancement plays, especially among women, in raising the standard of living and civic engagement in developing countries.