By Darrel Tillar Mason
My introduction to the “Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)” came because of my being a member of the State Board of Education when Virginia was required to respond to the 1990 reauthorization by Congress of IDEA. (That reauthorization also marked the name change from the “Education for All Handicapped Children Act” to IDEA.) Each time the federal government reauthorizes this legislation, each state must review its own special education regulations to ensure that the state regulations comply with any new federal mandates. In Virginia, this mandated review caused a flurry of effort by the state’s powerful school board lobby to strip the Virginia regulations of any section that provided students with a benefit that exceeded the minimum required by IDEA.
The most significant example of such a difference was the Virginia provision that children be evaluated for special education early intervention services and provided such services beginning at age two, while the federal regulations only required states to evaluate and serve children beginning at age three. The services typically involved speech, physical, and/or occupational therapy. The school board funded lobbyists argued to the State Board of Education that this one-year difference created a hardship on school districts in terms of staff time and expense and should be eliminated.
Special education parents across the state did not have the advantage of well-funded lawyer lobbyists. There were, however, disability-related organizations such as ARC of Virginia and The Autism Program of Virginia that sent volunteer representatives to address the State Board of Education and persuade the Board that cutting out this one year of eligibility would have significant negative repercussions. Maureen Hollowell from the Endependence Center in Virginia Beach was the force behind the development of the Coalition for Students with Disabilities in Virginia and this group was especially effective during this period in pleading for the maintenance of all protections afforded the special education population by the Virginia regulations.
I began meeting informally with Maureen’s group and representatives from various disability groups and received an education on how the special education process actually worked in Virginia. I came to understand that although IDEA was intended to make parents equal partners with school administrators and special education staff in determining what services were required to provide a “free and appropriate public education” to students with disabilities, the reality fell far short. I was horrified when I attended my first Individualized Education Program meeting at the request of a parent to see how adversarial the process was. I saw how the schools used delaying tactics and the scheduling of repeated meetings at times inconvenient for a working parent to wear down the parent. And I witnessed the offering of minimal interventions or accommodations that were not reasonably calculated to afford the child the opportunity to make meaningful educational progress. I also developed a new appreciation for just how hard special education teachers worked on behalf of their students. Generally, the teachers were not the problem.
After becoming convinced that the “playing field” could only be made anywhere near level by the involvement of lawyers and advocates trained in special education law (a subject not generally taught in law schools in the 1990s), I founded a Legal Advocacy Center to complement the existing parent-based Coalition for Students with Disabilities. This group (later known as the Center for Special Education Advocacy) offered resources to equip parents to advocate for their children, and offered training to lawyers willing to represent parents when non-legal advocacy failed. It was a harsh reality that parents who represented themselves in an IDEA due process hearing were almost never successful against a school board attorney specializing in such cases.
After my service on the State Board of Education was concluded, I determined that I would devote my legal practice to representing parents in their efforts to secure appropriate educational services for their child with a disability as promised by the IDEA. This work, and my related involvement with the state’s protection and advocacy entity (first the Department for Rights of Virginians with Disabilities, then the Virginia Office for Protection and Advocacy, and finally the disAbility Law Center of Virginia) has given me the opportunity to learn first-hand about the sacrifices made by special education parents. They have my profound respect.
As I write these reflections on my thirty-five years of involvement with IDEA, I am concerned about the current proposed administrative and policy changes aimed at shifting oversight of special education from federal control to state control, and the related changes in funding. Although I have long been a proponent of more of the special education budget being spent on actual services and less on administrative costs, I am worried that certain of the proposed changes will weaken enforcement.
My prayer is that parents of children with disabilities will once again rally and that their voices in support of their children’s right to an appropriate education will be heard.
Darrel Tillar Mason is an attorney whose passion has been assisting families of children with special needs gain appropriate educational services from local school divisions. She earned her law degree from the University of Virginia and her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Virginia Tech. Over her forty five year plus legal career, she has had numerous gubernatorial appointments, as well as appointments by the Supreme Court of Virginia to councils and commissions dealing with issues affecting public education, civil rights, and the practice of law. She has been recognized by the disAbility Law Center of Virginia for her effective advocacy, by the Virginia State Bar for outstanding service, by the Virginia Education Association and the Virginia PTA for championing teachers and counselors, and by the Virginia Diversity Conference for her support of civil rights.
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