THEREFORE, THE COMMITTEE RECOMMENDS THAT: 2. Congress should act to reduce the large gap between program authorization (authority to spend money) and program appropriation (actual money available to spend) in programs for the handicapped The Committee was dismayed to learn that limited operating funds will not allow a sufficient number of Advisory Committee meetings to be held; provide for sufficient travel of Bureau personnel; consultants for the Committee; or for sufficient personnel to operate the Bureau at maximum efficiency. It is important for the proper operation of Federal programs that the agency held responsible for performance should be equipped with highly regarded professional staff and the necessary tools to do the job. In this instance, it is vital that operating funds be made available to allow the staff to travel in order to consult with State and local educational agencies and institutions of higher learning to assist programs that need help and provide essential advice for new programs just getting started. We cannot think of a more wasteful approach to important social problems than to hire an efficient professional staff and then deny it the necessary tools to do an excellent job. The consequences of such shortsighted planning are that the highly qualified staff will leave, and, by default, the important job to be done in the Federal Government must be attempted with a less qualified group of professionals who will not have effective tools to accomplish their mission. THEREFORE, THE COMMITTEE RECOMMENDS THAT: 3. The Bureau of Education for the Handicapped should be provided with an adequate operating budget to allow it to accomplish its mission. The members of the Committee have learned more about the difficult and complicated processes by which new knowledge translates into action at the local school level. To accomplish the moves through the major phases of research, development, dissemination, implementation, and adoption, a variety of organizations are needed. One of the major, but unmet, organizational needs in the area of the handicapped is the need for research and development centers. Such centers would provide for the means by which knowledge is organized into effective sequences. This is required for the broad range of talent and personnel who are able to work consistently on major program development and curriculum development problems in the area of the handicapped. Without such organization, the teacher is forced to assume the equivalent role of being the composer of a sonata, as well as being required to play it with sensitivity and grace. This is asking too much of an individual who has never been trained to do composition, which is the equivalent of creative curriculum work. At the present time one such research center is being supported by the Bureau of Education for the Handicapped at Teachers College, Columbia University, in New York City, with an appropriation of $2 million. There is a great need for additional research and development centers in this country to meet the requirements of handicapped children. Adequate funds should be made available to establish a minimum of five research and development centers and vital research facilities in various parts of the United States, and in affiliation with institutions of higher learning within the next 5 years. THEREFORE, THE COMMITTEE RECOMMENDS THAT: 4. Congress should provide additional funds in the research budget for the construction and operation of research and development centers that will focus a sustained effort on major research problems in the education of handicapped children The Committee has noted that at the Federal level different agencies assume responsibilities for comprehensive social planning, such as the development of neighborhood service centers or model city programs. Usually such planning by different groups does not include programs for handicapped children until a problem arises calling for implementation and generally long after budgets have been allotted for other purposes. Measures to cope with the problem of handicapped children should be included by special education planners at the earliest stages of project development. THEREFORE, THE COMMITTEE RECOMMENDS THAT: 5. In comprehensive programs, with multiple agency funding (such as model cities and neighborhood service centers), educational programs for handicapped are often omitted. Funds should be available, and administrative avenues open, so that handicapped children can participate fully in such programs RECOMMENDATIONS CONCERNING SPECIAL AREAS NEEDING DEVELOPMENT From among a great number of areas needing development the National Advisory Committee selected four issues deemed to be current and crucial at this time. These are: (a) Special learning disabilities, (b) preschool education of the handicapped, (c) handicapped children in the inner city, and (d) handicapped children in rural areas. Special learning disabilities There has been increasing public understanding and concern about special learning disabilities. Local, national, and international organizations have been formed by parents of children with perceptual disorders, brain injury, learning disabilities, or dyslexia. Seven State legislatures have already enacted special legislation to establish educational programs for such children. Several Federal and private agencies have appointed study committees or sponsored conferences to discuss this handicap area. The problem of special learning disabilities should be considered as part of a larger issue of the classification of handicapped children. The traditional categories under which special education programs have been organized tend to employ medical rather than educational terminology. These categories often do not correspond to the types of programs required to meet the educational needs of the child. It is the hope of the Committee that attempts to clarify the issue of special learning disabilities will lead to reexamination of the current system of classification of handicapped children in general. Confusion now exists with relationship to the category of special learning disabilities. Unfortunately it has resulted in the development of overlapping and competing programs under such headings as "minimal brain dysfunction," "dyslexia," "perceptual handicaps," etc. A Federal study, sponsored jointly by the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Blindness, the National Society for Crippled Children, and the Office of Education, is now in progress to attempt to define more clearly the nature and extent of these problems, and to provide a basis for the planning of more effective programs of research and service. Prior to the completion of this study, it is necessary for the Office of Education to formulate a definition. To serve as a guideline for its present program the Committee suggests the following definition. Children with special learning disabilities exhibit a disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in understanding or in using spoken or written languages. These may be manifested in disorders of listening, thinking, talking, reading, writing, spelling or arithmetic. They include conditions which have been referred to as perceptual handicaps, brain injury, minimal brain dysfunction, dyslexia, developmental aphasia, etc. They do not include learning problems which are due primarily to visual, hearing or motor handicaps, to mental retardation, emotional disturbance or to environmental disadvantage. From an educational standpoint, special learning disabilities must be identified through psychological and educational diagnosis. The total number of children involved cannot be accurately determined until more adequate diagnostic procedures and criteria have been developed. The disorders may range in degree from mild to severe. While the milder degrees of learning difficulties may be corrected by the regular classroom teacher, the more severe cases require special remedial procedures. A conservative estimate of the latter group would include from 1 to 3 percent of the school population. It is already clear, however, that there is an urgent need for more extensive research on the etiology, diagnosis, psycho-educational assessment and remediation of special learning disabilities. There is an even more urgent need for trained personnel-particularly for personnel in special education. THEREFORE, THE COMMITTEE RECOMMENDS THAT: 6. Funds appropriated for research and training programs for children with special learning disabilities should be substantially increased. Such additional funds, necessary to define and explore this new area, should not be allocated at the expense of the pressing program needs in established areas Early preschool education of handicapped children The Committee is aware that research on the education of preschool children has demonstrated that early education can accelerate social and mental development of handicapped children. On the other hand, lack of educational attention to preschool handicapped children tends to increase the negative effect of mental and physical disabilities as the child becomes older. Specialized programs for preschool children have long been advocated for the deaf and the blind, but provisions for other handicapped children at the preschool level are conspicuous by their absence. Some States do not even have kindergartens for nonhandicapped children. Some States that operate kindergartens refuse admission to children who are physically or mentally handicapped. Even if all other social and moral arguments were disregarded, there are important economic factors to be considered. In a very real sense the handicapped child can be either another economic burden on society or can be a highly productive economic unit, if he_receives proper training and education. For example, when a handicapped child is sent to an institution for the mentally retarded and stays there over the period of his lifetime, it costs society a minimum of $75,000. If a child can be rehabilitated through special education at an early age, the community saves many thousands of dollars. For example, if it costs about $1,000 a year for this child's education between the ages of 6 and 16-the total cost would only come to $10,000. With this background of education the child growing into an adult can obtain a job and become a substantive member of our society. Not only is he a producer of goods or services, but instead of spending Federal, State, or local funds for his upkeep, he contributes to the economy and carries his fair share of taxes to support the society that helped him. In view of the impressive gains that are now possible through early intervention in the life of the handicapped child, regression of children with physical and mental handicaps can be avoided by their development at the crucial preschool age when education is most effective. THEREFORE, THE COMMITTEE RECOMMENDS THAT: 7. Congress should appropriate funds necessary for the development of model programs of preschool education for handicapped children between the ages of 3 and 6 Program development for handicapped children in the inner city areas The Committee recognizes that the problems of handicapped children in the affluent suburbs of our cities differ markedly from the problems of handicapped children in the inner city. The problems differ in terms of both cause and solution, and, in both aspects, reach into the very roots of our free society. The study of factors which handicap children in ways that interfere with their educational development should be given the highest priority by social, medical and educational agencies. Ultimate solutions to these problems will require a greater concentration of effort, as well as more specific knowledge than we presently possess. The Committee realizes that special studies need to be made to identify the children in some city areas and to find answers to the problems they present. The following observations are pertinent to several aspects of the problems. Thousands of handicapped children in the poverty pockets of our inner cities are neglected educationally. Parents may lack financial resources or information for securing available medical, educational, or social services soon enough to reduce the impact of the child's handicapped condition. Reports from school personnel in the inner city schools indicate that there is a greater percentage of children with handicaps in the inner city than in the outer city and in suburban communities. The lack of information about handicaps of children in the inner city requires considerable effort in studies to (a) identify the numbers of children involved and the types of handicaps in the inner city; and (6) determine what diagnostic and remedial services would be needed for early intervention in terms of educational programing. Special education needs special personnel, working in a special setting, in the service of special children. The inner city schools could be seen as physical resources into which specialized personnel, equipment, supplies, and expert administration are combined to develop quality services to handicapped children in the inner cities. After special services become available to inner city students, these services could be used by handicapped pupils in the outer city, the metropolitan area, and the suburban school districts. This might require the transfer of handicapped pupils from the outer cities into especially wellstaffed facilities in the inner cities. One suggestion is that there be a planned regionalization of services in most or all of the schools of the inner city, rather than a clustering of all services in a few of such schools in the outer city. It is recognized that the problems of the inner cities are complex and will require considerable study and effort before solutions can be found. THEREFORE, THE COMMITTEE RECOMMENDS THAT: 8. The Bureau of Education for the Handicapped should encour age research for the purpose of identifying the number, variety, and severity of handicapping conditions existing in the child population of the inner city areas 9. The Bureau of Education for the Handicapped should encourage States and local communities to develop unique educational programs in inner city schools that will be adapted to the conditions of intellectual, social, and emotional deprivation often found in inner cities Education of handicapped children in rural areas In rural areas, as well as in crowded cities, the Committee recognizes that the problem is to find and identify handicapped children as early as possible. Having found them, the next task would be to make diagnostic, educational and other services available. To accomplish this it is necessary to either bring the children to the services, or take services to the children. In areas where distances are great and children live in regions remote from the cities, the supplying of services is difficult and costly. Poverty in rural areas further complicates the problem. The President's National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty recently termed the poverty of 14 million rural Americans "a national disgrace." Legislative bodies throughout the United States, including the Congress and State legislatures, have recognized this demand for equalized educational opportunity for children in rural areas. While the goal to educate all handicapped children in the Nation is the same, achieving it in rural America presents a special challenge. Adequate programs for handicapped children in rural areas have not been developed because of problems of transportation, unavailability of special equipment and teaching materials, difficulty in obtaining qualified teachers, and in administering programs in sparsely populated areas. The following plans may be demonstrated on a substantial scale through model programs or through prototype demonstrations of services. |