Oral Remarks of Martin Gould before the OSEP Task Force of the President's Commission on Excellence in Special Education

April 26, 2002

Good afternoon members of the President's Commission on Excellence in Special Education. Thank you very much for inviting NCD to participate today. I am Martin Gould, a Senior Research Specialist at the National Council on Disability (NCD). NCD is an independent federal agency making recommendations to the President and Congress on issues affecting Americans with disabilities.

NCD is charged by Congress with monitoring federal statutes and programs pertaining to people with disabilities, and assessing their effectiveness in meeting their needs. Its mission is to provide a voice in the Federal government and to Congress for all people with disabilities in the development of policies and delivery of programs that affect their lives. One of those areas involves public education.

Of the various issues that are likely to be taken up during the idea reauthorization process this year, leadership will be one key issue. NCD believes that an integral part of exercising federal leadership is the role that OSEP must play in implementing and enforcing the civil rights law known as IDEA. It is not enough to "support" enforcement; OSEP must "do" enforcement.

Current Status of Federal Leadership

How well is IDEA working? How well has federal leadership worked?

In the more than 25 years since its enactment, IDEA implementation has produced improvements in the quality and effectiveness of the public education received by millions of American children with disabilities.

National data show that about 27%-55% (depending on which IDEA Annual Report Table you use) of students who receive special education graduate with diplomas, compared to 75% of their peers in general education. About 27% of students with IEPs who complete high school enroll in post-secondary education compared to 68% of the general student population. And, three to five years after exiting high school, more than half are found to be employed compared to 69% of their peers.

National data also show about 50% of students who receive special education are instructed in regular classrooms, where they have access to the general curricula and more rigorous educational instruction. We believe these outcomes are the result of OSEP's involvement with states and local school districts over the years. We also believe that the educational outcomes could be much better through strengthened federal leadership and consistent implementation and enforcement of the law.

In January, 2000 NCD released Back to School on Civil Rights, a report that analyzed data contained in the DoED's state monitoring reports. The study measured compliance and enforcement in the areas of FAPE, LRE, IEP, transition services, general supervision, procedural safeguards and protection in evaluation of students with disabilities. The study also looked at the enforcement and decision making efforts by leadership at DoED. NCD's report revealed that a majority of states, to different degrees, and over many years, have failed to ensure compliance in these areas.

What are the implications and consequences of chronic non-compliance and lack of enforcement of the most basic principles of IDEA?

• When critical IEP services (such as mental health or psychological counseling) are not provided, students may well develop behavioral problems that require school districts to apply serious disciplinary consequences to those children.
• When students do not receive the speech or physical therapy IEP services they are deemed eligible for they cannot achieve academic outcomes. Clearly, those children will be left behind.
• When school systems continue to categorically and unnecessarily place students (particularly those from diverse backgrounds) in more restrictive educational settings, students will be stigmatized, will have difficulty learning, and school systems can not maximize the use of the scarce federal education dollars they receive yearly.
• When students do not have transition plans to prepare them and their family for the world of work, or college, or the demands of community life after high school, they are not likely to become independent and responsible adults.

Recommendations

The ongoing struggles of many students with disabilities, their parents, and advocates to obtain services under IDEA leaves them with the impression that the Federal Government is not enforcing the law effectively. In far too many cases, parents are still a main enforcement vehicle for ensuring compliance with IDEA -- at all levels of government.

To address this issue, as well as other matters that affect students and their families as well as schools, NCD recommends:

• OSEP should strengthen compliance monitoring and enforcement by recognizing states that are performing well, offering ongoing technical assistance to states to correct noncompliance, and applying consequences consistently when improvement objectives are not met.
• OSEP should make as its own compliance monitoring and enforcement priority for the next five years the assessment of state progress toward creating reliable and comprehensive data to support effective state compliance monitoring and enforcement capabilities.
• OSEP should closely monitor state progress in developing reliable data collection and reporting mechanisms that adequately and accurately assess both state compliance and performance results for children with disabilities. This recommendation coincides with a central goal of the 1997 IDEA reauthorization to focus IDEA implementation more closely on objective performance standards and results measures.
• OSEP should expand its program support for initiatives that promote educational opportunities and rights for under-served populations of children and youth with disabilities and their families. More programs are needed to explain IDEA's requirements in light of the unique needs of students with disabilities involved in the juvenile justice, immigration, and naturalization and child welfare systems, as well as in schools operated or funded by BIA, to their families and advocates.
• OSEP's monitoring process in each state should routinely include an ethnically diverse sample of children who are matched to their records and who are interviewed, along with their parents and service providers, for a determination of whether the law's requirements are being met on their behalf.
• OSEP should issue the monitoring report as soon as possible after the site-visit, preferably within 60 days (two months).
• OSEP should develop and test the use of state compliance agreements that incorporate appropriate sanctions selected from a broad range of enforcement options, and link them to the state's failure to correct specific noncompliant conditions within the agreed time frame. OSEP should also encourage the state's use of sanctions in this manner when the state's compliance monitoring indicates that LEAs are failing to correct findings of noncompliance.

Conclusions

During the course of five studies on the IDEA, from 1989 to 2000, NCD consistently learned that parents of children with disabilities are enthusiastic supporters of the law. They think it's a good law. They also told us there is room for improvement on the basics.

OSEP has the responsibility to exercise a key leadership role in current IDEA reauthorization efforts. We stand ready to assist OSEP in any way that we can in these endeavors.

Thank you for allowing us the opportunity to share these remarks today.

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Last Updated: April 29, 2002