IDEA Reauthorization
Congressional Action
President’s Commission on Excellence in Special Education
U.S. Department of Education
USCCB study on Catholic school students with special needs
Like most laws authorizing major federal education programs, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) comes before Congress approximately every five years for a mandatory process of review and revision, or "reauthorization." The current reauthorization of IDEA, scheduled for 2002, will likely span the November 2002 congressional elections and extend well beyond the convening of the 108th Congress in January, 2003. This process provides an important opportunity for the Catholic school community to recommend changes to the law that will better enable parentally-placed private school students to obtain equitable special education services through IDEA.
There are several avenues through which parents, teachers, school administrators, and other interested parties may communicate their views regarding the reauthorization of IDEA.
CONGRESSIONAL ACTION
The Congressional committees charged with the initial drafting and review of the reauthorization legislation are the House Committee on Education and the Workforce and the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions and their respective subcommittees, the House Subcommittee on Education Reform and the Senate Subcommittee on Children and Families. Initial hearings regarding general topics related to IDEA were held throughout the spring and summer of 2002 in the subcommittees and full committees. It is anticipated that the committees may begin reviewing draft legislation during the late summer and early fall. It is unlikely however, that the committees will consider a final draft of the reauthorized statute until well after the November 2002 elections, or possibly not until the 108th Congress in January 2003.
For an outline of the key areas of IDEA on which the USCCB will focus its lobbying efforts during the reauthorization process, click on the IDEA Options Paper link below.
For more information on how parents and other interested parties may contact members of Congress to express their views regarding IDEA, click on the IDEA Liaisons link below.
For a list of House and Senate committee and subcommittee members, click on the appropriate links below. A link is also provided to the House Education and Workforce committee's web site for submitting comments on IDEA.
President's Commission on Excellence
in Special Education
As an additional means of gaining a broad perspective regarding the condition of special education in America, the President appointed a President's Commission on Excellence in Special Education on October 3, 2001. The full commission held 13 hearings around the country, in addition to numerous task force hearings, before submitting its final report and recommendations to the President and Congress in July 2002.
The Commission's report includes recommendations from several different task forces, including the Task Force on Accountability, Flexibility and Parental Empowerment. One of the task force's four recommendations is that changes to IDEA should increase parental empowerment and school choice. Specifically, the task force recommends that:
- States and local schools should be given flexibility to increase parental school choice options, and that "IDEA should make it possible for IDEA funds to follow students to the schools their families choose."
- Similar to provisions in the No Child Left Behind Act, IDEA should require that "states allow IDEA funds to follow students with disabilities when they choose to opt out of chronically failing schools or districts", as long as adequate measures are in place to "measure and report outcomes for all students benefiting from IDEA funds."
- Adequate resources should be provided to choice programs to enable them to properly serve students with disabilities. "While federal policy should not require them to do so, the Commission recommends that in designing optional choice programs, states allow all available revenues to which the student would have otherwise been entitled - not just IDEA funds - to follow students to the schools their families choose."
The Commission's report and a copy of the testimony that the USCCB provided before the commission at the April hearing in Miami on parental choice are available by clicking on the links below.
U.S. Department of Education
The Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) at the U.S. Department of Education (ED) is the office responsible for implementing and overseeing IDEA. The office conducted regional forums throughout the country from October to December 2002 to solicit public input regarding the current implementation of IDEA and recommendations for changes to the statute. Many representatives of the Catholic school community testified at the regional forums regarding issues relating to parentally placed private school students.
For more information about the current IDEA, and the role of ED in the reauthorization process, consult the following web sites:
Study on Catholic School Students with Special Needs
The USCCB Department of Education recently completed a national study, conducted by the Center for Educational Partnerships, on the number of students enrolled in Catholic schools with disabilities, and their access to evaluations and special education services under IDEA. This information will be used not only to demonstrate to lawmakers and other decision makers the extent to which Catholic schools serve students with disabilities, but also to document the repeated difficulties encountered by Catholic school families in accessing evaluations and special education services under IDEA.