Historical Perspective
| Year | Event | Impact |
| 1965 | Congress adds Title IV to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 creating Bureau of Education for the Handicapped. | Educating disabled students is not mandated by federal or state law, but by this event change was on the horizon. |
| 1972 | Supreme court decisions PARC v. Pennsylvania and Mills v. D.C. Board of Education apply equal protection argument to students with disabilities. | The position of the courts was that children with disabilities have equal right to education as their non-disabled peers. There is no existing law that mandates this. However, because of the courts decisions some students began going to school. |
| 1973 | Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 is enacted into statue. | This national law protects qualified individuals from discrimination based on their disability. The majority of educators were not aware that this applied to public schools. |
| 1974 | The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act is enacted. | Parents are allowed to have access to all information collected, maintained, or used by a school district regarding their child. |
| 1975 | The Education for All Handicapped Children Act is enacted. Today it is known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. | Before 1975, most children with disabilities were denied education because of their disabilities. The EAHCA mandated all school districts to educate individuals with disabilities. |
| 1977 | The final regulations of EAHCA are released. | The federal regulations are enacted at the start of the 1977-78 school year. They provided rules in which school districts must adhere to when providing education to students with disabilities. |
| 1986 | The EAHCA is amended with the addition of the Handicapped Children's Protection Act. | This amendment makes clear that parents and students have rights under EACHA as well as Section 504. |
| 1990 | Americans with Disabilities Act is enacted. | ADA adopts the Section 504 regulations. 504 plans for students start to become more common place in school districts. |
| 1990 | The EAHCA is amended and called the Individuals with Disabilities Act. | The amendment calls for many changes to the old law. One of the biggest was transition services for students with disabilities. School Districts were now required to assists students with disabilities in transition to postsecondary life. |
| 1997 | IDEA reauthorized. | Students with disabilities were to be included on state and district-wide assessments. Regular Education Teachers are now required to be members of IEP teams. |
| 2001 | No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is enacted. | This law calls for all students including those with disabilities to be proficient in math and reading by the year 2014. |
| 2004 | IDEA reauthorized. | There were several changes, but the biggest is for more accountability at the state and local levels. Another change involves adequate instruction and intervention for students to help keep them out of special education. |
