Legal Actions for Handicapped Children

The needs of special children with problems in development and learning is an issue gaining increased awareness among educators. A number of factors have contributed to this growing recognition of the need for evaluation and treatment services in educational as well as rehabilitative settings. One of these factors is a variety of advocacy efforts and legal actions taken by parents on behalf of special children. A second factor, which has grown out of such legal actions, has been the enactment of legislative bills by state and federal governments. Of these, the passage of Public Law 94-142, the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, in 1975 represents the most comprehensive acknowledgement of the educational rights of special children.

PL 94-142 is an education law which guarantees educational programs for the handicapped by requiring that any agencies receiving federal funds have a handicapped program. The law provides for nine major guarantees:

1) Intent of congress to provide free and appropriate education to all handicapped children; 2) authorizes grants to states to assist in providing programs; 3) states must submit an annually updated plan to the Federal Commission in order to qualify for assistance.; 4) states must provide procedural safeguards and due process for handicapped; 5) as much as possible handicapped must be educated along with nonhandicapped in the same classes; 6) nondiscriminatory assessment measures must be developed for the handicapped; 7)

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ve become of recent concern. (Souweine, Crimmins & Mazel, 1981). Mainstreaming means educating handicapped children under conditions as close as possible to those of their normal peers. This is to include a series of services in addition to integration into the regular classroom. Mainstreaming has been the subject of debate for a number of years. In some cases mainstreaming has meant the elimination of special education programs and the inclusion of special need students in regular classes where they were inappropriately educated. Mainstreaming has been misinterpreted by some to mean regular class placement with no special services. However, mainstreaming more realistically has come to mean that mildly handicapped students can be serviced in the regular classroom with separation from nonhandicapped students only for special services which cannot be delivered in the regular classroom. The term mainstreaming has come to be replaced with the term "least restrictive" environment to emphasis the ongoing nature of the process of education. PL 94-142 provides that for the maximum extent appropriate handicapped students must be educated with children who are not handicapped, least restrictive rule. The intent is to prevent unne

Category: Government - L