6.14 1. Complexity of the Problems

• Library: Disability Law and Practice, Vol. 3 (NY) 2017

1.. Complexity of the Problems

Since its enactment in 1975, the Education of All Handicapped Children Act, now the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA),¹⁰⁷ has ended the exclusion of disabled children from public schools and established their right to an appropriate education. The implementation of the IDEA, however, has not produced solutions to many of the serious educational problems faced by deaf students. Although no longer misdiagnosed as mentally disabled,¹⁰⁸ deaf children continue to experience academic difficulties and poor achievement.

In the Supreme Court’s well-known Rowley decision, the Court held that a deaf kindergarten student receiving special services that provided “educational benefit” was not entitled to an interpreter, even though she could understand “less than half of what was said in the classroom.”¹⁰⁹ Whatever can be said about the Rowley analysis of the IDEA and its application to the evidence, the reality is that historically the mean reading comprehension score of 18-year-old deaf students had been demonstrated to be at the third-grade level.¹¹⁰

Students who do not master basic reading skills are simply not receiving the appropriate education promised by the IDEA. Even the Rowley Court recognized that “not . . . every handicapped child who is advancing from grade to grade in a regular public school system is automatically receiving a ‘free, appropriate public education.’”¹¹¹ Without the ability to read, a deaf person faces huge barriers to meaningful employment and, thus, economic security. What is perhaps the most important right created by the ADA, that of reasonable accommodation in employment, is largely useless to someone who cannot read and whose overall education has been limited by illiteracy.

The question of how to educate deaf children involves complex and controversial issues. More than 90 percent of deaf children are born to hearing parents who, overwhelmed by the implications of raising a deaf child, must immediately choose a communication strategy. Quick action is needed in order not to miss the critical period for language acquisition and cognitive development. With a multitude of fears as to how their child will function in a hearing world, parents are thrust into a century-old debate about sign language.

In the late 1800s, ASL was banned from the residential schools that virtually all deaf children attended. The decision was made by hearing educators who decided that, since signing was far...