Introduction

Many schools, school districts, and States throughout the nation are actively engaged in educational improvement. The U.S. Department of Education has forged new partnerships with States and communities to support their efforts to develop flexible, coherent, and comprehensive strategies for educational improvement based on high standards for all students. The Goals 2000: Educate America Act, the School-to-Work Opportunities Act of 1994, and the Improving America's Schools Act (IASA, the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965), promote these effective strategies based on raising academic and occupational standards, encouraging students to work hard to meet them, improving teaching, and strengthening parental involvement.

The reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) provides an opportunity to ensure that educational improvements for all children in fact include children with disabilities. By aligning IDEA with State and local school reform efforts, children with disabilities may participate fully in high-quality education with the special education and related services necessary for them to learn to challenging standards and achieve much more than they do now.

The Purposes of IDEA

The basis of the current IDEA, P.L. 94-142, was enacted in November 1975 and has undergone numerous amendments. The four purposes of IDEA are to ensure that all children with disabilities have available to them a free appropriate public education that emphasizes special education and related services designed to meet their particular needs; to ensure that the rights of children with disabilities and their parents or guardians are protected; to assist States and localities to provide for the education of all children with disabilities; and to assess and ensure the effectiveness of efforts to educate children with disabilities.

The right of children with disabilities to a free appropriate public education is grounded in the United States Constitution. Two landmark court decisions, Pennsylvania Association for Retarded Children v. Commonwealth (1971) and Mills v. Board of Education of the District of Columbia (1972), established that the responsibility of States and local school districts to educate individuals with disabilities is derived from the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. The drafting of IDEA was guided by the principles of these court decisions and a recognition of the federal role in ensuring that all children with disabilities in the nation are provided the equal opportunity that the Constitution guaranteed.

Prior to the enactment of the law, one million children with disabilities were excluded entirely from public schools. The federal government plays a particularly important role in assisting the States in meeting their constitutional obligation to ensure equal educational opportunity for children with disabilities. In addition to safeguarding the rights of children with disabilities and their parents, the federal government supports State and local school efforts through fiscal aid to States and through development of the knowledge and practices necessary to ensure a free appropriate public education under IDEA.

This reauthorization is intended to build on the basic purposes of the law. Each student must be ensured a free appropriate public education. Each child's education must be determined on an individualized basis and designed to meet his or her particular needs, in the least restrictive environment. And the rights of children and their families must be ensured and protected through procedural safeguards.

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