George Rittenmyer: Fixing special education starts by fixing the flawed law

Re “Task force turns focus to improving special ed” (Page B1, July 15): As a school psychologist who has worked in special education for the past 36 years, I was delighted by Bee’s coverage of our poor performance. However, a state task force can have only minimal impact on reforming special education.

The problem rests in the federal legislation. Enacted in 1975, what is now called the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act (IDEA) is an old and deeply flawed law that has never been revised. As the Bee points out, it creates a separate and unnecessary educational system and an extremely costly empire of administrators, specialists and school psychologists. It also creates uncertainty in identifying students with disabilities. Classifications such as “specific learning disabled” and “emotionally disturbed” are highly subjective, depending on the judgments of school psychologists. Criteria for these conditions are inconsistent and often vary between school districts.

The law does not provide equal protection for all families. Well-to-do parents can afford legal remedies when districts fail to provide their children with an appropriate education, but less well-to-do parents cannot. They have to pretty much accept what the school district offers them.

I encourage federal legislators to look at the current law. Possibly, it needs to be replaced with a law that guarantees that each child, regardless of disability and learning style, will achieve specified goals in literacy, mathematical competence, social functioning and vocational preparation.

This story was originally published August 3, 2015 at 2:39 PM with the headline "George Rittenmyer: Fixing special education starts by fixing the flawed law."