Civil Rights & Administrative Factors

In the previous unit you reviewed the factors that created a social climate which "set the stage" for a concerted effort to create federal policy for the eduction of children with disabilities. The dissatisfaction created by the social activitism of the 1960s and early 1970s, the Vietman War and the related protests, a series of economic reforms, an increasing use of the media to expose the plight of persons with disabilities, and the growing realization that we should be treating persons with disabilities as normally as possible, were necessary elements that increased the awareness for Congress of the need to create public legislation that would guarantee the right to an education to all children with disabilities. However, while it is true that without this social climate it is unlikely that we would have federal law that mandates special education services, these factor were not sufficiently powerful in their own right to create this law. Additional forces were necessary.

In this lesson, you will learn about two additional elements helped nudge our society closer to acknowledging a need for publicly funded special education.

• Administrative factors that further accentuated the social climate, and
• the Civil Rights Movement

Administrative Factors

The Presidential administrations of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson were essential for continuing to creating an impetus for increasing federal involvement in the care and treatment of persons with disabilities. It is particularly fortuitous that John F. Kennedy (JFK) served as president during this time of increasing dissatisfaction and change. The foundation of his administration, "the new frontier," and the associated liberal optimism of the times, created a concern with the well-being of all citizens. This social agenda, with the fact that JFK had a sister who had mental retardation and who was institutionalized, created an administration that was particularly sensitive to the conditions of persons with disabilities. In his Address to Congress in 19**, Kennedy established goals to improve the care of persons with disabilities and, for the first time, he sought to create federal support to insure that these goals were met. Part of Kennedy's plan involved seeking out the causes of mental retardation and mental illness in an effort to eradicate them. Kennedy proposed that Congress establish financial support to improve the training of personnel to serve persons with disabilities, increase scientific research to discover the causes of disabilities, and create incentives for creating community-based services. These priorities set the stage for initial federal legislation to address the situation of persons with mental retardation and mental illness. Later, this federal involvement in the care and treatment of persons with mental retardation and mental illness would be used to leverage additional federal involvment in special education.

Lyndon B. Johnson, following Kennedy, came to office with the goal of creating "the great society." Inherent in this goal was the elimination of poverty. The Johnson adminstration issued a call to eliminate poverty in the U.S. through a "war on poverty." Johnson believed that the best way to attach poverty was through education. Poverty could be eradicated in poor people were allowed to better themselves through education. During his administration, three important pieces of legislation were passes: The Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the Federal Assistance to State Owned and Operated Schools for the Handicapped, and the Ammendments ot the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (you will learn more about these later). Together, these laws created federal assistance for the education of persons with disabilities.

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The Civil Rights Movement

An important, many would say critical, to establishing broad based rights for individuals with disabilities. The people, actions, and results of the Civil Rights Movement opened our eyes to the inequities faced by minority groups, in this case African Americans. Once we acknowledged that we were not affording African American citizens the same rights that we were providing to other citizens, a precident was established that all persons are guaranteed equal rights under the Constitution was established. By extension, this precident was used by persons with disabilities, an equally disenfranchised minority group, to establish civil rights, including a right to a free and appropriate public education.

Brown v. the Board of Education

One of the significant events of the early civil rights movement was the court case of Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka This landmark case challenged the "separate but equal" doctrine in effect at that time.

 Visit the Brown v. the Board of Education page to learn more about the facts of this case.

In its decision the Supreme Court struck down the "sparate but equal" standard stating:

"in these days, it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied access to an education, such an opportunity, where a state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be available to all on equal terms"...."equal facilities are inherently unequal."

In ruling in favor of the plaintiffs, the Court agreed that "separate but equal" violated the due process clause of the 14th Ammendment of the Constitution. It further cited that exclusion from education for African American children was viewed as a violation of the individual rights guaranteed by the Constitution. By this decision, the Supreme Court firmly established a right to an equal opportunity to education.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964

As a result of the civil rights movement, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This law was the first piece of civil rights legislation initiated by the federal government. The Civil Rights Act guarantees "non-discrimination on the basis of race, color, creed, with any agency, program, or activity receiving federal assistance."

Visit the Civil Rights Act page for basic information about the contents of the Act.

Impact of the civil rights movement

The civil rights movement produced some significant outcomes for society at large. For persons with disabilities, however, three particular outcomes would prove to be significant:

1. the federal government, and society in general, began to acknowledge that all persons are guaranteed rights under the constitution.
2. federal statutes were employed to curb discrimination against disenfranchised groups, and
3. While the focus remained on civil rights of broad classes of people, the focus naturally turned to other minority groups receiving inferior treatment, including persons with disabilities.

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Go on to Topic 3: Types of Special Education Services for Students with Mild Disabilities

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E-mail the instructor at Larry.Gallagher@nau.edu

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