Writing laws is not an exact science. No matter how carefully crafted a piece of legislation is, it can have design flaws -- gray areas or big loopholes -- which lead to disputes, court cases and, often, decisions that obscure or pervert its intent. This is what's happened to the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). IDEA defines services for disabled children, a group whose educational needs used to be largely ignored, but there have been serious problems with a number of its important provisions. IDEA will be up for reauthorization soon, and Congress needs to fill in some blanks and rewrite some language in the law.
IDEA requires that youngsters with disabilities get a "free and appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment." What does that mean? It has generally been accepted that "least restrictive" depends on the nature of a particular child's disability, so a "continuum of placements" should be available. But now, advocates of "full inclusion" insist on a totally different interpretation of "least restrictive." They say it means that every child must be placed in a regular classroom, regardless of the nature and severity of the child's disability. Full inclusion is equated with fairness, but a one-size-fits-all approach is unfair to youngsters with disabilities, who differ greatly in what they need and can do. It is also unfair to the other kids in the class. By writing "continuum of placements" into the law, Congress can make sure that youngsters with disabilities are treated as individuals.
Those who created IDEA wanted to prevent kids with disabilities from being jerked around from one placement to another. But one of their tools, the "stay-put" provision, has turned out to be a nightmare for other students and teachers. According to "stay-put," once a child has been placed in a class, he can't be excluded because of behavior related to his disability for more than ten days a year without the consent of his parents or a formal hearing process that could take months. This means that a kid with a behavioral disorder who constantly disrupts the class -- or even assaults the teacher or other kids -- cannot be excluded. Congress can fix this problem by amending the law to allow responsible alternative arrangements for disabled students who are violent or disruptive until the issue of where they should be placed is resolved. Their rights can be protected without sacrificing the education of other students in the class -- some or all of whom may also be disabled -- or endangering their safety and that of their teachers.
The success of any placement depends to a large extent on the classroom teacher. Teachers who are going to work with disabled children must be adequately trained, but many teachers and paraprofessionals, particularly those in regular classrooms, are ill-prepared or unprepared to work with students who have disabilities.
IDEA needs to be amended to require that districts provide adequate training for all teachers who work with disabled students. A rewritten law should also authorize teachers to refer their students for services under IDEA. And it should specify that a child's teacher be part of the team writing the individual education plan and attend all meetings of the team. Except for parents, teachers know better than anybody else what a child needs. The child's teacher is also in the best position to know whether or not the services called for are actually being provided. The revised IDEA should allow teachers to report failure to provide services and offer protection to teachers who might hesitate to blow the whistle for fear of reprisal.
But a rewrite job alone, no matter how good it is, will not fix IDEA because lack of funding is as responsible for the distortion of the law as murky language. The services IDEA requires are very expensive -- New York State now spends 30 percent of all new education money on them -- but Congress has never come close to appropriating the 40 percent it promised. Many school districts have simply cut back their regular programs to pay for these unfunded mandates. And many districts are trying to control costs, under the pretext of inclusion, by dumping students with disabilities into regular classrooms without necessary supports for the youngsters or help for the teachers. This undermines the education of all students. And because regular programs have been cut back to pay for IDEA services, many kids who are identified as having learning problems, but who could normally get the help they need in a regular classroom, are pushed into special ed.
IDEA was intended to serve the best educational interests of students with disabilities without compromising the education of other students. Some serious attention from Congress, when the reauthorization comes up, will make it possible for IDEA to live up to this aim.