The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) was originally authorized in 1975 as the Education for All Handicapped Children Act. This Act was designed to support states and localities in protecting the rights of and meeting the individual needs of infants, toddlers, children, and youth with disabilities and their families in order to improve results for these populations. The goals were to assure all students a free appropriate education and to increase learning and achievement.

The Act has been amended several times between its first inception and its latest revision in 2004, and now exists as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. IDEA and its predecessors have allowed more children to be educated in their neighborhood schools, rather than in separate schools and institutions, and contributed to improvements in the rate of high school graduation, post-secondary school enrollment, and post-school employment for youth with disabilities.

2004 Reauthorization:

Much of the effort to reauthorize the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) occurred in 2003, but Congress wrapped up its work in 2004 in a bi-partisan manner. The House passed its IDEA reauthorization bill, H.R. 1350, on April 30, 2003, modifying discipline provisions, taking steps to reduce the paperwork burden, and authorizing more funding, but stopping short of making IDEA funding mandatory. The Senate introduced its IDEA reauthorization bill, S. 1248, on June 12, 2003, and the HELP Committee approved it four days later. The Senate bill included strong language that ACTE supported related to providing transition services to students with disabilities. This language included starting transition planning at age 14 and involving the vocational rehabilitation community more in serving students with disabilities. The Senate bill also included a compromise on discipline provisions, but like the House bill, did not make IDEA funding mandatory.

A crowded legislative agenda and other political priorities postponed the vote by the full Senate, but the Senate finally passed its IDEA bill, by a vote of 95-3, on May 13, 2004. A conference committee to work out the differences between the two bills was appointed in October 2004 and conducted negotiations during the fall recess. When Congress returned for the lame-duck session after the election, the official conference committee mark-up was held and a conference report was finalized. The final bill was approved on November 19, 2004 by the House on a vote of 397-3, and by the Senate by Unanimous Consent. The IDEA Reauthorization bill was signed into law on December 3, and most of the provisions in the bill will become effective on July 1, 2005 and last through 2011.

The bill emphasizes educational results over process and maintains all of the basic tenets of previous versions of IDEA, ensuring that students with disabilities are provided a free, appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment. Unlike the House proposed bill, the final legislation does protect a child from discipline if a behavior is the result of the disability, but also provides more flexibility for schools to discipline students when a behavior is not the result of a disability. The bill modifies the “highly qualified” teacher provisions for new special education teachers, providing more flexibility for teachers teaching more than one subject and teaching students with significant cognitive disabilities. The bill also attempts to cut the paperwork burden for teachers, reduce litigation between parents and school districts, decrease the over-identification of students as disabled by providing pre-referral services, and sets increased funding targets. While not all of the positive transition related provisions in the Senate bill made it in to the final legislation, there is a greater focus on the importance of comprehensive transition planning for students with disabilities.

Purposes:

IDEA has four main purposes:

(1) to ensure that all children with disabilities have available to them a free appropriate public education that emphasizes special education and related services designed to meet their unique needs and prepare them for employment and independent living; to ensure that the rights of children with disabilities and parents of such children are protected; and to assist States, localities, educational service agencies, and Federal agencies to provide for the education of all children with disabilities;

(2) to assist States in the implementation of a statewide, comprehensive, coordinated, multidisciplinary, interagency system of early intervention services for infants and toddlers with disabilities and their families;

(3) to ensure that educators and parents have the necessary tools to improve educational results for children with disabilities by supporting systemic-change activities; coordinated research and personnel preparation; coordinated technical assistance, dissemination, and support; and technology development and media services; and

(4) to assess, and ensure the effectiveness of, efforts to educate children with disabilities.

CTE-Related Provisions:

Several provisions of IDEA relate directly to how students are educated in the classroom and are relevant to CTE teachers. These include:

• Students are to be assessed in a nondiscriminatory and multidisciplinary way to determine their education needs. Several pieces of information are to be used to determine appropriate educational placements, and these materials are not to discriminate on the basis of culture, race, or language of origin.
• Students must be educated in the least restrictive environment that is consistent with their needs, and should be placed in situations with their non-disabled peers whenever possible. Accommodations and supplementary aids and services, such as assistive technologies, should be available to students in the general education classroom whenever possible to allow full participation in the school curriculum.
• An IEP (Individualized Education Plan) must be developed for each student who has been identified in need of special education or related services. An IEP is a specialized education plan that describes a student?s needs and how educational services will be delivered to meet those needs. The IEP must be developed by a team of people including the student's family, at least one special education teacher, at least one general education teacher, a representative of the local education agency, counselors, and the student if appropriate.
• Families have the legal right to become involved in the education program and to participate in decisions regarding appropriate strategies, accommodations, and placements.
• Students with disabilities must have plans in place to determine positive behavior interventions that decrease or prevent behaviors that hamper the learning of that student or the learning of others. When disciplining students with disabilities, whether or not the behavior was a result of the student's disability must be considered. 
• IDEA also supports the preparation of students for success after graduation through transition programs.