[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 7]
[Senate]
[Page 9374]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                  IDEA

  Mr. BOND. Madam President, I came here to recognize and commend the 
great work of Senator Gregg and Senator Kennedy on crafting an IDEA 
bill. They produced a solid, thoughtful, bipartisan bill which protects 
the educational rights of children with special needs while at the same 
time making IDEA more workable for parents, teachers, school 
administrators, and school districts.
  I think we all agree IDEA was a great idea. It helped open doors for 
many children with special needs since it was enacted in 1975. Yet 
there is no question that significant problems exist.
  As I traveled through Missouri and talked with educators, teachers, 
administrators, parents, and school board members, I heard all kinds of 
problems with IDEA. Over the years, these teachers, principals, and 
administrators in Missouri have told me IDEA has become a morass of 
rules, of regulations and litigation that truly limit access and in 
some instances actually hinder learning--not just for children with 
disabilities but for all children. That is simply not acceptable.
  Educators are struggling under a crushing procedural and paperwork 
burden imposed by IDEA, contributing to what is becoming a chronic 
shortage of quality teachers in special education in Missouri and 
nationwide. Special education teachers are leaving the profession--not 
out of frustration with the children whom they are there to serve, but 
out of frustration with the overwhelming and unnecessary paperwork and 
the regulatory burdens they face. Without a qualified teacher, a child 
with a disability cannot receive a free, appropriate public education.
  Most special educators report they have to spend 20 to 50 percent of 
their time on paperwork. More time spent on paperwork is less time 
spent with students or preparing lesson plans for students. It is as 
simple as that. We cannot continue to let IDEA interfere with the time 
educators can devote to the children they serve because we all know a 
misdirected focus on paperwork, on procedures, and on bureaucracy 
frustrates teachers and fails to give children the education they need.
  In addition, over the years IDEA has encouraged and fostered 
adversarial relationships between school districts, staff, and parents. 
Time, money, and resources exhausted in costly litigation would be far 
better spent on instruction for children. Taking limited dollars away 
from children with disabilities and redirecting them to attorneys to 
fight long and costly battles is simply counterproductive. It does not 
help the education of our children--all children, special children and 
other children in the schools.
  These are a few of the concerns I have heard from Missouri educators 
over the years. But the thing I like about Missouri educators is they 
don't simply tell me what the problem is; they show me how to fix it. 
Maybe that is one of the reasons they call Missouri the ``Show Me'' 
State.
  The Missouri School Board Association's Special Education Advocacy 
Council, working in partnership with the Missouri Council of 
Administrators of Special Education, developed a list of thoughtful, 
solid, and detailed recommendations to improve IDEA and inject a little 
bit of good old-fashioned commonsense reform to IDEA.
  In fact, the Missouri Special Education Advocacy Council examined the 
IDEA statute line by line and told me exactly where and how we improve 
the statute by refocusing special education on educating children with 
special needs rather than simply complying with a system of complex 
regulations and mountains of paperwork and red tape.
  I am pleased many of the recommendations made by MSBA's Special 
Education Advocacy Council have been incorporated in S. 1248. The 
numerous paperwork and regulatory reforms in the bill will go a long 
way to free special educators' time to spend with their students and in 
preparing effective instruction plans. In addition, this bill contains 
many provisions to reduce litigation and restore trust between parents 
and school districts.
  I thank both Senator Gregg and Senator Kennedy for including these 
critical reforms in the Senate bill. This bill will improve and 
strengthen IDEA and extend the promise of quality education for a new 
generation of children with special needs.
  I urge my colleagues to support this bill.
  There is one other thing I want to address. I want to talk a minute 
about funding IDEA. We heard a lot of talk yesterday about the broken 
promises. The authorization for IDEA said the Federal Government is 
going to provide 40 percent of the cost of IDEA. Over 19 years, funding 
for IDEA has increased from $251,000 in 1977 to $2.3 billion in 1996.
  Our side took control of Congress in 1995, and over the course of 
that time period, the Republican Congress has increased funding for 
IDEA by 224 percent since 1996. That was done through the 
appropriations process.
  If the President's budget is enacted, it will have increased funding 
for IDEA by 376 percent. The average per-pupil expenditure has 
increased from 7 percent to almost 20 percent. If you include the 
President's budget request for this year, IDEA funding since 2001 will 
have increased $4.7 billion--75 percent in this President's budget.
  In comparison, in the 1980s IDEA was one of the spending 
appropriations categories that did not increase. In fact, in many of 
those years the Federal Government covered less than the States' 
average per-pupil expenditure for children with disabilities than it 
had the year before. I am proud of our leadership in this Congress 
which has made steady progress toward finally trying to reach the 40-
percent level authorized in 1975. We have made great strides toward 
fulfilling the commitment. I know the people in education are very 
appreciative of those increases.

                          ____________________