Philip DiMattia

The IDEA's Least Restrictive Environment Mandate: Legal Implications:

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) states that students with disabilities are to be provided with a free appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment (LRE). During the early years of the IDEA, the courts generally deferred to school officials on LRE matters and ruled in favor of more restrictive placements. In some recent cases, however, courts have taken a more activist stance. These decisions may signal a new era in LRE case law. Nineteen years after the passage of P.L. 94–142, the courts may be growing impatient with school officials for not providing less restrictive environments for students with disabilities.

Seeking Social Justice: A Teacher Education Faculty’s Self Study

Committed in a general way to the idea of teaching and teacher education for social justice, the nine co-authors of this paper embarked upon a multi-year collaborative research and professional development project that came to be known as ‘Seeking Social Justice’. The project was designed to allow group members (all faculty in the same department) to examine their own understandings of social justice issues as part of the process of helping their students do the same as well as to encourage students to work for social change and effectively meet the needs of the increasingly diverse K-12 school population. In this article the authors discuss the framework for the project and the first two years of collaborative work. They suggest that their work together provides a ‘proof of possibility’ for faculty groups attempting to emphasize or infuse social justice into pre-service teacher education despite profound differences in politics, disciplines and perspectives. They argue that part of what made this possibl...

The Effect of Assistive Technology on Educational Costs: Two Case Studies

Until recently children with very profound disabilities-children who cannot speak and can move only their eyes or head-could be made comfortable, but by and large could not be educated. Assistive technologies now enable them to communicate and to be educated alongside their non-disabled peers. This is a wonderful development. But what is the financial cost? In this paper we look in detail at the costs associated with the education of two children who have used assistive technologies developed at our university and compare them with the educational costs had they not started using the assistive technologies. For these two children the costs of the technologies and special teachers hired are offset by savings from the tuition and transportation of sending them to special schools.

Legal Considerations in Providing Special Education Services in Parochial Schools

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) requires public school districts to provide special education and related services to students with disabilities enrolled in private schools. When the private school is a parochial school this issue may be complicated because of the First Amendments separation of church and state doctrine. Until recently, providing most on-site special education services was prohibited. A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision lifted the ban, and the 1997 amendments to IDEA have helped to clarify a school districts obligation for providing services to parochial school students. In this article the authors summarize and analyze the major court decisions concerned with the provision of special education and related services to parochial school students and discuss their implications for providing on-site special education services at parochial schools. In particular, two questions are addressed: Must private school students with disabilities be provided with the same level of services as their public school peers? Are school districts required to provide parochial school students with on-site special education services?

Accessing Internet Courses by Eye Movement and Head Movement

Education of people with very severe physical disabilities - people who cannot speak and are quadriplegic - can be greatly facilitated by the internet and by new computer access technologies. Five students between the ages of 17 and 24 have completed courses over the internet using access technologies that allow them to control the mouse pointer on the computer screen by moving just their eyes or head.