It was not until the mid-1970s that Congress passed a federal law stating that children with disabilities have the legal right to receive a public education.
Until the law was passed in 1975, millions of disabled children were often excluded from school, according to Wrightslaw Special Education Law and Advocacy (www.wrightslaw.com).
Wrightslaw is considered the leading source on interpretation of laws as they pertain to special education.
This was 21 years after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that "African-American children had the right to equal educational opportunities and that segregated schools have no place in the field of public education."
Despite the landmark ruling, educational segregation of children with disabilities continued in America.
When allowed to attend schools before the 1975 law, children with different disabilities were often lumped together in generic special education classes.
They were sent to schools not in their neighborhoods and segregated with other disabled students, according to Wrightslaw.
Because schools segregated children with disabilities from "normal" children, special education classes were often held in undesirable, out-of-the-way places such as trailers and school basements, Wrightslaw says.
Despite compulsory attendance laws, most states allowed school authorities to exclude disabled children if they believed the child would not benefit from education or if the child's presence would be disruptive to others, it added.
Some school systems were even more restrictive.
For example, until 1969 "it was a crime in North Carolina for a parent to try to enroll a handicapped child in public school after the child had been excluded," according to a 1992 report by Mark Weber, Special Education Law and Litigation Treatise.
It was Nov. 19, 1975, when Public Law 94-142 was enacted. It was called the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975. When the law was reauthorized in 1990, it was renamed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).
By passing IDEA, Congress intended that all disabled children would "have a right to education, and to establish a process by which state and local educational agencies may be held accountable for providing educational services for all handicapped children," according to the U.S. Code Congressional and Administrative News of 1975.
IDEA is designed to protect the rights of students with disabilities by ensuring that everyone receives a "free appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment" regardless of ability.
It also requires equal access to students with disabilities to education in public, parochial or private schools as well as those who are home-schooled. IDEA also provides additional special-education services and procedural standards such as Individualized Education Plans.
This plan for a disabled student outlines in specific detail the yearly academic and social goals for the student, including types of accommodation the student may need in the classroom.
It covers students with learning disabilities, attention deficit and emotional disorders, cognitive impairments, autism and hearing, visual, language or speech impairments as well as any other disability as defined by law.
A disability as defined by the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 is a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more of the major life activities of such an individual; a record of such impairment (such as a cancer survivor) or being regarded as having such an impairment.
Those who are disabled now also are able to receive educational services to age 26.
Accommodation refers to customized tools or situations for each student with a disability. These must be given regardless of the cost of such accommodation.
Some examples of accommodations are voice-recognition software, large-print or Braille textbooks, an American Sign Language interpreter, accessible buildings (with elevators and ramps, for example), aides in school to help a mobility-impaired student get from class to class, additional snack breaks for children with diabetes, rest breaks for those with muscular dystrophy or cerebral palsy.
Countywide intermediate school districts were created in the states to help relieve individual school districts of the cost of operating individualized special education programs. It is assumed the ISDs can afford to provide accommodations, according to an education report published on Feb. 10, 2000, that explains the role of an ISD.
Michigan has 57 ISDs. They were formed in 1962 by Public Act 190 which took Michigan's 83 county school districts and reorganized them under the name of intermediate school districts.
Contact Jerry Wolffe at 248-745-4612 or firstname.lastname@example.org or follow him on Twitter @JerryWolffe1 or on Facebook.