Sunday, April 21, 2013

Individuals with Disabilities Education Act

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) is a United States federal law that governs how states and public agencies provide early intervention, special education, and related services to children with disabilities. It addresses the educational needs of children with disabilities from birth to age 18 or 21 in cases that involve 14 specified categories of disability.

The IDEA is "spending clause" legislation, meaning that it only applies to those States and their local educational agencies that accept federal funding under the IDEA. While States declining such funding are not subject to the IDEA, all States have accepted funding under this statute and are subject to it.

The IDEA and its predecessor statute, the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, arose from federal case law holding the deprivation of free public education to disabled children constitutes a deprivation of due process. It has grown in scope and form over the years. IDEA has been reauthorized and amended a number of times, most recently in December 2004, which contained several significant amendments. Its terms are further defined by regulations of the United States Department of Education, which are found in Parts 300 and 301 of Title 34 of the Code of Federal Regulations.

In defining the purpose of special education, IDEA 2004 clarifies Congress’ intended outcome for each child with a disability: students must be provided a Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE) that prepares them for further education, employment and independent living.
Under IDEA 2004:

    Special education and related services should be designed to meet the unique learning needs of eligible children with disabilities, preschool through age 21.
    Students with disabilities should be prepared for further education, employment and independent living.

Background

Before the Education for All Handicapped Children Act was enacted in 1975, U.S. public schools accommodated only 1 out of 5 children with disabilities. Until that time, many states had laws that explicitly excluded children with certain types of disabilities from attending public school, including children who were blind, deaf, and children labeled "emotionally disturbed" or "mentally retarded." At the time the EHA was enacted, more than 1 million children in the U.S. had no access to the public school system. Many of these children lived at state institutions where they received limited or no educational or rehabilitation services. Another 3.5 million children attended school but were “warehoused” in segregated facilities and received little or no effective instruction.
As of 2006, more than 6 million children in the U.S. receive special education services through IDEA.

Historical context

In 1954, the established educational format in the United States of segregating black and white students into separate schools was deemed unconstitutional by Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954). This caused a great deal of unrest in the political sphere and marks a gateway moment in the Civil Rights Movement. Education was an important aspect of the Civil Rights Movement.

The years that led up to the formation of Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975 were marked by strife in the United States. The assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963, the Vietnam war was ongoing from 1955 until 1975. On top of those events, the Civil Rights Movement was in full force in the United States. From schools being integrated to the Montgomery Bus Boycott, from Greensboro sit-ins to marches on Washington, equal rights for all was a prevalent ideal. President Kennedy showed interest in mental retardation studies and President Johnson used Federal funds to increase research on “at-risk” youth. Early intervention programs for children living in low socioeconomic situations, such as the Head Start Program, began showing up around the country. Education was soon at the forefront of many political agendas.

In 1971 four moms from Washington State (Janet Taggart, Katie Dolan, Cecile Lindquist and Evelyn Chapman) wrote and passed into law, the first special education civil rights legislation in the US, called Education for All (HB 90) giving students with disabilities equal access to a public school education. The framework of Washington State HB 90 was used to create the Federal IDEA Law.

Another educational sector to argue for access to equal educational opportunities for all students was the Pennsylvania Association for Retarded Children (PARC), which sued Pennsylvania in 1972 for not providing equal access to educational opportunities to children with disabilities. Soon after this, the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 established that Federal programs could not discriminate on the basis of disabilities. However, the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 forced parents to take any cases to the court system. The Education for All Handicapped Children Act created the option for parents to use an administrative hearing instead, which could decrease the litigation costs associated with filing a claim. Parents retain the right to appeal to a federal or state court. The EHA also created a specific affirmative right to a free appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment for children with disabilities.

27 years later, in 1990, the EHA was replaced by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in order to place more focus on the individual, as opposed to a condition that individual may have. The IDEA also had many improvements on the EHA, such as promoting research and technology development, details on transition programs for students post-high school and programs that educate children in their neighborhood schools, as opposed to separate schools.

Provisions of IDEA
Eligibility for services


Having a disability does not automatically qualify a student for special education services under the IDEA. The disability must result in the student needing additional or different services to participate in school.

IDEA defines a "child with a disability" as a "child... with an intellectual disability, hearing impairments (including deafness), speech or language impairments, visual impairments (including blindness), serious emotional disturbance..., orthopedic impairments, autism, traumatic brain injury, other health impairments, or specific learning disabilities; AND, who... [because of the condition] needs special education and related services."
Children with disabilities who qualify for special education are also automatically protected by Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). However, all modifications that can be provided under Section 504 or the ADA can be provided under the IDEA if included in the student's IEP.

Students with disabilities who do not qualify for special education services under the IDEA may qualify for accommodations or modifications under Section 504 and under the ADA. Their rights are protected by due process procedure requirements.

The zero reject rule was affirmed in Parks v. Pavkovic, 753 F.2d 1397 (7th Cir.1985) and Timothy W. v. Rochester School District 875 F.2d 954 (1st Cir. 1989). The courts have ruled that even if the student is completely incapable of benefiting from educational services and all efforts are futile—even if the child is unconscious or in a coma—the school is still required to provide educational services to the child.
 
Individualized Education Program

The act requires that public schools create an Individualized Education Program (IEP) for each student who is found to be eligible under both the federal and state eligibility/disability standards. The IEP is the cornerstone of a student's educational program. It specifies the services to be provided and how often, describes the student's present levels of performance and how the student's disabilities affect academic performance, and specifies accommodations and modifications to be provided for the student.
An IEP must be designed to meet the unique educational needs of that one child in the Least Restrictive Environment appropriate to the needs of that child. That is, the least restrictive environment in which the child learns. When a child qualifies for services, an IEP team is convened to design an education plan. In addition to the child’s parents, the IEP team must include at least one of the child’s regular education teachers (if applicable), a special education teacher, someone who can interpret the educational implications of the child’s evaluation, such as a school psychologist, any related service personnel deemed appropriate or necessary, and an administrator or CSE (Committee of Special Education) representative who has adequate knowledge of the availability of services in the district and the authority to commit those services on behalf of the child. Parents are considered to be equal members of the IEP team along with the school staff. And of course, parents have fundamental rights as parents. Based on the full educational evaluation results, this team collaborates to write an IEP for the individual child, one that will provide a free, appropriate public education. The required content of an IEP is described in Individualized Education Program.

Related services

The definition of related services in the IDEA includes, but is not limited to: transportation and such developmental, corrective, and other supportive services as are required to assist a child with a disability to benefit from special education, and includes speech-language pathology and audiology services, psychological services, physical and occupational therapy, music therapy, recreation, including therapeutic recreation, early identification and assessment of disabilities in children, counseling services, including rehabilitation counseling, orientation and *mobility services, and medical services for diagnostic or evaluation purposes. The term also includes school health services, social work services in schools, and parent counseling and training.

Free Appropriate Public Education

Guaranteed by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), FAPE is defined as an educational program that is individualized to a specific child, designed to meet that child's unique needs, and from which the child receives educational benefit. To provide FAPE, schools must provide students with an “… education that emphasizes special education and related services designed to meet their unique needs and prepare them for further education, employment, and independent living.”

Some of the criteria specified in various sections of the IDEA statute includes requirements that schools provide each disabled student an education that:

~ Is designed to meet the unique needs of that one student
~ Provides “ …access to the general curriculum to meet the challenging expectations established for all children” (that is, it meets the approximate grade-level standards of the state educational agency)
~ Is provided in accordance with the Individualized Education Plan (IEP) as defined in 1414(d)(3).    Results in educational benefit to the child.

Least Restrictive Environment

The U.S. Dept. Education, 2005a regulations implementing IDEA states: "...to the maximum extent appropriate, children with disabilities including children in public or private institutions or care facilities, are educated with children who are nondisabled; and special classes, separate schooling or other removal of children with disabilities from regular educational environment occurs only if the nature or severity of the disability is such that education in regular classes with the use of supplementary aids and services cannot be achieved satisfactorily."

Simply put, the LRE is the environment most like that of typical children in which the child with a disability can succeed academically (as measured by the specific goals in the student's IEP). This refers to the two questions decided upon in Daniel R. R. v. State Board of Education, 874 F.2D 1036 (5th Cir. 1989).

This court, relying on Roncker, also developed a two-part test for determining if the LRE requirement is met. The test poses two questions:

~ Can an appropriate education in the general education classroom with the use of supplementary aids and services be achieved satisfactorily?
~ If a student is placed in a more restrictive setting, is the student "integrated" to the "maximum extent appropriate"? (Standard in AL, DE, GA, FL, LA, MS, NJ, PA, TX).
Discipline of a child with a disability

Pursuant to IDEA, when disciplining a child with a disability, one must take that disability into consideration to determine the appropriateness of the disciplinary actions. For example, if a child with Autism is sensitive to loud noises, and she runs out of a room filled with loud noises due to sensory overload, appropriate disciplinary measure for that behavior (running out of the room) must take into account the child's disability; such as avoiding punishments that involve loud noises. Moreover, an assessment should be made as to whether appropriate accommodations were in place to meet the needs of the child.

According to the United States Department of Education, in cases of children with disabilities who have been suspended for 10 or more days for each school year (including partial days), the local education agency (LEA) must hold a manifestation determination hearing within 10 school days of any decision to change the placement of a child resulting from a violation of code of student conduct. The Stay Put law states that a child shall not be moved from his or her current placement or interim services into an alternative placement if the infraction was deemed to cause danger to other students. The LEA, the parent, and relevant members of the individualized education program (IEP) team (as determined by the parent and LEA) shall review all relevant information in the student's file, including the child's IEP, any teacher observations, and any relevant information provided by the parents to determine if the conduct in question was:

~ Caused by, or had a direct and substantial relationship to, the child's disability; or
~ The direct result of the LEA's failure to implement the IEP.

If the LEA, the parent, and relevant members of the IEP team make the determination that the conduct was a manifestation of the child’s disability, the IEP team shall:

~ Conduct a functional behavioral assessment and implement a behavioral intervention plan for such child, provided that the LEA had not conducted such assessment prior to such determination before the behavior that resulted in a change in placement described in Section 615(k)(1)(C) or (G);
~ In the situation where a behavioral intervention plan has been developed, review the behavioral intervention plan if the child already has such a behavioral intervention plan, and modify it, as necessary, to address the behavior; and
~ Except as provided in Section 615(k)(1)(G), return the child to the placement from which the child was removed, unless the parent and the LEA agree to a change of placement as part of the modification of the behavior intervention plan.

If it is determined that a student's behavior is a manifestation of his or her disability, then he or she may not be suspended or expelled. However, under IDEA 2004,if a student "brings a weapon to school or a school function; or knowingly possess, uses, or sells illegal drugs or controlled substances at school or a school function"; or causes "serious bodily injury upon another person," he or she my be placed in an interim alternate educational setting (IAES) for up to 45 school days. This allows the student to continue receiving educational services while the IEP team has time to determine the appropriate placement and the appropriate course of action including reviewing the FBA and the BIP.

Prohibition on mandatory medication

Due to allegations that school officials coerced parents into administering psychotropic medication such as Ritalin to their child, an amendment to the IDEA was added called prohibition on mandatory medication. Schools may not require parents to obtain a controlled substance as a condition of:
~ attending school
~ receiving an evaluation or reevaluation
~ receiving special education services

Child Find

For infants/toddlers with disabilities and/or developmental delay, the state's designated lead agency for Part C early intervention is responsible for educating the public about early intervention services and how to refer. In most states, any individual (including the parent) may make a referral if a delay is suspected. Primary referral sources, generally, neonatal care hospital staff, pediatric professionals, day care workers, etc. are required under IDEA to refer an infant or toddler suspected of having a disability or developmental delay as soon as possible but no later than seven days after identification. Public service agencies involved with families in crisis also refer children for intervention who have been involved in a substantiated case of child abuse or neglect as defined in section 320 of the Family Violence Prevention and Services Act, 42 U.S.C. 10401, et seq. Despite regulations intended to address the needs of infants and toddlers with disabilities or delays, less than half of all eligible children are referred for services.

When a toddler who is receiving early intervention services under Part C of IDEA approaches his/her third birthday, the early intervention program sends the LEA - the local educational agency (in most states, regional educational cooperatives) as well as the SEA - the state educational agency (the department of education) a list of the children receiving early intervention services who are potentially eligible for early childhood special education services under Part B of IDEA. LEA and SEA notifications are required under IDEA CFR 303.209(b).

Public schools work in collaboration with the early intervention lead agency to coordinate "child find" through inter-agency agreements required under IDEA. Public school districts are responsible for providing supportive educational services for all students with disabilities who qualify for special education services and who reside in their district, regardless of whether they are attending public schools, since private institutions may not be funded for providing accommodations under IDEA.
Procedural safeguards

IDEA includes a set of procedural safeguards designed to protect the rights of children with disabilities and their families, and to ensure that children with disabilities receive a FAPE. The procedural safeguards include the opportunity for parents to review their child's full educational records; full parent participation in identification and IEP team meetings; parent involvement in placement decisions; Prior Written Notice; the right of parents to request independent educational evaluations at public expense; Notice of Procedural Safeguards; Resolution Process; and objective mediation funded by the state education agency and impartial Due Process Hearings. IDEA guarantees the following rights to parents:

~ Right to be informed in writing of the Procedural Safeguards (There is a booklet)

This booklet is to be provided in the following instances * On the first complaint or request for an evaluation

~ Upon the request of a parent or guardian
~ If a complaint is filed with the department of education
~ Upon your child having their school changed as a result of disciplinary action against your child

The professional safeguard booklet titled, Whose Idea Is This? A Parent’s Guide to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004 outlines the expectations and responsibilities of the parents as well as the expectations and legal responsibilities of the teachers, administration and school district.

~ Right to review all educational records.
~ To be equal partners on the IEP team, along with the school staff. To participate in all aspects of planning their child’s education.
~ To file complaints with the state education agency
~ Request mediation, or a due process hearing
~ At this time, parents may present an alternative IEP and their witnesses (experts and others), to support their case.
~ These hearings are Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) hearings and can be appealed. This is not a trial.

The entire goal of this process is to make the evaluation and, if needed, implementation of an IEP a joint venture between the students guardians and the school, with the goal of providing the education services needed to aid instruction in a general classroom setting, or other setting if needed. The booklet outlines a seven step process to determine a student’s educational needs and the services that they require:

~ Request for assistance: Parents may contact the schools to discuss potential learning concerns that they may have and the school contacts home if they believe the child is struggling due to a disability.
~ Request for evaluation: Here a parent may request, in writing, for a formal evaluation of the student with the school to determine if the student has any educational disabilities.
~ Evaluation: Students are typically evaluated on the following items, although additional areas can be examined upon parent or school request: Health, vision, hearing, social and emotional development, general intelligence, academic performance, communication abilities and motor abilities.
~ Development of an IEP: In accordance with the findings of the evaluation and in joint collaboration between parents and school a plan of action to aid the student is created. At this time a parent must also provide consent to the plan and guidelines that are created as part of the IEP
~ Annual Review: As part of IDEA it is mandated that a child’s IEP is reviewed at least once a year. This is a chance for parents and school personal to comment on the effectiveness of the plan and to decide on an appropriate future course of action.
~ Re-evaluation: Allows for a student to have their educational needs reassessed by school personal if a parent does not agree with the findings of the initial evaluation
~ Independent educational evaluation: This is a parent action that informs the school that they disagree with the school's evaluation of their child. From here it may be required that an independent, non-school affiliated team, evaluates the child in order to determine the child’s educational needs.

Early intervention

The Education for all Handicapped children Act of 1975 started the course of action for early intervention programs. In this act, public schools that received federal funding were required to provide equal access to education for children with disabilities.
On September 6, 2011, the US Department of Education updated the IDEA to include specific interventions for children of ages 2 and under that have disabilities. This section of the IDEA is entitled Part C and serves children with developmental delays or children that have conditions that may lead to developmental delays in the future. Part C is a $436 million initiative that will be administered at the state level.

On September 28, 2011, the Department of Education published an article in the Federal Register detailing the updates that have been made to Part C of the IDEA. The regulations are effective on October 28, 2011. Major changes in the regulations are detailed below:

~ The definition of multidisciplinary has been revised to respect aspects of an updated individualized family service plan (IFSP) team.
~ Native language is the language normally used by the parents of the child for any child that is deemed limited English proficient
~ State’s applications to must include how the State plans to follow the payor of last resort requirements in Section 303.511
~ Distinguishes between pre-referral, referral, and post-referral IFSP activities such as screening, evaluations, assessments, IFSP development, etc.
~ Specifies that early identification information in provided in the native languages of various population groups in the State
~ State must report to the public the performance of each Early Intervention System program in relation to the State’s Annual Performance Report

More specific details on Early Intervention requirements are found below.

Part C of IDEA

An Individualized Family Service Plan (IFSP) is a strengths-based plan of care for the infant/toddler with a developmental delay or disability. The plan is based on a child and family assessment of strengths and needs as well as the results of multidisciplinary evaluations administered by qualified professionals meeting their state's certification guidelines. The IFSP is similar to an IEP in that it addresses specific services, who will provide them and when/where, how often, etc. and the plan is monitored and updated frequently. Unlike an IEP, however, the IFSP addresses not only the needs of the child but also the needs of the family to meet their family goals and specified outcomes as related to assisting in their child's development. All infants and toddlers receiving early intervention services under Part C of IDEA are required to have an IFSP in order to receive services. Part C of IDEA is the program that awards grants to every state in the United States to provide early intervention services to children from birth to age 3 who have disabilities and to their families. Part C of IDEA also allows states to define "developmental delay" (either as a standard deviation or a percent delay in chronological months) for eligibility. States provide early intervention services to the children who have medically diagnosed disabilities as well as children who exhibit developmental delays. In order to receive funding, participating states must provide early intervention to every eligible child and the respective family, regardless of pay source. Lastly, services from Part C are not necessarily free - early intervention programs, as the payor of last resort, make use of public and private insurance, community resources, and some states implement a "sliding scale" of fees for services not covered by public or private insurance.

Goals for an IFSP

The goal of an IFSP is to assist the family in meeting their child's developmental needs in order to the infant or toddler (birth to age three) to increase functional abilities, gain independence and mobility, and be an active participant in his/her family and community. Another goal of early intervention in general is to improve a child's functional abilities, particularly in the domains of communication, cognitive ability, and social/emotional well-being in preparation for preschool and later kindergarten so that extensive special education services will not be necessary for the child's academic success. Once an infant/toddler is determined eligible (each state sets its own eligibility requirements), the family identifies whom they would like to participate as part of the IFSP team. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) Part C requires that the IFSP team consist of the family and at least two early intervention professionals from different disciplines (one being the service coordinator) - consistent with CFR §303.343(a)(1)(iv). However, the family may choose to include other members on the team such as the child's pediatrician, an early intervention service provider who may be working with the child, a parent advocate or trusted friend/family member.

The IFSP team works with the family to create a "service plan" to address the deficits of the infant or toddler and to assist the family in meeting their goals for their child's (and family's) development. The team uses information that the family provides as well as the results of at least two evaluations, all available medical records, and the informed clinical opinion of the professionals serving on the IFSP team. An initial IFSP is then created with the family. An IFSP will outline the following:

~ The child's current levels of physical, cognitive, communication, social or emotional, and adaptive development.
~ The family's resources, priorities, and concerns to help in their child's development.
~ The desired end result for the child and for the family (goals/outcomes), as well as the steps needed to achieve said end result (objectives). The plan will be monitored and evaluated quarterly to gauge progress. If the family chooses to revise the goals or the plan, they include updates as revised additions to the plan.
~ The early intervention services for the child and the family. This includes how often and the method of how the child and the family will receive the services.
~ The different environments that the services will be provided in and justification for services not provided in the "natural environment" as defined by IDEA (the location that a child without a disability would spend most of his/her time). For example, the family might have requested to receive services for the child at a day care center or in their home.
~ The date the services will begin and their anticipated duration.
~ The identification of the service coordinator, from the profession most immediately relevant to the infant's or toddler's family's needs, who will be responsible for the coordination and implementation of the plan with the other agencies and persons.
~ For toddlers approaching the third birthday, the IFSP will include a transition plan outlining the steps, activities, and services needed to support the transition of the toddler with a disability to preschool or other appropriate services.

In summary, a key to an effective IFSP is to include outcomes that “address the entire family’s well-being and not only outcomes designed to benefit the child’s development.” For this reason, the IFSP will inherently have goals that are designed for the family as well as for the child. The service coordinator helps the early intervention team of service providers write objectives that meet the family’s priorities and concerns.

Role of the Service Coordinator

All infants/toddlers (and their families) eligible for early intervention services under Part C of IDEA are guaranteed the right to service coordination at no cost to the family (at public expense). An initial service coordinator is assigned to a family upon referral, however, the family has the right of choice and may change service coordinators at any time. Under IDEA, the service coordinator serves as a single point of contact. "Service coordination services include assisting parents of infants and toddlers with disabilities in obtaining access to needed early intervention services and other services identified in the IFSP" [IDEA CFR §303.34(b)(1)]. The service coordinator works with the family and also leads the early intervention team of professionals working with the infant/toddler and family, conducting follow ups and monitoring service provision. The service coordinator will work with the infant/toddler and his/her family until the child turns three and "ages out" of early intervention (except in the few states that have elected to provide early intervention services from birth to five). As early as nine months prior to the toddler's third birthday, the service coordinator works with the family to prepare for transition to another appropriate environment for the child. The transition plan and a transition conference will be completed at least ninety days before the toddler's third birthday. For toddlers receiving early intervention services who are not eligible for early childhood special education services under Part B, the service coordinator will help the family identify other appropriate early childhood learning environments/opportunities/programs in their community (IDEA CFR §303.344(h)).
Federal law (CFR §303.34) lists the ten functions of service coordinators in their work with infants and toddlers who have special needs and their families. These include:

~ Assisting families in obtaining needed services (as well as making referrals, scheduling appointments, etc.)
~ Coordinating early intervention services (social, medical, educational)
~ Coordinating evaluations and assessments and making sure results are explained with family members and that family members receive a copy
~ Facilitating and participating in the development, review, and evaluation of Individualized Family Service Plans (IFSPs)
~ Assisting families in identifying available EIS providers (including making the referral)
~ Monitoring the delivery of services indicated on the IFSP (timely receipt of services)
~ Following up to determine that appropriate services are being provided
~ Informing/educating families of their rights and procedural safeguards
~ Coordinating funding sources for services
~ Facilitating the development of a transition plan to preschool services under Part B or other appropriate services

Differences between IFSP and IEP

When writing the IFSP for a child, the IFSP can (but not always) outline services that are not one of the seventeen mandated early intervention services under Part C of the IDEA. For example, a parent may need counseling services to overcome debilitating depression in order to better care for the infant or toddler, and these services will be written into the family's plan. The IEP (Individualized Education Plan) cannot include services to meet "family goals" but must focus solely on what the child needs to achieve academic success in an educational setting (whether the class or activity is academic or extra-curricular in nature).

The Individualized Family Service Plan is different compared to an Individual Education Plan in other key ways:

~ Eligibility for early intervention (birth to three) under Part C of IDEA is set by each state individually and is often different than eligibility for special education (3-21) under Part B of IDEA.
~ The IFSP will have goals and outcomes for the family and for the infant's/toddler's development.
~ Goals on the IFSP may be in non-academic areas of development such as mobility, self-care, and social/emotional well-being. The IEP has goals and outcomes for the child only and related entirely to his/her ability to adapt to and progress in an educational setting.
~ The IFSP includes services to help a family in natural environment settings (not just in daycare/preschool) but at home, in the community, etc. Services and activities on the IFSP could be tailored to "nap time," "infant swimming lessons at the YMCA," "church outings," etc. The IEP provides services solely on what happens in a pre-school or K-5 school environment or school-sponsored field trip/activity
~ The IFSP team involves a service coordinator who assists the family in developing and implementing the IFSP. The IEP team also involves the family, but the school district generally does not provide a professional who represents them and provides case-management/service coordination. The family will have to communicate with the special education department's designee.

Department of Education Regulations

In addition to the Federal law, the U.S. Department of Education publishes regulations that clarifies what the law means. States may add more provisions to further regulate how schools provide services, but they cannot reverse any provision specifically included in the federal statute.
Alignment with No Child Left Behind

The reauthorization of IDEA in 2004 revised the statute to align with the requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). NCLB allows financial incentives to states who improve their special education services and services for all students. States who do not improve must refund these incentives to the federal government, allow parents choice of schools for their children, and abide by other provisions. Some states are still reluctant to educate special education students and seek remedies through the courts. However, IDEA and NCLB are still the laws of the land to date.

In looking to align NCLB and the 2004 reauthorization of IDEA there are a few key areas of alignment: requirement highly qualified teachers, establishment of goals for students with special needs and assessment levels for these students The alignment of NCLB and IDEA requires that all special education teachers be highly qualified. While the standards for being highly qualified may different between state or school district the minimum requirements are that a teacher holds a bachelor’s degree from a four year college, is certified and licensed to teach by the state and has taken the necessary tests to indicate competency in ones subject area, although special education teachers are often exempt from such testing. These requirements for highly qualified teachers do not always exist for private schools, elementary or secondary. Next, goals and assessments must be provided that align with students educational needs. A state is allowed to develop alternate or modified assessments for students in special education programs but benchmarks and progress must still be met on these tests that indicate adequate yearly progress (AYP). In addition, these goals and assessments must be aligned similarly to students enrolled in general education. Finally, in order to make AYP schools may additionally require that schools met state standards of student retention, in terms of dropout rates and graduate rates for their special education students.

Criticisms
Criticisms from taxpayers

~ There are no exceptions to IDEA: no child is so severely disabled as to not qualify for educational services under IDEA. Even children who are in a permanent vegetative state or suffering from similarly severe brain damage still qualify for a Free Appropriate Public Education. This means that schools can be required to provide "educational" services to children who have no capacity for voluntary movement, no ability to communicate, and no indication that they recognize their own names or their parents' faces.
~ Under the "related services" clause, schools are specifically required to pay for many kinds of medical treatments, including speech therapy, audiology, physical therapy, and nursing, if the medical treatment is expected to help the student's education. There is no requirement that private health insurance be used when available. (A subsequent statutory exception relieved schools of the duty to pay for certain kinds of surgery, such as cochlear implants.)

Criticisms from schools


~ Excessive procedures and paperwork requires teacher time that would be better spent teaching
~ School staff often state beliefs that IDEA protects children and parents but not districts, schools and teachers
~ Parents request services for their children for which their children do not qualify based on local, state and federal guidelines.

Teachers and administrators then often deal with anger from parents who do not understand or do not agree with the regulations by which the school must abide.

~ Providing mandated educational and related services is expensive and reduces schools' ability to educate regular education students
~ Unfunded mandate. When originally passed in 1975, Congress established a maximum funding level for the program of 40 percent of the average per pupil expenditure of American students. This was a rough proxy for the estimated additional cost of educating a student with disabilities. Some have construed this as a promise that the federal government would fund that amount of spending. To date, despite massive increases in Part B funding, Congress has never provided more than 30 percent.

Criticisms from students and parents

~ Parents criticize schools for not following laws in designing and implementing education plans. Enforcement is scarce and ineffective.
~ Impartial Due Process hearing officers are not impartial
~ Districts spend thousands of dollars fighting against parents who want services for their children rather than providing the services, which are often much less expensive than the attorney's fees.
~ Schools and districts may retaliate against families who advocate for their children, sometimes retaliating against the children themselves. Such retaliation may include reporting the special needs child and family to the local state Child Protective Services, sometimes in an attempt to blame the "home environment" as being abusive or neglectful in order to shift blame away from the school for the child's failure to progress or regression at school. The school may claim that there was "evidence" of abuse and neglect, including dirty clothing, holes in clothing, poorly nutritious lunches given to child by parents, child's nosebleeds or a child's self-injurious behavior seen at school. Sometimes schools will report on a special needs child but not his/her non-disabled sibling. These actions often appear to be for retaliation and harassment purposes rather than based in fact.
~ Parents do not know how to prepare an IEP to counter inadequate IEPs prepared by schools.
~ Some students do not obtain effective transition skills and information necessary for when they exit special education, and out into the real world. They are essentially dumped without necessarily any idea of the available community resources, infrastructure, and/or policies.
~ Minorities, particularly African-Americans, are over-identified as having learning disabilities, emotional disturbances, and mental retardation.

African-Americans over-identified with learning disabilities

There is a disproportionate amount of African-Americans in special education juxtapose the general American in school system. Socioeconomic status, geography, and culture play a role in this dis-proportionality among other factors.
There is a strong correlation between socio-economic status and special education diagnosis. Those living in poverty are less exposed to certain societal experiences, and a higher percentage of those living in poverty are African-Americans. Because children living in poverty are less exposed to certain experiences, they are at greater risk for not performing well on exams such as IQ tests. This then makes these students more likely to be referred for special education, and once a referral has been made the placement or admittance into special education services soon follows at high numbers.

There is also a widely held belief that some exams that are administered to determine if a student has a disability are culturally biased and gender biased. There is a body of research that supports this view, although there is also support that not all norm-referenced tests are in fact biased. There can also be a lack of cultural competency between the learning styles of African-American students and their educators & school systems.

Addressing disproportionality

Every state is required under IDEIA to provide data to ensure that disproportionality is not occurring. The issue is that there is no guideline on how that data should be analyzed. The Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) met in 2003 and 2004 to use risk-ratio and determine its challenges, while also addressing them. Insight on how data is being collected and analyzed can shed light on where and how the dis-proportionality is occurring and how to curtail them if they are.

IDEA 2004 also put in place indicators to prevent the over-diagnosis of students with disabilities The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction created a Checklist to Address Disproportionality (CADSE) in order to increase awareness of over-diagnosis and put systems in place that prevent the continued cycles of over-identification. An important component of this checklist is cultural competency. Efforts continue to be made on a local, state, and national level to prevent over-identification in special education.

Legal rights

There are resources available to safeguard and protect students and families with disabilities. Parents must be asked if they want their child evaluated for special needs testing. If a parent feels that their child has been misdiagnosed or has been discriminated against for a particular reason including race or language, they have the right to filed with the Office of Civil Rights. There are legal service providers in each state that can be accessed through the National Association of Protection and Advocacy Systems. There are also resources to help parents in understanding their rights through the National Information Center for Children and Youth with Disabilities.

Legislative history

1975 — The Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EAHCA) became law. It was renamed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) in 1990.

1990— IDEA first came into being on October 30, 1990 when the "Education of All Handicapped Children Act" (itself having been introduced in 1975) was renamed "Individuals with Disabilities Education Act." (Pub. L. No. 101-476, 104 Stat. 1142). IDEA received minor amendments in October 1991 (Pub. L. No. 102-119, 105 Stat. 587).

1997— IDEA received significant amendments. The definition of disabled children expanded to include developmentally delayed children between three and nine years of age. It also required parents to attempt to resolve disputes with schools and Local Educational Agencies (LEAs) through mediation, and provided a process for doing so. The amendments authorized additional grants for technology, disabled infants and toddlers, parent training, and professional development. (Pub. L. No. 105-17, 111 Stat. 37).

2004— On December 3, 2004, IDEA was amended by the Individuals With Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004, now known as IDEIA. Several provisions aligned IDEA with the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, signed by President George W. Bush. It authorized fifteen states to implement 3-year IEPs on a trial basis when parents continually agree. Drawing on the report of the President's Commission on Excellence in Special Education, the law revised the requirements for evaluating children with learning disabilities. More concrete provisions relating to discipline of special education students was also added. (Pub. L. No. 108-446, 118 Stat. 2647).

2009— Following a campaign promise for "funding the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act", President Barack Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) on February 17, 2009, including $12.2 billion in additional funds.

Judicial interpretations
U.S. Supreme Court decisions

Schaffer v. Weast

On November 14, 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Schaffer v. Weast, 546 U.S. 49, that moving parties in a placement challenge hold the burden of persuasion. While this is an accord with the usual legal thinking, the moving party is almost always the parents of a child.
Arlington v. Murphy

On June 26, 2006 the Supreme Court held in Arlington Central School Dist. Bd. of Ed. v. Murphy, 548 U.S. 291, that prevailing parents may not recover expert witness fees as part of the costs under 20 U.S.C.§ 1415(i)(3)(B).

Winkelman v. Parma City School District

On May 21, 2007 the Supreme Court held in Winkelman v. Parma City School District, 550 U.S. 516, that parents have independent enforceable rights under the IDEA and may appear pro se on behalf of their children.

Forest Grove School District v. T.A.

The case of Forest Grove School District v. T.A., 129 S.Ct. 2484, argued before the Supreme Court on April 28, 2009, addressed the issue of whether the parents of a student who has never received special education services from a public school district are potentially eligible for reimbursement of private school tuition for that student under the IDEA. On June 22, 2009 the Supreme Court held that parents of disabled children can seek reimbursement for private education expenses regardless whether their child had previously received special-education services from a public school. By a vote of six to three, the Court held that the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) authorizes reimbursement whenever a public school fails to make a free appropriate public education (FAPE) available to a disabled child.

Cedar Rapids Community School Dist. v. Garret F.

RULE: Continuing nursing services is "related service" that district must provide under IDEA

~ Ventilator-dependent student needs nurse/attendant with him all day and parents want school to pay for this nurse/attendant.

School says no, thinking this isn't a legal obligation (to provide 1:1 nursing).

~ TEST applied (from Tatro)

    ~ Related service? Yes: help kids benefit from school
    ~ Medical service exemption? No, school nurse services not covered by exemption (pretty much only services covered by a doctor can be excluded). This is a service which must be paid for by the school. Cost of service is not a factor in determining whether it is required by IDEA. There is no undue burden exemption.

Education for All Handicapped Children Act

The Education for All Handicapped Children Act (sometimes referred to using the acronyms EAHCA or EHA, or Public Law (PL) 94-142) was enacted by the United States Congress in 1975. This act required all public schools accepting federal funds to provide equal access to education and one free meal a day for children with physical and mental disabilities. Public schools were required to evaluate handicapped children and create an educational plan with parent input that would emulate as closely as possible the educational experience of non-disabled students.

The act also required that school districts provide administrative procedures so that parents of disabled children could dispute decisions made about their children’s education. Once the administrative efforts were exhausted, parents were then authorized to seek judicial review of the administration’s decision. Prior to the enactment of EHA, parents could take their disputes straight to the judiciary under the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. The mandatory system of dispute resolution created by EHA was an effort to alleviate the financial burden created by litigation pursuant to the Rehabilitation Act.

PL 94-142 also contains a provision that disabled students should be placed in the least restrictive environment-one that allows the maximum possible opportunity to interact with non-impaired students. Separate schooling may only occur when the nature or severity of the disability is such that instructional goals cannot be achieved in the regular classroom. Finally, the law contains a due process clause that guarantees an impartial hearing to resolve conflicts between the parents of disabled children to the school system.

The law was passed to meet four huge goals: 1. To ensure that special education services are available to children who need them 2. To guarantee that decisions about services to disabled students are fair and appropriate 3. To establish specific management and auditing requirements for special education 4. To provide federal funds to help the states educate disabled students

EHA was revised and renamed as Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in 1990.
Functional relationship between EHA, the Rehabilitation Act, and the equal protection clause

The Supreme Court decided that EHA would be the exclusive remedy for disabled students asserting their right to equal access to public education in Smith v. Robinson, 468 U.S. 992 (1984). The petitioner, Tommy Smith, was an eight year old student who had cerebral palsy. The school district in Cumberland, Rhode Island originally agreed to subsidize Tommy’s education by placing him in a program for special needs children at the Emma Pendleton Bradley Hospital. The school district later decided to remove Tommy from that program and send him to the Rhode Island Division of Mental Health, Retardation and Hospitals, which was severely understaffed and under funded. This transfer would have constructively terminated Tommy’s public education. Tommy’s parents appealed the school district’s decision through the administrative process created by EAHCA. Once the administrative process was exhausted, the Smiths sought judicial review pursuant to the EAHCA, § 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, and 42 U.S.C. § 1983.

The United States Supreme Court held that the administrative process created by EHA was the exclusive remedy for disabled students asserting their right to equal access to education. "Allowing a plaintiff to circumvent the EHA administrative remedies would be inconsistent with Congress’ carefully tailored scheme…We conclude, therefore, that where the EHA is available to a disabled child asserting a right to a free appropriate public education, based either on the EHA or on the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the EHA is the exclusive avenue through which the child and his parents or guardian can pursue their claim." The court based its decision on a contextual analysis of the applicable statutes. To permit a student to rely on § 504 or the § 1983 would be to effectively eliminate the EHA, because it would circumvent the EHA’s requirement that petitioners first exhaust their administrative options before seeking judicial intervention.

In the face of this Supreme Court decision, the United States Congress passed an amendment to the EHA which explicitly overruled the Supreme Court's decision in two ways: (1) The amended law allowed parents to collect attorney's fees upon winning a case against the school. (2) The amended law permitted parents to bring a lawsuit under either EHA, § 504, or § 1983 once the administrative remedies had been exhausted.

Saturday, April 20, 2013

Education reform

Educations reform is the name given to a political process with the goal of improving public education. Small improvements in education theoretically have large social returns, in health, wealth and well-being. Historically, reforms have taken different forms because the motivations of reformers have differed. A stated motivation has been to reduce cost to students and society. From the ancient times until the 1800s, one goal was to reduce the expense of a classical education. Ideally, classical education is undertaken with a highly educated full-time (extremely expensive) personal tutor. Historically, this was available only to the most wealthy. Encyclopedias, public libraries and grammar schools are examples of innovations intended to lower the cost of a classical education.

Related reforms attempted to develop similar classical results by concentrating on "why", and "which" questions neglected by classical education. Abstract, introspective answers to these questions can theoretically compress large amounts of facts into relatively few principles. This path was taken by some Transcendentalist educators, such as Amos Bronson Alcott. In the early modern age, Victorian schools were reformed to teach commercially useful topics, such as modern languages and mathematics, rather than classical subjects, such as Latin and Greek.

Many reformers focused on reforming society by reforming education on more scientific, humanistic, pragmatic or democratic principles. John Dewey, and Anton Makarenko are prominent examples of such reformers.

Some reformers incorporated several motivations, e.g. Maria Montessori, who both "educated for peace" (a social goal), and to "meet the needs of the child," (A humanistic goal.)

In historic Prussia, an important motivation for the invention of Kindergarten was to foster national unity by teaching a national language while children were young enough that learning a language was easy.

The reform has taken many forms and directions. Throughout history and the present day, the meaning and methods of education have changed through debates over what content or experiences result in an educated individual or an educated society.

Changes may be implemented by individual educators and/or by broad-based school organization and/or by curriculum changes with performance evaluations.

Early history
Classical times


Plato believed that children would never learn unless they wanted to learn. In The Republic (7.536e), he said, " .... compulsory learning never sticks in the mind." An educational debate in the time of the Roman Empire arose after Christianity had achieved broad acceptance. The question concerned the educational value of pre-Christian classical thought: "Given that the body of knowledge of the pre-Christian Romans was heathen in origin, was it safe to teach it to Christian children?"Modern reforms

Though educational reform occurred on a local level at various points throughout history, the modern notion of education reform is tied with the spread of Compulsory education - education reforms did not become widespread until after organized schooling was sufficiently systematized to be 'reformed.'

In the modern world, economic growth and the spread of democracy have raised the value of education and increased the importance of ensuring that all children and adults have access to high quality and effective education. Modern education reforms are increasingly driven by a growing understanding of what works in education and how to go about successfully improving teaching and learning in schools.

Reforms of classical education

Western classical education as taught from the 18th to the 19th century has missing features that inspired reformers. Classical education is most concerned with answering the who, what, where, and when? questions that concern a majority of students. Unless carefully taught, group instruction naturally neglects the theoretical "why" and "which" questions that strongly concern less students.

Classical education in this period also did not teach local (vernacular) languages and cultures. Instead it taught high-status ancient languages (Greek and Latin) and their cultures. This produced odd social effects in which an intellectual class might be more loyal to ancient cultures and institutions than to their native vernacular languages and their actual governing authorities.

Educational economies in the 19th century

Before there were government-funded public schools, education of the lower classes was by the charity school, pioneered in the 19th century by Protestant organizations and adapted by the Roman Catholic Church and governments. Because these schools operated on very small budgets and attempted to serve as many needy children as possible, they were designed to be inexpensive.

The basic program was to develop "grammar" schools. These taught only grammar and bookkeeping. This program permitted people to start businesses to make money, and gave them the skills to continue their education inexpensively from books. "Grammar" was the first third of the then-prevalent system of Classical Education.

The ultimate development of the grammar school was by Joseph Lancaster and Andrew Bell who developed the monitorial system. Lancaster started as a poor Quaker in early 19th century London. Bell started the Madras School of India. The monitorial system uses slightly more-advanced students to teach less-advanced students, achieving student-teacher ratios as small as 2, while educating more than a thousand students per adult. Lancaster promoted his system in a piece called Improvements in Education that spread widely throughout the English-speaking world.

Discipline and labor in a Lancaster school were provided by an economic system. Scrip, a form of money meaningless outside the school, was created at a fixed exchange rate from a student's tuition. Every job of the school was bid-for by students in scrip, with the largest bid winning. However, any student tutor could auction positions in his or her classes. Besides tutoring, students could use scrip to buy food, school supplies, books, and childish luxuries in a school store. The adult supervisors were paid from the bids on jobs.

With fully developed internal economies, Lancaster schools provided a grammar-school education for a cost per student near $40 per year in 1999 U.S. dollars. The students were very clever at reducing their costs, and once invented, improvements were widely adopted in a school. For example, Lancaster students, motivated to save scrip, ultimately rented individual pages of textbooks from the school library, and read them in groups around music stands to reduce textbook costs. Students commonly exchanged tutoring, and paid for items and services with receipts from "down tutoring."

Lancaster schools usually lacked sufficient adult supervision. As a result, the older children acting as disciplinary monitors tended to become brutal task masters. Also, the schools did not teach submission to orthodox Christian beliefs or government authorities. As a result, most English-speaking countries developed mandatory publicly paid education explicitly to keep public education in "responsible" hands. These elites said that Lancaster schools might become dishonest, provide poor education and were not accountable to established authorities.

Lancaster's supporters responded that any schoolchild could avoid cheats, given the opportunity, and that the government was not paying for the education, and thus deserved no say in their composition.

Lancaster, though motivated by charity, claimed in his pamphlets to be surprised to find that he lived well on the income of his school, even while the low costs made it available to the poorest street-children. Ironically, Lancaster lived on the charity of friends in his later life.

Progressive reforms in Europe and the United States

The term progressive in education has been used somewhat indiscriminately; there are a number of kinds of educational progressivism, most of the historically significant kinds peaking in the period between the late 19th and the middle of the 20th centuries.

Child-study

Jean-Jacques Rousseau has been called the father of the child-study movement. It has been said that Rousseau "discovered" the child (as an object of study).

Rousseau's principal work on education is Emile: Or, On Education, in which he lays out an educational program for a hypothetical newborn's education to adulthood. Rousseau provided a dual critique of both the vision of education set forth in Plato's Republic and also of the society of his contemporary Europe and the educational methods he regarded as contributing to it; he held that a person can either be a man or a citizen, and that while Plato's plan could have brought the latter at the expense of the former, contemporary education failed at both tasks. He advocated a radical withdrawal of the child from society and an educational process that utilized the natural potential of the child and its curiosity, teaching it by confronting it with simulated real-life obstacles and conditioning it by experience rather than teaching it intellectually. His ideas were rarely implemented directly, but were influential on later thinkers, particularly Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi and Friedrich Wilhelm August Fröbel, the inventor of the kindergarten.

Transcendentalist education

H. D. Thoreau's Walden and reform essays in the mid-19th century were influential also (see the anthology Uncommon Learning: Henry David Thoreau on Education, Boston, 1999). For a look at transcendentalist life, read Louisa May Alcott's Little Women. Her father, A. Bronson Alcott, a close friend of Thoreau's, pioneered progressive education for young people as early as the 1830s.

The transcendental education movement failed, because only the most gifted students ever equaled the skills of their classically educated teachers. These students would, of course, succeed in any educational regime. Accounts seem to indicate that the students were happy, but often pursued classical education later in life.

National identity

Education is often seen in Europe and Asia as an important system to maintain national, cultural and linguistic unity. Prussia instituted primary school reforms expressly to teach a unified version of the national language, "Hochdeutsch". One significant reform was kindergarten, whose purpose was to have the children spend time in supervised activities in the national language, when the children were young enough that they could easily learn new language skills.

Since most modern schools copy the Prussian models, children start school at an age when their language skills remain plastic, and they find it easy to learn the national language. This was an intentional design on the part of the Prussians.

In the U.S. over the last twenty years, more than 70% of non-English-speaking school-age immigrants have arrived in the U.S. before they were 6 years old. At this age, they could have been taught English in school, and achieved a proficiency indistinguishable from a native speaker. In other countries, such as the Soviet Union, France, Spain, and Germany this approach has dramatically improved reading and math test scores for linguistic minorities.

Dewey

John Dewey, a philosopher and educator, was heavily influential in American and international education, especially during the first four decades of the 20th century. An important member of the American Pragmatist movement, he carried the subordination of knowledge to action into the educational world by arguing for experiential education that would enable children to learn theory and practice simultaneously; a well-known example is the practice of teaching elementary physics and biology to students while preparing a meal. He was a harsh critic of "dead" knowledge disconnected from practical human life, foreshadowing Paulo Freire's attack on the "banking" view of education.

Dewey criticized the rigidity and volume of humanistic education, and the emotional idealizations of education based on the child-study movement that had been inspired by Bill Joel and those who followed him. He presented his educational theories as a synthesis of the two views. His slogan was that schools should encourage children to "Learn by doing." He wanted people to realize that children are naturally active and curious. Dewey's understanding of logic is best presented in his "Logic, the Theory of Inquiry" (1938). His educational theories were presented in "My Pedagogic Creed", The School and Society, The Child and Curriculum, and Democracy and Education (1916).

The question of the history of Deweyan educational practice is a difficult one. He was a widely known and influential thinker, but his views and suggestions were often misunderstood by those who sought to apply them, leading some historians to suggest that there was never an actual implementation on any considerable scale of Deweyan progressive education. The schools with which Dewey himself was most closely associated (though the most famous, the "Laboratory School", was really run by his wife) had considerable ups and downs, and Dewey left the University of Chicago in 1904 over issues relating to the Dewey School.
Dewey's influence began to decline in the time after the Second World War and particularly in the Cold War era, as more conservative educational policies came to the fore.

The administrative progressives

The form of educational progressivism which was most successful in having its policies implemented has been dubbed "administrative progressivism" by historians. This began to be implemented in the early 20th century. While influenced particularly in its rhetoric by Dewey and even more by his popularizers, administrative progressivism was in its practice much more influenced by the industrial revolution and the concept economies of scale.

The administrative progressives are responsible for many features of modern American education, especially American high schools: counseling programs, the move from many small local high schools to large centralized high schools, curricular differentiation in the form of electives and tracking, curricular, professional, and other forms of standardization, and an increase in state and federal regulation and bureaucracy, with a corresponding reduction of local control at the school board level. (Cf. "State, federal, and local control of education in the United States", below) (Tyack and Cuban, pp. 17–26)

These reforms have since become heavily entrenched, and many today who identify themselves as progressives are opposed to many of them, while conservative education reform during the Cold War embraced them as a framework for strengthening traditional curriculum and standards.

In more recent times, groups such as the think tank Reform's education division, and S.E.R. have attempted to pressure the government of the U.K. into more modernist educational reform, though this has met with limited success.

Critiques of progressive and classical reforms

Many progressive reforms failed to transfer learned skills. Evidence suggests that higher-order thinking skills are unused by many people (cf. Jean Piaget, Isabel Myers, and Katharine Cook Briggs). Some authorities say that this refutes key assumptions of progressive thinkers such as Dewey.

Jean Piaget was a Swiss psychologist who studied people's developmental stages. He showed by widely reproduced experiments that most young children do not analyze or synthesize as Dewey expected. Some authorities therefore say that Dewey's reforms do not apply to the primary education of young children.

Katherine Briggs and her daughter Isabel Myers developed a psychological test that reproducibly identifies sixteen distinct human temperaments, building on work by Jung. A wide class of temperaments ("Sensors", half by category, 60% of the general population) prefer to use concrete information such as facts and procedures. They prefer not to use abstract theories or logic. In terms of education, some authorities interpret this to mean that 60% of the general population only use, and therefore would prefer to learn answers to concrete "Who, what, when, where", and "how" questions, rather than answers to the theoretical "which" and "why" questions advocated by progressives. This information was confirmed (on another research track) by Jean Piaget, who discovered that nearly 60% of adults never habitually use what he called "formal operational reasoning", a term for the development and use of theories and explicit logic. If this criticism is true, then schools that teach only principles would fail to educate 60% of the general population.

The data from Piaget, Myers and Briggs can also be used to criticize classical teaching styles that never teach theory or principle. In particular, a wide class of temperaments ("Intuitives", half by category, 40% of the general population) prefer to reason from trusted first principles, and then apply that theory to predict concrete facts. In terms of education, some authorities interpret this to mean that 40% of the general population prefer to use, and therefore want to learn, answers to theoretical "Which and "Why" questions, rather than answers to the concrete "Who, what, when, where" and "How" questions.

The synthesis resulting from this two-part critique is a "neoclassical" learning theory similar to that practiced by Marva Collins, in which both learning styles are accommodated. The classroom is filled with facts, that are organized with theories, providing a rich environment to feed children's natural preferences. To reduce the limitations of depending only on natural preferences, all children are required to learn both important facts, and important forms of reasoning.

Diane Ravitch argues that "progressive" reformers have replaced a challenging liberal arts curriculum with ever-lower standards and indoctrination, particularly in inner-city schools, thereby preventing vast numbers of students from achieving their full potential.

Education reform in the United States since the mid-20th century
Reforms arising from the civil rights era


From the 1950s to the 1970s, many of the proposed and implemented reforms in U.S. education stemmed from the Civil Rights Movement and related trends; examples include ending racial segregation, and busing for the purpose of desegregation, affirmative action, and banning of school prayer.

Reform efforts in the 1980s

In the 1980s, some of the momentum of education reform moved from the left to the right, with the release of A Nation at Risk, Ronald Reagan's efforts to reduce or eliminate the United States Department of Education. In the latter half of the decade, E. D. Hirsch put forth an influential attack on one or more versions of progressive education, advocating an emphasis on "cultural literacy"—the facts, phrases, and texts that Hirsch asserted every American had once known and that now only some knew, but was still essential for decoding basic texts and maintaining communication. Hirsch's ideas remain significant through the 1990s and into the 21st century, and are incorporated into classroom practice through textbooks and curricula published under his own imprint.

Reform efforts in the 1990s and 2000s

Most states and districts in the 1990s adopted Outcome-Based Education (OBE) in some form or another. A state would create a committee to adopt standards, and choose a quantitative instrument to assess whether the students knew the required content or could perform the required tasks. The standards-based National Education Goals (Goals 2000) were set by the U.S. Congress in the 1990s. Many of these goals were based on the principles of outcomes-based education, and not all of the goals were attained by the year 2000 as was intended. The standards-based reform movement culminated in the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, which as of 2009 is still an active nation-wide mandate in the United States.

OBE reforms usually had other disputed methods, such as constructivist mathematics and whole language, added onto them.[dubious – discuss] Some proponents[who?] advocated replacing the traditional high school diploma with a Certificate of Initial Mastery. Other reform movements were school-to-work, which would require all students except those in a university track to spend substantial class time on a job site. See also Uncommon Schools.

Contemporary issues

In the first decade of the 21st century, several issues are salient in debates over further education reform:
> Longer school day or school year
> After-school tutoring
> Charter schools, school choice, or school vouchers
> Smaller class sizes    Improved teacher quality
        - Improved training
        - Higher credential standards
        - Generally higher pay to attract more qualified applicants
        - Performance bonuses ("merit pay")
        - Firing low-performing teachers
> Internet and computer access in schools
> Track and reduce drop-out rate
> Track and reduce absenteeism
> English-only vs. bilingual education
> Mainstreaming special education students
> Content of curriculum standards and textbooks
> Funding, neglected infrastructure, and adequacy of educational supplies

Funding levels

According to a 2005 report from the OECD, the United States is tied for first place with Switzerland when it comes to annual spending per student on its public schools, with each of those two countries spending more than $11,000 (in U.S. currency). Despite this high level of funding, U.S. public schools lag behind the schools of other rich countries in the areas of reading, math, and science. A further analysis of developed countries shows no correlation between per student spending and student performance, suggesting that there are other factors influencing education. Top performers include Singapore, Finland and Korea, all with relatively low spending on education, while high spenders including Norway and Luxembourg have relatively low performance. One possible factor, is the distribution of the funding. In the US, schools in wealthy areas tend to be over-funded while schools in poorer areas tend to be underfunded. These differences in spending between schools or districts may accentuate inequalities, if they result in the best teachers moving to teach in the most wealthy areas. It has also been shown that the socioeconomic situation of the students family has the most influence in determining success; suggesting that even if increased funds in a low income area increase performance, they may still perform worse than their peers from wealthier districts.

Starting in the early 1980s, a series of analyses by Eric Hanushek indicated that the amount spent on schools bore little relationship to student learning. This controversial argument, which focused attention on how money was spent instead of how much was spent, led to lengthy scholarly exchanges. In part the arguments fed into the class size debates and other discussions of "input policies." It also moved reform efforts towards issues of school accountability (including No Child Left Behind) and the use of merit pay and other incentives.

There have been studies that show smaller class sizes and newer buildings  (both of which require higher funding to implement) lead to academic improvements. It should also be noted that many of the reform ideas that stray from the traditional format require greater funding.

It has been shown that some school districts do not use their funds in the most productive way. For example, according to a 2007 article in the Washington Post, the Washington, D.C. public school district spends $12,979 per student per year. This is the third highest level of funding per student out of the 100 biggest school districts in the United States. Despite this high level of funding, the school district provides outcomes that are lower than the national average. In reading and math, the district's students score the lowest among 11 major school districts—even when poor children are compared only with other poor children. 33% of poor fourth graders in the United States lack basic skills in math, but in Washington, D.C., it's 62%. According to a 2006 study by the Goldwater Institute, Arizona's public schools spend 50% more per student than Arizona's private schools. The study also says that while teachers constitute 72% of the employees at private schools, they make up less than half of the staff at public schools. According to the study, if Arizona's public schools wanted to be like private schools, they would have to hire approximately 25,000 more teachers, and eliminate 21,210 administration employees. The study also said that public school teachers are paid about 50% more than private school teachers.
In 1985 in Kansas City, Missouri, a judge ordered the school district to raise taxes and spend more money on public education. Spending was increased so much, that the school district was spending more money per student than any of the country's other 280 largest school districts. Although this very high level of spending continued for more than a decade, there was no improvement in the school district's academic performance.
According to a 1999 article, William J. Bennett, former U.S. Secretary of Education, argued that increased levels of spending on public education have not made the schools better, citing the following statistics:

> Between 1960 and 1995, U.S. public school spending per student, adjusted for inflation, increased by 212%.
> In 1994, less than half of all U.S. public school employees were teachers.
> Out of 21 industrialized countries, U.S. 12th graders ranked 19th in math, 16th in science, and last in advanced physics.

Alternatives to public education
In the United States, Private schools (independent schools) have long been an alternative to public education for those with the ability to pay tuition. These include religious schools, preparatory and boarding schools, and schools based on alternative philosophies such as Montessori education. Over 4 million students, about one in twelve children attend religious schools in the United States, most of them Christian. Montessori pre- and primary school programs employ alternative theories of guided exploration which seek to embrace children's natural curiosity rather than, for instance, scolding them for falling out of rank.

Home education is favored by a growing number of parents who take direct responsibility for their children's education rather than enrolling them in local public schools seen as not meeting expectations.

School choice

Economists such as Nobel laureate Milton Friedman advocate school choice to promote excellence in education through competition and choice. A competitive "market" for schools eliminates the need to otherwise attempt a workable method of accountability for results. Public education vouchers permit guardians to select and pay any school, public or private, with public funds currently allocated to local public schools. The theory is that children's guardians will naturally shop for the best schools, much as is already done at college level.

Though appealing in theory, many reforms based on school choice have led to slight to moderate improvements--which some teachers' union members see as insufficient to offset the decreased teacher pay and job security. For instance, New Zealand's landmark reform in 1989, during which schools were granted substantial autonomy, funding was devolved to schools, and parents were given a free choice of which school their children would attend, led to moderate improvements in most schools. It was argued that the associated increases in inequity and greater racial stratification in schools nullified the educational gains. Others, however, argued that the original system created more inequity (due to lower income students being required to attend poorer performing inner city schools and not being allowed school choice or better educations that are available to higher income inhabitants of suburbs). Instead, it was argued that the school choice promoted social mobility and increased test scores especially in the cases of low income students. Similar results have been found in other jurisdictions. Though discouraging, the merely slight improvements of some school choice policies often seems to reflect weaknesses in the way that choice is implemented rather than a failure of the basic principle itself.

Barriers to reform
A study by the Fordham Institute found that some labor agreements with teachers' unions may restrict the ability of school systems to implement merit pay and other reforms. Contracts were more restrictive in districts with high concentrations of poor and minority students. The methodology and conclusions of the study have been criticized by teachers' unions.
Another barrier to reform is assuming that schools are like businesses—when in fact they are very different.

Motivations

Education reform has been pursued for a variety of specific reasons, but generally most reforms aim at redressing some societal ills, such as poverty-, gender-, or class-based inequities, or perceived ineffectiveness. Current education trends in the United States represent multiple achievement gaps across ethnicities, income levels, and geographies. As McKinsey and Company reported in a 2009 analysis, “These educational gaps impose on the United States the economic equivalent of a permanent national recession.” Reforms are usually proposed by thinkers who aim to redress societal ills or institute societal changes, most often through a change in the education of the members of a class of people—the preparation of a ruling class to rule or a working class to work, the social hygiene of a lower or immigrant class, the preparation of citizens in a democracy or republic, etc. The idea that all children should be provided with a high level of education is a relatively recent idea, and has arisen largely in the context of Western democracy in the 20th century.

The "beliefs" of school districts are optimistic that quite literally "all students will succeed", which in the context of high school graduation examination in the United States, all students in all groups, regardess of heritage or income will pass tests that in the introduction typically fall beyond the ability of all but the top 20 to 30 percent of students. The claims clearly renounce historical research that shows that all ethnic and income groups score differently on all standardized tests and standards based assessments and that students will achieve on a bell curve. Instead, education officials across the world believe that by setting clear, achievable, higher standards, aligning the curriculum, and assessing outcomes, learning can be increased for all students, and more students can succeed than the 50 percent who are defined to be above or below grade level by norm referenced standards.

States have tried to use state schools to increase state power, especially to make better soldiers and workers. This strategy was first adopted to unify related linguistic groups in Europe, including France, Germany and Italy. Exact mechanisms are unclear, but it often fails in areas where populations are culturally segregated, as when the U.S. Indian school service failed to suppress Lakota and Navaho, or when a culture has widely respected autonomous cultural institutions, as when the Spanish failed to suppress Catalan.

Many students of democracy have desired to improve education in order to improve the quality of governance in democratic societies; the necessity of good public education follows logically if one believes that the quality of democratic governance depends on the ability of citizens to make informed, intelligent choices, and that education can improve these abilities.

Politically motivated educational reforms of the democratic type are recorded as far back as Plato in The Republic. In the United States of America, this lineage of democratic education reform was continued by Thomas Jefferson, who advocated ambitious reforms partly along Platonic lines for public schooling in Virginia.

Another motivation for reform is the desire to address socio-economic problems, which many people see as having significant roots in lack of education. Starting in the 20th century, people have attempted to argue that small improvements in education can have large returns in such areas as health, wealth and well-being. For example, in Kerala, India in the 1950s, increases in women's health were correlated with increases in female literacy rates. In Iran, increased primary education was correlated with increased farming efficiencies and income. In both cases some researchers have concluded these correlations as representing an underlying causal relationship: education causes socio-economic benefits. In the case of Iran, researchers concluded that the improvements were due to farmers gaining reliable access to national crop prices and scientific farming information.

Digital Education

The movement to use computers more in education naturally includes many unrelated ideas, methods, and pedagogies since there are many uses for digital computers. For example, the fact that computers are naturally good at math leads to the question of the use of calculators in math education. The Internet's communication capabilities make it potentially useful for collaboration, and foreign language learning. The computer's ability to simulate physical systems makes it potentially useful in teaching science. More often, however, debate of digital education reform centers around more general applications of computers to education, such as electronic test-taking and online classes.

The idea of creating artificial intelligence led some computer scientists to believe that teachers could be replaced by computers, through something like an expert system; however, attempts to accomplish this have predictably proved inflexible. The computer is now more understood to be a tool or assistant for the teacher and students.

Harnessing the richness of the Internet is another goal. In some cases classrooms have been moved entirely online, while in other instances the goal is more to learn how the Internet can be more than a classroom.

Web-based international educational software is under development by students at New York University, based on the belief that current educational institutions are too rigid: effective teaching is not routine, students are not passive, and questions of practice are not predictable or standardized. The software allows for courses tailored to an individual's abilities through frequent and automatic multiple intelligences assessments. Ultimate goals include assisting students to be intrinsically motivated to educate themselves, and aiding the student in self-actualization. Courses typically taught only in college are being reformatted so that they can be taught to any level of student, whereby elementary school students may learn the foundations of any topic they desire. Such a program has the potential to remove the bureaucratic inefficiencies of education in modern countries, and with the decreasing digital divide, help developing nations rapidly achieve a similar quality of education. With an open format similar to Wikipedia, any teacher may upload their courses online and a feedback system will help students choose relevant courses of the highest quality. Teachers can provide links in their digital courses to webcast videos of their lectures. Students will have personal academic profiles and a forum will allow students to pose complex questions, while simpler questions will be automatically answered by the software, which will bring you to a solution by searching through the knowledge database, which includes all available courses and topics.

The 21st century ushered in the acceptance and encouragement of internet research conducted on college and university campuses, in homes, and even in gathering areas of shopping centers. Addition of cyber cafes on campuses and coffee shops, loaning of communication devices from libraries, and availability of more portable technology devices, opened up a world of educational resources. Availability of knowledge to the elite had always been obvious, yet provision of networking devices, even wireless gadget sign-outs from libraries, made availability of information an expectation of most persons. Cassandra B. Whyte researched the future of computer use on higher education campuses focusing on student affairs. Though at first seen as a data collection and outcome reporting tool, the use of computer technology in the classrooms, meeting areas, and homes continued to unfold. The sole dependence on paper resources for subject information diminished and e-books and articles, as well as on-line courses, were anticipated to become increasingly staple and affordable choices provided by higher education institutions according to Whyte in a 2002 presentation.
Digitally "flipping" classrooms is a trend in digital education that has gained significant momentum. Will Richardson <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Richardson>, author and visionary for the digital education realm, points to the not-so-distant future and the seemingly infinite possibilities for digital communication linked to improved education. Education on the whole, as a stand-alone entity, has been slow to embrace these changes. There are documented cases of specific school projects that have seen views toppling the 3 million mark. [Richardson footnote] The use of web tools such as wikis, blogs, and social networking sites is tied to increasing overall effectiveness of digital education in schools. Examples exist of teacher and student success stories where learning has transcended the classroom and has reached far out into society.

Creativity is of the utmost importance when improving education. The "creative teachers" must have the confidence through training and availability of support and resources. These creative teachers are strongly encouraged to embrace a person-centered approach that develops the psychology of the educator ahead or in conjunction with the deployment of machines. Creative teachers have been also been inspired through Crowd-Accelerated Innovation. Crowd-Accelerated Innovation has pushed people to transition between media types and their understanding thereof at record-breaking paces. This process serves as a catalyst for creative direction and new methods of innovation. Innovation without desire and drive inevitably flat lines.

Mainstream media continues to be both very influential and the medium where Crowd-Accelerated Innovation gains its leverage. Media is in direct competition with formal educational institutions in shaping the minds of today and those of tomorrow. [Buchanan, Rachel footnote] The media has been instrumental in pushing formal educational institutions to become savvier in their methods. Additionally, advertising has been (and continues to be) a vital force in shaping students and parents thought patterns.

Technology is a dynamic entity that is constantly in flux. As time presses on, new technologies will continue to break paradigms that will reshape human thinking regarding technological innovation. This concept stresses a certain disconnect between teachers and learners and the growing chasm that started some time ago. Richardson asserts that traditional classroom’s will essentially enter entropy unless teachers increase their comfort and proficiency with technology.
Administrators are not exempt from the technological disconnect. They must recognize the existence of a younger generation of teachers who were born during the Digital Age and are very comfortable with technology. However, when old meets new, especially in a mentoring situation, conflict seems inevitable. Ironically, the answer to the outdated mentor may be digital collaboration with worldwide mentor webs; composed of individuals with creative ideas for the classroom.

Another viable addition to digital education has been blended learning. In 2009, over 3 million K-12 students took an online course, compared to 2000 when 45,000 took an online course. Blended learning examples include pure online, blended, and traditional education. Research results show that the most effective learning takes place in a blended format. This allows children to view the lecture ahead of time and then spend class time practicing, refining, and applying what they have previously learned.

Notable reforms

Some of the methods and reforms have gained permanent advocates, and are widely utilized.

Many educators now believe that anything that more precisely meets the needs of the child will work better. This was initiated by M. Montessori and is still utilized in Montessori schools.

The teaching method must be teachable! This is a lesson from both Montessori and Dewey. This view now has very wide currency, and is used to select much of the curricula of teachers' colleges.

Conservative programs are often based on classical education, which is seen by conservatives to reliably teach valuable skills in a developmentally appropriate order to the majority of Myers-Briggs temperaments, by teaching facts.

New programs based on modern learning theories that test individual learning, and teach to mastery of a subject have been proved by the Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA) to be far more effective than group instruction with compromise schedules, or even class-size reduction.
Schools with limited resources, such as most public schools and most third-world and missionary schools, use a grammar-school approach. The evidence of Lancaster schools suggests using students as teachers. If the culture supports it, perhaps the economic discipline of the Lancaster school can reduce costs even further. However, much of the success of Lancaster's "school economy" was that the children were natives of an intensely mercantile culture.

In order to be effective, classroom instruction needs to change subjects at times near a typical student's attention span, which can be as frequently as every two minutes for young children. This is an important part of Marva Collins' method.

The Myers-Briggs temperaments fall into four broad categories, each sufficiently different to justify completely different educational theories. Many developmental psychologists say that it might be socially profitable to test for and target temperaments with special curricula.

Some of the Myers-Briggs temperaments are known to despise educational material that lacks theory. Therefore, effective curricula need to raise and answer "which" and "why" questions, to teach students with "intuitive" (Myers-Briggs) modalities.

Philosophers identify independent, logical reasoning as a precondition to most western science, engineering, economic and political theory. Therefore, every educational program that desires to improve students' outcomes in political, health and economic behavior should include a Socratically taught set of classes to teach logic and critical thinking.

Substantial resources and time can be saved by permitting students to test out of classes. This also increases motivation, directs individual study, and reduces boredom and disciplinary problems.

To support inexpensive continuing adult education a community needs a free public library. It can start modestly as shelves in an attended shop or government building, with donated books. Attendants are essential to protect the books from vandalism. Adult education repays itself many times over by providing direct opportunity to adults. Free libraries are also powerful resources for schools and businesses.

A notable reform of the education system of Massachusetts occurred in 1993.

The current student voice effort echoes past school reform initiatives focusing on parent involvement, community involvement, and other forms of participation in schools. However, it is finding a significant amount of success in schools because of the inherent differences: student voice is central to the daily schooling experience because students spend all day there. Many educators today strive for meaningful student involvement in their classrooms, while school administrators, school board members, and elected officials each lurch to hear what students have to say.

Internationally
Taiwan


In other parts of the world, educational reform has had a number of different meanings. In Taiwan in the 1990s and first decade of the 21st century a movement tried to prioritize reasoning over mere facts, reduce the emphasis on central control and standardized testing. There was consensus on the problems. Efforts were limited because there was little consensus on the goals of educational reforms, and therefore on how to fix the problems. By 2003, the push for education reform had declined.