Special Education Law

  • Period: to

    Discrimination of Students With Disabilities

    In the early decades of the 20th Century, schools discriminated against students with disabilities by a) not allowing them in school if they had a disability and/or b) classifying students as having a disability when they did not have one.
  • Brown v. Board of Education

    Brown v. Board of Education
    Brown v. Board of Education was a lawsuit to end segregation. The Supreme Court ruling that made it illegal to segregate schools was used to argue that schools can not segregate based on ability or disability.
  • Pennsylvania Association of Retarded Children v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania

    Pennsylvania Association of Retarded Children v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
    This was a lawsuit to reverse a state law that allowed schools to deny public education to students that had not reached a mental age of 5 years old. The lawsuit was successful and decreed that all students between the ages of 6 and 21, regardless of disability, were to get a free public education.
  • Mills v. Board of Education of the District of Columbia

    Mills v. Board of Education of the District of Columbia
    The court ruled in favor of children getting a free public education in Washington D.C. Cited Brown v. Board of Education in making the decision.
  • Rehabilitation Act

    Rehabilitation Act
    This act guaranteed transportation of all disabled people as well as students in school.
  • Education of All Handicapped Students Act

    Education of All Handicapped Students Act
    Starting point for IDEA. Required all public schools that received federal funding to accept students with disabilities and give them a free public education as well as one free meal per day. It also required that schools perform evaluations on students to determine the disability and work with the parents to create an educational plan similar to the general education students.
  • Smith v. Robinson

    Smith v. Robinson
    A lawsuit that resulted in an amendment for the Education for All Handicapped Children Act to allow parents to sue schools and to collect attorney's fees upon winning a case.
  • Individuals with Disabilities Education Act

    Individuals with Disabilities Education Act
    Education of All Handicapped Children Act was renamed to Individuals with DisabilitiesEducation Act (IDEA)
  • Reauthorization of IDEA

    Reauthorization of IDEA
    IDEA was reauthorized as an Act and has remained, largely unchanged, since.
  • Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act

    Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act
    In 2004, IDEA was rewritten to comply with the No Child Left Behind Act. The rewritten act requires all special education teachers be highly qualified as well as having an assessment of the students with goals for the student as well.