Education Week
December 1, 2004
Overview: The New IDEA

The reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, approved by Congress in late November and now awaiting President Bush's signature, would make changes in several areas of special education.

Highly qualified teachers: Under the bill, special education teachers must be "highly qualified" by the end of the 2005-06 school year, even if they are teaching multiple subjects to students. New special education teachers would have extra time to become certified in different subjects, as long as they were highly qualified in at least one.

Student discipline: Schools would have more freedom to remove disruptive students from the classroom if their behavior wasn't related to their disabilities. Under current law, the school has to make the case that a disruptive student needs to be moved to another educational setting. Under the reauthorization, a child could be moved, and it would be up to the parents to appeal the decision.

Funding: The measure commits the federal government in principle to paying 40 percent of the average per-pupil cost of educating a special education student by 2011. The federal government now pays about 19 percent of such costs.

Paperwork reduction: Minor changes to a student's individualized education plan could be made in a conference call or by letter. Fifteen states would be chosen to try out a paperwork-reduction plan that would free up more time for teachers.

Complaints: A two-year statute of limitations would be placed on a parent's ability to file a special education complaint, with a 90-day limit for appeals. Hearing officers would focus on whether a child was denied an appropriate education, not procedural mistakes. Lawyers could be held liable for filing complaints deemed frivolous.

Education Week
December 3, 2004
President Signs Reauthorized IDEA
Law Seeks to Eliminate Overrepresentation of Minority Students
By Christina A. Samuels

The reauthorized Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act will attempt to eliminate one of the longest-running problems in special education: the overrepresentation of minority students.

The latest version of the main federal special education law, which President Bush signed into law on Dec. 3, includes provisions that will require states to keep track of how many minority-group members are in special education classes and provide "comprehensive, coordinated, early-intervention programs" for children in groups deemed to be overrepresented.

Rep. John A. Boehner, R-Ohio, the chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, said during a House-Senate conference committee meeting on the measure that too many children are "inappropriately placed in special education."

"In fact, many of these children simply have not been taught to read," Rep. Boehner said on Nov. 17. "The overidentification and misidentification of children for special education is an issue we must address for the good of our education system as a whole."

School administrators and researchers said the provision appears to put a new focus on an issue that has been discussed for years and is severe in some school districts.

The Schott Foundation for Public Education, a Cambridge, Mass.-based organization created to promote equity in education, recently released a report on education and black males that showed black students accounted for 72 percent of the total number of students with mental retardation classifications in Chicago's public schools, while black students accounted for 52 percent of overall enrollment. In Charlotte, N.C., black students accounted for 78 percent of students with mental retardation, even though they represented just 43 percent of the district's enrollment. The statistics were based on numbers gathered in 2000, according to the Schott Foundation.

In addition to overenrollment, researchers say that black and Hispanic students, once they are determined to be in need of special education services, are more likely than white students to spend time outside the regular classroom. According to an Education Week analysis of 2002-03 data from the Department of Education, 30 percent of black students in special education spend more than half the school day outside a regular classroom, compared with 15 percent of white students in special education.

New Priorities

"It's not a new issue, but there's some meat now behind it," said Don Blagg, the coordinator for psychological services for the 280,000-student Clark County, Nev., school district, which includes Las Vegas and is one of the fastest-growing district in the country. Mr. Blagg also serves as the chairman of a school district committee on minority overrepresentation that is in its second year of studying the issue locally.

He said the renewed IDEA will build on provisions in the federal No Child Left Behind Act that emphasize achievement for special education students.

"No Child Left Behind has done a lot of things, some positive, some negative," Mr. Blagg said. "This might be one of the positives."

Since 1997, the last time the IDEA was revised, the Education Department has required states to compile data on the racial and ethnic makeup of children receiving special education services. The new version adds several new provisions. In addition to making such monitoring a priority, districts must start early-intervention programs for children in overrepresented minority groups. The districts must also make public what they're doing to address the problem.

By bringing overrepresentation to the forefront, Congress has "raised the level of awareness," said Daniel J. Losen, a legal and policy research associate with the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University, which has studied the issue.

"The expectation is that most, if not all, states would have an action plan," Mr. Losen said. "That's the good news. They have to set some very clear indicators and targets for addressing the problem. You don't want to just look at the numbers. They're going to look at the educational outcomes for these kids."

Under the reauthorized IDEA, school districts will also be able to spend up to 15 percent of their federal special education funds on early-intervention programs designed to help children before they end up in special education.

"That's really unprecedented," said W. Alan Coulter, the director of the National Center for Special Education Accountability Monitoring, based at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. The national monitoring center is federally financed through the Education Department's office of special education programs.

The requirement for districts to report on new policies and procedures will allow the public to see whether changes are really happening, Mr. Coulter said.

"You and everyone else would be able to track what they do, and whether or not the change occurs," he said. "It's not that they're reporting on the 15 new computers they got for the classroom or the three new teachers they hired."

In Clark County, Mr. Blagg said, the district is already taking on some of the steps that would be required under the reauthorized IDEA. The district is working with researchers around the nation, as well as local administrators, teachers, and parents.

From an early analysis of the data, Mr. Blagg said, the district appears to have a problem with overrepresentation of minority students in special education.

"It's not a major problem, but it is a problem. It's a national problem," he said. To address it, the school district has started some early-intervention programs and is making sure principals and teachers know about them.

"You have building-level teams that want help for the kid, and so they think special ed," Mr. Blagg said.

Before a child enters special education, the principal must say that the other intervention methods have been tried.

"We need to use those other resources we have in regular education," Mr. Blagg added. "They could be beneficial for those kids."

In signing the bill last week, President Bush stressed his administration's mantra that all children are capable of learning. "Children with disabilities deserve high hopes, high expectations, and extra help," he said.

Education Week
November 22, 2004
Congress Passes IDEA Reauthorization
By Christina Samuels and Erik W. Robelen

Congress has approved legislation that reauthorizes the main federal special education law, a bipartisan compromise designed to improve the educational opportunities of some 6.7 million children with disabilities.

The House voted 397-3 on Nov. 19 to approve the latest version of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Hours later, the Senate followed suit with a voice vote in favor of the plan. President Bush is expected to sign the measure.

The reauthorized IDEA would mandate quality standards for special education teachers, streamline disciplinary actions involving students with disabilities, and attempt to reduce the number of lawsuits stemming from the statute.

Shortly before the measure's passage in the House, Rep. John A. Boehner, R-Ohio, the chairman of the the Education and the Workforce Committee, called the final bill "a tremendous achievement of compromise, of vision, determination, and bipartisanship."

Rep. Lynn Woolsey, the ranking Democrat on the Education Reform Subcommittee, noted that she opposed the original House version of the IDEA bill. That measure passed the chamber in April 2003 with only 34 Democrats in favor.

"Since then, there has been a lot of bipartisan effort," she said. The three House members to vote against the final bill last week were Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Arizona, Scott Garrett, R-N.J, and Ron Paul, R-Texas.

Rep. George Miller of California, the ranking Democrat on the House education committee, stated before the vote that "this has been a rather toxic season in the political arena and in this Congress. There is not a lot of evidence that there is a lot of bipartisan action taking place in the Congress of the United States."

But, he added, "in this committee, on this subject, we were able to work through all of those environmental concerns about the atmosphere and arrive at legislation that is going to be very good for those children with special needs."

At their Nov. 17 session, conference committee members applauded the measure as an example of bipartisan work to reconcile differing bills that passed the House and the Senate during the past two years.

"We have approved what I think is an extremely strong piece of legislation that will move the ball down the field," said Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, the ranking Democrat on the Senate education committee, said: "The agreement we have reached demonstrates what Americans have come to realize—that students with disabilities are a far too important priority to be used as a political tool or cast aside because of an election schedule. Their education is not a partisan issue."

Rep. Boehner said changes in the bill would bring the special education law closer to the provisions of the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

"The process of education reform did not end with the No Child Left Behind Act. It just began," Rep. Boehner said of the wide-ranging school improvement measure adopted three years ago.

Two Years Overdue

The IDEA is the current shorthand for the landmark law that Congress first enacted in 1975 as the Education for All Handicapped Children Act. It was last revised in 1997, and its latest reauthorization—two years overdue—was long hung up in partisan tensions.

The Senate passed its original bill by a vote of 95-3 in May. The House's initial bill, however, was approved by a narrower margin, 251-171, in 2003. The conference committee hammered out significant differences in the two versions.

But the measure still does not lock Congress into any funding commitments, an omission that prompted a "no" vote in the conference committee from Sen. James M. Jeffords, the Vermont Independent who left the Republican Party two years ago in large part over disagreement about the party's commitment to funding special education.

Sen. Jeffords had voted against the Senate version of the bill in May, calling it then a "hollow promise" and an unfunded mandate. His was the only no vote among the 28 House and Senate conference committee members voting last week. He continued his opposition to the final measure.

In a statement, Sen. Jeffords said, "As we approach the 30th anniversary of the original IDEA law, it is unconscionable that we, the Congress, will have once again failed to fulfill our commitment to pay the 40 percent share we promised almost three decades ago. In fact, as of today, we are not even halfway there."

He was also concerned about the definition of highly qualified teachers under the measure, and a provision allowing schools to divert some federal special education funding to other education programs.

This year, the federal government is estimating it will pay 19 percent of the costs of educating students with disabilities, and it has set a goal of funding 40 percent of the national average of per-pupil spending by 2011. 

On one of the most sensitive policy issues, the bill would allow school districts greater flexibility in dealing with special education students who have behavior problems.

If students with disabilities required discipline for misbehavior that was not related to their disabilities, they could be moved to another setting. Under the current law, schools are required to prove the need for a change of placement. In the conference committee's bill, the burden would now be on the parents to appeal the school district's decision.

The change is intended to eliminate separate punishment tracks for students once it has been determined that their behavior is not related to their disabilities.

Michael Carr, a spokesman for the National Association of Secondary School Principals, said that disciplinary change was one sought by members of his organization.

"It comes back to if we believe that these students can be in the classroom with all the other kids, the student needs to know how to act appropriately," Mr. Carr said. 

The bill's provisions on "highly qualified" teachers would parallel those of the No Child Left Behind Act. To be highly qualified under the revised IDEA, teachers would have to be fully certified in special education or pass state special education licensure exams. They also would have to hold a bachelor's degree and demonstrate knowledge of each subject for which they were the primary teacher.

Veteran teachers would be required to meet the standards by the end of the 2005-06 school year, even if they were teaching multiple subjects to students. New special education teachers would have extra time to become certified in different subjects, as long as they were fully credentialed in at least one.

The topic of teacher qualifications was the only one debated during the Nov. 17 conference committee meeting. Some committee members floated the idea of giving veteran special education teachers an extra year to meet the "highly qualified" standards, putting them off until the 2006-07 school year.

Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., asked fellow lawmakers to consider the one-year postponement, particularly because special education teachers often teach multiple subjects. The amendment, however, was rejected on a voice vote. 

"A highly qualified teacher is probably the most important person in this entire process" aside from parents, said Rep. George Miller of California, the ranking Democrat on the House education committee. He noted that the states have had time to create programs to help teachers meet the federal standards.

"If [states] decided to gamble on whether we would eviscerate the standard of a highly qualified teacher, they have lost," Rep. Miller said.

Kim Anderson, a lobbyist with the National Education Association, said the teacher-qualification provision was a disappointing part of the IDEA bill. States have been waiting for guidance from the Department of Education on creating certification rules for special education teachers, she said.

If flexibility can be provided to rural teachers who instruct students in multiple subjects, as the department has done, the same flexibility should be afforded to special education teachers, she said.

"To us, it seems like it's slapping the wrong party here," she said. 

Paperwork Reduction?

The bill also includes a provision for teachers and parents to make "minor" adjustments to a child's individualized education plan-required for all students receiving special education services-without reconvening a full IEP meeting. The change is intended to make it easier for parents to be involved in the IEP process without attending numerous meetings. And under a pilot program, 15 states would be given the opportunity to develop plans to reduce paperwork and free up more instructional time for teachers.

Lawmakers also tried to devise a way to reduce the number of lawsuits that special education placements often generate. 

The committee's bill encourages the use of mediation whenever possible. Parents and school officials would have to meet and try to solve problems before convening a due-process hearing. 

A two-year statute of limitations would be placed on a parent's ability to file a complaint, with a 90-day limitation on appeals.

Also, hearing officers would have to make decisions based on whether a child was denied an appropriate education, not because of procedural mistakes.

Education Week
December 1, 2004
Reauthorized IDEA Could Shift Power to School Districts
By Christina A. Samuels

The first overhaul of the nation's main special education law in seven years is getting guarded approval from education officials and advocacy groups.

As they analyzed the reauthorized Individuals with Disabilities Education Act last week, many people in the field said the bill appears to give school districts a stronger hand in special education disputes. Although they identified provisions they would change, most analysts said the measure is an adequate compromise between Senate and House versions.

"Overall, we're pretty pleased with it," said Daniel Blair, the senior director for public policy at the Council for Exceptional Children, an Arlington, Va.-based organization dedicated to improving education for students with disabilities and gifted students. "We think it will do a lot for children with disabilities."

President Bush has said he looks forward to signing the bill, though a date has not been set. The measure, which breezed through both houses of Congress on Nov. 19, would provide the education framework for 6.7 million students with disabilities nationwide. It would bring several important changes to special education, including in the areas of student discipline, teacher qualifications, paperwork requirements, and the complaint process. 

Paul Marchand, the staff director for The Arc and United Cerebral Palsy Disability Policy Collaboration, said the final bill was a vast improvement over its early incarnation in the House.

"The worst thing that could have happened was to have the [original] House bill pass. That would have been disastrous," he said. That bill, he said, would have allowed schools to discipline students without regard for their disability, would have eliminated student rights "in the guise of paperwork reduction," and would have created an arduous due-process procedure for parents. 

In contrast, with the recently approved measure, "there is a general sense that this is fair," said Mr. Marchand, whose Washington-based organization lobbies both for the Arc, a disability-rights group that focuses on the mentally retarded, and the United Cerebral Palsy Associations. 

Lawmakers praised each other for their bipartisan spirit before passage of the final bill, which was approved 397-3 in the House and by voice vote in the Senate. The three House members to vote against the final bill were Reps. Jeff Flake of Arizona, Scott Garrett of New Jersey, and Ron Paul of Texas, all Republicans.

Power to Districts?  

Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., the outgoing chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said he could think of "no finer way" to end his chairmanship than to complete work on the bill. 

But the reauthorization process was marked by partisan tensions in the early stages. The Senate bill passed by an overwhelming 95-3 majority in May 2003. But in the House, the bill passed this past April by a vote of 251-171, with only 34 Democrats in support. 

The final bill does not include any funding commitments, though lawmakers agreed in principle to pay 40 percent of the average nationwide cost of educating a student in special education.

The CEC's Mr. Blair said his organization was disappointed by the lack of a funding commitment. "That's been something that we have always wanted, some mechanism by which they could fully fund it," he said.

On Nov. 20, Congress approved a $10.7 billion budget for special education for fiscal 2005, nearly $500 million under the amount President Bush had requested.

Most observers believe the new IDEA would give more power to school districts to determine a child's placement and to limit lawsuits. Lawyers could be punished for filing complaints eventually deemed frivolous.

"This could have a chilling effect on parents who have legitimate complaints," said Susan Goodman, the director of governmental affairs for the Atlanta-based National Down Syndrome Congress.

Also, school districts would have the power under the new measure to move students who have discipline problems not related to their disabilities. Currently, students can stay in the classroom after an incident, unless the school makes the case in an administrative hearing that the child needs to be moved.

Ms. Goodman believes the new provision is taking an important protection away from children. However, the American Association of School Administrators supported the change, said Bruce Hunter, the Arlington, Va.-based organization's chief lobbyist.

"Where teachers are concerned for themselves or for other children, the student is gone from their classroom until a new placement is worked out," he said.

The new measure would also add language authorizing students to be removed from the classroom for committing "serious bodily injury." The current language already allows removal for bringing in guns, bombs, or drugs.

The serious-bodily-injury standard is "way too high," Mr. Hunter said. "Under this, a student has to actually hurt the teacher."

Another major provision in the bill would clarify what makes a special education teacher "highly qualified" under the provisions of the federal No Child Left Behind Act. Such teachers would have to meet state licensing standards, and those who teach multiple subjects must meet their state's "highly qualified" standard in every subject they teach. 

Highly Qualified Teachers

But the measure would give new special education teachers who teach multiple subjects and who are already highly qualified in math, language arts, or science two years to show competency in their additional subjects. 

The bill would also permit new special education teachers to become highly qualified under the "high, objective, uniform state standard of evaluation," or HOUSSE. That option allows teachers to show competence without re-enrolling in college or passing a subject-level test.

The revised IDEA's provision on teachers has led to a number of objections. The CEC's Mr. Blair objects to the HOUSSE option because he believes teachers who educate children with disabilities should be specially trained, and a test doesn't necessarily measure that..

"To us, it's a slap in the face of the notion of "highly qualified," he said.

Mr. Hunter said the teacher-quality provision does not reflect the fact that special education teachers who are teaching multiple subjects are doing so "at a very low level."

"If they were actually teaching physics and chemistry, this would make a difference, but they're not," he said of most special education teachers. Certification should be similar to that for elementary school teachers, who also teach multiple subjects, Mr. Hunter said.

Nancy D.Reder, the deputy executive director of the National Association of State Directors of Special Education, raised another concern: If teachers go through the state process to become highly qualified, what would stop them from just going on to teach regular education students in that subject?

"I mean, why not?" she said. "It's less paperwork."

At the district level, educators are waiting for regulations that would explain further some of the provisions in the revised IDEA. However, some have already seen provisions they welcome.

Paperwork Pilot

Patricia Addison, the director of special education for the 163,000-student Fairfax County, Va., school district, said she liked that the measure lays out a plan for funding 40 percent of special education costs by 2011.

"I'm especially encouraged to see at least 15 states will have the opportunity to pilot paperwork reduction," said Ms. Addison, who is also the president of the Virginia Council of Administrators of Special Education. New teachers in particular find themselves overwhelmed by paperwork, she said.

"We'd like to train those teachers so that they can implement a successful training program," Ms. Addison said, not focus so strongly on making sure paperwork is completed correctly.

Jerry Sjolander, the executive director of special education for the 50,000-student Anchorage, Alaska, school district, said the measure would provide an opportunity to identify and possibly solve parents' concerns before due-process hearings. Under the final bill, parents and a school district must meet before a due-process hearing can be scheduled.

"The time we spend wrapped up in those issues is an incredible amount," said Mr. Sjolander, who oversees about 7,000 special education students. "It saps district resources."

Archives

The federal law that supports special education and related service programming for children and youth with disabilities is called the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). It entitles all eligible school-aged children and youth with disabilities to receive a "free appropriate public education."

The eligibility category of a "specific learning disability" is one of the 13 listings under the IDEA for children who need special education and related services. More detailed information about the IDEA and other topics can be obtained in NICHY (National Information Center for Children and Youth with Disabilities) publications available free of charge at www.nichcy.org.