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Guaranteed Human.

After this week's episode on the 504 sit-ins, we are returning to the topic of disability rights for our Saturday classic with something that took place a few years earlier than that.

It is about lawsuits involving disabled students that followed in the wake of Brown v. Board

and the passage of the first U.S. law establishing that all children, regardless of ability, have the right to a free, appropriate public education.

In this episode, we mentioned that the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, which is now called

the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, required evaluation programs to be non-discriminatory

because poor children and children who weren't white were disproportionately being identified

as disabled. This continues to be an ongoing and pervasive issue today.

Black and indigenous children in particular

are disproportionately more likely

to be incorrectly identified as disabled.

And there are also gender disparities in special education.

This relates to how many children are identified as disabled and which disabilities they

are identified as having, and it can have a negative impact on students' entire educations

and their later lives.

This episode also makes a passing reference to No Child Left Behind.

No Child Left Behind was repealed on December 10th, 2015,

and it was replaced with the Every Student Succeeds Act.

This episode originally came out on March 25, 2015.

Enjoy.

Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of IHeart Radio.

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