The Meaning of Brown vs. Board of Education for Children with Disabilities

by A. Anthony Antosh, Ed.D. and Andrew Imparato. Originally posted on the American Constitution Society blog.

The 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling laid the foundation for the 1975 federal law (now called the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) requiring access to a free appropriate public education for all children with disabilities. Before 1975, about one million American children with disabilities were receiving no education from the public school system. Since then, we have made progress in securing quality, integrated educational opportunities for American children with disabilities, but we still have a long way to go – particularly for children with intellectual disabilities.

There is a history of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities learning, living and working in separate settings. As the Court noted in Brown, “Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” That statement was a stimulus for a civil rights movement that sought to integrate people with disabilities into every aspect of society. In the 1960s it was rare to find any public school that integrated students with intellectual disabilities. Although progress has been made, we still find widespread segregation of these students. Fifty-six percent of students (ages 6-21) with intellectual disabilities are primarily educated in separate classes or separate schools (United States Department of Education. 31st Annual Report to Congress on the Implementation of IDEA, 2009). The effects of segregation are significant. Twenty-seven percent of people with intellectual disabilities (aged 21-64) do not have a high school diploma (American Community Survey, 2012). The curriculum offered in segregated settings is often vastly different than the curriculum offered in typical classrooms (Wehmeyer, 2003). Students in segregated classrooms are less engaged and spend more time alone (Hunt, Farron-Davis, Beckstead, Curtis, & Goetz, 1994). Continue Reading on ACS blog…