Education for children with disabilities can be challenging. Children with disabilities deserve the right to have a sufficient education as well as mainstream students. Over the years, the fight for education for disabled children has increased. There are over six million disabled children that are in public schools; these children are fighting for a decent education. Some of the children have an aspiration to go to college. However, receiving the appropriate education will make it more of a challenge to attend college.
To add a larger insult, there are more disabled students dropping out of high school, compared to non-disabled students. The numbers are overwhelming! The drop-out rate is higher in the minority and low income areas. There was an act passed in 1975, called IDEA. IDEA stands for “Individuals with disabilities act”. This act was put in place for all children with disabilities to be able to attend a regular traditional school. (Koch, Kathy. “Special Education”. CQ Researcher. 10 (2000) NP (39) Web.)
Children that possessed physical, mental, or emotional disabilities were able to be funded by IDEA. There has been an overall success rate for disable children to transition to these schools. The IDEA was able to help fund particular students with disabilities with special equipment to help them with their assignments. The IDEA initiated that approximately 25 years ago. Before the IDEA was passed, 1.7 million disabled children were rejected into attending regular school, and 2.5 million disabled students had to enroll into institutions that didn’t provide a substantial learning curriculum.
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Now that the IDEA is intact, 6.3 million disabled students between the ages of pre-school age and 21 years of age are able to attend regular public schools at the public’s expense. (Koch, Kathy. “Special Education”. CQ Researcher. 10 (2000) NP (39) Web.)
Even though, millions of disabled kids were transferred into the public school system, the education system still poses problems with the system. For example, some students are being classified as disabled, and need remedial help, and the problem is the children weren’t taught how to read. The education system has also placed student with behaviors in special classes; the real problem is the child will act out, because, they are unable to keep up, due to the inability to read. The worst practice of all is, placing children that do not do as well as the majority, in the special classes. The reason for this practice is because, if the student’s academic test scores are low; and if their placed in a special education classes, their test scored will not count towards the general education students test scores when tested. (Koch, Kathy. “Special Education”. CQ Researcher. 10 (2000) NP (39) Web.)
The schools should also take responsibility if the students are not tested in a timely manner. The child will be kept behind and forced to be held back and repeat the grade. Per Diane Shust, the manager of the federal relations for the National Education Association, states there are more disabled children that have classroom asses and are graduating and moving on to college. She states; “We do this better than any other Country in the world”. (Shust,)
The law is responsible for the federal grants to the state, so that help will be provided to the local schools to pay for services needed by students that are disabled. Some states are doing a great job with accommodating the disabled students. There are still more than a few school boards that are not taking action and supplying the education that is needed. In 1990, there were students that possessed specific learning disabilities
