A Case Study of Federal Leadership Perspectives on Special Education

Design of the Study

We used case study methodology “to uncover the interaction of significant factors characteristic of the phenomenon” (Merriam, 1998, Location No. 417) of federal leadership in the field of special education. Utilizing retrospective case study design, federal leadership in special education is reconstructed from its modern beginnings with passage of P.L. 94-142 to its current state by selecting participants who had the necessary knowledge, rich information, and ability to reflect on their experiences (Flick, 2006). The interest in this intrinsic case study is the phenomenon of federal leadership in special education and exploration of its role on special education. This case study is bounded in space and time, that is, the case is located at the federal government level and includes a chronology of its role that excludes the current administration; its purpose is to focus on the views, visions, decisions and values of those who were in leadership positions at OSERS and OSEP to construct the story of federal leadership in special education.

Participants and Sampling

Potential participants included all living Assistant Secretaries of OSERS and OSEP Directors. Assistant Secretaries, Bureau Chiefs, and persons with similar responsibilities in governmental divisions preceding OSERS and OSEP, for example, the Bureau of Education of the Handicapped and Division of Personnel Training were also potential participants. We limited the sample to persons who were no longer employed by OSERS, OSEP, or elsewhere in the USED to alleviate potential conflicts of interest or other violations of appointments to the government. Eight potential participants were identified as having served in the role of Assistant Secretary during the years 1979 through 2012. Contact information did not result in viable contacts for former Assistant Secretaries Robert Davilla, John Hagar, and Tracy Justesen. There were 6 potential participants who served as Directors of OSEP and met the sampling criteria. No viable contact information was available for OSEP Directors Judy Schrag and Ken Warlick. For the purpose of this study, we defined viable contact information as email addresses that resulted in establishing communications after five contact attempts by electronic mail. In accord with institutional review board (IRB) procedures, we did not make cold calls (telephone calls or text messages that were not scheduled in advance by electronic mail).

Of the 13 potential participants, we managed to connect with 8 participants (see Table 2), and each agreed and participated in the study. Of the five potential participants we could not contact, three were interim appointees to their posts. The participants in the study represent presidential administrations starting from 1967, Dr. Edwin Martin, serving from 1967 to 1981, up to 2012 with Dr. Alexa Posny serving under the George W. Bush and Obama administrations.

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Table 2.

Officials in Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services (OSERS) and Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP), U.S. Department of Education.

Date	OSERS Secretary	Date	OSEP Director
1979–1981	Edwin A. Martin
1981–1982	Jean Tufts
1983–1989	Madeleine Will	1986–1989	Tom Bellamy
1989–1993	Robert Davilla	1990	Judy Schraga
1993–2001	Judith Heumann	1993–1999 1999	Tom Hehir Ken Warlicka
2001–2004	Robert Pasternack	2002–2005	Stephanie Lee
2004	Troy Justesena
2004–2007	John Hager	2006–2009	Alexa Posny
2007–2009	Tracy Justesen
2009–2012	Alexa Posny	2010–2015	Melody Musgrove
2012–2016	Michael Yudin	2016–2019	Ruth Rydera
2016–2017	Sue Swensona
2017–	Kimberly Richeya
2018–	Johnny Collett	2018–	Laurie VanderPloeg

Note. Bolded officials were interviewed for this study. All dates and names were identified by the authors and by participants in this study.

a

officials served as acting or interim.

Each of the Assistant Secretaries of OSERS and Directors of OSEP engaged in either professional or advocacy work for people with disabilities before assuming their appointments. Will and Lee had done state legislative work. Posny and Hehir had experience as leaders in school districts. Pasternak and Posny had worked as state director of special education and, Posny later served as state commissioner of education. Pasternack and Heumann both held leadership roles in states’ developmental disabilities councils. Martin, Bellamy, Hehir, and Posny worked in higher education. These individuals represent 45 years of federal leadership in special education.

Procedure

With IRB approval, the interviews were conducted during 2015–2017 with 8 participants. The first author conducted the interviews by telephone. The protocol consisted of semi-structured, open-ended items, focused on participants’ experiences while serving in these positions. Each interview lasted approximately 2 hr. In addition, six participants took part in a face-to-face focus group in Washington D.C. that lasted for 5 hr. All the data collected were saved in a digital recording device. Each participant, Assistant Secretaries of OSERS and Directors of OSEP, answered the following questions:

At times, the first author used follow-up questions to clarify and expand on specific answers the participants provided. A professional transcriber transcribed each interview verbatim as well as the focus group recording. The average number of pages per participant was 30 single-spaced pages, with interviews ranging from 17 to 40 pages. A few of the participants sent additional data sources such as their list of goals and/or their curriculum vitae.

Data Analysis

We took a phenomenological approach (Buttimer, 1976) to documenting participants’ perspectives on their tenure at the USED and their views on the federal role in special education. The “basic datum of phenomenology is the conscious human being” or the lived experiences of the participants in the research (Bentz & Shapiro, 1998, p. 98), therefore the transcribed interviews were key texts in our analysis.

Each author analyzed a portion of the data independently. Then, the researchers compared coding results to find agreement on data coding. Henceforth, the first two authors coded each interview separately and discussed their analyses jointly. The same steps were followed on generation of themes. In the beginning of data analysis, we used seven a priori codes based on concepts related to leadership (Gorton & Alston, 2009) such as vision, which many consider essential in leadership, functions such as setting goals and priorities, and codes from the interview protocol such as accomplishments, challenges, politics, and familial experiences. However, the next three phases of data analysis was conducted using inductive coding of the interview data. Line-by-line analysis of the interview data led to 12 additional inductive codes such as commitment to students with disability, advocacy, political sophistication, responsiveness to parents and families, historical perspective, bureaucracy, inclusion, duality of general and special education, resistance to change, fight for visibility in administration discussions, close relationships, and collaboration. Secondary inductive analysis of the codes resulted in 12 combined codes such as politics, finance, accomplishments, impact of DOE career professionals, bipartisan support for students with disabilities, controversies, adjustment of language to context, familial experiences, advocacy, rules and regulations, alliances, and critique of teacher preparation. During the third phase, we analyzed the combined codes of the data, and developed several themes that cut across eras of OSERS and OSEP leadership.

Familial Life Experiences

This topic was important for the participants in the study and seemed to be a thread as they discussed efforts in building coalitions when working with Congress to pass legislation that would benefit students with disabilities. Four participants had children or siblings with disabilities, and one is a person with disabilities. In their discussions on success in facilitating development of legislation that benefited students with disabilities the participants (OSERS Assistant Secretaries) noted the importance of congressional staff who had children with disabilities in enabling cross-party collaboration. On IDEA reauthorization, one of the participants stated, “you know some major players there [in Congress] have children with disabilities.”

Four of the eight participants mentioned either their own children or siblings with Down syndrome and specifically said that what they were trying to accomplish was grounded in their experiences with their family members and lack of services for them. Madeleine Will (Assistant Secretary of OSERS, 1983–1989) is a mother of a son with Down syndrome and as a parent she experienced the absence of early intervention programs and transition services after high school. She explained her interest in early intervention:

And that’s why my priorities were to strengthen the early intervention program and the three to five program. I had that on a little piece of yellow paper that I carried in my wallet with me because I thought it was just devastating to be told that there weren’t enough spaces for my son to be in a program.

As a person with disabilities, Judy Heumman (Assistant Secretary of OSERS, 1993–2001), worked to make disability a part of the overall agenda of the Clinton administration. Inclusion of students with disabilities in state assessments under Goals 2000: Educate America Act was a major driver for such visibility.

Robert Pasternack, who served as Assistant Secretary in the Bush administration from 2001 to 2004, described his role as the guardian for his brother who had Down syndrome as “one of the most important experiences” that he had. Early “horrible experiences” his brother had while institutionalized shaped his work in New Mexico and later at OSERS. He shut down institutions for the developmentally disabled when he was a chairman of the Governor’s Developmental Disabilities Planning Council. He said that “I’ve really focused on the premise . . . the philosophical premise that people with developmental disabilities should be integral parts of the community.”

Stephanie Lee, Director of OSEP from 2002 to 2005, had a daughter Laura with Down syndrome. She described the importance of her experience as a parent:

My personal experience as a mom really helped ground me in reality. So, for instance when we were talking about access to the general curriculum, I knew that my daughter had never been taught that the world was round. She has done apples for three years in a row . . . So, I had very strong views about what we needed to do to improve things based on my own personal experience.

Later, Lee worked to extend post-secondary access to students with disabilities when her daughter asked which college she was going to attend.

Accomplishments as Legislation and Regulations

Participants counted among their important accomplishments progress to ensure that services and materials were accessible to students with disabilities by facilitating passage of major legislation by Congress, writing regulations, disbursing discretionary grants to states and higher education institutions for personnel preparation, research, and national centers that would promote development and implementation of innovations such as Universal Design, Response to Intervention, and Positive Behavior Supports. The accomplishments shared by OSERS Assistant Secretaries (see Table 3) and OSEP Directors (see Table 4) illustrate similarities in their agendas and efforts across time.

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Table 3.

Major Accomplishments of OSERS Assistant Secretaries during Term of Appointment.

Participant	Accomplishments
Edwin Martin1967–1981	• Formed the Bureau of Education for the Handicapped under Title VI of PL 89-750 (the ESEA amendments of 1967)• Enabled the Bureau to connect training, research, and captioned films under the Title VI and PL 89-313 grants (Title VI of the Senate ESEA Amendments of 1966)• Provided leadership in drafting the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, PL 94-142 of 1975• Promoted Section 504 regulations extending the 1973 Rehabilitation Act• Disseminated regulations for PL 94-142 Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975
Madeleine Will1983–1989	• Refused Reagan Administration proposal to block grant IDEA thus reinforcing the federal role in ensuring the rights of students with disabilities to a free appropriate public education• Expanded services for people with disabilities across the lifespan through the early intervention and transition programs• Proposed the Regular Education Initiative policy supporting inclusive education of students with developmental disabilities• Laid the groundwork for transition amendments in the 1990 IDEA reauthorization and initiated the focus on self-determination in transition mandates and special education practice• Provided groundwork for passage of Part H of the 1986 reauthorization of the Education of the Handicapped Act, which provided services for infants and toddlers who had disabilities or were at risk for disabilities - Integration of services across federal and state agencies in administration and delivery of services, - Introduced the Individual Family Service Plans (IFSP) for infants and toddlers
Judith Heumann1993–2001	• Supported inclusion of students with disabilities in the Goals 2000 Act of 1994• Provided groundwork for reauthorization of IDEA in 1997• Supported efforts during the 1997 reauthorization to prevent expulsion of students with disabilities based on acts related to their disabilities• Emphasized the enforcement and implementation of IDEA• Hired people with disabilities in leadership roles across OSERS and OSEP• Advanced the implementation of the Americans with Disabilities Act throughout governmental agencies
Robert Pasternack2001–2004	• Participated in the President’s Commission on Excellence in Special Education• Promoted inclusion of accountability measures for students with disabilities in No Child Left Behind Act of 2001• Provided leadership leading to the 2004 reauthorization of Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act
Alexa Posny2009–2012	• Collaborated across agencies to prepare for reauthorization of NCLB as the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015• Promoted use of RtI in Title I of ESSA• Supported technical assistance centers to assist in the implementation of RtI, PBIS, and UDL for all students• Worked to align special education teacher evaluations with those for general education teachers under Race to the Top

ESEA = Elementary and Secondary Education Act; ESSA = Every Student Suceeds Act; IDEA = Individuals with Disabilities Education Act; OSERS = Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services; OSEP = Office of Special Education Programs; NCLB = No Child Left Behind; PBIS = Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports; UDL = Universal Design in Learning.

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Table 4.

Major Accomplishments of OSEP Directors during Term of Appointment.

Participant	Accomplishments
Tom Bellamy1986–1989	• Assisted Madeleine Will in balancing conflicting demands by the Reagan White House and the field at large• Bridged gap between the policy and the professional groups• Mediated the interest and proposals of the staff and the interests and proposals of the administration• Oversaw funding for research on PBIS• Promoted focus on student outcomes
Tom Hehir1993–1999	• Participated in planning committee drafting priority items for reauthorization of IDEA of 1997• Supported Heumann’s policy for manifestation determination under the 1997 IDEA reauthorization• Advocated for students with disabilities to have access to standards and assessments and to be included in accountability• Promoted the concept of access to the general curriculum• Advocated shifting the focus to outcomes for students with disabilities
Stephanie Lee2002–2005	• Participated in developing regulations, guidance, and implementation related to students with disabilities for NCLB of 2001• Participated in development of the Title I regulations for alternate achievement standards for students with the most significant cognitive disabilities• Advocated for implementation and reauthorization proposals of IDEA to align with NCLB• Led early proposals for results-driven accountability in OSEP regulations• Implemented the Continuous Improvement and Focused Monitoring System• Organized focus groups and worked with staff and the Office of Management and Budget to develop early childhood and postsecondary outcome indicators and long-term performance measures for all OSEP programs• Spearheaded the focus on UDL• Facilitated the development of NIMAS standards for accessible instructional materials that appeared in the 2004 reauthorization
Alexa Posny2006–2007	• Introduced modified assessments based on modified achievement standards to bridge the gap between alternate assessments and regular assessments with accommodations• Worked on introducing RtI through IDEIA regulations

IDEA = Individuals with Disabilities Education Act; IDEIA = Individuals with Diabilities Education Improvement Act; NCLB = No Child Left Behind; NIMAS = National Instructional Materaials Accessibiltiy; OSEP = Office of Special Education Programs; PBIS = Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports; UDL = Universal Design in Learning.

Continuity of Policy on Special Education

A remarkable but indirect finding from participants’ interviews in the study was the degree of continuity in our participants’ goals, advocacy, and understanding of change processes. According to Hehir, Director of OSEP from 1993 to 1999,

I think we’ve been fortunate in our field of special ed in having some relatively consistent leadership across administrations. And so, I think that, for instance, during the Bush Administration, Stephanie Lee essentially prevented a lot of bad things from happening. And that’s a good policy result as well.

Hehir pointed out that all of the Assistant Secretaries of OSERS and Directors of OSEP worked from the same legislative framework, IDEA, during their tenures: “We’ve had the same essential policy since the passage of the law, whereas No Child Left Behind is totally different than what existed before in the ESEA.”

All participants expressed respect for the efforts of career staff in pushing the work forth. Most participants spoke about the importance of career professionals at OSERS and OSEP in continuing to move the issues forward during transitions between Presidential administrations. They also described the role career staff in the USED play in the transmission of knowledge about special education policy and politics. According to Posny,

Things change every time a new political appointee comes on board. And, it’s really complicated for the political appointee depending upon what level of knowledge they have when they walk in that door; that’s what makes the difference. That’s the one thing about OSEP and OSERS, there are so many career people, yes, but a number of them are retiring now, so they’re going to lose a lot of that historic knowledge.

The participants also discussed the evolution of the special education field and their contribution to its growth.

Challenges, Controversies, and Politics

Each Assistant Secretary and Director faced unique challenges. Collectively, they discussed changes in the legislative process, the political nature of their appointments, controversies around specific legislation or issues, the temporary nature of their positions, politics associated with disability, pushback by the disability community and organizations, the importance of terminology and wording in policy, and the influence of decreases or lack of funding on setting priorities, OSERS’ role within the USED, and fighting for visibility in the larger administration discourse.

In his early years as Director of the BEH, Ed Martin, worked closely with advocates and Congressional staff to establish a federal infrastructure and to advocate for authorizing legislation that would guarantee a FAPE for students with disabilities. Each Assistant Secretary and Director faced unique challenges and controversies that were marked by the politics of the time they served. Martin, for example, worked directly with legislators in Congress to develop bills that addressed the needs of students with disabilities. This was the time when many students with disabilities were neither identified nor served by public schools:

When [Hugh] Carey [who represented New York in the United States House of Representative from 1961 to 1974] first approached me about a new bill, I had been up until that time, a college professor and knew zilch about the Congress. Carey told me to develop a bill for the handicapped, like Title I of Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA). I talked with the Legislature’s Counsel, and we laid out a bill. He pointed out that we couldn’t do the same kind of formula that Title 1 of ESEA used (which was a per child grant) because even if there were a million kids, we were talking about $100 million to start, roughly. The amount the government was paying at that time was a thousand dollars per kid or a couple thousand. And so what we did was use a different formula. We took the percentage of children in a state versus the percentage in the country to calculate the federal share. If you had 10% of the kids, you had 10% of the funds. Carey didn’t like that and I understand why. It’s not as good a formula as we got through with later legislation. But then he said, well aren’t there just a few thousand of these kids? I said no, there are probably a million, but there may well be 3 or 4 million. He didn’t know that. He said he had been to the schools for the deaf and for the blind. I told him that in the public schools there are a lot of kids just sitting around and not getting special ed. They will start coming out of the woodwork when we start giving money to the schools. So, that piece of legislation had a grant to the states for the education . . . improvement, initiation and expansion of the program for the handicapped. It also had a Title II, books and materials. In Title III, I put in authorization for a model of an exemplary program. Title IV had training grants for special ed. and research, both of which were federal authorities already. Title V was grants to the states to strengthen states’ departments of education so they would have someone to administer the programs. That’s pretty close to what the ESEA was, except for the training and research that I put in.

Madeleine Will was offered the post of Assistant Secretary of OSERS when the Reagan Administration wanted to abolish the USED and attempted to block grant all education funds, thereby risking loss of a separate funding stream for students with disabilities. She refused to accept the post until she received assurances that IDEA would be funded. Tom Bellamy, Director of OSEP under Will noted that after A Nation at Risk Report was issued in 1983, most of the emphasis was on general education reform and “anything about disability was conspicuously absent in the larger departmental agenda around school reform at the time.”

During Judy Heumann’s and Tom Hehir’s tenures as Assistant Secretary of OSERS and Director of OSEP, respectively, a Republican majority won Congress in the midterm elections during Clinton’s first term of office. According to Hehir, the Republican-led House had “A Contract with America” slogan, and they argued “very strongly about getting rid of the federal law as it related to IDEA and used IDEA as an example of federal overreach.” Other challenges included major pushback against inclusion from the American Federation of Teachers and from some disability organizations. Hehir stated that the idea that students with significant disabilities would be included was a “radical notion. Even though IDEA always had the least restrictive environment in it, you know, most people didn’t really think that that meant kids with the most significant disabilities.” Another challenge surrounding the 1997 reauthorization of IDEA was expulsion of students with disabilities.

Historical and Political Contexts

The historical and political contexts in which our participants served changed dramatically over time and across presidential administrations. In the early years when Martin served as Director of BEH and, later, as the head of what is now called OSERS, there was a high degree of bipartisan optimism about what could be accomplished through federal legislation. The ESEA of 1965 seemed to provide a chance to equalize educational opportunity by providing remedial education services to children who were poor and those who, prior to Brown v. Board of Education, had attended separate and unequal schools. Martin built on this optimism and commitment to educational opportunity to get similar legislation for children with disabilities. As reported in Karanxha et al. (in press), the passing of the Education of the Handicapped Act of 1975 was largely a result of Martin’s political savvy, development of relationships, his understanding of the power of legislation and the offices that administer it, and his persistent advocacy for children with disabilities.

By the early 1980s, skepticism about the federal role in education led Ronald Reagan to attempt to abolish the newly established USED, to block grant all education funds, and to dismantle IDEA. When appointed as Assistant Secretary of OSERS, Madeleine Will refused to accept the office until IDEA was no longer in jeopardy. Under her leadership and that of Tom Bellamy as Director of OSEP (from 1986 to 1989), IDEA services were extended to include infants and toddlers, and a roadmap for transition services for adolescents was created.

During the 1990s, the Clinton administration provided incentives to states for adopting standards-based reform through Goals 2000: Educate America Act and a planned reauthorization of IDEA. However, by the end of the Clinton administration, IDEA was once again threatened by those who attributed blame for school shootings such as Columbine on mental health issues and disability. Again, a coordinated advocacy effort, as described by Lee, Will and Heumann (Karanxha et al., in press), led to a “positive reauthorization of IDEA that protected the rights of students with disabilities.”

Following attempts to strip IDEA of FAPE protections during the late 1990s, President George W. Bush’s signature legislation, No Child Left Behind (NCLB) of 2001 was enacted. NCLB built on, and consolidated, the standards-based accountability movement into federal law soon after Robert Pasternack (2001–2004) became Assistant Secretary of OSERS. President Bush responded to concerns about the status of students with disabilities by convening the President’s Commission on Excellence in Special Education (PECSE). The PECSE report provided groundwork for reauthorization of IDEA in 2004 and outlined the needs for inclusive education, for improved services for students with significant disabilities, for improved post-school outcomes for students with disabilities, and for use of evidence-based practices such as Response to Intervention (RtI), Positive Behavior Support (PBS), and Universal Design in Learning (UDL). Pasternack and Lee both described the discussions regarding how best to include students with disabilities in states’ assessment systems. Lee, for example, commented,

Once I came on board, I realized that NCLB and how it impacts students with disabilities and the people who teach them, had to be a top priority. I was in a meeting at the White House, and senior people in the Department when they were first discussing the NCLB regulations and said, “what about students with significant cognitive disabilities? Will they have the same standards and the same assessments, or are we going to think about an alternate?” And that’s how we got started with that. The one percent assessment based on alternative achievement standards was a very hard fought battle to get through. I always use the analogy of ‘let’s not push these kids off a cliff, but you could build a ramp to the grade level content standards.

Posny described her efforts to incorporate RtI, PBS, and UDL into reauthorization of the ESEA under President Obama as follows: “When thinking about reauthorization of IDEA, I knew that ESEA always has to come first.”

Advocacy for Persons with Disabilities

Each of the Assistant Secretaries of OSERS and Directors of OSEP addressed the challenges posed by these contexts with fierce advocacy based on their personal experiences as parents, siblings, or persons with disabilities and/or their experience at multiple levels of the education system. As parents of children with Down syndrome, Will and Lee both experienced gaps in their children’s education and their hopes for the future. For Pasternack, his brother’s experience shaped his vision for an inclusive society. Heumann has been a major figure in the disability rights movement from leading protests at UC Berkeley to her advocacy for hiring people with disabilities within OSERS. Martin’s early experience as a professor in Alabama during the Civil Rights Era led to his later advocacy for persons with disabilities.

Advocacy of parents of children with disability who were either congressional elected officials and/or staffers was also a recurring theme throughout the interviews. Parent advocates have played a significant role in passage of legislation from the early years prior to EHA of 1975 through the reauthorization of IDEA in 2004. According to our participants, issues related to disability reach beyond politics and party affiliation. As a result, each reauthorization has received bipartisan support.

Each of the Assistant Secretaries and Directors of OSEP was able to draw on political sophistication gained through their previous professional and advocacy work for people with disabilities. All spoke of using their federal posts as a bully pulpit for elevating a unified message that mobilized and focused stakeholder input in the legislative process. All worked with leaders from national organizations to gain support for their efforts. As a group, they knew who needed to be influenced among stakeholders, consumers, superiors in the USDE, and legislators.

Transition and Adult Outcomes

All expressed interest in and described activities they had undertaken related to early childhood and transition to adulthood. All were advocates for students with significant disabilities for whom they felt the current system was not working well. All were concerned with outcomes for adults with disabilities. The issue of transition became one of Madeleine Will’s priorities and she was instrumental in laying the groundwork for the transition amendments that continued to be a priority for OSERS Assistant Secretaries in the administrations that followed. According to Judy Heumann:

The whole issue of transition and the work of students and really raising expectations of educators, students, and parents that disabled people could work, and making sure they were getting the opportunities that they needed—much of it had to be driven at the state and local level. We were kind of like a bell at the top, trying to ring the bell to make sure these issues were being discussed.

Teacher Preparation Programs

Virtually all the participants described what they saw as the need for improvements in teacher education and the challenges of leveraging change in institutions of higher education that are guided by a complex and varied array of state credentialing systems for education personnel. All the participants indicated that the preparation of new educators is critically important for the field of special education. They also expressed little confidence that the current IDEA funds for personnel preparation have had the impacts that they had hoped or anticipated. The reasons behind their skepticism seem to revolve around the relatively small amount of funding available for personnel preparation, and what they perceived as the inability or unwillingness of colleges and universities to respond to what these leaders saw as the needs of the field. For example, Tom Hehir stated, “we needed, as you could probably see in the priorities, to have more money in model demonstration projects and leadership. We felt that there were other areas of investment that were market failures.”

All participants had an inclusive vision for children and youth as well as adults with disabilities, though their visions for inclusion were expressed in different ways. Pasternack focused on the outcomes of special education,

When you look at the fact that kids with disabilities drop out at twice the rate of non-disabled kids, and you look at the stagnant academic achievement results, there are a whole bunch of reasons why special ed is not that special for the vast majority of kids who are receiving special education.

Heumann argued that the term “special education” is wrong and that special education services are too often used as a default placement for students whom teachers do not want in their classes. Posny emphasized that we will always need a field of special education but that her vision would be to “ . . . do away with special education as a separate entity and just have a field of education.” Based on the difficult battles to get education for every child, Martin stated,

Inclusion is what our whole society wants. The general trend of the civil rights movement is based on the premise that we should be inclusive, but many people feel that the radical inclusionist perspective is a dangerous path unless there is enough accountability for what goes on. I think the future is that more and more special ed instruction will take place in the regular education classroom, but special education instruction means individually designed instruction.

At the time of these interviews, our participants expressed concern regarding how their values and principles would be reflected in future legislation. For example, Martin states,

When we passed the Education of the Handicapped Act of 1975, Congress worked in a bi-partisan way. To me, right now, I don’t see much of that anymore. I still think the desire for that exists in society. We have made progress, but it’s far from where we hoped it would be.

Posny and Lee discuss the loss of key legislators who have reliably supported the rights of children and youth with disabilities and the federal government’s role in assuring those rights.

Reflecting on the field and its progress, Martin stated, “One part of me says we’ve come a long way; another part of me says we have a long way to go.” Heumann, asserted that the accomplishments of the past 40 years are “remarkable—persons with disabilities have gained access through the Americans with Disabilities Act and children who, at one time, would not have been in school are now educated because of IDEA.” Hehir critically remarked, “the good news is we got the kids much more in the mainstream, and the bad news is we got the kids much more in the mainstream, because that mainstream isn’t what it should be.”