Lit Review
Theme I- History of Restorative Practices Submitted to Dr. EDL 821: Capstone I Summer 2025 History of Restorative Practice The landscape for the provision of special education and related services has evolved over the past 40 years. In the 1960s, students with disabilities had no access to the general education classroom or to the general education curriculum (Stone, 2019). They were educated separately from their general education peers and although they were granted the right to attend public schools, they did not have the same right to access the general education classroom as compared to those students without disabilities. Advocacy groups formed and pushed for lawmakers to change the way that students with disabilities accessed education in public schools and policymakers responded by enacting new federal policies and legal protections for students with disabilities throughout the country (Stone, 2019). Legislation In 1965, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson. Although the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA) and its subsequent amendments acknowledged the fact that laws specific to meeting the needs of students with disabilities were warranted, it did little to ensure them equal access to public schools (Stone, 2019). Instead, a culmination of grants and programs were created to target students with disabilities. The 1972 class action lawsuit, Pennsylvania Association for Retarded Children v. Pennsylvania, contested Pennsylvania’s educational laws regarding the denial of disabled students’ rights to a public education. Subsequently, the court ruled on behalf of the Pennsylvania Association for Retarded Children and determined that the state could not apply the law in a way “so as to deny any mentally retarded child access to a free public program of education and training” (McGovern, 2015, p. 119.) In 1972, Mills v. the Board of Education concluded that students with disabilities should not be removed from the public-school setting and placed in an alternative setting without also ensuring that that they had access to the necessary supports and services to meet their individual needs (McGovern, 2015). As a result, students with disabilities were required to have “ a constitutionally adequate prior hearing and periodic review” of their progress to ensure that the setting is appropriate (McGovern, 2015, p.119). The ESEA of 1965 laid the foundation for the first substantial legislation mandated for students with disabilities, the Education for All Handicapped Children’s Act (EAHCA) (Public Law 94-142) law of 1975. EAHCA introduced the provision of a Free and Appropriate education (FAPE) for students with disabilities (Eunjoo et al., 2018). This law made it a requirement for students with disabilities to attend school and be “educated to the maximum extent appropriate in the general education classroom” alongside their general education peers (Stone, 2019). The law took into consideration that not all students with disabilities could benefit from being in the general education classroom due to the nature and severity of their disability. Read More …