Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation: Rise and Fall … and Rise Again?

Abstract

Office Of Special Education and Rehabilitation: Rise and Fall . . . and Rise Again? * New leadership for the U.S. Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services and most of its subcomponents has now been nominated and is in the approval process. The nominees present promising backgrounds of professional experience in services for persons with disabilities and also are familiar with the problems people with disabilities face in our culture. These appointees offer the promise and hope for new energies and opportunities for the special education and rehabilitation communities across the nation and within the U.S. Department of Education. Historically, the federal government's role in special education and vocational rehabilitation has been an unusually significant one, particularly given the general emphasis on state and local control of education. The federal Rehabilitation Services Administration and its predecessors played a major role in developing the field of rehabilitation as it exists today. The agency's long-time Commissioner, Mary Switzer--a master bureaucrat in the best sense--formed coalitions with top professionals like Dr. Howard Rusk to create a field, as well as an agency. In the mid-1960s, the special education community lobbied successfully for congressional activity, which led to the establishment of the Ad Hoc Subcommittee on the Handicapped in the U.S. House of Representatives. The subcommittee, chaired by Hugh Carey of New York, held extensive hearings; and Carey introduced legislation that led to the first Education of the Handicapped Act in 1966 (Martin, 1968). A key ingredient of that legislation, opposed strenuously by the Administration, was the establishment by law of the Bureau of Education for the Handicapped. The creation of the bureau was a key element in bringing about a kind of Golden Age of special education in federal programming. The bureau played a leadership role in bringing together coalitions of parents and professionals, articulating needs of children with disabilities, building effective relationships with national and state special education leaders, and establishing a trust relationship with members of Congress and their staffs. During the next decade Congress passed a variety of federal programs building the supply of teachers, establishing research competencies, developing model programs in areas such as early childhood education and programs for children with severe and profound disabilities, and supporting new technology. The highlight of the bureau's activity was the establishment of a goal calling for education for every handicapped child by 1980 and ending the practice of exclusion of handicapped children from education programs (Martin, 1971). This goal was reached with the passage in 1975 of Public Law 94-142, the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, and its subsequent adoption by the states. From 1967 to 1980 federal funding for special education programs grew from $37 million to more than $1 billion. PROBLEMS FACING NEW LEADERS Progress by the Executive Branch in special education and rehabilitation since 1981 has been uneven, marked by some significant leadership activities, particularly its emphasis on the transition from school to work and the related concept of supported employment (Will, 1984), and by some spectacular failures. The most significant of these failures is the development of unfortunate divisions between key participants in the special education and rehabilitation communities and the federal agency, and, in some instances, within and among both groups. Deep divisions arose early in the Reagan Administration when the Administration proposed legislation that would have repealed the Rehabilitation Act and the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, essentially undoing the efforts by citizens with disabilities and their advocates over the past 20 or 30 years. …