PL 94-142 was replaced with IDEA: minor tweaking of the law

• Names come and go
  • “handicapped children” is no longer politically correct
  • “disabled children” replaced with children “with disabilities”
  • “Mental retardation” replaced with "intellectual disability"
• Age range affected by the law has increased (initially affecting kids of school age 5-15)
  • Why? Because the earlier you intervene, the better!
  • Typical age at diagnosis is 8 or 9 (third or fourth grade). By that point, you’ve missed intervening during a crucial part of development.
  • People with more severe disabilities can now be covered until age 21
  • Many kids now identified during preschool level (work with language/auditory processing; rather than teaching them to read straight away)
  • Only about 50% of kids in US are involved in pre-school so they cannot be diagnosed. Parents aren’t particularly adept at identifying a lag as there are no peers to compare with. Parents only see siblings and playmates while teachers see plenty of kids and are therefore much more reliable at identifying a potential disability.

During Bush Administration, No Child Left Behind mandate was established:

• It was a broad program that was supposed to benefit everyone
• Substantial focus on standardized testing: tested more topics for days at a time
  • Wealth of test information wasn’t put to good use in any way
  • Just put a lot of stress and anxiety on kids and didn’t improve test performance or general academic ability!!!
  • Was generally phased out — found that testing is not necessarily the best approach
• High stakes test: decisions made based on tests (standardized tests, SAT/ACT)