Abstract
Between 1960s and 1975, state legislatures, the federal courts, and the U.S. Congress suggested effective educational rights for children with disabilities. Forty-five state legislatures passed laws mandating, encouraging, and/or funding special education programs. Federal courts, interpreting the equal protection and due process guarantees of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ruled that schools could not single out on the basis of disability and that parents had due process rights related to their children's schooling.
Congress, in legislation now re-titled the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), laid out detailed procedural protections concerning eligibility for special educational services, parental rights, individualized education programs (IEPs), the requirement that children be served in the least restrictive environment, and the need to provide related (non educational) services. Decisions on instructional matters such as curricula and the elements of the IEP remain the province of local and state authorities.
Activists for students with disabilities have constantly sought separate (categorical) funding for special education services. Current movements toward block grants rather than categorical programs and toward greater inclusion of special education students in general education classrooms raise alarms in some areas about whether students with disabilities will continue to have full access to the special services they need.
Special Education: A Brief History
During the 19th century Institutions played such an important role in treatment and education for people with disability during this reform period that Craver (2000) found in his research:
“It seems clear that it was not until the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries that major reforms led to extensive institutional care, such as asylums for the mentally ill and schools for blind, deaf, or mentally retarded students. By the close of the 19th century, the education of people with disabilities of various kinds was housed in special institutions for the most part....................
