Effects of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act on the Deinstitutionalization of Status Offenders (From Neither Angels nor Thieves Studies in Deinstitutionalization of Status Offenders, P 699-721, 1982, Joel F Handler and Julie Zatz, ed. - See NCJ-84933)

• NCJ Number: 84953
• Author(s): S S Magnetti
• Date Published: 1982
• Length: 22 pages
• Sale Source: National Institute of Justice/; National Academies Press
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: Available on microfiche as NCJ-84933

Annotation

Handicapped status offenders should receive special education in accordance with the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (P.L. 94-142), so this program potentially influences where such children are placed and what services will be offered in that placement.

Abstract

P.L. 94-142 is intended to ensure that all handicapped children are provided a free appropriate public education. In that the statute fundamentally espouses the principle that all children should be educated in the least restrictive setting appropriate to their needs, the act adopts the idea of deinstitutionalization; however, various aspects of the program and of its interaction with other policy directives may militate against deinstitutionalization. The need to identify and classify handicapped children as required by the statute may encourage some inappropriate institutionalization. Further, State and local funding of special education may make it more desirable to place children in restrictive educational environments. Also, the interaction of P.L. 94-142 and other special needs education programs may affect the ways in which special education services are used in schools. To the extent that the client populations of special needs programs for handicapped, bilingual, or educationally deprived children overlap, these children effectively may be isolated from a regular school environment by a daily succession of pullout programs. Twenty-eight references are listed. (Author summary modified)