DINF Web Posted on December 15, 1997
The information in this document has been superseded by more recent information available elsewhere on this site. This document is for historical purposes only. See http://www.ed.gov/offices/OSERS/IDEA/ for more current information about IDEA.
Testimony of Richard W. Riley
Secretary, U.S. Department of Education
Committee on Economic and Educational Opportunities
Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Youth and Families
June 20, 1995
Secretary Riley delivered this testimony on June 20, 1995, before the House Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Youth and Families (which is a subcommittee of the House Committee on Economic and Educational Opportunities).In this testimony, the Secretary describes the Administration's proposal to improve the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which will be submitted to Congress shortly.
The June 20 hearing was one of the initial hearings Congress has held as part of its review of IDEA. Additional hearings & action on IDEA are expected this summer & through the fall.
Introduction
I would like to begin by commending the committee for convening hearings on this topic. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (the IDEA) is a vitally important law that touches the lives of millions of Americans. Your thoughtful leadership in this area is critical to each of them.
I. History of the IDEA; Opening Up Opportunities; Assuming Responsibilities
As you review the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, I encourage you to look at both its history and its positive effects. Prior to the enactment of P.L. 94-142 in 1975, federal courts recognized that children with disabilities have a constitutional right to a free appropriate public education. P.L. 94-142 was enacted to assist states and communities in meeting their constitutional obligation to educate children with disabilities.
As you begin your review of the IDEA, please remember that only twenty years ago, more than one million children with disabilities were not receiving any public education. Many of these young Americans were placed in dehumanizing state institutions for the mentally retarded. Today, infants and toddlers with disabilities receive early intervention services that help get them on the right developmental track from the beginning. Children with disabilities go to preschool and to school in their community with their brothers and sisters, play on little league teams, and sing in the church choir. And, when they finish school, they go to work and pay taxes, enjoying the opportunities of this great country, while accepting the responsibilities of citizenship. Disabled students and their families do not want to be shut away and given a watered-down curriculum; they want challenging standards and to be a part of their community. They do not want handouts; they want an opportunity to study and to work so that they can contribute to society. The IDEA has changed the role of government from one of caretaker of dependent individuals to one that opens the door to education and empowers people with disabilities to take up the responsibilities of citizenship.
The fight that parents waged to open the schoolhouse door for their disabled children will be viewed by history as reaffirming the fundamental right of all Americans to be free of discrimination and arbitrary treatment. Equally important, as President Clinton has said, we do not have a person to waste in this country, and without the educational opportunity afforded to children with disabilities through the IDEA, we would continue to have a large segment of our population uneducated and unemployed.
As Americans, we understand that without a high-quality education for all of our citizens, we are a doomed society. As Americans, we should also take pride in the fact that when we become committed to a mission we work hard to accomplish it. We can all feel proud of what this nation has accomplished over the past twenty years in implementing the IDEA. As I meet with parents and teachers of disabled children, I hear about the successes these children are achieving in school.
We can also point to the positive data from our recently completed National Longitudinal Transition Study. Graduation rates are higher. More students with disabilities are going on to college. For instance, the percentage of students with disabilities in the freshman college cohort has tripled since 1978. We also know from the Transition Study that students enrolled in vocational education programs are particularly likely to pursue postsecondary education. Fifty-seven percent of youth with disabilities are competitively employed within five years of leaving school, compared to an employment rate of only 33 percent for older people with disabilities who have not benefitted from the IDEA. In short, the IDEA's guarantee of access to education has greatly increased the opportunities for disabled children and youth to acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to achieve their goals and to participate in society as responsible citizens.
Children whose potential would once have been ignored can now reach their full potential. Judy Heumann, who is sitting next to me today, was one such child. She was not allowed to go to elementary school because she was in a wheelchair. For four long years, she was told to stay at home and was given only three and one half hours of education a week. Today, thanks to her own grit and a strong family, she is an Assistant Secretary of Education -- I can only imagine what she would be doing if she had been permitted to go to school during those years.
Young adults with disabilities who have been beneficiaries of the IDEA are doing great things that few would have envisioned when the law was passed. They have gone on to successful careers alongside their nondisabled peers as engineers, lawyers, and in countless other careers and occupations that would have been shut out for them but for their education under the IDEA.
This law has not only been good for disabled children. It has been good for all children. Nondisabled students are learning about learning and playing with children who look, sound, or act differently from them; they are learning about responsibility and how to live with members of their community. And, in many cases, they are benefitting from having another teacher or aide in the classroom who can help all students.
These successes show that the IDEA has been a fundamentally good law. Today, however, we have the opportunity to take what we have learned over the past twenty years and use it to update and improve the law.
II. The Challenge Before Us -- Improving Results for Students with Disabilities
While there has been great progress, there remain great challenges. When appropriate interventions are not provided, too many students with disabilities drop out of school, have a high risk of unemployment, and some get in trouble with the law and spend significant time in jail. Enrollment in postsecondary education is still too low. We still need to make sure that all these children grow up with the skills they need to get a job and live independently.
You may be hearing stories about the problems with special education, and we need to address those concerns. But it is important to remember that there are many places where things are working -- and working well. Judy and I have visited schools across the country that are exemplary. We are both struck by the fact that when there is leadership from a superintendent or a principal, schools are creating effective classrooms that improve education for all children.
I saw this when I visited the O'Hearn School in Boston. The principal, Bill Henderson, became blind a number of years ago. When he began to lose his vision, he talked to colleagues to get suggestions about how to modify his work so he could continue. He says that they all told him to go on disability. He didn't agree and today runs O'Hearn as a model school that has effectively included all students with disabilities in regular classes. The parents of both the nondisabled and disabled students are highly involved in the school -- including involvement in a family resource center -- and pleased with their children's education. In fact, this public school, which used to have a low enrollment, now has a waiting list of parents who want their children-- both disabled and nondisabled -- to attend. And the teachers at this school are excited about their work. I was told that, in the beginning, some regular education teachers were anxious about a special education teacher or aide coming into their classroom because they were not used to team-teaching or sharing their classroom. Teachers told me that once the initial anxiety passed, the special education teacher or aide was a valued teaching partner who helped everyone in the classroom.
Visiting excellent schools like the O'Hearn School is one of the most gratifying parts of my job. I encourage you all to visit programs in your districts that families and school administrators believe are working. The challenge here -- as in all areas of education -- is to move beyond limited success in model schools to support improved results for all students across the nation.
III. Who is Served by the IDEA -- Diverse Students with Diverse Needs
Our review of the legislation takes into account the more than 5.4 million diverse children served under the IDEA. About 150,000 are infants and toddlers, 500,000 are preschoolers, and 4.8 million are of school age. The majority of these children do not have visible disabilities -- the majority are not blind, do not use wheelchairs, and are not mentally retarded. In fact, of the 4.8 million school-aged children with disabilities, about half have learning disabilities -- generally problems with reading, writing, and to a lesser degree, mathematics. About 9 percent exhibit significant emotional disturbance. A small number are blind or deaf or have other significant disabilities such as autism or traumatic brain injury. It is important to note that fewer than 12 percent of children served under the IDEA have mental retardation that would prevent them from learning at the same level as other students. (See figure #1.) It is also important to note that 70 percent of students with disabilities are in the general education classroom for a substantial portion of the school day. (See figure #2.)
IV. What We Have Heard
In the course of preparing our legislative proposal for the IDEA, we have consulted with parents, educators, and many others concerned with improving the education of children with disabilities, including Congressional staff from both sides of the aisle. We asked for public comment in the Federal Register and received over 3,000 responses. During more than a year of consultation, we have heard about the many strengths of the current law -- its focus on individualized approaches, its protection of the rights of children and their families, and its support for innovative approaches to teaching. For example, the IDEA has supported many advances in technology -- such as talking books for blind students, assistive communication devices for children who cannot talk, and television captioning for deaf students -- that help students achieve in ways that have never before been possible.
However, we have also heard from some that the law promotes a separate system with lower standards, that it is unnecessarily prescriptive, that it focuses too much on paperwork, that it creates unnecessary costs, that it creates barriers to effectively disciplining students, and that it spawns too much litigation. We have listened carefully to these concerns and are addressing them. Needed improvements, including streamlining State Plans and school district applications, reducing data reporting requirements, providing more fiscal flexibility, and reducing the unnecessary testing during triennial reevaluations, will be in our proposal and are described in more detail below.
In the 20 years since P.L. 94-142 was enacted, we have learned a great deal about how to improve educational results for children with disabilities and how to intervene early with infants and toddlers to help children to be ready to learn. We now have a chance to improve the law to put into practice what we have learned about effective teaching and learning. This is a particularly opportune time for us to review the IDEA. American education is changing, and exciting improvements are taking place in states and communities around the nation.
The principles we have developed are aimed at allowing special education to be seen as a service that should be integrated into the education reform efforts in each state. We have an opportunity to align the IDEA with these efforts so that children with disabilities can be included in them in their local communities. Special education is an important asset in overall school improvement efforts. Where special education is seen as a "service", not a "place", it contributes to the overall resources of the school and enriches the teaching and learning that takes place for all children. Our proposals will assist these efforts.
V. Principles on Which Our Proposal is Based
We have based our reauthorization proposal on six key principles that clearly define our mission to improve results for students with disabilities. These six principles are:
- Align the IDEA with state and local education improvement efforts so students with disabilities can benefit from them.
- Improve results for students with disabilities through higher expectations and meaningful access to the general curriculum, to the maximum extent appropriate.
- Address individual needs in the least restrictive environment for the student.
- Provide families and teachers -- those closest to students -- with the knowledge and training to effectively support students' learning.
- Focus on teaching and learning.
- Strengthen early intervention to help ensure that every child starts school ready to learn.
I know that as you undertake the task of reviewing the IDEA, many different approaches and proposals will be raised. As you consider them, I hope that you will judge them against these principles.
In developing our proposals based on these principles, we have had extensive consultations with others. We have heard tremendous agreement that the changes we will be proposing are good for children, good for families, and good for schools. While not everyone agrees with every single proposal we are putting forward, all agree that the issues we are raising are the right ones and merit serious attention and healthy debate.
As we all know, disability affects the lives of people regardless of party affiliation. This is one reason why there historically have been bipartisan efforts to develop and implement effective laws such as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. We all realize that we cannot afford to waste any human resource. It is my hope that we will continue this bipartisan approach as we move forward to reauthorize the IDEA.
VI. Structure of the Current Law
The IDEA has several distinct programs. The main program of grants to states, authorized under Part B, will provide approximately $2.3 billion this fiscal year to states and school districts to help support the education of children with disabilities. Part B also includes a specific authority to provide additional support for the education of pre-school children with disabilities, which is funded in fiscal year 1995 at $360 million. The newest program in IDEA is Part H, which was created in 1986. Part H assists States in providing early intervention services to infants and toddlers with disabilities and their families. The program, which is designed to provide for coordinated efforts by a variety of state agencies, is currently funded at about $315 million.
We propose to maintain this current three-pronged structure for serving infants and toddlers, pre-schoolers, and school-aged children.
The IDEA also contains 14 categorical program authorities -- each of which was created over the years to address a specific need identified by the field at that time. These programs, currently funded at a total of $250 million, would be replaced by 5 new authorities focused on improving educational results for children with disabilities.
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