IDEA, IEPs and Civil Rights Laws
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act or IDEA was very critical to making sure that kids with special needs received services. It passed in 1990 to ensure people with disabilities received a free and appropriate education. There was also an amendment to it. A good place to review that is through Wrightslaw. Wrightslaw has really good resources and have lawyers on call to help families.
If you are going to be working on IEPs for school transition, it is important for you to know the background about this law and how is it implemented in different school districts. Transition services are going to depend on the amount of money that a school district has. For example, in my area in South Carolina, there is not a lot of money. North Charleston is one of the biggest cities in our state. However, their financial resources for these kids transitioning are extremely low. In constrast, there are a lot of districts that have a lot of money. One school in which I work has resources for kids that want to do functional things like cooking. It has many classes, beyond "Home Ec" types of classes, that kids can enter so that they can work on skills to maintain gainful employment after transition. IDEA is going to require that kids with a disability obtain services.
This design has to be unique. Of course like an IEP must be unique to each individual, the transition plan must be unique. This can be hard as a lot of parents do not understand that an IEP must be unique. This law guarantees the equal access for these kids to resources that can help them overcome obstacles that interfere with their ability to gain employment.
A 504 plan is simply a civil rights law. Usually in an IEP, there are a list of accommodations. That list of accommodations is generally the 504 plan. If you are looking at a 504 plan alone, that is just a list of accommodations. However, when we put it in an IEP, we are adding goals that we can measure. This is part of a civil rights issue and it qualifies for everyone. Even after transition at age 22, the student will still qualify for a 504 plan. There is a website that I will talk about it later called JAN, or Job Accommodation Network. It will give a punch list of disabilities and tell you the accommodations in which you can qualify.
