Barb McMillen's Just Sayin'

Reading List:

Boost for disabled kids
Twenty-Five Years of Progress in Educating Children with Disabilities Through IDEA
New Supreme Court decision woefully fails to address burden of special education costs and services

I have heard people say IDEA is out of date. That it presents an undue burden on the local schools. That the bill needs to be reconsidered. My fear is we all – schools and community members without special needs children forget what IDEA which was originally Public Law 94-142 was all about. 1975 really isn’t that long ago but our memories are very short.

What did we discover after the passage of that law? Well, the law said schools needed to search their communities to find and identify, test and assess handicapped children. Handicapped children were discovered locked in the basements and closets of private homes, and chained in cells in institutions where they were hosed down – kept in the dark and out of the public eye because they were an embarrassment, a burden, and an unknown entity.

After the Landmark decision, the search revealed these hidden children who, when brought out into the light, were discovered to have abilities and to be teachable.  Some were actually of normal intelligence. Some could be taught to talk and walk, to eat, to work, when taught by folks who had appropriate backgrounds.

Handicapped children benefited from having social lives, and so did the ‘normal children’ who were learning that normal had a range much broader than once thought.

“Before the enactment of Public Law 94-142, the fate of many individuals with disabilities was likely to be dim. Too many individuals lived in state institutions for persons with mental retardation or mental illness. In 1967, for example, state institutions were homes for almost 200,000 persons with significant disabilities. Many of these restrictive settings provided only minimal food, clothing, and shelter. Too often, persons with disabilities, such as Allan, were merely accommodated rather than assessed, educated, and rehabilitated. (See side bar: Allan’s Story.)”

A similar finding:

Public Law 94-142 was a response to Congressional concern for two groups of children: the more than 1 million children with disabilities who were excluded entirely from the education system and the children with disabilities who had only limited access “to the education system and were therefore denied an appropriate education. This latter group comprised more than half of all children with disabilities who were living in the United States at that time. These issues of improved access became guiding principles for further advances in educating children with disabilities over the last quarter of the 20th Century. “

Without this protection children with disabilities go back into hiding, go back to leading non-lives, wherein their talents are erased, wherein sexual neutering takes place, wherein they are locked up, locked out, hosed down and unfed. Wherein they are not accessed and uneducated.

In 1975 the stories were appalling. But in 2009? Inexcusable. That handicapped children are still considered a burden on the system. Consider – the Oregon SCHOOL psychologist saw nothing wrong with the child in the Oregon case. But there was something wrong. What’s the problem, then, with the school psychologist? The school was happy to get rid of that child. A burden. Without Federal Law where would he go, what would become of him? And even with it – his parents had to place him in a special environment.

Let the schools come up with programs. Find teachers. Include the handicapped. It is outrageous that that Oregon family should have to send their child away to an ‘academy’ After all these years – have we spent the time figuring out how to avoid IDEA instead of figuring out how to implement it? Do we not feel handicapped children are actual members of society?

Take a look at the governor of Ohio’s spending cutbacks. How many of those cut backs are for Special Needs? Why are the special needs programs the first to be cut? Because special needs people often can’t speak for themselves. They have no advocate. This is why under IDEA or PL 94-142 – parents too are provided protection. Because they need to advocate, to be voices. If not they – who?

One indicator of a truly civilized society is how that society cares for its least able. IDEA is not the problem. It exists, however, because there is a problem. We still do not feel special needs children are part of the community.  And we refuse to design programs that 1) will include them and 2) after time become part of the mainstream of offerings.

IDEA doesn’t have to be a punishing law for communities. If, at some point, communities get the IDEA.