"What's the big IDEA?": The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act & You

By: Jacob Witt

I attended the University of California, Santa Barbara. I majored in Writing & Literature through the College of Creative Studies, a program that admits approximately 400 undergraduate students each academic year, 75% of whom eventually go on to Graduate School. I received two awards in college: Outstanding Studentship & University Service. I’ve been published numerous times as a poet and journalist, and I’m working on the manuscript of my book. These may be impressive achievements, but I can’t place all of this wholly at my own feet. As an autistic person, my experience of education, up until I began college and was no longer eligible for them, was typified by regular consultations to maintain my Individualized Education Plan and, as a result, my participation in an educational curriculum uniquely modified to best suit my needs. My educational experience, that is, was shaped by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and the services it assured me. 

While legislation that, undeniably, impacts the lives of numerous disabled people – data showing that 7.5 million students aged 3 to 21 received Special Education or some other service through the IDEA from 2022 to 2023 [1] – there is a good possibility that many Americans may not be fully familiar with it. Research has found that more than 70% of Americans fail basic civic literacy quizzes [2]. Thus, this article will explain the scope of the IDEA, its history, its flaws, and proposed expansions, and, most importantly, how they can make it work best for them.

WHAT IS THE IDEA?

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, its name often abbreviated to the IDEA, is, going by the textual description of the government-operated website explaining it, a law that makes available a Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE) to eligible children with disabilities throughout the nation and ensures special education and related services to those children, supports early intervention services for infants and toddlers and their families, and awards competitive discretionary grants [3]. Within that description, a “Free Appropriate Public Education” is defined as special education and related services provided at public expense and under public supervision, without any charge for services directed for disabled students and their families, and a public education that is in accordance with the standards of the state’s educational agency - providing an appropriate preschool, elementary, and secondary school education under public direction and in accordance with the plan laid out in the student’s individualized education program [4]. 

Meanwhile, a child who is eligible for the assurances provided to them by the IDEA, a child with a disability, is defined as one who has: 

“...intellectual disabilities, hearing impairments (including deafness), speech or language impairments, visual impairments (including blindness), serious emotional disturbance (referred to in this chapter as “emotional disturbance”), orthopedic impairments, autism, traumatic brain injury, other health impairments, or specific learning disabilities; and who, by reason thereof, needs special education and related services.” [5]

To achieve its promises of providing a Free Appropriate Public Education for Disabled Students, the IDEA requires the provision of Individualized Education Programs (IEPs), written statements for each disabled child, outlining their present academic achievements and functional performance. This includes how their disability impacts their involvement and progress through an educational curriculum, and then establishing annual academic and functional goals that will allow them to be involved and make progress in a general education curriculum, and meet any other existing educational needs. Access to Assistive Technology is included amongst the assurances made to those who benefit from the IDEA, so long as it is required for a child’s special education, related services, or supplementary aids and services. 

HISTORY OF THE IDEA

The IDEA’s history begins with prior federal legislation, supported by family associations, that laid the foundation for early intervention and special education programs, which the IDEA itself would later formally create a strong legal mandate for. Legislation of this character includes the Training of Professional Personnel Act of 1959, one of many that assisted those in the field of education via providing grants for their training on how to teach children with intellectual disabilities. The Teachers of the Deaf Act of 1961 is another, fulfilling a similar purpose of training instructional personnel on how to educate children who were deaf or hard of hearing. The Handicapped Children’s Early Education Act of 1968 and the Economic Opportunities Amendment of 1972 authorized support for exemplary early childhood programs and increased Head Start enrollment for young, disabled children [5]. 

Even with such policies in place, conditions for students with disabilities were poor. In 1975, the year of the policy that would become the IDEA’s passage, Congress had identified that out of an approximate 8 million disabled children, only 3.9 million were receiving an appropriate education, with others either not being properly identified as disabled and, therefore, struggling or being completely without education altogether. In response, President Gerald R. Ford signed the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975 (the EHA), also known as Public Law 94-142, on November 29th, 1975 [6].

Through the EHA, disabled children were guaranteed Free Appropriate Public Education in every state and locality across the country, with its four guarantees being access to that Free Appropriate Public Education, the protection of disabled children and their families, the assistance of states and localities in providing an education for disabled children, and the continuous assessment and assurance of the effectiveness of efforts to educate all children with disabilities.

Subsequent reauthorizations of the EHA brought with them early intervention and the extension of the EHA’s guarantees to a disabled child upon birth in 1986, the changing of the EHA’s name to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in 1990, and myriad expansions in 1997, which included an increase in access to general curriculum, permitting states to raise the definition of developmental delay up to age nine, and requiring that caregivers get an opportunity to resolve disputes with schools and Local Education Agencies (LEAs) through mediation.

A living document, the IDEA has been expanded not just through reauthorizations but also through precedents set by Supreme Court cases, with noteworthy court rulings including: 

• Cedar Rapids Community School District V. Garett F., a 1999 ruling which determined schools are required to provide continuous, one-on-one nursing care for disabled children and that medical treatments like suctioning, ventilator checks, catheterization, and any other treatment which non-physician personnel could administer, is a “related service,” covered by the IDEA, rather than a “medical service,” not covered by the IDEA [7]

•  Forest Grove School District v. T.A., a 2009 ruling which found that the IDEA authorizes reimbursement for private special education services when a public school has failed to provide a “Free Appropriate Public Education” and the private special education service is appropriate, regardless of whether the child had previously received special education services through the public school, extending a caregiver’s ability to seek relief after a school has failed to act in service of a disability [8].

• Endrew F. V. Douglas County School District, a 2017 ruling which found that a school must provide more than a trivial or minor benefit to a disabled student to fulfill the IDEA-established mandate for a Free, Appropriate Public Education and, instead, must provide an IEP reasonably calculated for a child to make progress appropriate in light of their circumstances [9].

CRITICISMS OF THE IDEA

While broad in its range of assurances regarding the quality of life and education for students with disabilities, the IDEA has been criticized on numerous fronts. IEPs, as mandated by the IDEA, are supposed to be funded at 40% by the federal government. In actuality, the federal government funds less than 12% of special education costs [10].

As a consequence of this and also a nationwide shortage of educators, which the recent COVID-19 pandemic only exacerbated, there are discrepancies in the availability of the services provided by the IDEA on a state-by-state basis. Research from 2022 found that parents in Connecticut only had to wait a maximum of 45 days for their child to be evaluated and placed with an IEP, whilst parents in West Virginia would find the same process could take up to 110. Nationwide, there exist differences between the means by which eligibility for the services provided by the IDEA is identified; some states not taking into account whether or not a child has one of the 13 disabilities identified as grounds for IDEA-ensured services, others not accepting external medical assessment, and some not requiring an assessment by the school [11]. 

This situation is further complicated under the present Trump administration, wherein staff members of the Department of Education’s Office of Special Education, tasked with distributing funding connected to the IDEA, have faced mass layoffs which, on October 11th of 2025, reduced the office’s staff to all but two senior members amidst a wider reduction in force that year which ultimately reduced the department’s total workforce by 460 people [12]. This runs parallel to a policy track record in which the Trump administration has favored school vouchers, which direct federal funding to private schools, at a cost to disabled students because private schools are not subject to the same IDEA compliance mandates as public schools. This enables them to isolate disabled students in separate classrooms, deny them services like speech therapy, and exclude them from inaccessible aspects of the curriculum if they see fit [13]. 

Beyond issues of funding, the IDEA has also been criticized for failing to live up to its promise of meaningful access to education opportunities for disabled children, specifically for students of color and low-income students, due to flaws identified with how marginalized and low-income families may engage with the IDEA compared to non-marginalized and wealthier families. A key example is that the IDEA is dependent upon the advocacy of parents and caregivers to enforce its mandate (much like the ADA is dependent upon people bringing non-compliance to court to enforce it), which is much less accessible to parents and caregivers whom cannot afford litigation, may not have access to knowledge upon the legal entitlements owed to their child, and may flatly not be comfortable filing due process claims, necessary for the enforcement of the IDEA. 

Studies have also found parents of color have needed to be much more vehement in their advocacy for their child’s access to resources under the IDEA in a way that white parents have not, and encountered communication barriers with school administrators such as being perceived as security threats and aggressive, facing assumptions about their level of education, and finding that administrators failed to disclose details about their child’s education plan, inappropriately delayed requests for related services, or outright ignored them [14]. 

There are myriad proposals to address the IDEA's shortcomings. The provision of legal advocates into IEP teams, the creation of an ombudsman’s office in each school district, the provision of liaison “navigators” who could coach caregivers on the formal and informal rules of parental advocacy, and the provision of individual legal assistance have all been raised by scholars, like UCLA Law Professor LaToya Baldwin-Clark, as solutions to the barriers impacting IDEA accessibility for poor and racially-marginalized people. There are also policy proposals, such as the IDEA Full Funding Act and the IDEA Fairness Restoration Act, that are under consideration by the government. 

The IDEA Full Funding Act, introduced to the House of Representatives on April 2nd of 2025, and then redirected to the House Committee on Education and Workforce that same date, aims to fulfill, exactly, the promise outlined in its name: fully funding the IDEA and, by extension, special education throughout the country, requiring that federal government commit to fund 40% of the average per pupil expenditure for special education (the amount originally outlined in the text of the IDEA as owed), rather than only providing the 12% which research has born out is being provided [15]. 

Parallel to this, the IDEA Fairness Restoration Act – introduced into the House of Representatives on November 14th, 2007 and numerous times thereafter (most recently reintroduced in the Senate on September 10th, 2014), and bipartisanly sponsored by Tom Harkin, Chris Van Hollen, and Pete Sessions — would allow caregivers prevailing in IDEA cases to recover reasonable costs for attorneys and expert witnesses; the latter case including for any tests or evaluations which were necessary for the case [16]. This is much like Title Seven of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, and seven other federal laws that permit the recovery of expert witness fees. 

MAKING THE IDEA WORK FOR YOU

Even with the demand for reform, third parties have already prepared some resources to ensure that the IDEA best serves disabled students and their parents or caregivers. The Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates (CPAA) provides a comprehensive post on its website outlining what to do before, during, and after an IEP meeting.

In their post, advisement for before the meeting includes encouragement that parents and caregivers organize all pre-existing documentation and paperwork about their child either into a tabbed binder or an online equivalent such as a service like Google Drive, practice awareness of why their child is eligible for an IEP and what their needs are and where their areas of need are, prepare their Vision/Parent Input Statement – a document outlining what they would like to see their child’s IEP focus on and feature – in advance of the meeting, and request documentation from the LEA like updated progress reports and outlines of goals, accommodations, placement recommendations, and evaluations. 

For during the meeting, the CPAA encourages active listening and engagement, note-taking, respectful conduct, an emphasis upon Specific, Measurable, Action-word based, Realistic, and Time-Limited (SMART) IEP Goals, and open-mindedness, with the CPAA also stressing that caregivers should be conscious of the Prior Written Notice (PWN) provision of the IDEA, requiring that a school district provide caregivers with the previously-mentioned prior written notice whenever proposing initiating or refusing a change to their child’s identification, evaluation, or educational placement, or, their provision of a Free Accessible Public Education. 

Finally, after the meeting, the CPAA encourages reviewing provided documentation, such as the IEP, and, if one has been provided by the district, any Prior Written Notice, maintaining active communication with teachers and other service providers, gaining assurance that teachers and other service providers have reviewed the updated IEP, periodically checking schoolwork against the IEP to make sure the terms of it are being honored, and, if necessary, notifying the Special Education department if the terms of the IEP are not being honored - not hesitating to schedule an IEP as soon as is possible in the face of any concern [17]. 

CONCLUSION: A FREE, ACCESSIBLE PUBLIC EDUCATION

The IDEA and its capability to enhance an educational curriculum means a night-and-day difference in the quality of education that children in the United States receive. It was, in my own life, in no small part because of my Individualized Education Plan that my talents were best allowed to develop and shine as I engaged with educational curriculum throughout my life. For that reason, literacy with regard to the IDEA has a clear and undeniable value, with my hope being that any readers, whether they are simply studious on policy or preparing for their first IEP Team meeting, remember the contents of this article, have them serve as the impetus to further research on this topic, and, in doing so, better the IDEA, either through advocating for the necessary improvements to it or keeping in mind what must be done to experience the best version of it. 

REFERENCES

[1] National Center for Education Statistics. (2024). Students With Disabilities. Condition of Education. U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cgg.

[2] U.S Chamber of Commerce Foundation (2024). New Study Finds Alarming Lack of Civic Literacy Among Americans. U.S Chamber of Commerce Foundation. https://www.uschamberfoundation.org/civics/new-study-finds-alarming-lack-of-civic-literacy-among-americans 

[3] US Department of Education. Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. US Department of Education. https://sites.ed.gov/idea/statuteregulations/ 

[4] Team, LegalClarity. (2026) What is FAPE under the IDEA? LegalClarity https://legalclarity.org/what-is-fape-free-appropriate-public-education-under-idea/ 

[5] US Department of Education. Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. US Department of Education. https://sites.ed.gov/idea/statuteregulations/ 

[6] US Department of Education. (2024) A History of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. US Department of Education. https://sites.ed.gov/idea/IDEA-History 

[7] US Department of Education. (2026). The Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) - History & Evolution. US Department of Education https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEuCdzoAnME 

[8] CEDAR RAPIDS COMMUNITY SCHOOL DIST. V. GARRET F. Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School, https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/96-1793 

[9] (2009). FOREST GROVE SCHOOL DISTRICT, PETITIONER v. T. A. Supreme Court of the United States. https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/08-305.ZO.html 

[10] ENDREW F. v. DOUGLAS COUNTY SCHOOL DIST. RE-1. Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School, https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/15-827 

[11] (2025). Van Hollen, Huffman Introduce Bill to Fully Fund Special Education. Chris Van Hollen U.S. Senator for Maryland. https://www.vanhollen.senate.gov/news/press-releases/04/07/2025/van-hollen-huffman-introduce-bill-to-fully-fund-special-education 

[12] Sterman, Joce, Molina, Daniela, Decker, Jon, et al. (2022). Unequal Education: Special education policies differ from state to state. Arnolt Center for Investigative Journalism. https://arnoltcenter.org/work/unequal-education-special-education-policies-differ-from-state-to-state/ 

[13] Métraux, Julia. (2025). Trump’s New Layoffs Hurt Disabled Kids. Mother Jones. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/10/trumps-new-layoffs-hurt-disabled-kids/ 

[14] Métraux, Julia. (2025). Project 2025’s Plan to Dismantle Public Education – And Screw Over Disabled Kids. Mother Jones. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/01/project-2025-trump-education-disabled-students/ 

[15] Davis, Liza. (2021). How the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act Fails Minority Students. Michigan Journal of Race & Law. https://mjrl.org/2021/02/18/how-the-individuals-with-disabilities-education-act-fails-minority-students/#_edn15 

[16] (2025). Van Hollen, Huffman Introduce Bill to Fully Fund Special Education. Chris Van Hollen U.S. Senator for Maryland. https://www.vanhollen.senate.gov/news/press-releases/04/07/2025/van-hollen-huffman-introduce-bill-to-fully-fund-special-education 

[17] (2014). S.2790 - IDEA Fairness Restoration Act. Senate of the United States. https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/senate-bill/2790/text 

[18] Allen, Shemica. (2024). IEP Tips & Strategies For Parents To Use Before, During, & After IEP Meetings. Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates. https://www.copaa.org/blogpost/895540/502922/IEP-Tips--Strategies-For-Parents-To-Use-Before-During--After-IEP-Meetings