Escaping IDEA: Freeing Parents, Teachers, and Students through Deregulation and Choice. Policy Analysis.

This policy analysis of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) in the context of current reauthorization efforts concludes that IDEA's central failure is the complex and adversarial process required to determine the size and nature of each disabled child's entitlement to special services through the Individualized Education Program (IEP) process. It suggests that the IEP process has failed to ensure an appropriate education for disabled children while marginalizing parents and creating a barrage of compliance-drive paperwork. The adversarial nature of IDEA is seen as undermining relationships between parents and educators, and pitting parents, especially poorer parents, against schools in a struggle over limited resources. The paper also finds that IDEA has precipitated a financial crisis in schools with regulatory compliance and litigation costs soaking up educational resources and with incorrect labeling of students as disabled to qualify for funding. It urges establishment of portable benefits for parents and reform of special education to allow parents to control how their child's educational dollars are spent in the public or private school of their choice. (Contains 130 references.) (DB)