Assuring Quality Special Education for Children with Visual Impairments

This document is no longer timely and may be only of historical value.

For information on current issues go to the Education Issues section.

Paul Schroeder
Vice President, Governmental Relations
American Foundation for the Blind

and

Mark Richert
Executive Director
Association for Education and Rehabilitation of the Blind and Visually Impaired

Summary of Recommendations

To ensure that children who are blind or visually impaired receive a high-quality education with related services Congress must:

• ensure that blind or visually impaired students are provided with access to classroom instructional materials and technology equal to their non-disabled classmates,

• require that assessments of students with visual impairments are designed with sensitivity to their unique needs, are administered by personnel with knowledge of those needs, and are provided in individually appropriate reading media;

• dramatically increase the availability of teachers and related services personnel trained to meet the unique needs of students who are blind or visually impaired;

• provide for a complete and accurate identification of students with visual impairments in need of special education and related services;

• address the need for a full range of appropriate transition services ensuring successful progress from school to work;

• guarantee placement of students with visual impairments in educational settings based on individual students' needs.

Access to Materials and Technology

Far too often, students who are blind or visually impaired are barred from full and equal participation in classroom instruction because required instructional materials and technology are inaccessible to them. Many students arrive on the first day of class to find that, unlike their non-disabled classmates, their texts and related materials are not available in reading media they can use, such as braille, large print or audio recordings.

Moreover, though the Internet, personal computers and other information technologies are ever-increasing and integral components of America's schools, the needs of students with visual impairments go largely ignored. Much of the hardware and software used in schools is obtained with little or no thought to its accessibility for students who are blind or visually impaired.

In addition, in spite of the importance of specialized, assistive technologies, a national survey conducted by the American Foundation for the Blind found that 68% (384) of the responding teachers said their students had never received an assistive technology evaluation. Thus, these essential tools of learning in the 21st century, tools which can be made accessible to students with disabilities, actually serve as high-tech barriers to education and competitive employment.

Remarkably, IDEA and its implementing regulations perpetuate this problem by failing to mandate equal access to instructional materials and information technology for blind or visually impaired students.

Recommendation

Congress has already begun to address this challenge with the introduction of the Instructional Materials Accessibility Act of 2002 (IMAA) by Representative Petri (H.R. 4582) and Senator Dodd (S. 2246). Enactment of this legislation will ensure equal access to textbooks and instructional materials in specialized media for students who are blind or have other print disabilities.

However, IDEA must also be amended to ensure that it unequivocally protects the right of students with disabilities to equal access to textbooks and related instructional materials and to information technology

Assessments

Standardized assessment tests obviously play a critical role in our education system. However, much like required classroom instructional materials, these standardized assessments are usually administered in a manner that limits, if not bars, success for students who are blind or visually impaired.

Frequently, assessments are not provided in reading media most appropriate to visually impaired students' individual needs. Moreover, assessments frequently contain material that is substantially visually oriented with extensive use of graphics and illustrations, but with utter disregard for the need to administer such assessments to students with visual impairments.

In addition, personnel responsible for the administration of such assessments usually possess little or no knowledge of the educational needs of students who are blind or visually impaired.

Recommendation

Congress must ensure that the development of any national or statewide assessment includes accessibility for students with visual impairments and that such assessments are administered in each student's preferred reading media by appropriately trained personnel.

Personnel Preparation

Children who are blind, visually impaired or deaf-blind require training in highly specialized skills such as braille, technology and walking independently with a white cane. This requires instruction by personnel with specific knowledge in these areas and who have sufficient instruction time with each student.

However, there is a profound national shortage of teachers and other personnel with the training and qualifications necessary to ensure an appropriate education for children with visual impairments.

Currently, 6,700 full-time-equivalent Teachers of the Visually Impaired (including Teachers of the Deaf-Blind) serve nearly 100,000 students. Experts agree that the current national average teacher-to-student ratio of 1 to 14 must be lowered to 1 to 8.

To address the shortage and to meet this recommended student-teacher ratios the National Plan for Training Personnel to Serve Children with Blindness and Low Vision called for training an additional 5,000 Teachers of the Visually Impaired an increase of approximately 75% over the current number and an additional 10,000 Orientation and Mobility specialists over the next five years. However, fewer than 250 new teachers of the visually impaired graduate each year, while less than 50 new orientation and mobility specialists are trained each year.

Recommendation

Congress must make addressing this inequity a priority by redefining 'low incidence' disability in Part D of IDEA to more effectively target federal spending toward supporting programs training personnel working with visually impaired children, to increase the number of such programs nationwide, and to promote recruitment and retention of such personnel. Congress must also ensure that sufficient funding is made available to meet these objectives.

Identification of Students with Visual Impairments

Although the U.S. Department of Education has officially estimated the number of children with visual impairments needing special education and related services to be only approximately 30,200, including deaf-blind children, the facts tell a different story.

The American Printing House for the Blind (the nonprofit agency charged with national responsibility since 1879 for production of school textbooks in accessible formats such as braille) is currently providing services to 48,996 students who are legally blind. Recent independent research found that the number of students nationwide with visual impairments who are qualified for services under IDEA is actually approximately 93,600.

The Department's erroneously low count is largely due to the fact that the Department counts a child only once for purposes of providing federal funding to states, regardless of whether the child has a variety of disabilities. A child's visual impairment may not be that child's primary disability, but each of a child's multiple impairments should be addressed by specialized services.

The result of the erroneous count is that a visually impaired student who has multiple disabilities is frequently accounted for under another disability category, and the needs stemming from the child's visual impairment are left unaddressed. Though the child count should certainly not be duplicative, accurate identification of students with visual impairments is absolutely essential to ensure that a range of appropriate services meeting the full scope of a child's unique needs is provided. A more accurate and complete count is also critical for future research in the field of blindness and visual impairment and for better understanding the full extent of the current personnel shortage.

Recommendation

Congress should require the maintenance of dual counts of students with disabilities, one for purposes of determining states' federal funding needs and another to ensure that each of a student's multiple disabilities is identified and answered with appropriate individualized services.

Transition Services

Although many students who are blind or visually impaired are succeeding academically, the unemployment rate among adults is staggeringly high. Undoubtedly, discrimination against people with disabilities in hiring and promotion remains a key factor in explaining this regrettable reality. However, many students with disabilities, including those who are blind or visually impaired, are not provided the independent living, social, self-advocacy and job readiness skills necessary to obtain and retain employment. IDEA attempts to address the need for skills training and other services necessary for successful progress from school to work by providing for appropriate transition services.

Too frequently, parents of children with visual impairments report that, if substantive plans for the provision of transition services are put in place at all (planning for transition often means nothing more than checking a box on the IEP), the scope of services provided is narrow, and students' career goals are either ignored or unidentified.

State educational agencies usually enter into cooperative interagency agreements with local educational and state vocational rehabilitation agencies to share human and financial resources to provide transition services. In practice, critical needs are not met because the individual transition plan (ITP) is not initiated or used.

Students who are blind or visually impaired can especially benefit from assistive technology, but largely because of cost and lack of cooperation among agencies, assistive technology needs are not adequately addressed. Moreover, although vocational rehabilitation agency personnel are expected to play an active role in the planning and delivery of transition services, such coordinated collaboration is infrequent and frustrated by bureaucratic breakdowns.

Recommendation

Congress should strengthen IDEA to more aggressively coordinate shared responsibility among state and local agencies for the provision of a full range of transition services through the ITP. Congress should especially ensure that visually impaired students' independent living skills, communication skills, independent travel skills, career goals and assistive technology needs are adequately addressed in students' individualized transition plans.

Placement

From its beginning, IDEA has promoted the primary objective of integrating students with disabilities into their neighborhood schools. This is a worthy goal, and schools must indeed be held accountable for the extent to which their educational and other programs and services are accessible to children and youth with disabilities.

Unfortunately, the provisions of IDEA mandating placement of students in the "least restrictive environment" (LRE) are all too often read to exclude placement in settings which are frequently best suited to the unique educational needs of students with visual impairments.

To be sure, Congress has, albeit not in the statute itself, recognized

the longstanding policy of a continuum of alternative placements designed to meet the unique needs of each child with a disability. Placement options available include instruction in regular classes, special classes, special schools, home instruction and instruction in hospitals and institutions. For disabled children placed in regular classes, supplementary aids and services and resource room services or itinerant instruction must also be offered as needed. (Senate Report 105-17, page 11; House Report 105-95, page 91)

However, this legislative history has not proven sufficient to ensure that students are placed appropriately or that parents are made aware of the full array of options. The regulations implementing IDEA also permit placement in a range of settings along the continuum (34 CFR at 300.551), but such provisions are typically overshadowed by the presumed inherent value of integration in meeting the needs of all students with disabilities.

The misuse of the emphasis on LRE extends to IDEA's Part C early childhood intervention provisions as well. Because of the law's presumption that infants and toddlers are best served under IDEA in "natural environments," provision of appropriate services to such children with visual impairments is significantly hindered or even made impossible.

Though the Department of Education has held that the requirement to provide services in natural environments does not preclude provision of services in settings where only disabled children are served (Letter to Woolsey, 34 IDELR 36 (OSEP 2000)), the Department has yet to formally clarify the statutory "natural environments" provisions. Indeed, the Department has withdrawn its proposed rule making on Part C in light of the upcoming IDEA reauthorization.

Recommendation

Congress should clarify the intent of the "least restrictive environment" provisions and formally endorse the continuum of placement options in the statute itself. Congress should further emphasize that infants and toddlers with visual impairments may be served in settings where only young children with disabilities are served. These additions to IDEA will go far toward ensuring the provision of specialized services meeting students' individual needs while preserving the statute's integration objective.

For further information, contact

Paul Schroeder
Vice President, Governmental Relations
American Foundation for the Blind
Governmental Relations Group
820 First Street, N.E., Suite 400
Washington, DC 20002
202-408-8172
pws@afb.net