Legal rights of students with disabilities

¶ … legal rights of students with disabilities under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) of 1975. It has been revised in 2004 and still remains the law for students with special needs in the U.S.

This analysis is organized around the six central principles that thread their way through the law and underpin the rights that adolescents with disabilities and their families possess and the way in which schools plan, deliver and evaluate the special educational services that they deliver to these youngsters. These principles include the following:

free appropriate public education (FAPE)

appropriate evaluation individualized education program

least restrictive environment parent and student participation in decision making

procedural safeguards (Gargiulo, 2006, 48-49)

Summary of the Six Components of IDEA

By "free appropriate public education, the law meant special education as well as related services comprising services that have been provided the public expense, under public supervision and direction and without charge. Additionally, the services must meet the high standards of the State educational agency. By law, the services must include an appropriate preschool, elementary, or secondary school education in the State involved. Finally, the services need to be provided in compliance with an individual education program (IEP) (ibid).

Under the principle of appropriate evaluation procedures are put in place that assure that all of the children with special disabilities are assessed appropriately for the express purposes of eligibility determination, individual performance monitoring and educational programming. Historically, IDEA has been committed as well to ensure that the evaluation and testing materials were selected and administered so as not to be discriminatory in racial or cultural ways (ibid).

The principle of the IEP corresponds very directly to the central purpose of the law. This to ensure that each individual student with disabilities receives a sufficient education. The law requires that such an education be individualized and appropriate for them. This principle is manifested in the IEP, the documentation of each student with disabilities. Each such student is required to have an IEP designed by the school to meet their individual needs (ibid).

The least restrictive environment principle manifests itself in the concept of "normalizing" students by placing them in regular classroom environments (with the appropriate help of course). While this is the ideal, it might not be the right thing for that particular student. Whether or not the special needs student is embedded in the regular classroom up to the determination of the IEP team. In some instances, the IEP team may determine that the student cannot be educated satisfactorily in the general education classroom, even when supplementary aids and services are provided. An alternative placement must then be then considered. In accordance with this, schools have been and still required by law, to ensure that all students have access to an equal education (ibid).

It is critical to IDEA that that parents are a vital part of the process of planning for their child's education. The law from its earliest days has required schools to involve each child's parents in developing that person's IEP. The parents must be notified and must give consent, parents' input must be solicited and seriously considered. Students can also be made a part of the process. They can attend the IEP meetings. By bringing the parents and the children into the process, it insures that the family members can become involved in enriching the student's motivation if they also have ownership in the process (ibid).

Finally, there are the procedural safeguards. There are three main components (or purpose of the law's procedural safeguards 1) to protect the student's rights, 2) to ensure that the appropriate information is provided, 3) to give a way for disputes to be resolved. Many of the procedural safeguards in the law are designed to protect student and parent rights. To this end, the law requires that the school must notify the parents with respect to a number of activities that it intends or wishes to take (e.g., evaluating the child for the first time, revising the child's IEP). The law also requires parental consent in most circumstances. A second purpose of the law's procedural safeguard provisions is to ensure that information is provided to parents and students. Similarly, evaluation information must be shared with parents. The third purpose of procedural safeguards relates to the resolving of disagreements. The IDEA establishes concrete procedures that need to be followed to in order to resolve disputes, thereby giving all the parties a system by which to handle conflict .

B. Summarize the key components of the following IDEA re-authorizations:

Since IDEA began as the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EHA) of 1975, it has had to undergo several changes over the course of its tenure. It was initially created to assure that all of the children were receiving a completely free and appropriate public education (FAPE). While the updates are made every five years of so, the latest changes to the Act were reauthorized in 2004. In 2006, additional changes were also made to IDEA as the final regulations were released, which required the schools to use research based interventions in the process of assisting the students with learning difficulties or determining the eligibility for special education. Many schools have begun to implement the Response to Intervention (RTI) as a method of meeting the new requirements with IDEA 2004 (ibid, 51-56).

Changes to the IEP (Individualized Education Plan) Process:

The process of the IEP has had some changes. This includes the following:

1. The content of the IEP, which encompasses annual goals, educational progress, short-term objectives, special education services, accommodations/alternative assessments and also transitions.

2.IEP meeting attendance - A person who is a member of the IEP team may be excused if the team member's service will not be discussed at the meeting. This must be approved by the school and the parents.

3. That IEPs are set to be reviewed on a regular basis.

5.Transition -- this clarifies that the transition services should begin at the age of 16 and should also include a list of interagency responsibilities and needed resources.

6. That there be an alternate means of participating in meetings.

Changes to due process include the following: Procedural Safeguards Notice only needs to be distributed once per year, Parents have two years to exercise due process rights, changes to the due process complaint notice procedure, parents must go through a mandatory resolution session before due process, responsibility for attorney's fees and requirements for hearing officers (ibid. 55-56).

C-D. IDEA Guidelines/Processes for Referrals

It is a very involved process to get a referral for a student. A teacher must be thoroughly knowledgeable about the process and the copious information required.

The first part of the process is the prereferral. This consists of the information necessary to document and explain a students' difficulties and challenges. It is also meant to test the effectiveness of classroom accommodations and modifications. Also, this step is meant to assess the power of various instructional interventions and to monitor students' progress (ibid., 63).

Secondly is the referral for a student with special needs. If the prereferral interventions are unsuccessful, then an individual is referred for special education services. The begins the assessment process. The purpose of this step in the IEP process is in order to determine whether a youngster actually has a disability, as to whether or not special education is required or what types of services are needed. Evaluations are then conducted by multidisciplinary teams that are made up of professionals who have the expertise in each area of concern to the student who is being evaluated (ibid.).

Instructional Programming/Appropriate Placement

The information from the assessment step is then used to identify students who actually have a disability and to qualify them for special education services. For those particular students, the IEP committee then determines what components of the full range of special education and related services are needed so that an appropriate education can be planned for and ultimately delivered. The education of those students who do not meet the eligibility requirements remains the responsibility of general educator (bid., 66-56).