Individuals with Disabilities Education Act

Judge gavel and puzzle
pieces with blue background.

The 1960s and 1970s was a time period full of reform for minority groups in the United States. Most people recognize this time period for making great strides for females and people of different ethnicities, but there was also a great amount of progress made for people with disabilities. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) was signed into effect by President Gerald Ford in 1975. The IDEA website defines this law as, "a law that makes available a free appropriate public education to eligible children with disabilities throughout the nation and ensures special education and related services to those children" (IDEA). The IDEA tells states and public agencies how to provide over 7.5 million eligible children with special education, related services, and early intervention. Furthermore, the IDEA authorizes formula grants to support special education, early intervention, and related services as well as discretionary grants to support various other resources to help people with disabilities.

The IDEA is something that I am very passionate about as a special educator. I am proud of the people who advocated for their rights and pushed for change. Before the IDEA, students with disabilities were left behind and were not given a fair chance at the success they were always capable of achieving. Now, the public school system is held accountable to doing right by each child, with or without a disability. I see the wonderful effects of IDEA each day, whether in what I am learning in my special education acts or what I am seeing in the classrooms I visit each week. The IDEA provides funding to educators and parents to provide the tools necessary to improve educational outcomes for each student. It also provides funding to research being done to advance and validate best teaching practices for this group of students. The impacts that the IDEA have had on people with disabilities is never ending.

Standardized Testing and Students with Disabilities

Standardized tests are a controversial topic in the education field. Some argue that they are a great way to gauge where students are performing compared to their peers, and others argue that a standardized test is not a sufficient way to collect reliable and meaningful data. Students with disabilities must participate in taking most standardized tests, even though these types of exams are not appropriate for this group of students. Findings from documents from the National Center on Educational Outcomes (NEO) and the National Center of Systemic Improvement (NCSI) show that students with disabilities continually fail standardized tests because they are not receiving instruction that would prepare them to pass this type of exam. Furthermore, this group of students could know the material, but need a different way of expressing their knowledge. However, multiple choice and writing essays is not conducive to these needs.

A hand holding a pencil and filling in bubbles
on a multiple choice exam.

Personally, I do not believe that standardized tests are a good measure of knowledge for any student, whether they have a disability or not. These kinds of high-stakes exams put a lot of pressure on students to perform well, as well as putting a great deal of pressure on teachers to prepare their students for the exam. Teachers should be teaching their students to answer correctly on a standardized test, rather than teaching them and assessing them in ways that suite their needs best. However, it is common to see teachers delivering exams in the format standardized exams are delivered in so that their students become used to taking those tests. For students with high-incidence disabilities, standardized tests are even less appropriate. The state mandates that appropriate accommodations be allowed for those students, but these accommodations barely scratch the surface of leveling the playing field. For students with moderate to significant disabilities, standardized tests are absolutely not appropriate. As the NEO and NCSI found, this group of students is not engaging in the same academic content as their peers, and therefore will not be familiar with the items on the standardized exams. Furthermore, many of these students have experiential deficits where they have not had the life experiences that would give them the background knowledge needed to be successful on the exam.