Jean Crockett knows very well how the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) transformed life for students with disabilities. When she was an elementary school teacher in the 1970s, she had a student who was non-verbal and would make loud vocal sounds during reading time.
“Fortunately, it was 1978, and the regulations in IDEA came into effect,” Crockett says. She referred her student to the school psychologist, who placed the student in a class where he received the support he needed.
Before IDEA, there was no measure of whether students with disabilities were receiving an appropriate education—if they were in school at all, says Crockett, now a professor emerita of special education at the University
of Florida.
But that all changed when the Education for All Handicapped Children Act was signed into law in 1975 (it would be renamed IDEA in 1990). The law mandated that students with disabilities would not be turned away from their public school.
While the law was transformative for students with disabilities and their families, and ushered in a new era of inclusion in public schools, the full potential of the law has never been reached.
Will We Move Forward or Backward?
From the start, IDEA stated that the federal government will pay up to 40 percent of the average per pupil cost for special education students. But the federal contribution has never come close to that—it’s currently just 12 percent.
Two Trump administration proposals could make the situation even worse.
In the administration’s efforts to dismantle the Department of Education, it has cut more than 1,400 employees and proposed that IDEA be managed by the Health and Human Services agency, which has no experience protecting the rights of students with disabilities.
Trump’s stated intention is to “move education back to the states” by converting formula grants into block grants—with little to no federal oversight. This would make it much less likely that IDEA funding will reach the students it was intended to help.
“States would not have to answer to anyone about whether they are following the law,” says Tom Zembar, NEA’s education policy and practice manager.
“As a result, students in some states could receive needed services while students in others receive none,” he says.
NEA has taken legal action to block the destruction of the Department of Education and supports a bipartisan push in Congress to fully fund IDEA. Read on to find out how you can help.
What Can You Do?
Tell your members of Congress how IDEA funding helps your students, and ask them to support the IDEA Full Funding Act.
