Special Education Services

By morgandyal

  • Connecticut Asylum for the Education and Instruction of Deaf and Dumb Persons opens in Hartford, Connecticut

    Founded by Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet and Laurent Clerc and it was originally called the American Asylum for the Education and Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb.

  • Perkins Institution for the Blind opened for Samuel Gridley Howe

  • Braille code is first published

  • Howe establishes experimental school for feebleminded youth

  • American Printing House for the Blind is established

  • National Deaf Mute College is established, later to be renamed Gallaudet University

    Authorized by President Abraham Lincoln through the signing of the Enabling Act. This was the only recognized school for the deaf to offer college degrees in the United States.

  • American Association on Mental Retardation

    Who can and cannot access public funded services

  • Act to promote the Education of the Blind

    Provided federal funding to the American Printing House for books and apparatuses for blind students throughout the United States.

  • Formal training for teachers of blind persons begins at Columbia University; Alexander Graham Bell introduces the term "special education"

  • College-level training for teachers of students with intellectual disabilities begins

  • The First Special Education Class

    Elizabeth Farrell taught her first SPED class in New York City. She believed the goal of SPED was to return students to the regular classroom, not to just separate them.

  • Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon publish their intelligence test, the basis for modern IQ testing

  • Segregated classes in the public schools are established as viable alternatives to instructing children with disabilities; the term "emotional disturbance" comes into use

  • The term "mentally retarted" is introduced; the term "gifted" appears in the professional literature

  • Council for Exceptional Children is founded

    Elizabeth Farrell was the founder and first president of this organization

  • Leo Kanner identifies the characteristics of children with autism

  • Dr. Hans Asperger identifies children with characteristics that later would come to be called Asperger syndrome

  • Willowbrook State School opened as a facility for children with intellectual disabilities. After medical scandals and an expose about its horrible conditions, it was closed in 1987.

  • U.S. Supreme Court hands down decision in Brown vs. Board of Education

  • Samuel A. Kirk introduces the term Learning disabilities

  • B. Blatt and F. Kaplan publish "Christmas in Purgatory" a photographic expose of life in institutions for those with intellectual disabilities. The widespread publicity it received led to significant changes in law and policy

  • Congress provides funding to disseminate best practices for special education by adding Title VI to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA)

  • Equal Protection for Students with Disabilities

    Children with disabilities has equal amount of right to education as their non- disabled peers.

  • P.L. 94-142, amendments to the 1974 Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EAHCA), is enacted

  • Americans with Disabilities Act is enacted; EAHCA is amended and renamed the Individuals with Disabilities Educations Act (IDEA)

  • IDEA is amended, adding provisions related to transition services, participation by general education teachers, and discipline

  • No Child Left Behind Act increases accountability for outcomes for all students and requires that they are taught by highly qualified teachers

  • Reauthorization of IDEA raises standards for quality instruction for students with disabilities, elaborates on parent involvement and discipline, and defines "highly qualified" for special education teachers

  • President Obama signs Rosa's Law, which changes federal language usage from "mental retardation" to "intellectual disability"

  • More Assistive Technology for Special Education Students