What is a 504 Plan?

Note: Visit my education blog, The Green Cup.

What is a 504 Plan? Do you need one? How is it different from an Individualized Education Plan (IEP)? These are important question if your child has a disability.

In the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (Public Law No. 93-112), Section 504 states that: "no otherwise qualified individual with a disability...shall solely by reason of his/her disability be excluded from the participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination to any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance..." (emphasis added).

At the moment, every public school system in America receives some degree of federal funding. Because of this, they are all subject to this law. What that means for you is this: if your child has a disability, the school system must accommodate that disability in some way - under Section 504 if no other way is available. Probably that will mean the development of a formal plan for defining and providing those accommodations.

A 504 Plan is civil rights document. It protects your child's rights regarding access to education. Often the disability is a medical problem like asthma, childhood diabetes, or allergies.

Sometimes the problem is more complicated and the school system and parents must decide whether the child needs a 504 Plan under the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 or an IEP under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). The difference between the two, in theory, is simple. Technically, a 504 Plan provides accommodations for the disability. Accommodations are environmental in nature. Changes are made to the learning environment:

• a handicapped bathroom is installed.
  
• an elevator is made available.
  
• assistive technology (possibly something as simple as a cassette tape player) is provided.
  
• perhaps the student is given extra time on some assignments or tests.

The curriculum itself does not change. An IEP, on the other hand, is for students whose disabilities require specially designed instruction. The curriculum itself must be modified in order for the student to receive an appropriate education.

Do you need a 504 Plan? A 504 Plan formalizes a set of accommodations that the school may be quite willing to make informally. For example, if your child has asthma and you bring the school some kind of a medical statement to document the fact, the school may be quiet willing to:

• alter the child's schedule of physical activity.
  
• hold medication in the office for the child and administer it when appropriate.
  
• commit to take a particular set of steps in the event of an emergency.

Under these circumstances, does the 504 Plan serve a purpose? Maybe not. But having the formal document in place can be reassuring for everyone involved. And sometimes the exact accommodations to be used aren't as obvious as in the case above. In those cases, the formal plan helps people remember what to do.

There are some basic steps involved in obtaining a 504 Plan. The first is referral. A teacher, support staff, a parent, or a medical professional may refer the student for consideration, usually by calling the school and speaking to the principal or the chair of a school team that considers such matters.

The next step is a meeting to discuss the referral; perhaps a 504 Plan will emerge from that meeting, or perhaps more than one meeting will be required as the team involved gathers information. The last step is to review the effectiveness of the 504 Plan at some later date.

A 504 Plan can be an effective tool for safeguarding your child's right to an appropriate education.

Special Education Vocab: Least Restrictive Environment

The law says that your school system is obligated to educate a student with disabilities in the least restrictive environment (LRE) possible. Do you know what that MEANS?

What is LRE? The long list of technical terms in special education can be daunting to some parents. And since LRE is one of the most basic terms, I thought I'd take a little time here to make sure you could find a clear, concise definition...

The Least Restrictive Environment Coalition has one of the best explanations of the term least restrictive environment that I've come across on the Internet:

The Least Restrictive Environment (LRE) is defined as the educational setting where a child with disabilities can receive a free appropriate public education (FAPE) designed to meet his or her education needs while being educated with peers without disabilities in the regular educational environment to the maximum extent appropriate.

Their page goes on to look at a number of related questions about LRE and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), LRE and Section 504, etc.

Least Restrictive Environment is really a pretty simple concept. Any child (disabled or not) should be given an appropriate education. A child with a disability should be educated with its non-disabled peers. Sometimes a child's disability means that what's appropriate for the disabled child is different from what's appropriate for the non-disabled child. And, sometimes, the differences between what's appropriate for the disabled child and what's appropriate for his or her non-disabled peers means that the child with a disability has to be taken out of the general education setting in order to receive an appropriate education. Among the easiest examples to understand, a child with orthopedic impairments who is bound to a wheel chair may receive physical therapy during some of the time each week that his non-disabled peers spend in the gym for physical education.

The point is this, if a child with a disability is going to be removed from the regular education environment where his non-disabled peers are being educated, there needs to be some rationale, some justification as to why it needs to happen. And that justification needs to be articulated individually for each segment of time where the child is being removed: a justification for removing the child from reading and/or language arts, a justification for removing the child from math, a justification for removing the child from physical education, etc.

In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Brown vs. Board of Education that separate educations could not be equal education. The ruling's initial affect was to end racial segregation. But eventually the courts applied the ruling to disability rights. Thus Least Restrictive Environment is a civil rights issue for people with disabilities. In a nutshell, schools cannot segregate students with disabilities from the non-disabled peers except when the separation is essential for an appropriate education...