| Chapter 1: | Introduction |
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closely with the Council of Exceptional Children in drafting the S.6 bill (Melnick, 1994).
The bill on federal special education generated little opposition in Congress. Interest groups representing educators were convinced that comprehensive reforms were inevitable. After all, a right to education and a basic set of reforms had been established in various court orders across the country, and many state legislatures had already enacted policies that allowed children with disabilities to attend public schools. Hence, facing the inevitability of providing education for students with disabilities, the states and organizations representing school professionals wanted to ensure adequate revenues. The federal government seemed like a logical source for aid.
However, the compliance mechanism of the act was a source of disagreement between the disability advocates and the education representatives. In fact, a deadlock in the conference committee over the statute’s compliance mechanisms threatened the passage of the act (Melnick, 1994). Disability advocates preferred appeals procedures that gave parents substantial rights, which education groups such as the National School Boards Association opposed. Representative George Miller (D-CA), who worked with Children’s Defense Fund and the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation, drafted a compromise solution that was finally accepted by the education groups (Melnick, 1994). In the end, the enacted law guaranteed provisions almost identical to the Mills v. Board of Education and PARC cases: Free appropriate public education, an annually developed individualized education program (IEP), and procedural safeguards for children and their parents, including impartial due process hearings.
President Ford, who had been opposing the bill and threatened to veto it because the implied costs were too high, was persuaded by his aides to sign it (Weiner & Hume, 1987). On November 29, 1975, he signed the bill, saying,