DINF Web Posted on December 15, 1997
Secretary Riley's Testimony on IDEA -- June 20, 1995
The information in this document has been superseded by more recent information available elsewhere on this site.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.
VII. Our Proposal
1. Align the IDEA with state and local education improvement efforts so students with disabilities can benefit from them
Our first principle -- aligning the IDEA with state and local education improvement efforts so that students with disabilities can benefit from them -- underlies our entire proposal. In the past few years, I have visited many schools around the nation. When I go to schools, I rarely know whether the children I meet are being served under the IDEA -- except in the cases where children have visible disabilities. This is to be expected -- as mentioned above, our newest data tells us that 70 percent of students with disabilities are in the general education classroom for a substantial portion of the school day and that, with appropriate supports, most can succeed there.
This means that we must stop thinking about "special education" as a separate program and a separate place to put students and start thinking about "special education" as the supports and services children need in whatever setting is the least restrictive -- whether it be the regular classroom, a resource room, a separate classroom, or a separate school. Clearly, some of the lessons we have learned in working with students with disabilities -- how to identify learning problems early, how to teach reading to children who have trouble grasping letters or sounds, how to use technology to enhance learning, and how to teach children to take control over their behavior in the classroom -- can benefit all students. As states and communities move forward with school improvement efforts, children with disabilities should not be left behind. Each of our proposals, described below, will support transforming our current categorical education system into a system for all children that meets the individual needs of each child.
2. Improve results for students with disabilities through higher expectations and meaningful access to the general curriculum, to the maximum extent appropriate
Our second principle is to improve results for students with disabilities through higher expectations and access to the general curriculum. We know that most children work harder and do better when more is expected of them -- whether it be in the classroom, doing their homework, or doing the dishes. Disabled students are no different. When we have high expectations for students with disabilities, most can achieve to challenging standards -- and all can achieve more than society has historically expected. However, not all schools presently have high expectations for these students, and not all schools take responsibility for the academic progress of disabled students.
Our proposal will have several related strategies for promoting high expectations and accountability for educational results. The first is that students with disabilities should be included in state and district-wide assessments and the results should be publicly reported. While civil rights laws already prohibit the discriminatory exclusion of students with disabilities from participation in assessments, some states exclude over 90 percent of all students with disabilities from assessments, and few states report publicly on how students with disabilities are achieving. Of course, a small number of students with significant cognitive disabilities cannot appropriately be included in general State and district-wide assessments. States and districts would provide alternative assessments -- such as portfolio assessments -- for these few students. This is already happening in States like Kentucky -- which is including all students with disabilities in its state assessment system. Kentucky is finding less than 3 percent of students with disabilities cannot participate in the general state assessments -- and is providing these students with alternative assessments.
We believe that when schools assess students with disabilities and report on the results, they will focus more on improving results for students with disabilities and providing access to the general curriculum. In addition, States would be asked to use this information on the performance of children with disabilities to establish strategies for achieving educational progress in State Improvement Plans that we have proposed.
Our second strategy for increasing expectations and access to the general curriculum is improving the IEP. The individualized education program -- known as an IEP -- is central to the education of students with disabilities. Each year, a team consisting of teachers, parents, and administrators develops an individualized plan for each child's education.
Our proposal would create an improved IEP process focused on educational results. The new IEP would include meaningful annual objectives for the student. Unless the IEP indicates otherwise, it would focus on access to the general curriculum, in which children with disabilities would have the opportunity to meet the same challenging standards as other students. And the new IEP process would do more to include parents in helping their children succeed. Today, parents of disabled students often are not told how their children are progressing in school until the end of the year -- when they may hear that the student has not progressed far. Surprisingly, many parents do not even receive regular report cards. Our proposal will ensure that IEP requirements make sense - - such as a proposal that parents be informed of their children's progress, by means such as report cards, with the same frequency used to inform parents on the progress of their nondisabled children.
3. Address individual needs in the least restrictive environment for the student
A central purpose of the IDEA -- and the third principle underlying our proposal -- is to ensure an effective and individualized education to address each child's unique needs in the least restrictive environment. Our proposals will help to increase incentives for appropriate identification of children with disabilities and ensure that special education is a valued service for all children who are identified, including African-American children, children with limited English proficiency, and other minority children who have encountered overidentification, inappropriate placement in separate classrooms, as well as low expectations.
Our first strategy is to promote better ways of identifying and serving students. Under the current IDEA, students must be identified as being in one of thirteen specific disability categories to be served. This fosters a categorical approach to evaluating, labeling, placing, and serving children. However, we know from research and experience that these categories do not give us accurate information about an individual student's educational needs. To know what a student needs to be able to learn, we need to look closely at that specific child -- not just the child's label. And the current approach of putting a categorical label on children has little educational meaning or benefit, especially at the level of the interaction between a teacher and a student. This is why we will propose a new eligibility definition. The new definition, together with changes in reporting requirements, would encourage states to move forward toward less categorical approaches, while permitting states that wish to retain their current eligibility criteria to do so. Under this new definition, children who are eligible under the current criteria would remain eligible.
Just as important to promoting individual -- not categorical -- education is improving student evaluations. These evaluations are important for identifying and educating children with disabilities. However, far too often, these evaluations consist of a battery of standardized tests that are unrelated to the student's instruction. And they require resources -- an average of $2,000 and hours of a school psychologist's time per evaluation -- that could be better used for direct services to children. Even students with clearly permanent disabilities such as deafness or blindness are subjected every three years to a battery of tests to determine whether they remain disabled. We propose streamlining evaluation procedures so that what is educationally relevant is not lost, but resources can be better devoted to helping students.
Our third strategy is to ensure that federal and state requirements and funding systems do not create disincentives for appropriate placements and services. We will propose to reduce unnecessary paperwork for schools, while improving services for students, by allowing schools to use their IDEA funds to pay for special education services in the regular classroom for the purpose of benefitting students with disabilities without having to track the costs of any incidental benefits to nondisabled students. This will help schools have classrooms in which the regular teachers are assisted by aides and special education teachers who can focus on helping the disabled children -- but who can also work with nondisabled children and catch learning or behavior problems early.
We will also propose that the federal funding formula be changed to allocate to states all new funding above their fiscal year 1995 grants based on the total number of children in the state. This change in the formula would remove disincentives for States to undertake improvements such as the increased provision of early intervention services that may result in fewer children being served in special education. Some states, including Pennsylvania and Vermont, have already begun such improvements, and our goal is to encourage that kind of effort. The change would also remove incentives for States to over-identify students as disabled.
4. Provide families and teachers -- those closest to students -- with the knowledge and training to effectively support students' learning
Our fourth principle is that families and teachers must have the knowledge and training to effectively support student learning. This requires strong working relationships between families and schools. Family involvement is at the heart of the IDEA, and we propose several actions to strengthen that important aspect. For example, our proposal will include involving parents more fully in decisions on where their child is educated, and will keep parents informed of students' progress in attaining measurable annual objectives.
We also want to reduce unnecessary lawsuits that create emotional and financial burdens for parents and school districts. While the right of parents to "due process" hearings to resolve disputes is central to the implementation of the law, recourse to these hearings should be a last resort when less adversarial methods have failed. A substantial number of states have created successful mediation systems to resolve family-school disputes quickly and effectively. Parents and school districts that engage in mediation report that mediation not only helped them to clarify and resolve their particular disagreement, but that it also helped them to work together better and avoid future conflicts.
That's good news in my opinion, because building trust through better communication is so essential to making the IDEA work for the child and the school. California, for example, had 993 requests for mediation from 1991-1992. Only 14 percent of these cases went on to hearings. Massachusetts reports similar results as well. In 1992, only 15 percent of mediations went to hearings.
Mediation can also reduce the costs to school districts which is also an important objective. California estimates that the cost of successful mediation is only 13 percent of the cost of the due process system. Based on the first two years of its mediation process, the Texas Education agency estimated that the use of mediation in special education saved $5 million.
When the Justice Center of Atlanta, nationally known for its expertise in mediation, studied the special education mediation program in Georgia, it asked parents and schools who had participated in mediation whether they would recommend mediation to others. Eighty-five percent of the parents and 99 percent of the schools said "yes." While the many benefits of mediation are clear, a number of states do not offer mediation to parents. We propose, therefore, that mediation be available as an option to all parents for dispute resolution.
All of these proposals concern the state grants programs under Part B. Reforming the IDEA categorical programs is also essential if schools and families are to have the knowledge and skills they need to be able to improve results for children with disabilities.
There are 14 categorical competitive grant programs in the IDEA, and over the past 19 years there has been much good work done in each of them. However, despite some real successes, we believe that these programs need significant reform. Having developed separately over the years to address specific issues, the 14 programs are fragmented and too narrowly focused. Many activities are limited to particular disability categories or age ranges in ways that no longer make sense. Moreover, administering the numerous discretionary programs requires significant staff at all levels of government. As we work to make government smaller and more efficient, there will be fewer staff to administer these programs -- making effective administration problematic.
We envision a streamlined, comprehensive, and coordinated approach for these programs that will be more effective in improving results for children with disabilities while also making effective use of resources. To achieve this, we propose replacing the 14 current programs with five flexible authorities. To ensure that issues concerning the special needs of children with low-incidence disabilities, such as deaf-blindness, continue to be adequately addressed, there would be a minimum "floor" for discretionary spending across these new authorities to meet the needs of these children.
A new State Improvement authority would recognize the key role that the states play in implementing the law and enhance the ability of state agencies to carry out their own plans for program improvement by providing flexible resources based on an IDEA State Improvement Plan. Each state would develop a State Improvement Plan, with broad-based participation, that describes its strategies for implementing new efforts to improve results for students with disabilities -- including how it will ensure a supply of prepared teachers and how it will assist local communities in improving their schools. This flexibility would be in return for increased accountability for results for students with disabilities. Asking States to focus on improving outcomes by addressing systemic problems in their plans -- and giving States resources to address problems -- would create a continuous improvement "feedback" loop that would be a significant step in our efforts to improve implementation of the IDEA.
The proposed Professional Development authority would make a significant investment in improving teacher preparation. Research shows that improved teacher preparation is critical to improve the quality of teaching and student results. We need to prepare teachers to work in the classroom of today. We need teachers who can work with both disabled and nondisabled students, teachers who can teach both the basics and challenging academic material, teachers who can identify reading problems early and work with children before they get too far behind, teachers who have the skills to help troubled children learn how to take responsibility for their behaviors and to resolve conflicts through words, not fighting. Continuing education for teachers is an important piece of achieving this goal. However, nothing can take the place of new teachers taught by faculty who understand how to teach children with different learning needs. Nothing can take the place of classroom experience in schools that are excited about working with all students. Our proposal will be designed to help reduce the barriers that currently exist between special education and general education professionals -- in our schools of education, in state certification requirements, and in our public schools.
The third authority, Research to Practice, would be at the hub of our efforts to use knowledge to improve results for children with disabilities. This authority would include not only activities to develop knowledge, but also activities to ensure that this knowledge reaches teachers, parents, administrators, policy-makers, and others working with children with disabilities. These activities would be carried out in accordance with a comprehensive plan we would develop to coordinate program activities to systematically move research into practice.
The fourth authority would build on the current authority for a national network of parent training centers that can assist parents in gaining the knowledge and skills they need to help their children meet their full potential.
The final authority, Technology Development and Educational Media Services, would promote the use of advanced technologies for students with disabilities as well as support captioning and similar activities.
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