IDEA - Let It "B"

The IDEA reauthorization activity has been fast and furious. The Memorial Day weekend gives us an ideal chance to reflect on where we are today. Congress has gone home for the holidays to reconnect with their families, friends and constituents. The Senate work on drafting its IDEA reauthorization version churns ahead, but at a slower pace than anyone originally expected. Can we the student, parent and advocacy community already be making a difference?

Meanwhile, 6.6 million students receiving IDEA services and their families are enmeshed in the annual IEP process. They are conscientiously analyzing student outcomes from this year’s IEP, identifying current needs and new goals, and writing next year’s IEPs.

We are amazed that our community has been able to find any time to confront IDEA reauthorization issues. But not only are we finding time to confront HR 1350 and the assault on IDEA, we also are finding heroes. Mike Savory, a parent from Winchester, Virginia walked 90.3 miles from his home to Washington to dramatize the IDEA crisis. Parent groups and advocacy organizations have initiated letter writing and call-in campaigns. National disability rights and advocacy organizations have united to publicly oppose HR 1350 and to present a wealth of information and strategic responses to enhance community efforts to stop HR 1350. Our Children Left Behind has developed “Take Your Faces to Their Places.” We have united in diversity to save IDEA for our children. We can’t even begin to count the number of unsung individual and organizational heroes in this mission.

The Memorial Day brief respite has allowed us time to process everything that has happened so quickly since March 19th, and to talk more with parents who are living in and working in the trenches for their own children. Debi Lewis, a parent from West Virginia who has been fighting for her son’s inclusion in his community school, wrote us a simple email. She asked why we were working so hard to save Part B (the heart of IDEA) when it already is permanently authorized. She asked why we don’t just tell the Senate to leave Part B out of the IDEA reauthorization process. Great question!

Why, indeed? Ms. Lewis is absolutely correct. The IDEA sections that need reauthorization are Part C which addresses early childhood and intervention services and Part D, which focuses IDEA principles on strong research based best-practices, enhances the skills of IDEA educators and supports national, state and regional parent education and training on IDEA and special education. Part C and D need to be “reauthorized” because their funding clauses only permit funding through September, 2002. Part B, which contains the core IDEA programming provisions, does not contain a funding expiration date.

Congress has the power to amend any statute at any time it wishes. There is nothing illegal about amending Part B as part of the process of reauthorizing Part C and Part D. We realize now, with Ms. Lewis’s comments, that reauthorization is being used as an excuse to radically alter Part B even though no Congressional action is required to save Part B and to continue its broad range of programs, services and protections to the core student base IDEA serves.

What about Part B? IDEA ’97, the law in effect today, passed with the concerted effort of ALL special education stakeholders, including educators, administrators, students, parents, advocacy organizations and policy makers to create a comprehensive living Act to guide special education into the 21st century. IDEA ’97’s comprehensive reforms include the recognition that behavior challenges interfere with education and need special consideration. Congress and the stakeholders also recognize a need to build stronger parent-professional partnerships and to offer alternative dispute resolution systems that focus on partnerships rather than on litigation. IDEA ’97 emphasizes accountability across the system and across constituencies.

The best indicator of IDEA ‘97s comprehensive reforms was that it took two years to pass the federal regulations implementing IDEA ‘97 in the states. In our state, Michigan, the rules implementing IDEA ’97 were not passed until last year. In reality IDEA ’97 is still in the implementation process, and at its best has only really been in effect for the last two years.

The House of Representative justifies that HR 1350 is needed to increase accountability, reduce paperwork, and ensure that students who receive special education services are not left behind. What is wrong with this picture? IDEA ’97 has not been in effect long enough to see whether the 4 years implementing it has produced the outcomes Congress expected when it passed the Act. We only can begin to imagine the effort in administrative/teacher/parent hours and state administrative costs incurred to implement IDEA ’97. Why duplicate that effort now for HR 1350?

How does HR 1350 increase accountability when Congress made no effort to analyze the current effects of IDEA ’97? How is administrative activity and paperwork reduced when HR 1350 forces the Department of Education and the legislatures and educational officers in all 50 states to repeat the recently completed process to implement IDEA ’97? How does HR 1350 propose that states pay for these activities and still fund direct special education services to students at anywhere near the level virtually all stakeholders believe is required? Finally, how does HR 1350 promote improved outcomes for individual students when it removes the fundamental protections that insure that students who have disabilities receive a free appropriate public education?

We do not now choose to believe the House of Representatives had any deceptive motivation to use the reauthorization process to gut IDEA ’97 even though Part B is permanently authorized. Whatever Congress’ intent, the fact remains that students, parents and advocacy groups were left out of HR 1350 process. We need to ask the Senate to look at that, and to ask itself why Part B should be gutted – at huge financial expense to the states and at huge loss of educational outcomes for students – when IDEA ’97 has been given so little time to reap the benefits its collective stakeholders believed were possible when it was passed. Part B is permanently authorized. Before the Senate creates its own Bill amending Part B it should ask the simple question Ms. Lewis raised, “Why fix it if it isn’t broken?”

Tricia and Calvin Luker
Jessica, Missy, Lara and Will’s Mom and Dad
parentvolunteer@ourchildrenleftbehind.com