| In 1975, President Ford signed into law the Education for All Handicapped Children Act. The Act is the landmark federal legislation for special education and impacts millions of children with disabilities in The United States as well as the public school system at large. The Act was reauthorized numerous times and was renamed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in 1990. Since 1975, the number of school age children served by the Act has increased in every year with one exception. In 1999–2000, over five million children, ages six through 21, were served under IDEA in America.; The origins of the Act can be traced to the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments of the Constitution, compulsory public school attendance laws, the civil rights movement, earlier legislation involving adults and children with disabilities, and case law involving students with disabilities and their right to public education. The Act established two substantive rights for students with disabilities, a free appropriate public education and the least restrictive environment. To ensure those rights, a host of procedural rights and funding was established to help the states. The United States Supreme Court addressed the issue of a free appropriate public education and the provision of health related services. The United States Circuit Courts established judicial standards for the least restrictive environment mandate. The annual reports to Congress on the implementation of the Act show increasing graduation rates, decreasing drop out rates, and increased participation in general education programs for students with disabilities. The specific learning disability category of disability represents 51 percent of the students age six through 21 served under IDEA. Disproportionate representation of racial/ethnic groups in various categories of disabilities has been monitored since the 1997 IDEA Amendments. The National Council on Disability's 2000 report found every state out of compliance with the IDEA.; Since the enactment of PL 94-142, certain trends have emerged. Five such trends are (a) an emphasis on procedural requirements, (b) increasing numbers of children served and overall cost associated with EHCA/IDEA, (c) the shift away from a focus on students with the most severe disabilities toward those with high incidence disabilities, (d) the court rulings to leave educational decisions related to methodology to state and local education agencies, and (e) the disproportionate representation of racial/ethnic groups served under IDEA. |
