Legal Frameworks and Policies in Education
Twenty years of research on the implementation of federal and state education policies have highlighted both the limitations and potential of policy as a tool to change the way students are educated. The biggest limitation is well known: change ultimately depends on the will and capacity of local communities. Therefore, significant differences in policy impact are the norm, and decision-makers cannot simply dictate desired outcomes (McLaughlin, 1987). However, despite the limitations of its influence, politics has the potential to shape educational practice in significant ways. In addition to content and performance standards, student testing is generally a central component of the government`s reform initiatives. Large-scale, state-administered assessments are designed to measure the extent to which students` mastery of content standards is at a level defined in state performance standards. Coinciding with the implementation of standards-based reform, the format of these assessments has been diversified and expanded beyond the use of multiple choice elements. The most typical model was to combine multiple-choice elements with open-ended responses and writing patterns. 4 About five states include pass tasks in their assessments, and an equal number have portfolios of students as part of their assessment process.5 However, in their analysis of the state`s math and science curriculum, Blank and Pechman`s systemic reform, which emphasizes curriculum standards, is presented as a solution that “seeks to combine the vitality and creativity of bottom-up change in the school workplace with an enabling and supportive approach. More centralized structure.
Levels of the system” (Smith and O`Day, 1991: 245). From this perspective, standards are seen as a way to avoid the dilemma of past top-down reform policies that did not go far enough in the classroom to change the teaching and learning process, and bottom-up reforms that had limited impact because they never affected more than a few local schools or districts at a time. The first objective of special education policy in the second half of this century was access to education for all students with disabilities. Between 1966 and 1974, 38 states and the U.S. Congress passed laws that began to achieve this goal. Access to education has been expanded to achieve several important policy goals: “zero rejection”, the concept that every child with disabilities is educable; the principle that students with disabilities should be educated to the greatest extent reasonably possible in the same environments and classrooms as their non-disabled peers; the provision of appropriate education for all students with disabilities; and the application of procedural safeguards to protect the rights of students with disabilities (Minow, 1990; Tweedie, 1983; Sarason and Doris, 1979; Butts et al., 1953). The argument that standards-based reforms address identified gaps in past education policies may be a stronger argument than the argument that it stems from research on student achievement. One of the main reasons Smith and O`Day (1991) and others advocate radical or systemic reforms focused on curriculum standards is that they see this as a way to address a major drawback of the United States` decentralized approach to governance and education policymaking: “We argue that a fundamental barrier to developing and maintaining high-performing schools in the United States has been fragmented, complex system of multi-level education policies in which they are integrated. Indeed, the fragmented political system creates, exacerbates and prevents the solution of serious long-term problems in the areas of educational content, pedagogy and support services that have become endemic in the system” (p. 237).
Unfortunately, we cannot determine at this stage whether any of the guiding assumptions of the standards movement are correct, or whether this policy will have the desired effects. Even early implementing countries, such as Kentucky and Maryland, have been fully implementing their programs for less than five years, and in the case of standards-based reforms, the implementation process is longer than most education policies. For example, Goertz and Friedman (1996) report that in the 18 countries studied, the standardization process took between 2 and 4 years from the time the legislation was enacted to the final approval of the standards. States needed more time to develop curricular frameworks. The initial development and subsequent modification of new state assessments can also take several years.12 While we cannot draw conclusions about the effectiveness of standardization policies, the experience of early implementers highlights some of the potential obstacles. Our analysis shows that if the first four of the five assumptions discussed below are not valid, standards-based reforms may encounter serious implementation problems or may even fail to achieve their objective. IDEA is the second largest federal program supporting elementary and secondary education, currently allocating approximately $2.3 billion annually to fund the additional costs associated with educating students with disabilities. When Public Law 94-142 was passed, initial state funding was 5% of the estimated additional cost of special education. The Act allowed for the gradual introduction of supplementary assistance, with the aim that by 1981 the federal government would fund 40% of the average additional costs of special education. This goal was never achieved.
At its peak, in 1979, federal funds reached 12.5% of incremental costs. Currently, federal assistance accounts for about 7 per cent of the additional costs, with states and municipalities responsible for the remainder (Box 2-1). Federal laws and regulations, as well as judicial interpretation of the constitutional process and equality protection clauses, have played a leading role in the education of students with disabilities for 25 years. This federal policy is reflected in state laws and regulations, as well as numerous state court decisions, some of which extend protections for persons with disabilities beyond those offered by federal laws. Although it is difficult to document the amount and evolution of spending on programs for students with disabilities, two recent studies of a small number of school districts and one state suggest that spending on special education has grown faster than spending on general education. Both studies, which examined the allocation of spending increases, found that 38% of new education dollars were spent in the 1970s and 1980s. As with most education policies, the case for standard reforms is based on a combination of value appeals, research findings, and lessons learned from the implementation of previous reform initiatives. The policy framework for standards-based reforms is both simple and complicated.
The main idea behind him is the simple belief that all students can meet high standards if these standards are clearly articulated and teachers teach them. The achievement gap between students from different demographic and socioeconomic groups is one of the biggest problems in American education. The concept of high standards for all is seen as a solution to this problem (Ravitch, 1995). The assumption is that by clearly communicating the concept of “all students can learn to high standards,” teachers and students will understand what is expected of them, and schools will take steps to equalize learning opportunities for students. A greater challenge and source of ambiguity are therefore the priority issues in deciding under which standards students with disabilities should be maintained, whether these standards are common to all students or whether there may be differences in some general parameters, and how students with disabilities should be effectively taught in a standards-based curriculum. Part of the problem seems to stem from the historical gap between general education staff and special education staff. Goertz and Friedman (1996:18) report: “From our interviews with state directors of special education and state directors of curriculum and education, it appears that in most states special education has not played a major role in developing specific content standards or curriculum frameworks. Rather, the involvement of special education in general was limited to a review of standards and curriculum documents created by other educators, if at all. However, these researchers found some notable exceptions to this trend. For example, in Missouri, state special education staff developed examples of classroom activities to illustrate how state performance standards can be applied to students with cognitive disabilities. In addition to federal laws governing the education of students with disabilities, all states and many local governments have enacted laws and regulations to promote the rights of students with disabilities. Because states must have a plan to qualify for IDEA funds, all have enacted special education laws that contain key provisions of IDEA.
However, some state laws go beyond federal criteria for adequate education. Melnick (1994), for example, notes that Massachusetts law refers to the “maximum possible development of handicapped children” and that New Jersey law establishes the principle that all students “shall be assured of the greatest possible opportunity to develop their intellectual abilities.” .
