[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 19]
[Senate]
[Pages 25193-25194]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




              INDIVIDUALS WITH DISABILITIES EDUCATION ACT

  Mr. BOND. Madam President, I begin today on a happy note to say, 
after a lot of hard work in the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions 
Committee, we have brought forth an excellent product. Thanks to the 
leadership of Senator Gregg and Senator Kennedy, we have produced a 
solid, bipartisan conference report which protects the educational 
rights of children with special needs while at the same time making the 
Individuals With Disabilities Education Act more workable for parents, 
teachers, school administrators, and school districts.
  While IDEA, as the bill is known, has helped to open the doors to 
many children with special needs since it was enacted in 1975, there is 
no question about problems existing.
  Over the last half dozen years, I have traveled around the State of 
Missouri and met, in over 50 different communities, with teachers, 
school principals, school board members, and parents to find out what 
the challenges are in education. No surprise that you would come to 
hear that it is not just that they want more Federal money, they want 
sense in the Federal regulations. They told me horror stories about the 
regulatory hurdles they had to overcome to administer some of the 
Federal programs, especially IDEA. The IDEA was more focused on complex 
rules than on producing the results that children with disabilities and 
their families deserve.
  I have heard story after story about frustrated special education 
teachers just throwing up their hands and saying: I can't take it 
anymore. I came to serve special needs children, not a bureaucracy, and 
not to be involved in litigation all the time. I have hared about 
crushing paperwork burdens, children misidentified for special 
education, that the Federal Government is not paying its fair share of 
the cost.
  The conference report we adopted yesterday is a very important step 
to address these concerns, to strengthen and improve IDEA for both 
children and the educational system. We believe it will strengthen the 
accountability and results for children with disabilities, reduce IDEA 
paperwork burdens, provide greater flexibility for school districts, 
reduce the number of children wrongly placed in special education 
classes, reduce litigation, and restore trust between parents and 
school districts.
  I am particularly pleased to tell you that many of the ideas 
contained in this legislation were developed in Missouri. When I heard 
the complaints of Missouri educators, I met and talked with the 
Missouri School Board Association, which put together a multimonth 
planning conference with representatives of the teachers, of the 
special needs community, and others to come up with specific ideas and 
reforms. The Missouri School Board Association's Special Education 
Advocacy Council and the Missouri Council of Administrators of Special 
Education came forward with proposals that I took to the committee, and 
the committee was able to include most, if not all, of those in the 
final legislation. So once again, the best ideas we get here come from 
home. I thank all of the committed education professionals and friends 
of special education who worked on it.
  I am particularly pleased with the significant reforms which will 
focus special education on educating children with special needs, not 
simply complying with a system composed of intricate and complex 
regulatory and mountainous paperwork burdens.
  Special education teachers, as I indicated, are leaving the 
profession out of frustration because of the unnecessary

[[Page 25194]]

burden, and that is causing a chronic shortage. More time on paperwork 
means less time spent with students or preparing lessons for students. 
It is as simple as that. The numerous reforms in the bill will go a 
long way to free our time of special educators.
  Again, my thanks to Senator Gregg and Senator Kennedy, and on my on 
staff, Kara Vlasaty and Julie Jolly for helping us come up with an 
excellent product.

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