Individuals with Disabilities Education Act – IDEA 2004

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) is the federal mandate regarding special education for children with disabilities. Since the 1997 amendments to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), discussion within the field of special education regarding educating students with disabilities has been focused on ensuring students are accessing the general education curriculum. Although IDEA (1997, 2004) does not specifically state how students will access the general education curriculum, it does stipulate that students with disabilities must have educational programs which enable them to be involved in and make progress in the general education curriculum.

The 1997 amendments to IDEA placed emphasis on ensuring students with disabilities are involved and make progress in the general education curriculum (the general curriculum is defined in IDEA as “the same curriculum as for nondisabled students”). According to IDEiA 2004 (the reauthorization of IDEA 1997), each student’s Individualized Education Plan (IEP) must provide a statement of:

1. The child’s present level of academic and functional performance, including:
a. How the child’s disability affects their involvement and progress in the general education curriculum.

2. Measureable annual goals, academic and functional, designed to:
a. Meet the child’s needs that result from the child’s disability to enable the child to be involved in and make progress in the general education curriculum.
b. Meet each of the child’s other educational needs that result from the child’s disability.

3. The special education and related services and supplementary aids and services to be provided to the child, and a statement of the program modifications or supports for school personnel that will be provided to enable the child to:
a. Be involved in and make progress in the general education curriculum.

IDEiA (2004) is closely aligned with the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB, 2002) to ensure all students with disabilities achieve high standards related to the general education curriculum and participate in state accountability systems along with their typically developing peers. NCLB required states to create standards which are the basis of the accountability system. All students, with and without disabilities, are held accountable to making adequate yearly progress (AYP) towards those standards. Most students take standardized test, and the scores from these tests are used to determine how well individual schools are performing. In the cases in which schools are determined to not be making AYP, they are put on improvement plans to increase their students’ success. Since students with significant cognitive disabilities (SCD) are part of the school, their progress also needs to be monitored and their scores figured in to AYP. Since many of the standardized test, however, are not appropriate and would not likely be sensitive to the progress students with SCD have made, most states have created a set of alternate standards, which are a subset of the general education standards, and developed an alternate assessment system for students who are unable to participate in the general assessment (up to 1% of the student population). These scores are combined with the scores of all the other students to ensure that students with SCD and their teachers are also being held accountable for making AYP in relation to the state standards.