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Paige Releases Principles for
Reauthorizing Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)
For Release: February 25, 2003
Contact: Jim Bradshaw, (202)
401-1576
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U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige today unveiled a set of
principles to guide the Education Department in its work toward
seeking reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities
Education Act (IDEA), the landmark statute that provides for the
education of America's 6.5 million students with disabilities.
"Every child in America deserves the highest-quality education,
including our children with disabilities," Secretary Paige said.
"Our goal is to align IDEA with the principles of No Child Left
Behind by ensuring accountability, more flexibility, more
options for parents and an emphasis on doing what works to
improve student achievement. I look forward to working with
Congress in the weeks and months ahead to achieve these goals."
The act, which comes up for reauthorization before Congress this
year, guarantees a free appropriate public education in the
least restrictive environment to students with disabilities. At
the time it was passed by Congress in 1975, more than a million
students with disabilities were warehoused in institutions.
Today, many students with disabilities are educated in regular
classrooms alongside their nondisabled peers. Following is the
text of the principles that will guide the department's work
toward reauthorizing the act:
PRINCIPLES FOR REAUTHORIZING THE INDIVIDUALS WITH
DISABILITIES EDUCATION ACT
Since 1975, the Federal government has played an important role
in ensuring that children with disabilities receive the best
possible education through the Individuals with Disabilities
Education Act (IDEA). President Bush's sweeping reforms in the
No Child Left Behind Act made fundamental improvements in
elementary and secondary education to enhance the education of
children with disabilities by supporting accountability for
results, expanded parental choice, a focus on what works, and
increased local flexibility. The President believes the next
step for achieving excellence in the education of children with
disabilities is significant reform of IDEA.
In 2001, the President created the Commission on Excellence in
Special Education. After 13 meetings and hearings across the
country, the Commission delivered to the President its
recommendations for improving special education and reforming
IDEA. President Bush believes the Commission's recommendations
should serve as the starting point for reauthorization. The
President intends to work with the Congress to renew IDEA based
on the following principles:
1. STRONGER ACCOUNTABILITY FOR RESULTS
Children with disabilities must be considered as general
education students first. Under No Child Left Behind (NCLB),
states are responsible for implementing a single accountability
system for all students based on strong academic standards for
what every child should know and learn, including children with
disabilities. IDEA must incorporate the NCLB principles of
assessment for children receiving special education and align
with NCLB accordingly to enhance state efforts to improve
student achievement.
Consistent with those principles, IDEA should ensure that
students with disabilities have access to and make progress in
the general curriculum, and are appropriately included in state
accountability systems. IDEA must move from a culture of
compliance with process to a culture of accountability for
results. Consequently, IDEA eligibility and compliance paperwork
requirements at the federal level must be streamlined and
focused on improving results for students with disabilities. In
return for that rigorous accountability, states and localities
will receive significant annual increases in IDEA funding. This
funding would be on a discretionary basis.
2. SIMPLIFY PAPERWORK FOR STATES AND COMMUNITIES AND INCREASE
FLEXIBILITY FOR ALL
IDEA guarantees the availability of a free appropriate public
education for children with disabilities. Yet the law itself
often hampers effective education by requiring vast amounts of
paperwork and substantial procedural requirements for teachers
and administrators. IDEA should be simplified and unnecessary
paperwork eliminated by focusing on results. This will increase
the time spent by teachers on teaching and minimize time
currently spent on procedural and non-instructional tasks while
still preserving the fundamental rights of students with
disabilities. States should be allowed to submit plans to the
Department to streamline and simplify paperwork while
demonstrating compliance.
States and localities should have more flexibility to use
federal special education money to provide direct services for
students with disabilities. This will permit states, for
example, to create intrastate risk pools for the highest cost
children with disabilities, or to increase professional
development opportunities for teachers, paraeducators, other
service personnel and administrators. In addition, the current
process for states to demonstrate their eligibility to receive
IDEA funds must be streamlined and simplified.
Meaningful involvement for parents of students with disabilities
should also include earlier and easier access to alternative
dispute resolution. IDEA should expand and improve upon existing
dispute resolution processes through a variety of strategies
including improved mediation practices; allowing mediation to be
requested at any time during the dispute resolution process; and
permitting the use of voluntary binding arbitration for both
parents and districts. The law should also simplify the
complexities of IDEA's discipline requirements. Changes would
improve school safety while preserving protections for students
with disabilities.
3. DOING WHAT WORKS
IDEA should target federal education dollars to implement
research-based practices that have been proven to help students
with disabilities learn. Half of the more than 6 million
children currently served under IDEA have learning disabilities
and about 90 percent of them exhibit reading difficulties as
their primary demonstration of their specific learning
disability. IDEA should ensure the revision of outdated
regulations that result in the misidentification of students as
having disabilities because they did not receive appropriate
instruction (in areas such as reading) in their early years.
This will help schools focus on identification practices that
promote earlier intervention, dramatically reducing the
misidentification of students with learning disabilities.
More broadly, IDEA should ensure that schools, local education
agencies, state education agencies and the Federal Department of
Education quickly adopt research and evidence-based practices.
OSERS research and training activities should be aligned with
the work of the Department's Institute of Education Sciences.
Additionally, information should be provided to families and
teachers on effective programs based on rigorous research,
including requiring the federally funded parent training centers
to educate parents about effective research that improves
results for students with disabilities. IDEA should also reflect
the research principles outlined by the President's Commission
on Excellence in Special Education while adhering to the
standards for high quality research established by the Education
Sciences Reform Act of 2002.
4. INCREASE CHOICES AND MEANINGFUL INVOLVEMENT FOR PARENTS
A core principle of IDEA is identifying and serving all children
with disabilities regardless of the type of school they
attend--traditional public, public charter, private, and
parochial. IDEA currently empowers parents of children with
disabilities to participate in the selection of schools and
services for their children and where those services will be
provided. For instance, IDEA permits parents to move their child
out of a special education program to the private program of
their choice if an IEP team agrees the child would be more
appropriately served in such a program.
Yet too often these choices for students with disabilities are
limited by arbitrary decisions. IDEA should expand opportunities
to help parents, schools, and teachers choose appropriate
services and programs for children with disabilities, including
the charter and private schools of their choice. States should
then measure and report academic achievement results for all
students benefiting from IDEA funds, regardless of what schools
they choose to attend.
Note to editors: For more information about IDEA, visit
http://www.ed.gov/offices/OSERS/OSEP/. |
