Know Your Rights: Supporting Students with Disabilities

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Know Your Rights: Supporting Students with Disabilities

Educational Psychology · Chapter 1: Foundations of Education and LearningSection 1.5 · lesson 5 of 10010 min · free with a free account

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In this lesson

IDEA, its six core principles, and what they demand of every teacher.

  • Trace special education law from PARC and Mills to IDEA 2004
  • Explain the six core principles of IDEA
  • Apply the FAPE and LRE standards to placement decisions
  • Distinguish accommodations from modifications in practice

Transcript

Everything said in the video, section by section (1,383 words). Read along, or search it.

Foundations of Education and Learning

Know Your Rights: Supporting Students with Disabilities

Every teacher in an American public school works under a federal law. Most of them could not name its six core principles. They are civil rights, and a teacher can violate them without meaning to. This section covers the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. We will trace how it came to exist, which is a story about exclusion. We will work through each of its six principles in turn. Then we will get very practical about what it demands in a classroom. Including one distinction that new teachers get wrong constantly. The difference between an accommodation and a modification.

Before The Law

When Exclusion Was Legal

Start with what things looked like before the law existed. Education for students with disabilities was not always a guaranteed right. Before the middle of the twentieth century, many children were excluded entirely. Children with physical, intellectual or sensory disabilities. Excluded is a soft word, so be specific about what it meant. Some were institutionalized. Some were educated in segregated facilities. And some were simply left without any educational services at all. Two court decisions in nineteen seventy-two changed that. PARC versus the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and Mills versus Board of Education. For the first time, students with intellectual disabilities were held to have a right. A constitutional right to a public education. Those rulings set the stage for federal legislation.

The Statutes

From 1975 to IDEA 2004

The legislative watershed came in nineteen seventy-five. The Education for All Handicapped Children Act, also called Public Law ninety-four, one forty-two. It required states to provide a free appropriate public education. To all children with disabilities, as a condition of federal funding. Money was the lever, and it worked. The same law mandated three things that still structure practice. Individualized education programs. Nondiscriminatory evaluation. Parent participation rights. In nineteen ninety the law was renamed and strengthened as IDEA. It has been reauthorized several times, most recently in two thousand four. Today IDEA covers roughly seven and a half million students with disabilities. That is about fifteen percent of all public school students in the country.

Key Idea

This Is a Civil Rights Law

IDEA is not merely an education policy. It is a civil rights law. It guarantees an education appropriate to a student's individual needs. Delivered in the least restrictive environment. And with the full participation of that student's family. Read those three guarantees again as rights, not as services. A service can be rationed when budgets tighten. A right cannot. That changes what a teacher's obligation looks like. Understanding IDEA is not optional professional knowledge. It is an ethical and legal obligation for every teacher in a public school.

Six Principles

The Interlocking Framework

IDEA rests on six core principles, and they interlock. Free appropriate public education. Least restrictive environment. The individualized education program. Nondiscriminatory evaluation. Parent participation. And procedural safeguards. They are better understood as one structure with six load-bearing walls. An education plan built on a biased evaluation rests on bad data. A placement decision made without the parents has no legitimacy. And none of it holds up without safeguards to enforce it. So we will take them one at a time, and then look at how they hold each other up.

Principle 1

FAPE: Free, and Appropriate

The first principle is free appropriate public education, known as FAPE. Every eligible student with a disability is guaranteed it, at public expense. Designed to meet their unique educational needs. At no cost to families beyond what is charged to every other student. Appropriate is the word that generates most of the litigation. It does not mean the best possible education. It does not mean the education that parents would prefer. The Supreme Court settled the standard in Endrew F. versus Douglas County School District. That decision came in twenty seventeen. Schools are not required to maximize a student's potential. But they must provide a program from which the student makes genuine progress. Progress that is measurable, whether academic or functional.

Principle 2

LRE: Inclusion Is the Starting Presumption

The second principle is the least restrictive environment. Students with disabilities must be educated alongside their nondisabled peers. To the maximum extent appropriate. Removal from the general education classroom is allowed, but the bar is high. The nature or severity of the disability must rule out the regular classroom. Even with supplementary aids and services, education there cannot be achieved satisfactorily. IDEA sets out what is called a continuum of placement options. It runs from full inclusion in the general education classroom to resource rooms. Then self-contained classrooms, then specialized schools. Then home instruction, and hospital or institutional settings. Inclusion is the starting presumption, and every step away from it needs a reason.

Principle 3

The IEP Is the Cornerstone

The third principle is the individualized education program, the IEP. It is the legal and educational cornerstone of the whole act. The IEP is a written document, developed collaboratively by a team. The team includes the student's parents, and general education teachers. It includes the special education teacher and a district representative. And when appropriate, it includes the student themselves. Six things must appear in the document. Current levels of academic achievement and functional performance. Measurable annual goals, which is a phrase worth underlining. A description of the special education and related services to be provided. The extent to which the student will participate in general education. How progress toward the goals will be measured and reported. And transition planning, for students aged sixteen and older. The plan is reviewed at least annually, using the most recent evaluation data.

Principle 4

Evaluation That Does Not Discriminate

The fourth principle governs how a student gets identified in the first place. Before any student is placed in special education, they must be evaluated. A comprehensive individual evaluation, using multiple assessment tools. And those tools must not be racially, culturally or linguistically discriminatory. Tests are administered in the student's native language where that is feasible. No single test or criterion may be the sole basis for a decision. The evaluation is conducted by a multidisciplinary team. It must assess all areas related to the suspected disability, not just the obvious one. And re-evaluation must happen at least every three years. A label assigned in second grade does not get to follow a child silently.

Principles 5 And 6

Parents as Rights-Bearing Team Members

The fifth and sixth principles are about power, and who holds it. IDEA treats parents as essential, rights-bearing members of the team. They must be notified before any evaluation, identification or placement decision. They consent to, or refuse, evaluations and initial special education placement. They participate in every IEP meeting, and receive a copy of the plan. They may review all educational records. When parents disagree with the school, IDEA gives them formal routes. Mediation, due process hearings, and state complaint procedures. Procedural safeguards back all of this up. Written notice of safeguards at least once a year, in the family's language where feasible. Prior written notice before any proposed change of placement. And the right to an independent educational evaluation at public expense. All of this paperwork exists because history showed what happens without it.

In The Classroom

Accommodation Is Not Modification

Now the part that touches a general education teacher every single day. General educators are required members of the IEP team. They must implement the accommodations and modifications the IEP specifies. And the difference between those two words is the one people get wrong. An accommodation changes how a student accesses learning. Or how they demonstrate what they know. Extended time on a test. Preferential seating. Text-to-speech software. The content and the standards stay exactly where they were. A modification changes the content, the curriculum level, or the expectations. A shorter assignment. A simplified reading level. Accommodations do not change what is expected. Modifications do.

Beyond Compliance

Universal Design, and Why It Matters

It is called Universal Design for Learning. Instead of retrofitting accommodations after the fact, you design for range from the start. Instruction is built to reach the widest possible span of learners. Multiple means of representation, of expression, and of engagement. Consider Jordan, an eighth grader with dyslexia and attention deficit disorder. His plan specifies extended time, text-to-speech software, and seating near the teacher. It also reduces the required writing length on assignments. His science teacher puts all of that in place during a unit on ecosystems. Then she goes further, and this is the universal design part. Content comes as video, as text, and as diagram. Students may show understanding in written, oral or visual form. Assignments arrive in chunks rather than as one block. IDEA is not a bureaucratic burden. At its best it is a framework for equity.

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FAQ

Questions students ask us

About Know Your Rights: Supporting Students with Disabilities

What are the six principles of IDEA?
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act rests on six interlocking principles: free appropriate public education (FAPE), least restrictive environment (LRE), the individualized education program (IEP), nondiscriminatory evaluation, parent participation and procedural safeguards. IDEA grew out of the 1972 PARC and Mills rulings and the 1975 Education for All Handicapped Children Act, was renamed in 1990 and was most recently reauthorized in 2004.
What does free appropriate public education (FAPE) mean?
FAPE guarantees every eligible student with a disability a public education designed to meet their unique needs, at no extra cost to families. Appropriate does not mean the best possible education or the one parents prefer. In Endrew F. v. Douglas County School District (2017), the Supreme Court held that schools must provide a program from which the student makes genuine, measurable progress.
What is the least restrictive environment in special education?
The least restrictive environment requires students with disabilities to be educated alongside nondisabled peers to the maximum extent appropriate. Removal from the general classroom is allowed only when, even with supplementary aids and services, education there cannot be achieved satisfactorily. IDEA sets out a continuum of placements, from full inclusion to resource rooms, self-contained classes, specialized schools, and home or hospital instruction.
What rights do parents have under IDEA?
Under IDEA, parents are rights-bearing members of their child's education team. They must be notified before any evaluation, identification or placement decision, and they consent to or refuse evaluations and initial special education placement. They take part in every IEP meeting, receive a copy of the plan and may review all educational records. If they disagree with the school, they can use mediation, due process hearings or state complaint procedures.

About the Educational Psychology course

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Educational Psychology (Psychology 120) carries a NCCRS credit recommendation for 3 semester credits. ACE and NCCRS have over 2,100 cooperating colleges that will consider accepting credits; the final decision is with the universities.
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