• Bill of Rights for Kids with Disabilities!!!
• Changed landscape of public education (everyone was guaranteed public education regardless of level of support)
• Free appropriate public education (FAPE) is now the mantra
  • At no costs!!! (this is huge!!!)
  • Costs 50% more to educate a disabled child versus a non-disabled child
  • Schools are still highly dependent on property taxes though. (eg. Illinois: 8,000 in poorer neighborhoods versus 13,000/14,000 in Wilmette)

DEFINITIONS/CLAUSES FROM THE LAW:

• Least restrictive environment (LRE)
  • Basic principle: students with disabilities should attend their local school and be integrated, to the maximum extent possible, with students without disabilities
    • Start with assumption that they'll be in a mainstream classroom → change as necessary
  • Vast majority of kids with learning disabilities are educated in general education (Very few kids receive more than an hour a day out of the "regular" classroom in special education services. This is a dramatic change — kids with disabilities used to be in separate classrooms and were only integrated with the rest of their peers for music and gym class.)
  • Additional resource: https://www.disabilitylawco.org/sites/default/files/uploads/Fact Sheet_LRE-2.pdf
• Individualized education program (IEP) or individualized education plan:
  • Lays out a child's plan for the upcoming school year.
  • This includes: what is the problem and how we are going to meet those needs (ie. what services will be provided). This has to be measurable (“can read 2 lines with 80% accuracy) and success has to be quantified.
  • Planning takes place in May/June for the subsequent year: Staffing is held. Parents have a say.
• Procedural due process
  • There are safeguards for parents, so they don’t just sit back idly while the school district makes all of the decisions on behalf of their kids.
    • Can call for a meeting at any point in the year (school has to schedule within 30 days)
    • Confidentiality of records; Access granted with parents’ approval
    • Can get outside opinion on child care if wanted and it has to be at least considered by the school
• Non-discriminatory assessment
  • Prior to placement, having a multidisciplinary team assess the child
  • Not racially, culturally, linguistically biased
• Parental partisanship
  • Parents participate in the decision-making process
  • Parents who know more about learning disabilities end up with kids who do better

Congress’s 1975 findings (which prompted PL 94-142's passing):

• There were 8 million kids with disabilities in the US
• Special education needs were not fully met
  • More than half of disabled children in the US didn’t receive appropriate services
  • 1 million were excluded entirely from public school
  • Families were often forced to find services outside of the public school system (not many teachers were trained to teach kids with disabilities)
• Development in training of teachers/diagnostic/instructional procedures have advanced

WHAT HAPPENED:

• There was a need for people in the field (10s of millions of dollars poured into training teachers)
• From the 70s-90s, the number of kids diagnosed with a disability climbed

WHAT PL 94-142 LED TO: