The Role of Special Education Interest Groups in National Policy ...

Congress, Courts, and Advocates:
A Brief Legislative History⁶

Special education policy is a result of interactions among legislation, regulations, judicial interpretation, and local implementation. At the core of the policy framework is federal legislation called the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (referred to as IDEA or “the act” from here on), initially passed in 1975 as the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, which articulated a set of entitlements for students with disabilities. A look at the legislative history of the federal special education law, and events leading to its passage, illustrates the complex connection among the various institutions and the competing frames since the conception of the statute.⁷

Much of the statute’s content originated from judicial opinions in two lawsuits brought by advocacy organizations in an effort to gain access for students with disabilities to the public school system.⁸ One such advocacy group, the Pennsylvania Association for Retarded Citizens (PARC) was the plaintiff in PARC v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Another driving force in special education advocacy at the time was the Council for Exceptional Children. It provided expert testimony both in PARC and in subsequent litigation in other states, and was involved in drafting the model statute that was the basis for many state special education laws, and eventually the federal act (Melnick, 1994; personal communication with an organization’s government relations leader, March 3, 2000).

Melnick (1994) reported that, in order to gain access for children with disabilities in public education, special education advocates push their agenda through litigation. By 1973, 27 right-to-education lawsuits were pending or a decision recently rendered across the country (Extension of Education of the Handicapped Act,1975, pp. 193–239). Despite court victories by special education advocacy groups at that time, the constitutional right to “free appropriate public education”—a term used in PARC to define special education—had no basis in federal law at the time, and there was great variation in how the states were (or were not)