What is the history of the special education movement in America
In the early 1960’s, there were many advocates who required the Federal government to provide a special education for children with disabilities. The advocates proposed that the Federal should lead and fund a free appropriate public education (FAPE) for the disabled children. In 1996, the congress considered this suggestion and established the Bureau for Education of the Handicapped. This was established under the Title VI of the Elementary and Secondary Schools Act (ESEA). Consequently, there were numerous initiatives stating small amount of funds from the Federal for the services to be given to the disabled children. Since these programs underwent issues, the Bureau then decided that this rule should be considered as a single code and under a single law. After all discussions, this step has become the Education of the Handicapped Act and was passed in the year 1970.
Also in 1960’s and the early 70’s, state laws have required all local education agencies (LEA) to provide services of special education to all disabled children, and the state law will be providing partial funding for these services. But despite of these laws and available funding for this special education, there were still a lot of disabled children who are not served with special education by the public schools in their states. Clearly, the Federal should require all public schools of different states to provide all disabled children with FAPE.
In 1971 and the following year, there were 2 court decisions which stated that all states and districts of local schools should educate all disabled children and it is their responsibility to do so. Their decisions were based from the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution under the equal protection clause. These federal court decisions were made by Pennsylvania Association for Retarded Children and Board of Education of the District of Columbia.
These decisions have also made the states to form a new law where advocates joined to find a way for the Federal to be more consistent in providing leadership and subsidy to the costs of the special education for disabled children.
In the year 1975, the Congress was able to determine that there were millions of disabled children in America are still not offered and given special education, and that more than half of these handicapped children in US are not receiving proper educational services. The Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EAHCA) should have provided these handicapped children with equal opportunities. This was written under Sec. 3(b) (3) of the EAHCA. The Public Law 94-142 was then enacted to solve this problem by providing all funding for the special education programs and requiring all disabled students to receive FAPE.
As of today, the IDEA mandates that all disabled children starting from first grade to college students should all be provided with special education services. All disabled children who have speech impairments, emotional difficulties, behavioral difficulties, and children using wheelchair are considered disabled children and should receive the special education service. There have additional provisions and amendments to this mandate but these services have been intact for many years not, continuously providing services to disabled children.
