Schools shouldn't have to choose between serving a student with special needs or cutting an art class, laying off teachers or using outdated textbooks. But these are the positions that far too many schools have been placed in, and only a meaningful acknowledgment of the problem can begin the process of getting them out.

As I grew up, I became aware that there are people with special needs out there, and I have a real connection with them.

Like all good citizens, the elderly and people with disabilities want to eradicate waste and fraud from government, but helping people with special needs meet their basic needs doesn't fit this description.

I left school with basically nothing, I was a special needs kid. I did feel as though my school had let me down.

By growing up at a center for people with special needs, I learned to always fight hard to achieve what I want. In this regard, I was incredibly lucky.

Sometimes even the greatest joys bring challenge, and children with special needs inspire a very, very special love.

Low-income people, racial or ethnic minorities, pregnant women, seniors, people with special needs, people in rural areas - they all have a much harder time accessing a dentist than other groups of Americans.

When I was in primary school I was in a special needs group, which is the polite way of saying the dopey kids.

I definitely want to have a career in the TV/film industry, as I love acting, but if it all goes to pot, I want to set up a performing arts school for children with special needs.

When you see the poet laureate saying that every child should have read 'Ulysses' and that you're just giving up on children if you think it's elitist - does that include children with special needs or whose first language isn't English?

I will say, in open adoption, all these choices you make about race, about the amount of mental illness you can deal with, about special needs and physical maladies, you have to lay all this out there before you know anybody's story.

Chapter 11 is an expensive process that does not accommodate the special needs of farmers.

Working with special needs children is hard.

It's very, very, very, very difficult, you know any parent with children with any kind of special needs is very difficult.

What happens when kids don't have glasses - they get bored in class. They disengage and they may be disruptive. They may be misdiagnosed for A.D.D. or put in special needs classes.

I have started up the Jordan Spieth Family Foundation. My little sister has special needs, so I started out trying to help kids with special needs. We have moved on to military now and a third pillar in junior golf, trying to help grow it back home.

I don't think most people understand that when I wasn't running for president, I was working. Because I have to earn income. I have three kids in college. And three in school. And I have a little girl that has a lot of special needs. So I've got to work for a living. I was working already.

Like so many other kids with special needs, I have been bullied. Kids in elementary school made me eat sand, and those same boys would walk behind me, teasing me. Finally I had enough, and I told them to grow up.

As a mom, you worry about protecting your kid. But there are extra added layers of fears when you're talking about a kid with autism or who has some special needs issue.

I worked for a while as a teaching assistant while I was struggling. I really enjoyed it, working with kids with special needs, autism. It takes a hell of a lot of concentration, and you've got to focus on the child properly for seven hours a day.