SPECIAL learners By George Saunders There was a time when children with disabilities were routinely denied a public education. Often these children were turned away if the public school system was not equipped to educate them or the system simply did not want to expend the effort or incur the cost. They were never given a chance to learn and participate in society and, the shame of it is, many of them could have. The Education for All Handicapped Children Act and its successor, Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), set out to right this wrong. Today, IDEA protects children with disabilities and requires public schools to provide a Free and Appropriate Public Education (FAPE), with an Individualized Education Program (IEP), to prepare children with disabilities for further education, employment and independent living.
Special Education Advances Individualized Learning for All
The Burden of Compliance Although not perfect, the legislation has certainly made a difference. However, even today, delivering on IDEA is no easy feat. With government emphasis on compliance, everyone must work together to ensure the core process, dictated by regulations, is adhered to. Administrators and clerical staff are challenged to manage this complex process and negotiate the legal terrain to ensure that all steps are completed and documented on time. Districts are responsible for aggregating special education data and reporting regularly to the state, which in turn reports to the federal government. Failure to comply with regulations could result in loss of federal funding. It is costly not only to implement, monitor, and measure the process but also to deliver individualized services and instruction. This challenge is recognized by the federal government, which has the noble intention of funding up to 40 percent of special education, but today funds just 16.5 percent. State and local governments typically are asked to make up the difference. In fact, states are discouraged from reducing special education spending by the IDEA Maintenance of Effort provision, which seeks to protect students with disabilities from harmful budget cuts by forcing states to provide funding that is at least equal to the prior year’s spending. Ongoing Technological Revolutions in Special Education In the beginning, the process was managed with checklists and paper documents and filed in cabinets. It was difficult to expose compliance failures or aggregate data for analysis and state reporting. These tasks required a lot of time, resources, and manual coordination —leaving plenty of room for human error. In the early 1990s, software became available to help manage and automate regulatory requirements. Although commonplace today, special education administration software has revolutionized the management of special education. If it were solely about compliance, it would be a fairy tale ending. IDEA, though, was never intended to be about compliance but about leveling the playing field for students with special needs through personalized instruction and sufficient supports. This presents its own challenges, some of which may lead to the next revolution in special education that ultimately may
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WINTER 2014
SouthEast Education Network