Insured To Fail EDU

Welcome Ann Gradman ! Ann is the Founding Executive Director of ⁠⁠The Academy NJ⁠⁠ school in Holmdel, New Jersey, and the founder of ⁠⁠Anchor Literacy & Learning⁠⁠ where she leads literacy-focused evaluations and instruction. This episode shifts the conversation from what’s broken to what’s possible. Through the lens of an educator who stepped outside the system after 25 years, we explore the...

Episode 4: Parent o/b/o Student v. The System with Stacey Klein What looks like a dispute between one family and one district quickly reveals something much bigger: a coordinated infrastructure of legal defense, professional associations, insurance-backed litigation, controlled public narratives, and taxpayer-funded systems built to protect institutions. Joined by Minnesota fellow overqualified mo...

Welcome, Maren Peterson! In this episode, Maren examines how state complaint systems absorb noncompliance without correcting it. Through her detailed case out of Oregon, we trace how years-long investigations, shifting standards, suppressed findings, and retaliation leave families with no meaningful remedy - long after a child has left school. The result is an oversight process that protects insti...

Insured to Fail EDU , hosts Kai Collins and Shannon Peterson examine why access to education through due process is, in practice, limited to families who can withstand prolonged legal conflict. Districts are institutionally funded and insured to endure litigation. Families are not. The imbalance is structural. Rushing into due process is often the most costly mistake we can make—especially when th...

Every day, families trust that when they raise concerns, schools respond in the best interest of children. But what if the real decisions shaping those responses aren’t being made in the classrooms? In this opening episode of Insured to Fail EDU , hosts Kai Collins and Shannon Peterson pull back the curtain on the systems most families never see. We follow a familiar story, a struggling student, w...