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First special education school
Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet found the first special education school in the U.S is established in Hartford, CT. He believed it was moral and spiritual responsibility to educate the students. When opened on April 15, 1817, it was called the "Connecticut Asylum (at Hartford) for the Education and Instruction of Deaf and Dumb Persons," but it is now known as the American School for the Deaf. -
Rhode Island
Rhode Island is the first state to pass compulsory attendance laws. The government must provide, and all children must receive an education. This did not apply to students with disabilities or African Americans. Compulsory attendance laws are crafted by each state to require school attendance for children of certain ages. Five states require students to begin school at age 5, 32 mandate school attendance at age 6, and a small number allow children to wait until reaching 8 years old. -
Intellectual and developmental Disabilities
The AAIDD is the oldest professional association concerned with intellectual and developmental disabilities. AAIDD advocates for the equality, dignity, and human rights of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, and for their full inclusion and participation in society. It promotes progressive policies, sound research, effective practices, and universal human rights for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. https://aaidd.org/home -
Beattie vs. Board of Education
The Wisconsin Supreme Court upholds a ruling that a student could be excluded from a school based on a disability. The student had a condition that caused drooling and facial contortions. Teachers found the student's presence in class "nauseating". The courts agreed with school officials that argued the student required too much time of the teacher and caused disruptions to the learning environment. -
Autism
Autism is introduced by Dr. Leo Kanner at John Hopkins. When publishing his landmark paper. “Autistic Disturbances of Affective Contact”, describing 11 children who were highly intelligent but displayed “a powerful desire for aloneness” and “an obsessive insistence on persistent sameness”. The condition was previously called “early infantile autism”. -
Education Act
Education Act sought to provide education for all, from the ages of 5-14 (to be raised to 15 in the next few years). Secondary education was to begin at the age of 11. It also created the system by which there was a ministry responsible for schools, but they were administered by Local Education Authorities (LEAs). The curriculum, the dates of term, the length of the school day, remained under local control. -
Brown vs. Board of Education
Brown vs. Board of Education rules that “separate but equal” has no place in education. In the historic case, Brown vs. Board of Education, the Supreme Court ruled that students could not be denied the right to educational opportunity based on race. This landmark case provided new legal pathways for parents of disabled children who would also rely on the Fourteenth Amendment to argue against excluding children with disabilities from public schools. -
PARC vs. Pennsylvania
A class action suit brought by the Pennsylvania Association for Retarded Citizens (PARC) challenged the state's secretaries of education and public welfare, the board of education, as well as 13 school districts. PARC argued that students with mental retardation were not receiving appropriate services due to the reliance on a Pennsylvania statute that allowed schools to deny education to anyone who had not "attained a mental age of 5 years". [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOEX1YnkPFg] -
The Rehabilitation Act
Prohibits the exclusion of people based on disabilities in programs conducted, financed, and employed by the Federal Gov. Since public schools receive funding, Section 504 protects students with disabilities from discrimination in public schools throughout the U.S. -
The Individuals with Disabilities Act
The EAHCA was renamed in 1990 as the Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA) and continues to serve as the centerpiece for all matters pertaining to the protection of educational rights for students with disabilities. In 1997, the law was reauthorized and has proven to be largely successful "in improving students' access to public schools". Several additions to the law were made in 1997 to further outline the process of developing Individual Education Plans (IEPs). -
NCLB
The No Child Left Behind was established. The primary purpose of NCLB is to ensure that students in every public school achieve important learning goals while being educated in safe classrooms by well-prepared teachers. This law holds schools accountable for how kids learn and achieve. The law was somewhat controversial at times because it penalized schools that didn’t show improvement. This law effects every school in the United States.
