Empty Promises for Special Ed

The term “special ed” is so familiar today that it’s hard to recall how, less than 30 years ago, most schoolhouse doors were closed to disabled children. Before 1975, when the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act was approved, handicapped children were routinely turned away by public schools unwilling to provide the accommodations they needed, including wheelchair ramps and help taking notes in class. Today, more than 6.5 million students qualify for special education services that embrace children with profound physical handicaps as well as those with emotional problems, mental challenges and learning disabilities.

Along the way, the system has evolved from a network of special schools and isolated classrooms to one aimed at including special ed students in regular classes. That transition has been expensive and often rocky. Special ed enrollment has increased by more than 30% in the last 15 years -- in part because of dramatic growth in the number of students diagnosed with attention deficit disorder, autism and emotional disturbances. Because the federal government consistently reneges on its funding promises, school systems are forced to absorb the cost of the aides, equipment and therapies that handicapped students require, and classroom teachers struggle to incorporate them into overcrowded classes already brimming with unmet basic needs.

Now a revamp of special education law, two years in the making, pledges some relief.

Approved with almost unanimous bipartisan support and signed last week by President Bush, the legislative compromise is bound to make parents of some disabled children uneasy. It gives schools more freedom to remove disruptive students from classes and limits parents’ rights to challenge placement decisions. But it also raises qualification requirements for special ed teachers. Most important, it allows the use of special ed funds to help struggling students who are not in the special education pipeline but need extra help to succeed in regular classes. Such intervention could keep countless youngsters out of costly special education programs down the line. A Times study five years ago found that tens of thousands of students in California were enrolled in special ed not because of handicaps but because they had not been adequately taught to read.

The legislation stops short, however, of delivering enough money to do the job right. It again commits the federal government to paying 40% of local districts’ special ed costs. But that’s the same promise that was made 30 years ago. It never happened. Today, the federal contribution stands at less than 20%, forcing local districts to pit disabled children’s needs against the art classes, music programs and enrichment extras that disappear from school schedules in times of belt-tightening. It’s disappointing that a law so well aimed at educational equity still relies on an empty promise for its funding.