Individuals With Disabilities Education Act Reauthorization: Accountability and Personal Responsibility

The reauthorized Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) is a school-reform law closely aligned with the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB); a civil rights law; and a “cousin” of the 1996 welfare reform law. By imposing new or strengthened accountability expectations on students with disabilities and their parents, the reauthorized IDEA conveys a message about personal responsibilities. In that respect, it makes accountability—the hallmark of NCLB, and one of the core concepts in the original (1975) and all subsequent authorizations of IDEA—a bilateral concept: Congress, the SEAs, and the LEAs will assume shared responsibilities for educating students with disabilities and benefiting their parents, but the students and their parents must take on more responsibilities for their own behavior and for their relationships with the SEAs and LEAs.