Rethinking Special Education

Chester E. Finn, Jr., et al.

"Rethinking Special Education for a New Century" consists of fourteen original papers that present findings, ideas, and recommendations for rethinking and improving the federal special-education program The editors point out in the concluding chapter that as much as $60 billion is spent annually for the approximately six million students who participate. The report was released in time to influence congressional deliberations for the 2002 reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

Before reviewing problems that have crept into the special education program, we want to hail its accomplishments....Thanks to the IDEA, Section 504, and the state and local special education programs that complement and reinforce them, today many disabled children in America have the opportunity to obtain a high-quality educational experience tailored to their needs and circumstances, the priorities of their parents, and the judgments of their teachers. No other country tries harder to do right by its disabled citizens and its girls and boys with special educational needs.

And yet this record of accomplishment is at best half the story of the IDEA in particular and special education in general. For this program that has done so much is also sorely troubled. America's program for youngsters with disabilities has itself developed infirmities, handicaps and special needs of its own. Twenty-five years after President Ford signed the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, we are not educating many disabled children to a satisfactory level of skills and knowledge. Too often we are frustrating their parents, distracting their teachers, hobbling their schools, and making it harder to keep order in their classrooms, all this despite the best of intentions and the most earnest of efforts by families, educators, and policymakers.

We are sawing down forests to create paperwork that sometimes seems to have become the program's raison d'ętre; filling courtrooms with angry litigants and costly litigators; snarling state and local education reform efforts; legitimizing double standards and new forms of segregation; and hitting taxpayers with ever-larger bills for a lengthening list of services provided to a burgeoning population of children, many of whom might not have even become candidates for special education had they been given a first-class regular education.

Putting it bluntly, special education is broken for too many children. Think of it as "a program at risk." As the new administration and Congress prepare for the IDEA's reauthorization, it is vital to recognize this. Our conclusion has nothing to do with political party or ideology. It arises from an intense concern for the well-being of children and families, the quality of education, and the effectiveness of these government programs....

Fortunately, the choice confronting today's policymakers is not whether to keep the program as it is or return to the unacceptable pre-IDEA status quo. Rather, the challenge is to modernize the program, building on what we've learned about both special education and education in general.

Twenty-five Years Later: What We've Learned

The original problems to be solved by special education were that many handicapped children were denied access to public education, were segregated in warehouse-style schools, or had access only to classrooms that took no account of their distinctive needs.

This was wrong. It was un-American. It was bad education. And it was bad for children. Because it appeared that states and communities could not be trusted to do right by their disabled youngsters, the federal government stepped in, much as it had done earlier for black children. The education of disabled girls and boys thereupon became a civil right, enshrined both in the new federal special education programs that took shape after 1975 and in a series of court rulings and anti-discrimination statutes, especially Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act.

A quarter-century later, we are pleased to report, the original problem is largely solved. Disabled youngsters have access to public education, indeed to a more individualized and generously funded form of public education than their non-disabled age mates, and to a system that gives their parents greater say over their education than the families of other children.

We laud this success. It is a huge, albeit overdue, accomplishment for human decency and fairness. Nothing in this volume is intended to detract from it or to take credit away from those who made it possible. But how well is it really working? What exactly have these youngsters been given access to? Is the edifice of programs, services, procedures, and rights erected in the 1970s succeeding for disabled children today? And has it kept pace with important changes in the larger world of American education?

We think not. Over the past 25 years, K–12 education in the United States has undergone a profound paradigm shift, from access-and-services to results-and-accountability. During the most recent decade, this change has been especially dramatic. Special education simply hasn't kept up. It's still an access-and-services program enveloped by a civil rights orientation. It still has more to do with combating discrimination than teaching children what they need to learn. It's not really a quality-and-performance-enhancing education program. Despite the efforts of many people of goodwill, and notwithstanding numerous fine-tunings of the law, it still has little to do with the standards-based reforms that are today's engines of education change.

Questions

1. What do the authors believe have been the main benefits and shortcomings of IDEA? What data do they provide later in their chapter to support these conclusions?
2. To what degree do these conclusions agree with the discussion in this textbook? Do you find any differences?
3. What has happened in 2001 and since then to improve the situation?

Source: "Conclusions and Principles for Reform," in Chester E. Finn, Jr., Andrew J. Rotherham, and Charles R. Hokanson, Jr., eds., Rethinking Special Education for a New Century (Washington, D.C.: Thomas B. Fordham Foundation and the Progressive Policy Institute, 2001), available at www.edexcellence.net (click on "Our Publications" and then "Federal Education Policy").