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The first hospital for the mentally ill in the United States was opened in 1773 in Williamsburg, VA.
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Hervey Wilbur helped to create the Massachusetts School for the Feeble-Minded. This school was the first of its kind.
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Edouard Seguin became the first president of the Association of Medical Officers of the Feeble-Minded. This then became known as the American Association of Mental Retardation.
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Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon worked together and developed a measurement tool to indentify students with mental retardation. The scale, called the Binet-Simon Scale, is used to measure intelligence.
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Samuel A. Kirk was the first to use the phrase "learning disability" at a conference in Chicago.
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Congress creates the Bureau of Education for the Handicapped. This still did not make it mandatory to educate a student with a disability under federal or state law, however, this showed that change was coming.
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These were two crucial Supreme Court Decisions. The court took the position that children with disabilities have an equal right to education. A law was not created at this time, however many disabled students began going to school that had not gone before.
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Section 504 was made a law to protect qualified individuals from discrimination based on their disability.
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PL 94-142 mandated that all schools to educate students with disabilities. This became known as IDEA. http://www.nd.edu/~rbarger/www7/pl94-142.html
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This law stated that all students, even students with disabilities, would be proficient in math and reading.
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Several changes were made to the 1997 version of IDEA. More accountability and interventions for disabled students are required from the schools.
