Education for all Handicapped Children Act

Speech

By: Gerald R. Ford

Date: December 2, 1975

Source: Ford, Gerald R. Education for all Handicapped Children Act, Signing Statement. December 2, 1975. Ford Library and Museum, Ann Arbor, Michigan.

About the Author: Gerald R. Ford was the 38th president of the United States, serving from 1974–1978. A member of congress for more than twenty-five years, Ford assumed the presidency after President Richard M. Nixon resigned.

INTRODUCTION

Education of physically, mentally, and emotionally handicapped children in the United States, until the 1960s, was provided through a mixture of institutionalization, private tutoring, private schooling, or state-run schools for the handicapped. The Perkins School for the Blind, founded in 1829, was the first school for the blind in the United States, and similar schools for the blind and deaf opened throughout the United States in the latter part of the 19th century.

Students with other disabilities, such as those with conditions that prevented or hampered walking, developmental disabilities, or genetic conditions such as Down Syndrome were often ignored, institutionalized, or kept at home without schooling. In 1907, Maria Montessori, an Italian doctor, founded the Casa dei Bambini, a school for children with developmental disabilities in which she used experimental education approaches, with hands-on learning and self-correcting materials to teach "unteachable" mentally retarded children. Her ability to train children labeled mentally retarded to read and do arithmetic stunned educators and gained admiration from Alexander Graham Bell, who helped found the Montessori Education Association in 1913 in Washington, D.C.

Other methods and schools for the handicapped included the 1864 founding of Gallaudet University in Washington D.C., which specialized in education for deaf people, and the New York Institute for the Blind, which changed its name after 135 years to the New York Institute for Special Education in 1986, reflecting the broad change in society as the concept of "handicapped" shifted to the more inclusive term "special needs."

In 1966 Congress established the Bureau for Education of the Handicapped as part of Title VI of the Elementary and Secondary Schools Act (ESEA). Through this government bureau advocates for special education students began to pursue Free Appropriate Public Education, or FAPE, for students with physical and mental issues that required special assistance. Many states passed laws requiring local school districts to remove barriers to education for children in wheelchairs, or to provide aides and speech therapy to students with emotional or processing disabilities.

At the same time, the concept of a disability or a "special need" changed as well. Understanding of learning disabilities such as dyslexia, attention deficit disorder, auditory processing disorder, speech and language disorders, and other behavioral and neurological disorders improved; giving students access to FAPE included diagnosing and treating these students as part of their educational experience as well as those students with classic physical and mental disabilities. As government agencies, smaller appropriations, and local and state governments passed a mixture of disparate measures, the push for a cohesive federal plan for special education led to the Education for All Handicapped Children Act in 1975, which mandated FAPE and required that all children, regardless of severity of disability, must receive FAPE from their local public school district. The ensuing costs would, according to the act, be federally supported.

President Ford's signing statement reflects many of the concerns expressed by advocates and critics alike when he signed the act into law on December 2, 1975.

PRIMARY SOURCE

President Gerald R. Ford's Statement on Signing the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975

December 2, 1975

I have approved S. 6, the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975.

Unfortunately, this bill promises more than the Federal Government can deliver, and its good intentions could be thwarted by the many unwise provisions it contains. Everyone can agree with the objective stated in the title of this bill—educating all handicapped children in our Nation. The key question is whether the bill will really accomplish that objective.

Even the strongest supporters of this measure know as well as I that they are falsely raising the expectations of the groups affected by claiming authorization levels which are excessive and unrealistic.

Despite my strong support for full educational opportunities for our handicapped children, the funding levels proposed in this bill will simply not be possible if Federal expenditures are to be brought under control and a balanced budget achieved over the next few years.

There are other features in the bill which I believe to be objectionable and which should be changed. It contains a vast array of detailed, complex, and costly administrative requirements which would unnecessarily assert Federal control over traditional State and local government functions. It establishes complex requirements under which tax dollars would be used to support administrative paperwork and not educational programs. Unfortunately, these requirements will remain in effect even though the Congress appropriates far less than the amounts contemplated in S. 6.

Fortunately, since the provisions of this bill will not become fully effective until fiscal year 1978, there is time to revise the legislation and come up with a program that is effective and realistic. I will work with the Congress to use this time to design a program which will recognize the proper Federal role in helping States and localities fulfill their responsibilities in educating handicapped children. The Administration will send amendments to the Congress that will accomplish this purpose.

SIGNIFICANCE

In 1975 fewer than half of all children with known physical, developmental, and emotional disabilities were receiving a public or private school education. Part of the act's purpose was to increase opportunity for this underserved population; another purpose was to provide better education for those already in the system. A student in a wheelchair could not be deprived of physical education classes under this act; the classes must be modified to meet his need and to be "appropriate" and "fair." Students with emotional or neurobiological disabilities must be placed in a setting that is least restrictive; in many instances this means a classroom of four students and one teacher, or the assignment of a one-to-one aide for the student.

By the 1980s and 1990s the costs to school districts for providing FAPE to students with disabilities rose dramatically. The law required all students with any form of disability to be accommodated; the student with dyslexia or food allergies has the same rights to accommodation as a student in a wheelchair with cerebral palsy, or a blind or hearing impaired student. Ford's concerns about funding and federal administrative control have both been issues as this act has been implemented over time.

In the early 1990s, autism diagnoses began to rise in the United States; from a rate of one in two thousand in the late 1980s to one in 166 in 2005, diagnoses of autism spectrum disorders have overwhelmed many school districts. Because each student's needs must be fully accommodated, in some instances one student may need a one-to-one aide, hours of time with an occupational therapist, a speech therapist, and extra time from the regular classroom teacher. In addition, while special education students were placed in separate classes in past decades, by the 1990s "main-streaming," or integrating special education students into regular classes, became the goal for many special education advocates and parents who argued that socialization and academic success depending on mainstreaming when appropriate.

Each child with a diagnosed special need represents budget dollars, and the Education for All Handicapped Children Act—renamed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act during later revisions—requires that school districts must meet these needs, or send students to facilities that can provide the services the students need, at the local school district's cost. The student's right to a Fair Appropriate Public Education includes sending the child to a private school at public school district expense if needed; these cases generally result in the child being sent to a facility that costs between four and ten times the public school expenditure per pupil, causing strains on public school budgets.

Critics of such policies argue that all children are harmed by the exercise of this right for special needs children; in 2004 eleven school districts in the state of Washington sued the state, the governor, the Superintendent of Public Instruction, the President of the Senate, and the Speaker of the House to force the state to pay for special education services after the costs of administering such programs became onerous.

The Education for All Handicapped Children Act pledged that the federal government would pay for forty percent of a special education student's costs. According to the National Education Association, in 2004, the federal government provided slightly less than twenty percent, a difference of more than $10.6 billion that states and local school districts do not receive.

FURTHER RESOURCES

Books

Montessori, Maria. The Discovery of the Child. Ballantine Books, 1986.

Richardson, J. Common, Delinquent, and Special: The institutional Shape of Special Education (Studies in the History of Education). Routledge Falmer, 1999.

Winzer, Margaret. The History of Special Education. Gallaudet University Press, 1993.

Web sites

U.S. Department of Education. "Special Education & Rehabilitative Services." 〈http://www.ed.gov/policy/speced/guid/idea/idea2004.html〉 (accessed April 14, 2006).