Running head: INDIVIDUALS WITH DISSABILITIES EDUCATION IMPROVEMENT 1

Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act and Its Impact

Lindsey M. Bishop

Dakota State University

INDIVIDUALS WITH DISABILITIES EDUCATION IMPROVEMENT 2

Abstract

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004 provides processes to aid

students with disabilities. It has impacted the way educators interact with their students

individual needs and learning styles. This essay discusses the six principals of the Individuals

with Disabilities Education Improvement Act including the Zero Reject, Nondiscriminatory

Evaluation, Free Appropriate Public Education, Least Restrictive Environment, Procedural

Safeguards, and Parent Participation and Shared Decision Making. It also explains its effects on

the American education system, its effects on the roles of the educators, and the effects of the

law on the lives of individuals with disabilities. Including students with disabilities into the

general classroom as much as possible is the goal of this legislation. The law discussed in this

paper has played a very beneficial role in improving the education of individuals with

disabilities, but all students could further benefit from a revision of this law that requires

Response to Intervention instead of the Discrepancy model in qualifying students for special

education.

Key words: Special education, Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act
INDIVIDUALS WITH DISABILITIES EDUCATION IMPROVEMENT 3

The National Center for Education Services (NCES) (2017), states In 201415, the

number of children and youth ages 321 receiving special education services was 6.6 million, or

13 percent of all public-school students. Among children and youth receiving special education

services, 35 percent had specific learning disabilities. This is a large part of the population.

Think of what it would look like if these students did not receive the help they needed to be

successful, or worse yet, if they were excluded from education completely. The Individuals with

Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEIA) of 2004 is a revision of the Individuals with

Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) written in 1997. It is based on the philosophy that separate is

not equal, as determined in Brown v. Board of Education. IDEA was a major change in

education because, up to that point in history, many individuals with disabilities were not given

an appropriate education, and before 1975, many were completely omitted from education

because teachers did not feel adequately equipped to teach them, or because teachers did not

think these students were able to learn. According to Heward (2013), All children exhibit

differences from one another in terms of their physical attributes and learning abilities (p. 7).

Therefore, the government has the responsibility to educate all individuals appropriately and

differentially, regardless of the level or visibility of these physical and learning differences.

However, even after the revision of the law in 2004, many children are still falling through the

cracks. To qualify for special education under IDEIA, students must have a large discrepancy

between their ability and achievement, and teachers and parents and everyone on an Individual

Education Plan (IEP) team must go through a rigorous process to prove that students truly have a

disability that significantly impedes their education. The components of IDEIA have improved

the American education system, educators roles within that system, and the lives of individuals

with disabilities, but not enough.

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The components of IDEA have somewhat successfully improved the education system by

making sure all students with disabilities get an education. The first principal, Zero Reject, states

that schools must educate all children with disabilities. No child with disabilities may be

excluded from a free, appropriate, public education (FAPE), regardless of the nature or severity

of the disability (Heward, 2013, p. 16). This means even if a student is bedridden, the state may

not withhold an appropriate education. This first point helps prevent discrimination against

children with disabilities.

Also impacting the education system, the second principal, Nondiscriminatory

Identification, and Evaluation, is the condition that schools must use nonbiased, multifactored

methods of evaluation. This means that, after much documentation of the learning gap and tried

interventions, a teacher can ask for parental permission to assess. If permission is given, state

recommended tests, that are not culturally, linguistically or in any other way predisposed, must

be used. Testing and evaluation procedures must not discriminate based on race, culture, or

native language (Heward, 2013, p. 17). Once a student has been professionally tested, the

teacher fills out the Determination of Eligibility document. Evaluation must have more than one

form of assessment to determine a disability that is not due to cultural or linguistic differences.

The components of IDEIA have impacted American educators roles as well as the whole

system by requiring Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE). Teachers and administrators

provide much time and effort to integrate special education students into the general education

classroom as much as possible. This third principal mandates that an IEP must be developed for

each child that qualifies. This education must be provided at public expensethat is, without

cost to the childs parents (Heward, 2013, p. 17). Appropriate means functional, not best. For

instance, a student that qualifies for special education does not need to attend the best private
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school for children with a certain disability; the child simply needs to have the instructional

adaptations necessary for them to improve their learning. Also, students get to use services for

education only, meaning if an IEP provides for learning technology, they are not allowed to take

the device home. Free, appropriate education must be publicly provided.

The fourth principal that affects teachers is the Least Restrictive Environment (LRE).

Students with disabilities must be educated with other children without disabilities to the

maximum extent appropriate. Students with disabilities may only be removed to separate classes

or schools when the nature or severity of their disabilities is such that they cannot receive an

appropriate education in a general education classroom with supplementary aids and services.

IDEA creates a presumption in favor of inclusion in the general education classroom by

requiring that a students IEP contain a justification and explanation of the extent, if any, to

which the student will not participate with nonacademic activities (Heward, 2013, p. 19). When

writing IEPs, the team must start with the goal of integrating the student into the general

classroom full time. If that isnt appropriate, then the team must list why in detail and try to

integrate the student into the general classroom with minimal time in the resource room for

additional aid. If that isnt appropriate, then the team must list why in detail and move on down

the list until a least restrictive environment is found. The environment closest to the full time

general classroom that is appropriate concerning the childs disability is the Least Restrictive

Environment that must be provided for the child.

The components of IDEIA have impacted the lives of individuals with disabilities by

giving them due process safeguards. The fifth principal of Procedural Safeguards says that

Parental consent must be obtained for initial and all subsequent evaluations and placement

decisions regarding special education (Heward, 2013, p.19). This means that if, at any point, the
INDIVIDUALS WITH DISABILITIES EDUCATION IMPROVEMENT 6

parents and child feel their rights have been abridged, or that the school is not appropriately

following the agreed upon IEP, they can sue. Therefore, its very important that teachers

document carefully. If a school has documented an appropriate effort to follow the IEP, they are

not legally at fault. Safeguards ensure that parents and individuals with disabilities have a

continual say in the individuals education.

This bleeds into the sixth principle of Parental Participation and Shared Decision Making.

Schools must collaborate with parents. The parents input and wishes must be considered in

determining IEP goals, related-service needs, and placement decisions (Heward, 2013, p. 20).

Everything must be done as a team. Parents are the students authority and most influential

people in students lives. They should be included in all IEP discussions, and it is to the

advantage of everyone for teachers to keep them on their side.

Some overarching impacts IDEIA has had on the education system are it broadened the

scope of what services schools are required to offer, the number and kinds of staff they must

hire, and how they depend on federal funding as well as how they use funds. Teachers need more

training, such as a general education teacher taking courses for special education. IDEIA requires

more time from teachers, resulting in the hiring of additional teachers and staff, and new

vocations such as IEP writers. It helped special education (sped) teachers better define their role,

provided them with more support, and gave them higher visibility and prominence. The role of

sped teachers has grown in that they must work with general classroom teachers. The impact on

students with disabilities has gone from mostly dependent on private education and institutions

to now having free access to education (Sprayberry, 2015).

One improvement to IDEIA would be to switch from the discrepancy model to the

Response to Intervention (RTI) model. As of March 2012, only 14 states mandate RTI (Zirkel,
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2017). The IQ-achievement discrepancy model is the traditional method used to determine if a

student has a learning disability and needs special education services. The discrepancy model is

based on the concept of the normal curve (Iris Center, 2007). When students perform at a large

enough number of point deviations below their average ability, they qualify for special

education. It does nothing for students who are still struggling but dont have a big enough gap to

qualify for special education. RTI has levels/tiers that try to identify struggling students, and

immediately try documenting different methods and interventions with that student to help them

succeed. Tier 1 screens all students with state approved assessments to find the ones performing

at the lowest level in the classroom and seeks to improve their performance through high-quality

curriculum. Tier 2 provides students who did not improve through Tier 1 interventions with

moderately intensive evidence-based interventions designed to address the learning or

behavioral difficulties (Heward, 2013, p. 48). Tier 3 focuses on highly intensive,

individualized intervention for students who show minimal response to Tier 2 interventions

(Heward, 2013, p.48). Tier 4 (if not Tier 3) is special education as a last resort if they have still

not improved and have now developed a big enough gap between ability and achievement. Tiers

1-4 catch many struggling students who, under the discrepancy model, would have continued to

struggle because they didnt qualify for special education but were still achieving far below

average ability. So many students are still falling through the cracks in the discrepancy model

when RTI is evidently much more effective.

A further improvement to IDEIA would be to change the way the government describes

and addresses student needs. Currently, it has a rigid definition of regular and disabled

students that may not be an accurate way of thinking and addressing learning variances. Students

are diverse learners who benefit from a variety of better instruction and engagement methods and
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assessments such as those presented in Universal Design for Learning (UDL). This layered

approach would help all learners as they differ in the way they perceive and comprehend

information, rather than labeling students that are clearly unable to learn a certain way as

disabled (Universal Design for Learning, 2014).

Specific evidences of the positive impact of IDEA include the increase in college

enrollment and the decrease in high school dropouts (American Psychological Association,

2017). Although IDEIA has done much to aid individuals with disabilities, teachers, and the

education system, there is still much to be done. Requiring the RTI model instead of the

discrepancy model, which is currently being used by most states, would be an important revision

to the law. The government should also change the way it thinks about disabilities and special

education, because there is no such thing as a perfect, normal learner. In the meantime, however,

IDEIA is a great start to seeing everyone, not just individuals with labeled disabilities, as unique

learners with learning differences that need to be appropriately educated.

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References

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November 2017, from http://www.apa.org/advocacy/education/idea/index.aspx

Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA): What You Need to Know.

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Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). (2017). Acteonline.org. Retrieved 11

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Sprayberry, T.L. (2015). The Impact of I.D.E.A. for Students with Disabilities and Education

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Zirkel, P. (2017). The Legal Dimension of RTI: Part II. State Laws and Guidelines | RTI Action

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