Special Education: Attitudes, Litigation, and Legislation
This paper examines the evolution of special education in the United States through the lens of shifting public attitudes, landmark court cases, and key federal legislation. Beginning with the widespread exclusion of children with disabilities from public schools prior to the 1970s, the paper traces how litigation — particularly the PARC case — and subsequent laws such as the Education for All Handicapped Children Act and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act transformed access to public education for students with special needs. The paper argues that legal and legislative progress has reflected and reinforced changing societal attitudes toward children with disabilities, and that this progress must continue as educational standards evolve.
- Introduction: Special needs students historically excluded from public schools
- Major Shifts in Public Policy and Attitude: PARC case and 1975 law changed access to education
- Key Legislation: From PARC to IDEA: IDEA expanded federal guidelines for disability services
- Conclusion: Personal experience reinforces inclusive education values
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper uses a clear historical arc, moving from exclusion to inclusion, which gives the argument a logical and easy-to-follow progression.
- It grounds abstract policy changes in specific legislative milestones (PL 94-142, IDEA) and a concrete court case (PARC), lending credibility to its claims.
- The personal anecdote in the conclusion ties the broader policy discussion to a real-world classroom experience, reinforcing the paper's central argument with lived experience.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates the technique of using litigation and legislation as an organizing framework for historical analysis. Rather than simply listing events, it shows how court rulings created pressure for legislative action, and how that legislation continued to evolve — illustrating cause-and-effect reasoning within a policy context.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with a brief framing section that establishes the scope of the topic. The body is divided into an introduction that sets up the problem of special education exclusion, followed by a substantive section tracing the policy and legal shifts from the 1970s onward. A final conclusion personalizes the argument and reinforces the paper's thesis. The structure is concise and well-suited to a short analytical essay at the undergraduate level.
Introduction
Children with special needs present special challenges to public school educators and administrators. Such students are often overlooked and/or under-served by traditional or mainstream methods of instruction, yet the diversity of special needs in the overall population makes dedicated special-needs classrooms also ineffective. For this reason, children with disabilities were predominantly excluded from public education institutions, often at an even greater detriment to the child (ERIC, 1998). Through litigation and legislation, however, children with special needs and their parents have earned the equal protection and opportunity they are granted by law, and attitudes and methods for dealing with special education have undergone major changes.
Major Shifts in Public Policy and Attitude
Though special education continues to evolve — just as traditional theories and practices of education do — a large part of the responsibility for the overall change in special education delivery in this country is borne by a handful of court cases and the passage of several federal laws mandating higher standards for, and an increased availability of, special education (ERIC, 1998). Prior to the 1970s, many states had laws that specifically allowed them to deny education to children with special needs or learning disabilities, and few states had any legislation that actually ensured any form of public education for these children (ERIC, 1998). The majority of children with special needs were educated as best as possible by their parents or, when affordable, in private institutions; most were not given educations that were sufficient even in providing basic life skills and knowledge (ERIC, 1998).
In 1972, the Pennsylvania Association for Retarded Children (PARC) went to the state courts to challenge a law denying a public education to children with mental disabilities and other handicaps (ERIC, 1998). PARC won their case, with the court ruling that all children — including those with identified special needs — were entitled to a "free, appropriate public education" (ERIC, 1998). This case, and several others that challenged similar laws and de facto education practices, led in 1975 to Public Law 94-142, now better known as the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (ERIC, 1998). This piece of federal legislation mandated that all children receive a free, appropriate public education at their local institutions.
Conclusion
One educator's first encounter with special education came as an untrained aide in a physical education class for a child with autism. The student was described as capable of doing everything anyone else could, but motivation was said to be a problem. What emerged, however, was that the only real barrier was what the child had been told about his own limitations — once he was convinced those limitations did not exist, he became fully engaged in the class.
Though this experience will not apply universally, it reflects the basic trend in special education: recognizing that children with special needs require the same chances and encouragements as other students. This has been the attitude behind the litigation and legislation concerning special education over the past several decades, and it will continue to influence policy in the future.
Reference
ERIC. (1998). Special education and the law. Retrieved August 5, 2009, from
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