The Law

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The Law Placement Options

• SED 353

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Individuals with Disabilities Education
Improvement Act (IDEA) 2004

• First introduced in 1975 as P.L. 94-142 a.k.a
  Education for All Handicapped Act
• Congress re-authorized the law in 1997 know as
  the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act
  (IDEA 97)
• Most recent re-authorization occurred in 2004
  current name

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IDEA 2007

• Mandates that eligible children with disabilities
  have available to them special education and
  related services designed to address their unique
  educational needs.

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Special Education

• Means specifically designed instruction, at no
  cost to parents, to meet the unique needs of the
  child with a disability, including
• Instruction conducted in the classroom, in the
  home, in hospitals and institutions, and in other
  settings, and
• Instruction in physical education

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Related Services

• Means transportation, and such developmental,
  corrective, and other supportive services
  (including speech-language pathology and
  audiology services) as may be required to assist
  a child with a disability to benefit from special
  education and includes the early identification
  and assessment of disabling conditions in children

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Supplementary Aids and Services

• Services and other supports that are provided in
  regular education classes or other
  education-related settings to enable children
  with disabilities to be educated with
  non-disabled children to the maximum extent
  appropriate

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Six Principles of IDEA 2004

• Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE)
• Appropriate evaluation
• Individualized education program (IEP)
• Least restrictive environment (LRE)
• Parent and student participation in decision
  making
• Procedural safeguards (due process)

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Free Appropriate Public Education

• FAPE means special education and related services
  that
• Have been provided at public expense, under
  public supervision and direction, and without
  charge
• Meet the standards of the State educational
  agency
• Include an appropriate preschool, elementary, or
  secondary school education the state involved
  and
• Are provided in conformity with the
  individualized education program

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Appropriate Evaluation

• To determine eligibility for special education
• To plan educational programming
• For individual performance monitoring
• Must be nondiscriminatory

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Individual Education Program

• Present levels of educational performance
• Measurable annual goals
• A description of how childs progress towards
  meeting annual goals will be measured
• Statement of special education and related
  services and supplementary aids and services

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IEP cont.

• An explanation of the extent to which the child
  will not participate in the regular class
• An explanation to the extent in which the child
  will not participate in extracurricular and other
  nonacademic activities
• A statement of any individual appropriate
  accommodations that are necessary to measure the
  academic achievement and functional performance
  of the child on State and district wide
  assessments

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IEP cont.

• A statement if the student will be taking the
  alternative state assessments
• Projected date for beginning of special education
  and related services, the location, frequency and
  duration
• Transition services

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Least Restrictive Environment

• To the maximum extent appropriate, children with
  disabilitiesare to be educated with children who
  are not disabled, and special classes, separate
  schooling, or other removal of children with
  disabilities from the regular education occurs
  only when the nature or severity of the
  disability of a child is such that education in
  regular classes

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Parent and Student Participation

• Parents and students need to be involved as
  partners with educators because their
  participation enhances the ongoing process and
  final results

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Procedural Safeguards

• Safeguards have been include in the law to
  protect the rights of parents their child with a
  disability, as well as give families and schools
  a mechanism for resolving disputes.

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FAPE, LRE, IEP

• During the IEP all of the needs of the child must
  be considered, including
• Academic needs
• Behavioral needs
• Social emotional needs
• Communication needs
• The childs needs will vary based on language
  skills, use of residual hearing, age, academic
  achievement, and social and emotional development
• What is appropriate for this child?

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Specific Needs of Deaf and Hard of Hearing
Students

• Communication assessment
• Communication development
• Communication access

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IDEA Definitions of Hearing Loss

• Deaf
• Any person whose hearing is disabled to an extent
  (usually 70dB) that precludes the understanding
  of speech through the ear alone, with or without
  the use of a hearing aid
• Hard of Hearing
• Any person whose hearing is disabled to an extent
  (usually 35-69dB) that makes difficult, but does
  not preclude, the understanding of speech through
  the ear alone, with or without a hearing aid

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IDEA Definitions of Hearing Loss

• Prelingual Deafness
• Deafness that occurred at birth or at an age
  prior to the development of speech and language
• Postlingual Deafness
• Refers to deafness that occurs at an age
  following the spontaneous acquisition of speech
  and language

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Definitions of Placement Settings as reported to
the U.S. Department of Education included in the
Annual Reports to Congress

• General Education Class Students who receive
  special education and related services outside of
  the general education classroom for less than 21
  of the school day.

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• Resource Room Students who receive special
  education and related services outside the
  general education classroom for from 20 to 60
  of the school day.
• Separate Class Students who receive special
  education and related services outside of the
  general education classroom for more than 60 of
  the school day.

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• Separate School Students who receive special
  education and related services in separate day
  schools (more than 50 of the school day),
  residential facilities (more than 50 of the
  school day), or homebound/hospital environments

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D/HH School Placement Options

• Residential Schools
• The majority of students reside in the school.
  However, many students attend as day students.
• Most residential schools have cooperative
  agreements with local districts for integrated
  education for some of their students.
• Day Schools
• Special schools for children who are deaf to
  which the students commute daily.
• Students with normal hearing do not attend these
  schools.

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• Day Classes
• Classes for students who are deaf and hard of
  hearing in a public school building where the
  majority of students in the school are hearing.
• Instructional classrooms may be totally
  self-contained or students may attend general
  education classes with hearing students with the
  service of an interpreter.

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• Resource Rooms
• Children spend the majority of their day in
  regular classes, returning to the D/HH teacher
  for specialized coursework.
• Itinerant programs
• The child attends general education classes full
  time and receives services from an itinerant
  teacher periodically.
• This service may also be a consultant service to
  the classroom teacher.

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(No Transcript)
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Types of Classes in the U.S.

• Overhead shown in class of types and amounts (bar
  graph)

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Types of Classes in IL

• Overhead shown in class of types and amounts (bar
  graph)

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Commission on the Education of Deafness

• Established by the Education of the Deaf Act of
  1986
• Purpose to study the quality of education of
  deaf persons, report on their findings and to
• make recommendations to the Congress and the
  President of the United States.
• 12 members 8 deaf, 4 hearing

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Commission on the Education of Deafness

• Presented 52 recommendations
• Prevention and Early Intervention
• Elementary and Secondary Education
• Federal Postsecondary Education Systems
• Research, Evaluation and Outreach
• Professional Standards and Training
• Technology-Progress and Potential
• Clearinghouses and Committee on Deaf/Blindness

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Commission on the Education of Deafness Summary
Recommendations

• The report noted that Parents, deaf consumers,
  and professional personnel of all persuasions
  have, with almost total unanimity, cited LRE as
  the issue that most thwarts their attempts to
  provide an appropriate education for children who
  are deaf (p.x).

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• The COED recommended that guidelines be
  established for state and local educational
  agencies and parents to ensure that an
  individualized educational program for a child
  who is deaf takes into consideration the
  following
• severity of hearing loss and the potential for
  using residual hearing
• academic level and learning style
• communicative needs and the preferred mode of
  communication
• linguistic, cultural, social, and emotional needs
• placement preference
• individual motivation
• family support

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• Recommended that the Department of Education
  issue a policy statement requiring school
  personnel inform parents of all options in the
  continuum of alternative placements during each
  individualized education program conference.

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• The COED challenged the philosophical premise
  that LRE is the core value of special
  education.
• The COEDs emphasis on appropriateness over LRE,
  its support for center schools, its demand for
  individualized educational programs, and its
  argument that removal from the regular classroom
  does not require compelling evidence that such
  removal is necessary all call for a refocus of
  the least restrictive environment concept.

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• Dubow (1989) argued that the U.S. Department of
  Education, with its primary emphasis on LRE
  turned a congressional preference into a
  requirement and that this emphasis is contrary to
  both the legislative intent, and judicial
  interpretations of the ACT.

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• For more, specific information on the COED
  recommendations see the handout on the 353
  webpage under assignments.

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Deaf Child Bill of Rights

• Session Sine Die (adjourned with no date set)
• In Illinois, an attempt to legislate that all
  deaf and hard of hearing children have
  appropriate, fully accessible, educational
  opportunities.

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