Special Education
Education for children with disabilities was one of the first goals of the parents' movement. For years, it was generally believed that children with disabilities should begin schooling at a later age than others because they were slow to learn. But as Gunnar Dybwad stated "Because they needed more time to learn, we gave them less time… Today, one wonders how it was possible for people to be so shortsighted."
In 1953, the Association for Retarded Children issued a position statement, ''Education Bill of Rights for the Retarded Child," prepared by Elizabeth Boggs. This document stated that "every child, including every retarded child, has the right to a program of education and training suited to his particular needs and carried forward in the environment most favorable for him, whether that be the community public school, the state residential school or his own home."
Prior to 1975, people with profound disabilities seldom received any type of instruction. Persons with mild mental retardation were categorized as "educable" and had the opportunity to learn basic academic subjects and develop social skills. People with more severe disabilities were categorized as "trainable" and received instruction in self-help skills and socialization.
According to Dr. Gunnar Dybwad, attempts to classify children for the appropriate level of instruction, using the terms "educable" and "trainable," became "more and more damaging, if not pernicious, because [those terms] simply label persons with mental retardation for life on the basis of what we earlier judged their adjustment to be to a particular school situation.
In 1966, the President's Panel on Mental Retardation published a booklet entitled The Six Hour Retarded Child. This booklet noted that many students were labeled "mentally retarded" based on their school work rather than their level of functioning in their family and community.
The use of labels emphasized not only that education must improve for students with disabilities, but also that applying a label to one part of an individual's life results in stigmatizing a person's entire life.
Not only was much of the existing schooling inadequate or misplaced, but significant numbers of children with disabilities were not being educated at all. Thousands of children were simply turned away by schools who said they were unable to educate them and were not required by law to do so.
In 1975, when Congress passed the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, education for all children with disabilities changed dramatically. Regardless of the type or degree of disability, each school-aged child had the right to a "free appropriate public education."
This Act included "transportation, and such developmental, corrective, and other supportive services (including speech pathology and audiology, psychological services, physical and occupational therapy, recreation and medical and counseling services, except that such medical services shall be for diagnostic and evaluation purposes only) as may be required to assist a child [with disabilities] to benefit from special education, and includes the early identification and assessment of handicapping conditions in children.
Children with a wide range of disabilities were now enrolled in public schools. A team of individuals, including parents and students, participated in the development of an Individualized Education Program (IEP) to assure that the unique needs of each student were met.
The IEP includes a statement of the student's present level of educational performance, a statement of annual goals, a statement of the specific educational services and related services to be provided and the extent to which the student will be able to participate in regular educational programs, the projected duration of services, and evaluation procedures for determining if the goals are being achieved. This team planning process gave parents an opportunity to have some influence over their child's education.
In 1973, Marian Wright Edelman, founder of a new organization called the Children's Defense Fund, conducted a survey to determine why 750,000 children appeared in the U.S. Census as not attending school. Edelman suspected that the number represented African-American children kept out of school in segregated settings. In fact, they were children with disabilities. This data assisted the Pennsylvania Association for Retarded Children in its lawsuit regarding the exclusion of children with disabilities from school as a violation of the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution. The Federal District Court ruled in favor of the children, which led to the enactment of a federal law mandating their education.
Despite this federal legislation, the majority of children with mental retardation are still taught in separate schools and separate classes. Public education agencies still have a misperception that children with cognitive disabilities require a segregated educational placement. On the 20th anniversary of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, only 7.1 percent of children with mental retardation were being educated in regular classrooms compared with 44 percent of all other children with disabilities (1992-93 data). Nearly 50 percent of the states educated less than five percent of children with mental retardation in a regular classroom. Vermont, an exception, provides a regular classroom education for 75 percent of the children with mental retardation.
The table below shows the percentage of students in different educational settings for the 1989-90 school year compared with the 1992-93 school year. All fifty states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico are represented.
| Students with Mental Retardation |
Students with All Other Disabilities |
|||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Environment | 1989-90 | 1992-93 | 1989-90 | 1992-93 |
| Regular class | 6.7 | 7.i | 35.3 | 44.0 |
| Resource room | 20.1 | 26.8 | 40.2 | 32.3 |
| Separate class | 61.1 | 56.8 | 19.4 | 19.2 |
| Separate class | 10.3 | 7.9 | 3.7 | 3.1 |
| Residential facility | 1.4 | .8 | .9 | .8 |
| Home hospital | .4 | .5 | .6 | .5 |
| Source: The 17th Annual Report to Congress, The Arc | ||||
According to Paul Wehman at Virginia Commonwealth University, students with disabilities who are most likely to have jobs and live independently have these characteristics: High school graduation, highly educated family, no physical impairments, male gender, social integration, no behavior problems, two parent household.
According to census data from the US Department of Education, of all special education students, 44.8% graduate with a diploma, 12.4% graduate with a certificate, 27% drop out of school, 2.5% "age out" (reach the maximum age), and 13.3% have an unknown status.
According to 1990 census data from the U.S. Department of Commerce, about 61% of working-age adults with disabilities (ages 16-64), are unemployed.
