DINF Web Posted on December 15, 1997

Individuals with Disabilities Education Act Amendments of 1995

A central purpose of IDEA is to ensure an effective and individualized education designed to address each child's particular needs in the least restrictive environment. However, for many children, this promise is still not being kept. Analysis of our experience over the past 20 years shows that many children are still not receiving an individualized education in the least restrictive environment, as the law requires. Below, we discuss strategies for achieving this central purpose of the law through attention to the following issues: (1) initial evaluation and triennial re-evaluation; (2) the current categorical eligibility criteria; (3) the State funding formula; (4) the paperwork associated with fiscal tracking requirements; and (5) the problem of disproportionate representation of minority students.

Refocusing the Initial Evaluation and Triennial Re-Evaluation

To help students achieve to higher standards, parents and teachers need usable information about the student's abilities and the special education and related services he or she needs--how the student learns, where instruction should begin, what instructional strategies are most effective, what progress should be expected, and what supports or modifications are necessary to ensure meaningful access to education. The initial evaluation and triennial re-evaluation, as well as the annual review of the IEP, are the means for obtaining this vital information. To be effective, they should assess how the child is progressing in the general curriculum and how he or she responds to various instructional approaches within the curriculum.

Far too often, initial evaluations and triennial re-evaluations consist of a battery of standardized tests that are only partially or not at all related to the student's instruction or educational progress. They tend to look only at which of the 13 disability categories, within which the student fits in order to place a label on the child, without looking at how the child learns, or how the curriculum needs to be modified for the individual child to achieve to his or her full potential (Merrell, 1990; Reschly, 1988; Shinn, Tindal & Stein, 1988). While determining what category a child is in can often provide helpful information, it does not provide sufficient information to educators and parents to make individualized decisions based on the student's particular needs. Many professionals agree that excessive attention is devoted simply to identifying the disability rather than gathering valuable information about what the individual student knows and needs to be able to learn to his or her full potential.

Initial evaluations and triennial re-evaluations, as currently implemented, often divert resources from the primary goals of teaching and learning. School psychologists spend too much of their time administering evaluations and re-evaluations with little instructional relevance, rather than working directly with students, parents, and teachers to improve results for students. Even students with clearly permanent disabilities such as deafness or blindness often are inappropriately subjected every three years to a battery of tests to determine whether they remain disabled. Moreover, each initial evaluation and triennial re-evaluation is estimated to cost an average of $2,000 (Chaikind, Danielson & Brauen, 1993). Streamlining evaluation and re-evaluation procedures to focus on what is necessary will free up resources, including the time of school psychologists and other staff, to help students better.

Encouraging Eligibility Determinations that Focus on Educational Needs

Determining a student's disability is a natural element of the life of a child with a disability and can help to explain what modifications and special education and related services the student needs in order to achieve to challenging standards. However, the particular type of disability should not, by itself, determine the instruction and services a child needs or the child's placement. Research shows that the instruction and services a student needs are best determined by an individualized analysis of the child's abilities and skills (Fuchs & Deno, 1991). Nonetheless, too often, a purely categorical approach to instruction and service delivery focuses solely on the child's disability category without recognizing that many students within each category have very different functional abilities and instructional needs.

Problems Arising from Current Disability Categories

The 13 disability categories in the current statute and regulations form the basis for determining who is eligible to be served under IDEA. In many cases, once a student is identified as being in a particular disability category, the student is assigned to a program for students in that disability category to be taught by a teacher trained in that disability category. However, many of the 13 categories in the law are based on medical models and stereotypical patterns of performance for groups of persons (Atkins & Pelham, 1992; Reschly, 1988), and do not convey accurate information about an individual student's educational needs or how the disability affects an individual student's ability to succeed educationally.

Federal law does not require the categorical labeling of individual students, although it does require reporting on the number of students in each disability category. However, the current requirement of reporting and designation of children in one of 13 categories in order to be eligible under IDEA has fostered a narrow, categorical approach to evaluating, labeling, placing, and serving children (Keogh, 1990; Reschly, 1988; Reynolds, Wang & Walberg, 1987). This categorical approach is inconsistent with the basic principle of IDEA that children should be served based on individual needs in the least restrictive environment rather than based on stereotypical assumptions. Not only is this categorical approach contradictory to our fundamental goals and research on best practices, but also, for some students, it can be stigmatizing and breed low expectations (Shinn & Marston, 1985; Shinn et al., 1988; Tindal & Marston, 1986).

The practice of making educational decisions based solely on a child's diagnostic category can also detract from the central goal of schools: teaching and learning. Local school districts are spending considerable resources on evaluations to determine the appropriate diagnostic label (such as mentally retarded, learning disabled, autistic) for each child--with little educational benefit. The eligibility criteria for preschool students differ in one significant respect. For 3-through 5-year-olds, States may identify children as developmentally delayed instead of classifying them at a young age in a particular category.

The Need for More Efficient Approaches

Some States already are moving to less categorical approaches to eligibility and service delivery for 6-through 21-year-olds, based in part on the success of the less categorical approach for 3-through 5-year-olds. However, these States find their progress toward more efficient and effective approaches hampered by the current federal eligibility requirements. A revised eligibility definition could give those States the flexibility to move forward toward less categorical approaches, while permitting other States to retain their current eligibility criteria.

Under a revised eligibility definition, the same children who are eligible to be served under the law would remain eligible. However, the process for evaluation could be more instructionally relevant and better help determine what each child knows and what services and program modifications the child needs to be able to learn to high standards. These changes would help to enable students, families, and teachers to better understand the child's needs and appropriate instructional strategies. These changes also would help to ensure that services and placement would be based on the individual student's needs--and not solely on the student's disability category.

This change in eligibility criteria would not affect who is eligible for services under IDEA. All students who are currently eligible would remain eligible under the new definition. And, as under current law, only students who are in need of special education services as a result of their disability would be eligible.

Nor would this change require States to change their eligibility criteria--they could retain what they now use, if they so wished. However, States that are ready to move toward less categorical eligibility criteria and evaluations, consistent with the new definition, could do so. And, to support the efforts of the States, federal research efforts would devote considerable attention to improving and disseminating knowledge about eligibility criteria and evaluation instruments.

Ensuring That Federal and State Funding Formulas Help Promote Good Practices

To achieve our goal of ensuring that every child with a disability receives an appropriate education that meets his or her unique needs in the least restrictive environment, and receives services based on individual needs, not a label, it is critical that federal and State financing systems not create disincentives for appropriate placements and services.

Twenty years ago, when the law was adopted, Congress found that one million children with disabilities were excluded entirely from the public school system and that many children with disabilities were participating in regular school programs but because their disabilities were undetected, they were prevented from having a successful school experience. A critical purpose of the 1975 law was to ensure that children with disabilities were identified and served. A funding formula that allocated funds to States based on the number of students identified and served created appropriate incentives to identify children and serve them under IDEA. And those incentives have been successful--more than five million students are served under IDEA, and the number increases every year.

Most disabled students are now enrolled in school and identified as disabled. Critical issues today are that too many children are served in inappropriately restrictive environments, and, in some communities, that children--particularly minority children--are often inappropriately identified as disabled in order to generate funding (Feir, 1992; Parrish & Montgomery, 1995).

The current federal funding formula can create incentives that add to these problems, while creating disincentives for those States that seek progressive solutions to them. For example, some States have embarked on aggressive programs of early intervention and pre-referral in order to serve students with disabilities in a less restrictive and more appropriate manner. Yet, as they engage in these practices to serve children early and inclusively--practices that educators and families agree are exemplary--they find the number of students identified as needing special education and related services, and thus their federal funding, is declining. The federal funding formula thus is a direct disincentive to best practice (Parrish & Verstegen, 1994).

Allocating funding to States based on the total number of children in the State--rather than the number of children with disabilities--would create incentives for States to undertake reforms such as pre-referral and early intervention and disincentives for over-identifying children as disabled. This would be true regardless of the funding level for Part B. Such a change would not affect procedural safeguards afforded children with disabilities or suspected of having a disability, or the requirement to identify and serve all children with disabilities. Nor would it require that States adopt population-based formulas for the distribution of State special education funds. Allocating federal funding to States based on State population also would simplify administration of the program by reducing data-collection burdens and avoiding the problem of inaccurate child counts.

Changing Federal and State Practices That Encourage Inappropriate Placement

Many State formulas governing the distribution of State funds also contain disincentives to appropriately serving students in the least restrictive environment. For example, in some States, if a district seeks to keep a child in his or her neighborhood school because it believes that the student is most appropriately served in the regular classroom in that school, the State will not pay for the supports and aids that child needs to be able to succeed in that environment. The lack of State funding in this instance is due solely to the State's funding formula, not the needs of the student. Indeed, that same State would pay most or all of the cost of an expensive separate placement (Dempsey & Fuchs, 1993; Weintraub & Higgins, 1982). Not surprisingly, research shows that States that pay districts more for teaching special education students in more restrictive environments have a lower percentage of students with disabilities in the regular classroom (Dempsey & Fuchs, 1993).

Reducing Unnecessary Record-Keeping Requirements

Just as the current federal funding formula creates disincentives for appropriate placements and services, the current federal rules for tracking how the federal dollars are used also creates disincentives for serving children in the regular classroom, even when that is the most appropriate placement.

Serving a disabled child in the regular classroom often means that a special education teacher or aide will work in the regular classroom with that child and that child's regular education teacher. However, under the Department's rules, whenever a special education teacher works in a regular classroom with both disabled and non-disabled students, only the time spent working with disabled students may be paid for by IDEA funds. The rules allow only an "incidental benefit" to non-disabled students--and "incidental benefit" is very narrowly defined. In practical terms, this means that personnel must spend an inordinate amount of time on paperwork to document the time and effort spent on working with disabled and non-disabled children so that only that portion of the salary attributable to time spent solely with disabled children is paid for by IDEA funds.

Research and experience show that the presence of the special education teacher or aide can significantly enhance the educational experience of all the children in the classroom, not only the children identified as disabled (Davis, 1993; Slavin et al., 1991). The special education teacher or aide can help the disabled child or children work in small groups with non-disabled children, can assist in maintaining classroom discipline, and can intervene early with children who may not yet be identified as disabled but who are at significant risk of being identified because of their difficulties in learning. However, the current record-keeping requirements discourage this, directly contradicting what we know about good educational practice.

We propose a different formulation of the record-keeping requirements--one that would create incentives for appropriate services while at the same time ensuring that children served under the IDEA continue to benefit from federal funding. This new formulation would loosen the limitation on the benefits non-disabled students can receive from IDEA funds as long as children with disabilities benefit from these services. Of course, children with disabilities must continue to receive all of the services required by their IEPs.

Improving the Education of Minority Students

Although special education has generally been viewed as a valued service, there is another side to this for some children from minority backgrounds. African-American children are identified for special education and placed in restrictive settings and stigmatizing, dead-end programs at much higher rates than other children (Obiakor, 1992; Ogbu, 1987; U.S. Department of Education, 1994). Conversely, Asian and Native American Indian children are often under-represented in special education (U.S. Department of Education, 1994). In addition, schools often have difficulty in appropriately identifying and serving children with limited English proficiency (Gersten & Woodward, 1994; Baca & Cervantes, 1984). A major challenge is to ensure that children from minority backgrounds are appropriately served under IDEA.

The strategies and approaches we outline here will help reduce inappropriate incentives that foster inappropriate identification, placement, and services. For example, our improved strategies for assessments and IEPs will reduce incentives to place children in restrictive placements in order to avoid being accountable for their academic progress, and will promote for all children high expectations rather than watered-down curriculum and dead-end programs. Our strategies for federal and State funding formulas will remove fiscal incentives to over-identify children and to place them in restrictive settings. And, our approach to fiscal tracking will promote educational supports in the regular classroom. Our approaches to evaluation, triennial re-evaluation, and eligibility will permit removal of stigmatizing labels and provide for periodic assessment that is instructionally relevant and designed to determine whether the child continues to need special education services.

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