Special Education in the Context Of Education Reform This monograph by the Center on Education Policy (CEP) looks at how well three major Midwest cities -- Cleveland, Milwaukee and Chicago -- have been able to comply with the federal special education law IDEA. A guiding principle of this study is that "children placed in special education are general education first," emphasizing that both branches of education share responsibility for students with IEP's.

CEP found significant difficulty with compliance, especially that inner city residents need help understanding the laws and that they need better access to advocates.

CEP found specific improvements: in Chicago in identification, referral staff training, and ongoing classroom assessment; in Cleveland, with general education teachers accepting their role in teaching...

However, they also found significant problems.
A large gap remains between the achievement of students covered under IDEA and students without IEP's.

Even though IDEA was last revised in 1997, schools were still struggling to implement some of its requirements and are worried that the new reenactment will bring yet more changes before they had fully implemented the last version.

The schools noted that legal concerns tend to dominate special education concerns now. Court decisions cause significant changes. A recent one requires changes in how placement decisions are made as well as teacher certifications for both special and general education.

The cities continue to struggle with staff shortages, difficult teaching conditions and providing adequate amounts of staff development.

Personnel are burdened with excessive paperwork, large classes, poor pay as well as the challenges of teaching in the inner city. Districts face critical staff shortages, especially for bilingual staff. Districts struggle to identify early intervention candidates. Current achievement testing does not serve children with special needs well.

Districts face lack of funding; Congress should fully…