Wampum

Taking the teeth out of IDEA

Imagine this scenario:

You're driving down the highway in your Ford SUV, and it suddenly shifts into reverse, spins out of control and flips over, seriously injuring you and your family. You hire an attorney and take Ford to court, claiming its product was defective. The jury agrees with you, and finds against the defendant. It then orders Ford to provide you with a brand new, non-defective SUV.

That's it. No compensation for your injuries, and perhaps more stunning, no payment of attorney's fees.

Now imagine the outrage if this scenario was to be codified into law by Congress. Well, for the hundreds of thousand of parents and guardians of special needs children covered under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), this may in fact be our future.

IDEA, first introduced into law in 1975 after the Supreme Court ruled that disabled children had a Constitutional right to a free and appropriate public education (FAPE), is up for "re-authorization" this year. Of course, the Republican-dominated Congress has determined that provides them with the opportunity to gut it best they can. In this case, legislators have deemed that parents who seek through the courts to have their children's rights enforced have to do without the assistance of legal council, or to pony up the fees themselves. Even if the parents prevail, a "re-authorized" IDEA specifically denies the awarding of attorney fees. Most school districts have attorneys on staff to handle litigation; special needs children will be expected to go it alone.

This is in addition to one of the most egregious changes in the law, which will now allow school districts to remove special needs children from school for behavioral problems, even if that behavior is caused by their disability. For instance, if my autistic son's verbal outbursts are deemed "disruptive" to the classroom, he can be barred from that class. This essentially wipes out the gains made in the past 25 years, as school districts prior to IDEA often used the child's disability-related behavior as an excuse to keep them out of school. And no one can expect that in the face of No Child Left Behind standards requirements, which include special education children, that this aspect of the new IDEA will not be used to remove lower scoring children from the testing pool.

There are numerous other changes which render the legislation a pitiful shadow of its original self; most can be found at Wright'sLaw.com.

Please take the time this week to learn about this issue and contact your Senators. The original Senate bill, while problematic, was no where as bad as the House version, described above, but that which has suddenly emerged on the Senate floor is now nearly identical to House legislation.

Posted by MB Williams at September 8, 2003 09:57 AM | TrackBack