The monograph examines the status of education for the handicapped and addresses the provisions of P.L. 98-199 The Education of the Handicapped Act Amendments of 1983. Chapter 1, on progress in the education of the handicapped, presents information on the following topics: (1) the number of handicapped students receiving a free, appropriate public education; (2) special education and related services personnel; (3) least restrictive environment; (4) student evaluation; (5) individualized education programs; and (6) regressive trends, including the impact of fiscal restraint on actual appropriations. Chapter 2 outlines provisions of P.L. 98-199 regarding such aspects as centers and services to meet the special needs of the handicapped, personnel recruitment and training, research and demonstration projects, and special programs for children with specific learning disabilities. The text of the amended law is included as well as a list of public policy resources that are available through the Council for Exceptional Children. (CL)

This book examines the joint effort of twentieth-century public schoool administrators and private philanthropy to initiate reforms to provide for children with learning difficulties. The author explores the development of these reforms from the establishment of special classes for backward children at the beginning of the century to the creation of programs for learning disabled children. He considers what this history tells us about current efforts to provide for at-risk students. He looks at both the way school administrators conceptualized childhood learning difficulties and the institutional arrangements which they introduced to accommodate these students, and pays particular attention to the preference of school administrators throughout this century for accommodating low achieving children in segregated classes and programs.

Schools, welfare agencies, and a wide variety of other state and local institutions of vital importance to citizens are actually controlled by attorneys and judges rather than governors and mayors. In this valuable book, Ross Sandler and David Schoenbrod explain how this has come to pass, why it has resulted in service to the public that is worse, not better, and what can be done to restore control of these programs to democratically elected—and accountable—officials. Sandler and Schoenbrod tell how the courts, with the best intentions and often with the approval of elected officials, came to control ordinary policy making through court decrees. These court regimes, they assert, impose rigid and often ancient detailed plans that can founder on reality. Newly elected officials, who may wish to alter the plans in response to the changing wishes of voters, cannot do so unless attorneys, court-appointed functionaries, and lower-echelon officials agree. The result is neither judicial government nor good government, say Sandler and Schoenbrod, and they offer practical reforms that would set governments free from this judicial stranglehold, allow courts to do their legitimate job of protecting rights, and strengthen democracy.

Specifically developed for students without an education background, this collection of readings provides accessible, essential articles for professors and students of introductory Foundations of Education courses.