Children with Disabilities and Equity in Education: Connecting Standards and Practice to Law and Ethics

Abstract

Some of the most controversial education policy concerns and methods of practice have been over Special Education. Students between the ages three to twenty-one with disabilities compromise 13% of student enrollment between prekindergarten and twelfth grade (U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, 2013) (Appendix A, Table 1,2,3). From the late eighteenth century to current times, the legal system and court case outcomes have played a major role in the development of public education in America. The Supreme Court’s 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education not only ruled racial segregation as unconstitutional, but became a landmark case that opened the doors for court involvement in refining educational policy concerning Special Education. Standards of practice, which have evolved through the years, began to take form to support educational leaders in how they approached adhering to laws and policy concerning the education of students identified as special needs learners. Chief Justice Earl Warren who spoke for the Supreme Court of the United States in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), stated:

In these days, it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education. Such an opportunity, where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms (Brown v. Bd. of Educ., 347 U.S. 483, 1954).

This case dispelled the notion that education could be offered to any group under the premise of separate but equal that had earlier been established in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) is a landmark United States Supreme Court decision in the jurisprudence of the United States, upholding the constitutionality of state laws requiring racial segregation in public facilities under the doctrine of “separate but equal” (Maidment, 1973).