“It was a story that, if true, was certainly alarming,” wrote F.A.I.R’s Neil DeMause. Parents in Appalachia were pulling their disabled kids out of literacy classes, fearing “that if their kids learned to read, it would disqualify them from receiving monthly $698 disability checks from the federal government’s Supplemental Security Income program.”
DeMause has found a number of places where this story is being bruited: The New York Times, NPR, the Washington Post. Turns out, though, that it’s mostly… fiction. Read DeMause’s story: Disabled Are New Target for Charges of Cheating (F.A.I.R.)