Abstract
This paper considers the issue of special education. Specifically, the brief history of the emergence of this institution is provided, and the legal aspects of this history are touched. Further, contemporary challenges the special education legislation faces are described, and conclusions about the future steps are made. The study was conducted by carrying out an analysis of scholarly sources concerned with the topic and, due to the limited number of the latter, materials available online, mainly from official.gov websites.
The study found out that the establishment of the special education system was a crucial step, for previous generations of disabled children who were severely discriminated against. On the other hand, it was also uncovered that the current version of the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act does not cover all the children who need such protection and that it contains several major loopholes which sometimes allow for classifying healthy children as disabled and, paradoxically, for the usage of the act as a discrimination tool. Therefore, we conclude that these loopholes must be closed as soon as possible.
Introduction
Special education is a system that provides students with special needs with an education that addresses their requirements to integrate them into the community. It is an important institution that is necessary to establish and maintain educational equity for children. In our paper, we will concisely discuss the history of the emergence of this system, also addressing the history of the legislation. We will then discuss some challenges that the special education system legislation faces nowadays, also making conclusions about what needs to be done in the future.
A Brief History of Special Education, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act
The first signs of future development of special education in the USA appeared at the end of the 19th century. Before that, disabled people had few, if any, rights; mentally impaired, for instance, were placed in asylums, where “treatment” resembled abuse more than health care (Taylor, n.d., p. 5). After the precedent with Helen Keller, a deaf-blind child who was successfully educated, a social advocacy movement supporting children with special needs and demanding to provide them with education gradually began to arise (Rotatori, Obiakor, & Bakken, 2011, p. 22-23). After many years of endeavors, the movement began to achieve its victories.
In 1946, Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. Foundation was created, which caused a degree of public acknowledgment towards the disabled. In 1961, the newly chosen President John F. Kennedy “organized the President’s Panel on Mental Retardation; he formally established the panel in 1966” (Rotatori et al., 2011, p. 24). As a result, it was found out that the state institutions for mentally impaired were in an unsatisfactory condition, underfinanced; the impaired were often abused. In 1963, John F. Kennedy emphasized the importance of community care for people with mental illnesses (Taylor, n.d., p. 6).
Meanwhile, civil rights movements, ones that would fight for equality for all the Americans, developed; these movements did not forget the disabled and acted to promote equal rights for them as well. It is noteworthy that, on the whole, the history of the struggle for the disabled is closely tied to the history of movements for the rights of colored people, women, and other discriminated groups. These movements played a crucial role in promoting legal changes to protect persons with exceptionalities, applying the pressure on the government and protecting the disabled children in courts of law (Rotatori et al., 2011).
As for legal history, the first crucial legal procedures took place in the second half of the 20th century. Before that, the situation was grim; until 1969, a parents’ attempt to enroll their child previously expelled from school due to a disability was criminally prosecuted in North Carolina (Wolffe, 2010, para. 11). However, in the 1970s, numerous notable court cases concerned with children with disabilities occurred.
In Pennsylvania, for instance, the Pennsylvania Association for Retarded Children (PARC) won a legal process that led to the cancelation of the law prohibiting mentally impaired children from attending public schools; the children were granted the right to education. Many other lawsuits were won in other states at this time, which indicated the need for federal legislation. In 1975, the Education for All Handicapped Children Act was adopted; with time, its name changed due to amendments through Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEIA) to Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA); the latter change took place in 1990 (Rotatori et al., 2011, p. 29-31, 366; Wolffe, 2010).
Current and Future Challenges of the Special Education System Legislation
Nowadays, the main law dealing with special education is IDEA. However, it does not cover all the cases of children with disabilities (Rotatori et al., 2011, p. 367). It is stressed that IDEA is not always working properly, for parents sometimes experience problems while attempting to provide their children with appropriate education (Congress of the U.S., 2001).
Sometimes children or college/university applicants have to seek protection by appealing to other laws, such as Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act (the Act was adopted in 1973) or ADA (Leake & Stodden, 2014). Section 504 prohibits discrimination of qualified individuals with disabilities (i.e. ones who can carry out the main functions of the work they need to do) in any organizations that receive federal monetary help, and, therefore, can be in some cases applied to education (Office for Civil Rights, n.d.).
There is a major problem connected to diversity. It is highlighted that contemporary special education faces challenges from the fact of the overrepresentation of culturally diverse students (Rueda, 2007); the current numbers of culturally diverse students in special education programs are disproportionately high, whereas the numbers of such students in programs for talented children are disproportionately small.
Therefore, it is argued that the special education systems nowadays are being used to “get rid of students just because they exhibit different behavioral and learning styles” and are inconvenient for some educators (Rotatori et al., 2011, p. 368) becoming an instrument of racial/cultural discrimination. Still, not only diverse children sometimes are wrongly classified as having learning disabilities under IDEA (Etscheidt, 2012).
In the future, therefore, it is crucial to rid the education legislation of loopholes which allow for misinterpretation and misimplementation of this legislation (Rotatori et al., 2011, p. 374). In particular, it is paramount to provide all the children with the opportunity to achieve the education appropriate for their needs. Another essential issue is to make the exclusion of children from the non-special education system based on their cultural peculiarities impossible.
Conclusion
As we have seen, special education is an important system that allows for the establishment and maintenance of educational equity for children. The first harbingers of it appeared at the beginning of the 20th century, but it started to emerge in the second half of the century; the joint struggle of civil rights movements for the rights of the discriminated was essential to get the present results. The primary legal tool of special education is IDEA, the first variant of which was adopted in 1975.
This tool, however useful, has several loopholes that allow for its misinterpretation and misuse; this misuse can be rather severe, Besides, in some cases, the law fails to protect impaired children or leads to healthy children being classified as having learning disabilities. These loopholes require closing in the shortest terms.
References
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