News Release

NCD #01-325
April 6, 2001
Contact: Mark S. Quigley
202-272-2004
202-272-2074 TTY
mquigley@ncd.gov

National Council on Disability Calls for Accountability in Special Education

WASHINGTON--The National Council on Disability (NCD) again calls for accountability in special education.

In its January 2000 report, Back to School on Civil Rights, NCD offered recommendations to the President and Congress for how the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) can be better enforced.

On February 28, 2001, NCD presented IDEA testimony before Chairman Dan Burton's House Committee on Government Reform. Entitled "Special Education: Is IDEA being Implemented as Congress Intended?", the NCD testimony again calls for accountability in special education. At this hearing, the general sentiment was that families across the country do not feel that their schools are following the IDEA law. A majority of over 2,500 families who responded to the Committee's call for input before the hearing have had to fight for services. Families said that the schools did not inform them of the programs available to their children or of their rights under the law.

According to NCD chairperson Marca Bristo, "IDEA is now the most significant aspect of the federal involvement in public education for children and youth with disabilities. Rich or poor, urban, suburban, or rural, all schools and districts are affected by special education. IDEA's basic premise is that all children with disabilities have a federally-protected civil right to have available to them a free appropriate public education that meets their schooling and related service needs in the least restrictive environment, in regular classes, in the school the student would attend if not disabled. It is a law designed to work for every eligible student."

While Congress commits the nation to fully fund its 40 percent "promise" to states and local school districts for implementing IDEA, it should consider adopting the following recommendation from NCD's January 2000 Back to School report:

Congress should ask the General Accounting Office to conduct a study of the extent to which state and local education agencies are ensuring that the requirements of IDEA in the areas of general supervision, secondary transition services, free appropriate public education, procedural safeguards, and placement in the least restrictive environment are being met. In addition, the DoED Office of Inspector General should conduct regular independent special education audits (fiscal and program). The purpose of the audits would be to examine whether federal funds granted under IDEA Parts B and D (State Program Improvement Grants) have been and are being spent in compliance with IDEA requirements.

"Improvements in implementation of IDEA will not happen overnight. It will take the concerted efforts of parents, advocates, states and local school districts, and leaders such as those who conducted the Congressional hearing to make it happen. Increasing the federal share of IDEA dollars is one small step, but it is not nearly enough and it should not be initiated in the absence of other federal activity," Bristo added.