On May 1, the House voted, 251-171, to reauthorize the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), an update of a 1975 law that serves disabled children. The new legislation includes provisions that would reduce paperwork, cut down on misidentification of disabilities in children, and encourage mediation and arbitration to reduce litigation. Similar legislation is working its way through the Senate, which plans to unveil a bipartisan bill by Memorial Day.
The House rejected, 182-240, an amendment offered by Rep. Jim DeMint (R-SC) that would have allowed states to give parents dissatisfied with their local public school the option to transfer their child to a private school, with the state picking up tuition costs.
Rep. DeMint argued that the vouchers would “empower parents with children who have special needs.” Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-CA) argued that vouchers “undermine the very foundation” of IDEA. “When a special education student takes a voucher to private school, all guarantees under IDEA are lost,” Rep. Woolsey said. Another voucher amendment, offered by Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO), was defeated 176-247. The Musgrave amendment would have permitted school districts to give parents a check that could be applied toward parochial or private school tuition.
The House also rejected, 195-211, an amendment offered by Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-CA) that would have switched federal aid from discretionary to mandatory spending and made Congress guarantee it would contribute 40 percent of the funds needed for special education programs within six years. The federal contribution stands now at 18 percent ($8.9 billion), which means states and school districts have to come up with the difference; full funding would require federal funding for 40 percent of the costs of the program.
“Without mandatory full funding, the authorization levels in the bill are meaningless because they are subject to the many, many competitive requests included in all and every appropriations process,” argued Rep. Woolsey. “We can say we want full funding, if we do not guarantee it, it probably is not going to happen.”
Bill sponsor, Rep. Michael Castle (R-DE), addressed the funding issue, labeling some of the Democrats’ concerns as “political.” He noted that funding for FY2004 is at 21 percent, and that in the legislation is a “glide-path that would take funding up to the full 40 percent” within seven years. “Even under the mandatory funding bills that those advocates are talking about … the funding would not get there for 6 years. It would take an additional $10.2 billion, and everybody realizes that that cannot be done,” said Rep. Castle.
Democrats also objected to provisions that would govern student discipline. Under the current law, schools are allowed to remove disabled children from the classroom only for serious offenses, such as bringing drugs or weapons into the school. Schools also are required to determine whether a student’s disciplinary problems are a result of his or her disability. Under the bill, schools could treat disabled students the same as non-disabled students in matters of discipline and would not be required to take into consideration whether the violation was the result of the student’s disability.
“The revised discipline provisions in the bill were added to give school districts an opportunity to avoid providing the most challenging students with disabilities free and appropriate education; yet we should remember that even with the current protections, students with disabilities are already over-represented among students who are expelled from schools. The elimination of the current discipline safeguards will remove the only legal safeguards that currently exist for these students with disabilities,” said Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA).
Rep. Charlie Norwood (R-GA) countered the Democrats’ claim that the discipline provisions were “unfair,” and noted that the language was intended to protect disabled students as well as their peers and teachers. “State laws will prevail for students who bring weapons, drugs, or commit felonies in school. … We cannot stand here and say that the disciplinary changes we are making in this bill are harmful to the students of America. It is very, very important for the students of America, the 12 percent that are special needs students, and the 88 percent that are not.”
