CT Examiner

This year, on November 29th, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act—our nation’s promise to children with disabilities—turned 50. I also turned 50 in November. Unlike the IDEA, though, I did not require Congressional reauthorization to get here, though some days my knees might argue otherwise. It’s a strange feeling sharing a milestone birthday with a federal law. When IDEA was born in 1975, students with disabilities were routinely excluded from public schools. My biggest worry at the time was keeping my birthday cake intact while my older siblings plotted its early demise. Half a century later, IDEA has matured into a civil-rights cornerstone that serves approximately seven million children nationwide. And yet, like many 50-year-olds, IDEA is now experiencing what can only be described as an existential crisis. Under the current federal landscape, there is renewed talk of “letting the states decide.” As a lawyer who spends his days battling school districts that already interpret “free appropriate public education” as “the cheapest option possible,” I can assure you: shifting more control to the states is the policy equivalent of handing your 1996 Honda Civic to a 15-year-old because “they’ll figure it out.”