How Did We Get Here?

Students with disabilities and their families – and special education as we know it -- are about to be left behind. How did this happen? How did we get here? What happens if we don’t fight for our children now, right now? What can we do, and is it too late to do anything?

Our Children Left Behind has formed to answer those questions for students with disabilities and their families and supporters. We care about the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act [IDEA]. We all must work together to preserve IDEA programs and protections if students with disabilities are to continue receiving a free, appropriate, public education alongside their friends and neighbors who don’t have special needs.

WHY NOW? Congress is working on the “reauthorization” of IDEA, which was last reviewed in 1997. The process began in October, 2001 with the creation of the President’s Commission on Excellence in Special Education [PCESE]. The 19-member commission included 4 teachers and educators, 6 school principals and administrators, 5 government employees and policy makers, 2 business leaders and 2 members who were identified as parents of children with special needs. The PCESE made its recommendations in July, 2002. Its findings included that “[w]hen a child fails to make progress … parents do not have adequate options and recourse. Parents have their child’s best interests in mind, but they often do not feel they are empowered when the system fails them,” [Finding 4, emphasis original]; and that “[t]he culture of compliance has often developed from the pressures of litigation, diverting much energy from the public schools’ first mission: educating every child,” [Finding 5, emphasis original]. The PCESE’s Summary of Major Recommendations included that “we must insist on high academic standards and excellence, press for accountability for results at all levels, ensure yearly progress, empower and trust parents, support and enhance teacher quality, and encourage educational reforms based on scientifically rigorous research,” [Emphasis added.]

Congress’ role began in earnest in June, 2002 with the House of Representatives Committee on Education and the Workforce’s [HRCEW] web site call in separate notices to Republicans and to the general public for “Great IDEAs about special Educational Reform.” The call sought input on a number of IDEA issues including “increasing accountability and improving educational results,” “reducing the paperwork burden,” “restoring trust and reducing litigation,” and ensuring school safety. The 107th Congress ended its legislative session in December, 2002 without passing any IDEA reauthorization package, leaving the issue to the newly elected 108th Congress in 2003.

On March 19, 2003 – the same day America began its war in Iraq – the Improving Education Results for Children with Disabilities Act, H.R. 1350, was introduced in the House of Representatives to reauthorize IDEA. There were no public hearings on the bill between its introduction and its House passage on April 30, 2003. Other pages and links within our web site detail the problems with H.R. 1350. Students with disabilities, their parents and families, student/family advocacy groups and members of the public scrambled to encourage the HRCEW to slow down H.R. 1350’s progress through the House, and to give the families a fair opportunity to comment on the proposed bill. A national call-in day was set for April 29, 2003. HRCEW Chair John Boehner, and Education Reform Committee Chair Mike Castle posted an HRCEW web site alert to Members of Congress about the call-in, warning that “some lobbying organizations are spreading false and misleading information about the bill,” and promising that congress members “…can expect to receive calls with incorrect or incomplete information regarding the legislation, as well as requests to further delay this legislation that is overdue for reauthorization.” The “lobbying organizations” and callers the Congress members were being warned about included 39 organizations representing students and their families, and thousands of students, parents and family members like you and me who called in to urge the delay of passage and advance changes to H.R. 1350.

WHERE TO FROM HERE? On April 30, 2003 the House passed the bill, leaving students with disabilities and we who support them to do battle in the US Senate. Clearly Congress has not been willing to include students, parents or families in the core group of people influencing the drafting H.R. 1350, nor did the House of Representatives want to hear from us. We cannot let up our efforts in Congress or give up on our children. H.R. 1350 now goes to the US Senate. It can consider and amend the bill as it passed the House, or it can create and pass a new bill. Once the Senate passes its version of the IDEA reauthorization, that bill and H.R. 1350 will be sent to a Conference Committee of Senators and Congress members who work out the differences between the two bills. The bill that results from their effort is then sent back to the House and Senate for a new vote. Both houses have to approve the identical language.

WHAT MUST WE DO? We still can raise our voices for a strong IDEA reauthorization bill. There is still time to make a difference. An informal, grass roots effort is on to encourage students and parents to “take your faces to their places,” to go visit their US Senators in their state offices within the next three weeks. Student and parent advocacy groups are stepping up their efforts to mobilize us to action. TAKE ACTION! This is the biggest threat to IDEA since it first passed in 1975. Our children need us. Every voice counts.