Ensuring Access, Equity and Quality for Students with Disabilities in School-to-Work Systems: A Guide to Federal Law and Policies, by Eileen L. Ordover and Leslie T. Annexstein, the Center for Law and Education and the National Transition Network, 1999, 104 pgs, $20
Ensuring Access, Equity and Quality for Students with Disabilities in School-to-Work Systems is a book about merging quality and equity in school-to-work systems: the development of high quality programs for all students, and equity in those programs for youth with disabilities. By "quality," we mean programs that prepare students for careers, and are designed to meet the same high academic standards set by the state for all students. Quality programs integrate academic and occupational learning, provide strong understanding and experience in all aspects of an industry, develop higher order skills and prepare students for postsecondary education. Quality programs also empower students to make career and life choices by giving them the flexibility and transferrable skills they will need to cope with labor market changes and technological change, and to develop new education and career goals over time. By equity, or equitable participation, we mean full and meaningful participation by students with disabilities in the high quality programs created for all students..
The book begins in Chapter 1 with an overview of five key federal laws: the School-to-Work Opportunities Act, the Carl Perkins Vocational and Technical Education Act, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the Americans with Disabilities Act ("ADA") and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act ("IDEA"). Taken together, they form the infrastructure for quality for all youth and equity for youth with disabilities. The School-to-Work Opportunities Act and the Perkins Act, which virtually all states are using to underwrite the cost of school-to-work programs, incorporate standards designed to ensure that students receive high quality programs integrating academic and vocational learning. Both Acts also expect that all students, including students with disabilities, will have equal and meaningful access to the high quality programs they mandate. Section 504 and the ADA, civil rights laws prohibiting discrimination on the basis of disability, independently require equity for students with disabilities in the programs and systems the School-to-Work and Perkins Acts create. IDEA, amended in 1997 to more explicitly address the right of students with disabilities to education programs based upon high expectations and attainment of the same high standards set for their nondisabled peers, provides critical tools for ensuring quality and equity in the school-to-work programs designed for all students.
Chapter 2 explores the meaning of "quality" in the twin themes of quality and equity, as it emerges from these laws. Chapter 3 introduces three critical, guiding principles that flow from the convergence of the School-to-Work Act, Perkins, §504, the ADA and IDEA -- principles for ensuring equity in the high quality programs discussed in Chapter 2. These three principles, Equity in Program Development, Equity in Entrance Criteria and Linkage with IDEA for Quality and Equity, are further explored in Chapters 4 through 7. Chapters 4, 5 and 6 are built around case studies. Chapter 7 examines in detail how IDEA can be used as a tool for making real the right to equitable participation in the high quality school-to-work programs created for all students. Finally, Chapter 8 provides a guide to the systemic data collection, monitoring and evaluation activities necessary to ensure quality and equity for students with disabilities, and for all youth. Throughout, the discussion considers policy and practice implications as well as legal rights and responsibilities for policymakers, administrators and those educators and employers responsible for implementing school-to-work systems.
Students with disabilities are in dire need of the high quality educational opportunities that properly designed school-to-work systems can provide. Twenty-five years after the passage of what is now called IDEA, students with disabilities all too often are subjected to low expectations, poor education and poor outcomes, including segregation in low-track courses, high dropout rates, low rates of participation in postsecondary education and low employment rates. Equitable participation in the same high quality school-to-work programs mandated and created for all students is a significant part of the solution to these ills.