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Jamie Carpenter
Greg Hutchings
Bronwyn MacFarlane
Holly Richard

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Travis Burns
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Presentation On Special Education

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Jamie Carpenter

IDEA

Early Intervention and other special education programs exist as a result of a long process to improve education for children with special needs. In 1975, Congress enacted the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (Public Law 94-142) to support states and localities in protecting the rights of, meeting the individual needs of, and improving the results for infants, toddlers, children and youth with disabilities and their families (Ballard, J. & Zettel, J., 1977).

In the 1997 Individuals with Disabilities Education Act Amendments it is written that “Disability is a natural part of the human experience and in no way diminishes the right of individuals to participate in or contribute to society. Improving educational results for children with disabilities is an essential element of our national policy of ensuring equality of opportunity, full participation, independent living, and economic self-sufficiency for individuals with disabilities” (Bolick, 2001).

Before the date of the enactment of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975 (Public Law 94-142) the special educational needs of children with disabilities were not being fully met and more than half of the children with disabilities in the United States did not receive appropriate educational services that would enable them to have full equality of opportunity (Levine, E.L. & Wexler, E., 1981).

Over a million children with disabilities in the United States were excluded entirely from the public school system and did not attend public schools with their peers. There were many children with disabilities participating in regular school programs whose disabilities went undetected. And because of the lack of adequate services within the public school system, families were often forced to find services outside of the system, often at a great distance from their homes and at a great expense.

Before Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975, schools educated only one in five children with disabilities, and many states had laws excluding certain students, including children who were deaf, blind, emotionally disturbed or mentally retarded (Ballard, J., Ramirez, B.A., Weintraub, F.J., 1982). Before IDEA, the fate of many children was left to state institutions where clothing and shelter was minimally provided, but where access to education was almost non-existent.

Progress was slow in initial Federal response efforts. These included Federal legislation that provided services and improved the conditions of children with disabilities. The Training of Professional Personnel Act of 1959 (Public Law 86-158) helped train educators in implementing instruction to children who were mentally retarded (National Council on Disability, 2000).

Other Federal initiatives included the Captioned Film Acts of 1958 (Public Law 85-905), the Teachers of the Deaf Act of 1961 (Public Law 87-276), which trained teachers to work with deaf students and those who had hearing impairments. In 1965, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (Public Law 89-10) and the State Schools Act (Public Law 89-313) provided direct grants for educating students with disabilities. And in 1968, the Handicapped Children's Early Education Assistance Act (Public Law 90-538) supported programs such as Head Start to include children with disabilities in their curriculum (U.S. Department of Education, 1982).

Since the enactment of and implementation of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975, children with disabilities and their families have had access to appropriate public education and improving educational conditions (such as equal access to facilities). However, the implementation of the Act has been impeded by low expectations, and an insufficient focus on applying replicable research on proven methods of teaching and learning for children with disabilities (Reschly, 2000).

The Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975 (Public Law 94-142) has four purposes. They include:

• to assure that all children with disabilities have available to them…a free appropriate public education which emphasizes special education and related services designed to meet their unique needs
• to assure that the rights of children with disabilities and their parents are protected
• to assist states and localities to provide for the education of all children with disabilities
• to assess and assure the effectiveness of efforts to educate all children with disabilities (Education for All Handicapped Children's Act of 1975) (Reschly, 2000).

The Education for All Handicapped Children's Act of 1975 was a response to

Congressional concern for two major groups of children: the more than one million children with disabilities who were excluded entirely from public education and those who had limited access and therefore were denied appropriate education.

In 1997, an Act to amend the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) to reauthorize and make improvements to the act was presented at the first session of Congress. It was entitled Amendments to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and it sought to improve the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975 (U.S. Department of Education, 2000).

It sought to make improvements in areas where education for children with special needs was lacking. These included having higher expectations for children with special needs and ensuring their access to the best possible education; strengthening the role of parents and ensuring that the families of such children have meaningful opportunities to participate in the education of their children at school and at home; coordinating the Act of 1975 with other local, educational service agencies, state and Federal school improvement efforts in order to ensure that such children benefit from these efforts and that special education become a service for such children rather than a place where they are sent; providing appropriate special education and related services and aids and supports in the regular classroom to such children, whenever appropriate; and finally, supporting high-quality, intensive professional development for all personnel who work with special needs children in order to ensure that they have the skills and the knowledge necessary to enable them (Lyon, G.R., Fletcher, J.M., Shaywitz, S.E., Shaywitz, B.A., Torgesen, J.K., Wood, F.B., Schultz, A., & Olsen, R., 2001).

The Amendments of 1997 sought improvements in several areas. They included greater efforts are needed to prevent the intensification of problems connected with mislabeling and high dropout rates among minority children with disabilities (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act Amendments of 1997).

Other issues involved included expenditures. In the 1975 legislation, Congress authorized the Federal government to eventually pay for 40% of the extra per pupil expenditures involved in educating children with disabilities. Appropriations have never reached this authorized level, and the bulk of the costs for providing special education have fallen on local school districts. The Federal share of spending for special education was 12% (U.S. Department of Education, 2004).

In the 1980s, growing national concern for children with disabilities grew to include providing services from birth. The national concerns were reflected in several amendments for the Education for the Handicapped Act (EHA) and IDEA between 1975 and 1997. Amendments to the EHA (Public Law 101-476) in 1990 included changing the name of the EHA to Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) (McDonnell, L., McLaughlin, M., & Morison, P. (Eds.), 1997).

The reauthorization of IDEA in 2002 incorporated many changes due to the shortcomings of the 1997 Act (Public Law 105-17). The reauthorization Act states: “While states, local and educational agencies, and educational services agencies are primarily responsible for providing an education for all children with disabilities, it is in the national interest that the Federal Government have a supporting role in assisting State and local efforts to educate children with disabilities in order to improve results for such children and to ensure equal protection of the law” (Ahearn, E., 2001).

President Bush appointed a panel to review the shortcomings in the reauthorization act. In July of 2002, President Bush's Commission on Excellence in Special Education released a final report outlining the principles for special education reform. A list was compiled of the critical issues. In a summary paper remedies and concerns were listed as principles that should guide the reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which included focusing on reinforcing existing laws and avoiding statutory changes. Thomas Hehir, who served as the director of the Office of Special Education Programs in the U.S. Department of Education, and the author of the summary wrote: “Though some changes will be necessary to implement the recommendations contained in this paper, major changes should not be made at this time in the basic Part B program (the state grants program that specifies the requirements of the of the Act), as it relates to student programs and parent rights” (U.S. Department of Education, 2004).

The 1997 reauthorization made some major changes to Part B that went into effect when the regulations were promulgated in 1999, so changes were just beginning at that time to take effect. School systems and states needed greater assistance in implementing the Act. Restructuring grants to states to achieve specific goals while increasing funds to states were included in the 2002 Act (U.S. Department of Education, 2004).

Other revisions in the 2002 Act included incorporating principles of universal design in discipline provisions. Many schools complained that students with special needs did not have to adhere to school discipline standards as identified in their Individual Education Plan and therefore discipline was not equitable.

Paperwork reduction was included as well as loan forgiveness for special education and related services personnel. Expanding parent training centers and focusing the teacher-training programs on the adoption of “state of the art” practices were also included.

The core of the 2002 Act outlined the responsibilities of the Federal government declared that the appropriate role for Federal special education policy would 1) guarantee the core civil rights entitlements; 2) respond to variation of educational contexts; and 3) complement general education policy (U.S. Department of Education, 2004).

Although originally set for review in 2002, the reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA) did not take priority until the 108 th Congress in 2004 when it was finally passed. A bipartisan majority in the U.S. House of Representatives approved the bill on April 30, 2003. On November 19, 2004, the House approved the bill with bipartisan support (U.S. Department of Education, 2004).

The reauthorized Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) was signed into law on December 3, 2004, by President George W. Bush. The provisions of the act became effective on July 1, 2005, with the exception of some elements of the definition of “highly qualified teacher” that took effect upon the signing of the act.

In line with the recommendations of the President's Commission on Excellence in Special Education, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act will:

ensure school safety and reasonable discipline; give local schools more flexibility and greater control; move away from compliance with burdensome regulations and costly litigation, and reduce the paperwork burden on teachers; and expand choices and give parents more control over their children's education. The greatest drawback is the Federal assistance piece. Since IDEA was created the Federal response was to be 40% fiscally. It has yet to be anywhere close to this level of support, and it is unlikely that it will ever reach this amount.

Though there are drawbacks to IDEA 2004 (H.R.1350), children receive the long overdue benefits of programs like Early Intervention, with highly qualified therapists through public special education programs. Reform has been a long slow process, with many children losing out on educational opportunities in the past. Federal funding continues to lag behind. However, IDEA is making progress in educating children with special needs and these children can look forward to contributing to society as adults. Though many of the provisions have changed throughout the many public policies for educating children with special needs, the overriding theme is one of more programs for a broader range of ages, including Early Intervention and Infant Toddler programs, and representation of all children with special needs in the public school system.