President signs special education law

Updated IDEA includes progress on AFT issues but lacks full funding

Before it adjourned for the year, the lame-duck Congress managed to reach agreement on reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and sent it to the president for his signature in December.

As with any major piece of legislation, there are parts to like and others that could be better. The AFT worked hard on Capitol Hill to build on progress that was made in the last reauthorization in 1997 in areas such as student discipline, employment standards for paraprofessionals and paperwork burdens.

The final language on student discipline provides schools with more flexibility on how they can discipline special education students; the legislation allows schools to remove students who “inflict serious bodily injury” to an alternative setting for up to 45 school days. With the AFT’s support, the 1997 law for the first time allowed for the 45-day removal of students who brought weapons or drugs to school. The new bill does not include an AFT-supported provision that would have given principals more authority to remove dangerous or persistently disruptive students.

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 imposed a whole set of requirements related to “highly qualified teachers.” These have been problematic for special education teachers, who might have to meet separate requirements for each subject they teach. The new version of IDEA includes more flexibility in the form of a HOUSSE (high, objective uniform state standard of evaluation), which allows veteran teachers to demonstrate their qualifications by means other than a test. It also includes more money for special ed teachers to meet the requirements, but it does not provide more time to meet them, as the AFT and others had wanted.

Freeing teachers and other educators from paperwork burdens so they can spend more time teaching was another priority for the AFT. The final bill establishes a 15-state pilot project in which participating states will have the opportunity to identify ways to reduce paperwork and other administrative duties.

The AFT also worked hard to ensure that general education teachers play a role in meetings related to students’ individual education plans (IEPs). Unfortunately, the final compromise legislation contains language that allows parents and administrators to exclude members of the education team from some IEP meetings.

A clear victory for AFT members came in the area of employment standards for paraprofessionals. There had been efforts to include in IDEA the same standards for paraprofessionals—involving higher education credits or passing a test in math and reading—that were mandated in No Child Left Behind for Title I paraprofessionals. These employment standards have imposed hardships on many paraprofessionals. The final IDEA language did not include provisions similar to those in NCLB.

In the end, the promise of improving special education will remain unfulfilled if programs don’t receive adequate funding. Congress has never lived up to the promise in the original special education law of 1975, which said the federal government would provide 40 percent of the excess cost of educating students with disabilities. Even with recent increases in funding, the federal government is providing only about half of the promised 40 percent.

Lame-duck Congress cuts and runs

Legislators approve smallest ED funding increase in 10 years

The budget knives came out in Washington, D.C., not long after the campaign bunting came down. The lame-duck Congress wrapped up business late last year by approving the smallest education increase in more than a decade.

The Department of Education receives a $1.4 billion annual increase, or 2.5 percent, in the fiscal 2005 federal appropriations bill, which the lame-duck Congress approved Nov. 20. But most of the increases are focused on restoring 38 programs the administration had sought to eliminate in its budget plan. That means cuts in fiscal 2005 for several programs: comprehensive school reform, technology state grants, the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards and Even Start. Many others are “level funded,” including those earmarked for after-school programs, gifted and talented programs, mentoring, migrant programs, English language acquisition, early childhood professional development, and safe and drug-free schools.

The final increase will be even less when a .75 percent across-the-board cut, needed to keep overall numbers within the budget caps set by Congress, is factored in.

The education budget, which was rolled into a catch-all appropriations bill at the end of the congressional session, is below the bottom-line increase sought by President Bush. Many lawmakers (from both parties) opted for the austerity budget rather than a one-year budget extension, which would have been necessary had the budget not passed. Among the “lowlights”:

• Programs under the No Child Left Behind Act will receive 1 percent more than last year’s levels—$9.6 billion below amounts authorized by Congress and $193 million less than President Bush’s budget request.
  
• The bill cuts the administration’s Title I request in half. The 4 percent increase for Title I is $7.7 billion less than was promised under NCLB.
  
• The small increase in funding for improving teacher quality is still $235 million less than promised under NCLB, meaning that roughly 50,000 fewer teachers will get professional development.
  
• Funds for after-school programs are

$1 billion less than what was promised under NCLB; had the funding goals been met, the program could have provided 1.3 million more children with safe places to play and learn after school.

The final bill also contains some nonbudget-related bitter pills. The GOP leadership stripped language from the final bill that would have protected workers from the Labor Department’s harmful changes to overtime pay. This means the administration’s new overtime rules will cut the pay and lengthen the hours for at least 6 million workers who make as little as $23,660 annually.