Educating Exceptional Individuals - EDUC 525 Resource Guide

The Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975 (P.L. 94-142) originally defined the disability conditions that are eligible for services that are reimbursable by the federal government. Early versions of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) maintained essentially the same wording in the definition of “handicapped”. More recent iterations of the IDEA and its implementing regulations have adopted the now preferred term “child with a disability” when referring to children eligible for certain types of assistance under the IDEA.

One of the major provisions incorporated in the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (PL 94-142) and reinforced in its reauthorization, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, is the requirement that all handicapped children and youths, ages 3 through 21, be afforded a free and appropriate public education (FAPE). Initial federal statutory requirements were that services be provided to all children ages 3 through 5 and youths ages 18 through 21 apply to all states and U.S. territories except where state law or court order expressly prohibits the provision of FAPE to children or youths within these age ranges.

Under the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975, the U.S. government directed that public school systems seek out and educate all children, regardless of any disability. The measure was renamed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) during reauthorization proceedings in 1990. From the outset, the legislation has mandated that children with disabilities be provided with an “appropriate education” in the “least restrictive environment” possible.

IEP is the acronym for the individualized educational plan that must now be written for each identified child with a disability prior to his or her placement in a special education program. The Education of All Handicapped Children Act of 1975 (PL 94–142) and subsequent legislation such as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) required that states receiving federal funds for special education services develop and implement a written statement regarding the specific special educational services and related services each child with a disability is to receive.

Two major features of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004 (IDEIA; 2004) are in place to ensure the most appropriate education of children with disabilities. IDEIA requires that children with disabilities receive a free and appropriate public education (FAPE) in the least restrictive environment (LRE).

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEIA) of November 2004 included the option of using the Response to Intervention Model (RTI) as a means of identifying children with specific learning disabilities. Previous methods of identifying students with specific learning disabilities have raised concerns regarding their efficacy, accuracy, timeliness, equity, and feasibility.

As indicated by the name itself, the most striking and pervasive feature of autism is a child’s difficulty participating in the social world. Even with his or her parents, an autistic child may seem alone; in social relationships generally, he or she may be unattached or have a difficult time sustaining attachment.

Children with behavioral disorders constitute one of the major national issues confronting the schools and society. There is increasing concern about the academic failure and school dropout rate of U.S. children and adolescents identified with behavioral disorders (BD).

Arnold Gessell (1925, 1946), in his pioneering research at the Yale Institute for Child Development, established a sequence of developmental norms, or milestones, through which individuals progress on their way toward normal development. Under his maturational conceptualization, individuals achieve certain developmental milestones that represent indicators of both current and future development and adjustment

The greatest amount of progress on behalf of the emotionally disturbed (ED) occurred in the twentieth century. Assessment instruments, residential schools for the emotionally disturbed, special classes in public schools, child guidance clinics, juvenile courts and legal statutes specifically written for delinquent and abused children, and hundreds of texts dealing with the etiology, diagnosis, and treatment of children were all products of the twentieth century.

Hearing is the basis of human communication. The effects of hearing loss on a child's speech and language development are dependent on age of onset, age of diagnosis and intervention, individual differences in the child, and environmental influences. It is not solely the inability to hear that is involved.

Genetic effects on intellectual disability, or mental retardation, are well established and are particularly important for moderate to severe disability. Cloning of abnormal genes gives some clues about the biology of cognition.

Children and adults classified as learning disabled (LD) are those individuals who are of normal intelligence but suffer mental information processing difficulties. Several definitions refer to LD as reflecting a heterogeneous group of individuals with intrinsic disorders that are manifested by specific difficulties in the acquisition and use of listening, speaking, reading, writing, reasoning, or mathematical abilities

Motor speech disorders are caused by a neuropathology that affects a person’s ability to plan a program of motor activity (apraxia) or impairs their ability to carry out the movements which produce speech sounds (dysarthria). Motor speech disorders comprise more than 36 percent of all acquired communication disorders (Duffy, 1995). A motor speech disorder can be acquired or congenital, and may occur in both children and adults. Any type of language disorder is excluded from the category of motor speech disorder.

Children with learning disabilities may display deficits in one or more of the following areas: oral expression, listening comprehension, written expression, basic reading skills, reading comprehension, mathematics calculation, or mathematics reasoning (Federal Register, 1977). Although language is one of many areas in which a child may evidence a learning disability, the ramifications are tremendous with language, as they may be associated with problems in reading, spelling, writing, and arithmetic.

With advances in legislation for individuals with disabilities (e.g., IDEA, its reauthorizations Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act), a greater number of students with orthopedic disabilities are being included into regular or general education classes. In addition, students with multiple disabilities (e.g., severe mental retardation and cerebral palsy) are being served in public school settings with increasing frequency. The classroom teacher must take into account the specific needs of students with orthopedic disabilities when planning instruction. An awareness of the types of orthopedic disabilities as well as intervention methods is useful for teachers of students with such disabilities.

Other health-impaired children include those pupils whose health problems severely affect learning. Federal law designates this group as including children with severe orthopedic impairments, illnesses of a chronic or acute nature that require a prolonged convalescence or that limit that child’s vitality and strength (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome), congenital anomalies (e.g., spina bifida or club-foot), other physical causes (e.g., amputation or cerebral palsy), and other health problems including, but not limited to, hemophilia, asthma, severe anemia, and diabetes.

The term seriously emotionally disturbed (SED) has been defined by federal legislation (IDEA) as a condition with one or more of the following characteristics occurring to a marked degree and over a long period of time: (1) inability to learn not explainable by health, intellectual, or sensory factors; (2) inability to develop or maintain appropriate interpersonal relationships with students and teachers; (3) inappropriate behaviors or feelings in normal circumstances; (4) a pervasive mood of depression; (5) a tendency to develop physical symptoms or fears in response to personal or school difficulties

A developmental disorder of language is a significant delay or impairment in language acquisition (for expression and/or comprehension) in the absence of a known cause. Here we will use the term ‘specific language impairment’ (SLI) to refer to such language disorders.

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) involves an insult to the brain, not of a degenerative or congenital nature, but caused by an external physical force of sufficient magnitude producing a diminished or altered state of consciousness and/or associated neurological or neurobehavioral dysfunction

Godfrey Stevens, in his study on Taxonomy in Special Education for Children with Body Disorders (1962), used the term impairment to mean any deviation from the normal. Thus impairment was interpreted by many to mean disorder at the tissue level. Recently, however, visual impairment has come to mean the disability due to a medical disorder, rather than the medical disorder itself