In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Chapter Eleven Education: Integration in the Least Restrictive Environment THE FAILURE OF THE states, even as late as the 1960s, to provide many children with disabilities with the educational opportunities they required indicated the necessity for appropriate federal legislation. Two experts in the education ofchildren with disabilities observe: While the nation was seeking to improve the quality ofthe minority child's schooling, the handicapped child's educational needs remained forgotten, even though these needs were easilyas great as those ofthe most cruelly disadvantaged able-bodied children. At that time perhaps one handicappedchildin eightover one million handicapped childrenreceived no education whatsoever, while more than halfofall handicapped children did not receive the special instructional services that they needed.! A "Quiet Revolution" Although the U.S. Constitution does not guarantee every child the right to an education , the Fourteenth Amendment does affirm every person's right to equal protection under the law. Favoring the Pennsylvania Association for Retarded Children (PARe) in its suit against Pennsylvania, a federal court decision in Pennsylvania in 1971, invoking the Fourteenth Amendment, required that the state provide every "retarded " child with access to a free public education.2 In Mills v. Board ofEducation ofthe District ofColumbia, another district court in 1972 expanded the precedent established in the PARC case and ruled that every schoolage child was entitled to a free public education regardless ofthe nature or severity of the individual's disability.3 The Developmental Disabilities and Bill of Rights Act and the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, passed by Congress in 1975, included principles stemming from federal court decisions-primarily PARC and Mills-concerning equal educational opportunities for students with disabilities . The former act provides funding "to assist and encourage states to improve care and training for developmentally disabled citizens,"4 individuals with mental and/or physical impairments that manifested themselves at birth or in early childhood causing substantial functional limitations .5 The latter law, renamed in 1990 the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, required that each state find, identify, and assess all children with disabilities re- EDUCATION: INTEGRATION IN THE LEAST RESTRICTIVE ENVIRONMENT 185 siding in that state, as well as tailor educational programs to suit each child's particular needs by means of an "individualized educational plan."6 It extends to children with disabilities the principle of equality of educational opportunities underlying the landmark I954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board ofEducation.7 The disabilities ofmany ofthese children were "undiscovered or misclassified,"8 as the story ofDonald Snow illustrates: Once a patient at the old Willowbrook State Hospital, he was mistakenly diagnosed as mentally retarded when he was tested as a three-year-old child in 1965. Willowbrook employees noted that although he seemed veryactive, intelligent, and alert, he did appear to have a hearing problem. It was not until he was nine years old that doctors realized that his difficulties indeed were caused by hearing loss, not retardation. Soon after because of this misdiagnosis, Snow won a one and half million dollar lawsuit.9 Although manyeducational reformers referred to the IDEA as a "'quiet revolution' in special education," they also harbored reservations about the new legislation.lO The IDEA provides "comprehensive procedural requirements, such as written notice , due process hearings, access to records, and right to counsel, permitting parental or guardian challenges to an IEP" in order to ensure that parents play a pivotal role in the child's education.ll Reformers were concerned, however, about the primacy of the role of experts-physicians, psychologists , administrators, social workers, and educators-in devising the IEP, and the devaluation of the function of the parents, particularly when the parents were at a disadvantage because they were uneducated, non-English-speaking, poor, or minority. One goal oftheIDEAwas to break the traditional patterns of segregation that were perpetuated by linking racial discrimination with disability discrimination. A study published in March I97I, four years before the passage of the IDEA, illustrates this tendency: The prima focie evidence that racial discrimination sometimes marched under the flag of special education in many school systems was especially compelling.... A particularly flagrant misuse of handicap classification was discovered in the Missouri school system. There virtually no black children were placed in classes for the learning disabled, whereas black children made up about one-third of the students in classes for the educably mentally retarded. Learning disability, it seemed, obeyed the color line in MissouriP Two precepts underlying the IDEA, individualizing the programs for students with disabilities and integrating them into the...

Share