Requirements of Individuals with Disabilities Education Act IDEA
An individual with disabilities who needs to seek special education services should follow legal processes which involve various laws. For this to happen, the most significant law that an individual must understand is the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). IDEA is the nation’s special education law that provides protection and rights to children with disabilities, their parents and their legal guardians (Bouck, 2009). It ensures that every child with a disability has a right to free public education that suits and meets their unique needs and helps prepare them to further their education, career and independent living. Having learnt the legal rights under IDEA makes it easier for a parent or a legal guardian to get the help that their children needs and ensures that no child is left behind.
To ensure children with disabilities get fully involved, the school and the community should be able to include individuals with disabilities in various ways. One of the ways is to promote social inclusion in schools. Cultural consciousness on how people interact and treat with a disability needs to change starting with the elementary schools. Individuals with disabilities need to be celebrated and embraced for their differences (Dragoo, 2019). If taught at a younger age, there would be less discrimination and social inclusion would be more. The society has the responsibility to promote the inclusion of their differences.
The community should also view the disability community as a valuable consumer. People with disability are usually not represented in marketing products and should be included as the targeted audience and consumer. Additionally, employing people with disabilities who are ambitious and want to work is another way of including them. Employers need not discriminate the disability community against work. Another way is to integrate Disability History in School Curriculum. Disability history should be integrated within the school system for the community to understand. Further, the school and the community need to realize that individuals with disabilities are humans too. People with disabilities are a human being who have skills, talents, desires, loss and heartache just like every other individual. The community should also be able to increase disability representation in political settings. Young generation with disabilities should be encouraged to involve themselves in political campaigns to be able to incorporate the disability voice. The National Council of Disability (NCD) is an independent federal agency that created a voting questionnaire for individuals with all kinds of disabilities. Additionally, the school should provide a college scholarship to athletes with disabilities. Athletes with disabilities should be given a scholarship according to their athletic ability.
References
Bouck, E. C. (2009, March). No Child Left Behind, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and Functional Curricula: A Conflict of Interest? Education and Training in Developmental Disabilities, 44, 3-13.
Dragoo, K. E. (2019, August 29). Retrieved from The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) Funding: A Primer: https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R44624.pdf