2019 Volume 57 Issue 2 Pages 117-126
The present study examines actions taken by the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC) when appealing for the passage of legislation about the education of children with disabilities, in the general context of an examination of activities of professional organizations that try to improve special education and of groups that advocate for children with disabilities. At hearings of Congressional subcommittees, the CEC advocated for the proposed bill, urging that it contain a compliance mechanism, a provision for children to be served in the least restrictive environment, and a requirement for individualized education plans. Although previously published studies of the background of the enactment of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act examined it from the viewpoint of lawsuits over the right to education for children with disabilities and federal funding of state programs, the details of the CEC's activities have not been investigated. For the present study, the following documents were reviewed: (a) a publication of the CEC titled “State Law and Education of Handicapped Children” (Weintraub, Abeson, & Braddock, 1971), which was examined in order to demonstrate that the CEC had begun to pursue education for all children with disabilities before litigation began, (b) a CEC policy statement on the organization and administration of special education (CEC Policies Commission, 1973), which was examined in order to probe the ideas upon which the CEC's recommendations for the least restrictive environment and individualized education plans were based, and (c) reports of hearings before subcommittees of the Senate and the House of Representatives on bills related to education for children with disabilities, which were examined in order to illustrate points made by spokespeople for the CEC about the assurance of the appropriateness of special education and a guarantee of education for each child with a disability. The present analysis concludes that the meaning of the CEC's activities when lobbying Congress was that it was the CEC's mission and responsibility not only to advocate for the right to education for all children with disabilities, but also to aim at equal education for children with disabilities in the U.S. That led it in the direction of calling for each handicapped child to receive education designed for his or her needs.
