SPECIAL EDUCATION AND STUDENT BEHAVIOR

Special Education and Student Behavior

Special Education and Student Behavior

Historical Contexts and Realities

It is common knowledge that people like to associate with those who behave, look, speak, and act like themselves. Anyone who does not fall in that norm is traditionally perceived, treated, and educated differently. Clearly, students with exceptionalities have been discriminated against, ostracized, labeled, and called demeaning names (e.g., stupid, imbecile, and little dummies). Today, it has become increasingly clear that differences are a part of life. Advocates of students with exceptionalities have pressed for ways to positively respond to their needs in quantifiable ways. In the United States, it is impossible to divorce the education of these students from the Civil Rights Movement and the subsequent events that followed.

To a great extent, the education of these students has been historically influenced by social developments and court decisions in the 1950s and 1960s. For example, the landmark Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954) case was a civil rights case that declared separate education as unequal education and unconstitutional. This was significant because it had the goal of ending racial segregation in schools. Logically, this opened doors of advocacy for students with exceptionalities. The ruling of this case became a catalyst that prompted parents and professionals to lobby for equitable education for their students (Brown, 1954).

The Brown ruling, in the United States, encouraged parent groups to petition the courts to allow students with exceptionalities to be educated in public schools. In addition, it led to more landmark cases that have had historical impacts. For example, the Pennsylvania Association for Retarded Children v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (1972) (PARC) case held that children could not be denied access to public schools, and entitled them to a free and appropriate public education (FAPE). In the Mills v. Board of Education (Mills, 1972) case, a class action lawsuit was filed on behalf of 18,000 children with varied exceptionalities in the Washington, DC schools. In this case, the court ordered the district to educate all children, including those with special needs and further clarified that specific procedures had to be followed to determine whether a student should receive special services. Generally, these cases and other subsequent cases formed the framework for the laws that currently guide the field of special education (Pennsylvania Association, 1972).

In the United States, many laws have historically impacted the fields of general and special education. For instance, the 1964 Civil Rights Act (PL 88-352) provided legal rights to equality in education and other sectors of human interactions. In 1973, Section 504 of the Vocational Rehabilitation Act (PL 93-112) was passed to provide persons with exceptionalities with (a) free and appropriate public education, (b) civil rights, (c) accessibility of programs, and (d) employability rights.

In 1975, the Education of All Handicapped Children's Act (PL-94-142) was passed with the following fundamental ingredients:

education for students from 3-21 years,

free and appropriate public education,

identification of students, (d) non-discriminatory assessments,

placement in the least restrictive environment (LRE),

confidentiality of information,

procedural safeguards, ...