|
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act
(IDEA) 2002 Reauthorization; Goals We Seek
We
seek a Bill that:
- Federally
funds the IDEA program approaching the 40% funding level originally
promised by Congress.
- Requires
the maximum provision of services to all eligible private and religious
school students, and that such services be provided on site, consistent
with the Supreme Court’s Agostini decision.
- Strengthens the ‘child find’ provisions to ensure adequate and timely evaluation and identification of special needs students in private and parochial school and eliminates the disincentive for school districts not to provide above mentioned evaluation and identification.
- Strengthens the existing complaint procedure and by-pass language to that similar to the recently re-authorized ESEA’s Title I, including the ‘child find’/evaluation process.
- Requires the annual federal report to provide separate data on all referred, identified and served children in public, private and parochial schools. · Provides for appropriate due process procedures for parents of eligible students in private and parochial schools.
- Requires federal monitors who evaluate the implementation of IDEA programs to include private and parochial school representation.
Includes language which would
prevent the amount of state and local dollars available to provide
services for private and parochial school students from counting against
their fair share of federal dollars under IDEA
WHAT IT IS IDEA (the Individuals with Disabilities
Education Act) is the
legislation that funds and oversees Federal funding for special
education. This year, IDEA must be re-authorized by Congress. The
Orthodox Union, along with a broad coalition of like-minded education
advocacy groups, is working to improve the implementation of IDEA to
better serve private and parochial school students.
WHAT IS WRONG WITH IDEA To the great disservice of special needs
students in nonpublic schools and their families, the amendments in the
1997 IDEA reauthorization enshrined a fundamentally inequitable
framework in IDEA. The current law provides every disabled public school
student an individual entitlement to receive the full range of free
special education services (including, but not limited to, physical,
speech and occupational therapy, classroom shadows, etc.), but denies
this basic right to other students with identical disabilities solely
because they attend nonpublic schools. This inequality of similarly
situated public and nonpublic school students under the present IDEA has
engendered a nationwide crisis for the private school community in which
the needs of thousands of special needs children are going unmet.
WHAT ARE WE ASKING FOR A bill that, 1) Federally funds the IDEA program
approaching the 40% funding level originally promised by Congress, 2)
improves the child find provisions to ensure adequate and timely
evaluation and identification of special needs students in private and
parochial schools by local education authorities, 3) will require the
maximum provision of services to all eligible private and parochial
school students and that these services are provided on site, consistent
with Supreme Court decisions and 4) includes in the IDEA reauthorization
a provision that requires federal monitors who evaluate the
implementation of IDEA programs to include private and parochial school
representation.
WHO SUPPORTS IDEA The Orthodox Union has written to Secretary of
Education Rodney Paige, members of the Bush Administration and members of
Congress urging them to consider our proposals concerning the
reauthorization of IDEA. We were joined in this letter by a wide
range
of education advocacy groups, both secular and religious including---
Agudath Israel of America, the Association of Christian Schools
International, the Association of Montessori International/USA,
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Friends Council on
Education, the National Association of Independent Schools, the National
Catholic Educational Association, the National Christian Schools
Association, the National Society for Hebrew Day Schools and the United
States Conference of Catholic Bishops.
|
