The final regulations package includes three broad categories. The text of the regulation makes up about 25% of the entire package. The analysis of the public comments, including a description of the changes we've made, as well as the cost and benefits information, technical assistance documents which provide, among other things, useful guidance and clarifying information for families, teachers, students and administrators on effective implementation of the new IDEA requirements.

REGULATION "NOTES" We know from the extensive feedback we've received that many of you had concerns about the notes. Traditionally, the regulations have included notes to clarify a specific provision or to provide guidance on how to interpret the requirements. The commentors expressed concern that there were too many of these notes, and some of the commentors went so far as to say we were regulating by notes. In general, folks said that: one, notes that should have been part of the document should be incorporated into the text, meaning that they should be a part of the regulation; two, that all notes should be deleted or otherwise moved to a technical assistance document; and third, that notes that are retained should be used only for providing guidance or clarifying information. As you'll see on the screen, the notes that were in the NPRM have been removed. The substance of any note that should be a requirement has been added to the text of the regulation. The substantive notes directly related to the IEP have been included in Appendix A. The substance of any note that provides useful guidance has been added to the discussion in Attachment 1. The rest of the notes have simply been removed.

SPECIFIC CHANGES IN THE REGS Now, Tom Hehir and I are going to talk specifically about some of the changes in the regulation, including: the vital connection between IEPs and the general curriculum; the link between high achievement and student assessments; the role of regular education teachers in developing IEPs; graduation from high school with a regular diploma; attention deficit disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder; and finally, discipline. During this portion of our program, we'll also spend some time with researchers and educators who have developed extremely successful strategies for the implementation of IDEA in real-life classroom and community settings.

I know that many of you will have additional questions about these regulations and about the approach of the new strategies we're outlining today, and we'll be very pleased to respond. Tom?

THOMAS HEHIR, Director, OSEP: Thank you, Judy. It's great to be here today. As we saw from thousands of people who tuned in to our March third teleconference, the interest in the IDEAs that Work information series is tremendous. Students with disabilities are enormously lucky to have such a dedicated group of people in their court. One of the key reasons we're providing a series of technical assistance activities lies in the evolution of IDEA itself. Early on, much of the driving force for this act was access -- making sure students with disabilities were able to join their peers in schools. Later, we extended the law to provide early intervention programs for infants, toddlers and pre-schoolers. IDEA '97 continues this evolution of expanding educational opportunity for children with disabilities by ensuring their involvement in the general curriculum and requiring greater accountability for results. Over the past few years, we've accelerated our progress by focusing ever more on the end goal -- the results that have brought of these students into higher education and the work force than ever before.

To do this, we built on a solid foundation the law has provided and made some changes to promote the results we want for children today. As Secretary Riley noted, IDEA '97 greatly strengthens the role of families in educational planning and decision-making. It focuses on access to the general curriculum and to the assessments that give us a true reading of student progress. All of this has been accomplished with one overarching goal in mind: protecting the basic rights of children with disabilities to a free and appropriate public education, while giving educators and families the tools to help them succeed.

IEPs in the GENERAL CURRICULUM The first topic for today's discussion is the vital connection between the individualized education programs or IEPs in the general curriculum. Prior to 1997, the law did not specifically address involvement of disabled students in the general curriculum. The 1997 amendments brought this issue into focus with clear language about what we should be doing in this area and why. The regulations, for example, require that the IEP for each student with a disability include: a statement of the student's present level of performance including a description of how that disability affects his or her involvement in, and progress in, the general curriculum; a statement of measurable annual goals including benchmarks or short-term objectives relating to meeting the needs that result from the student's disability. This is designed to enable the child to be involved and progress in the general curriculum.

It also focuses on meeting the child's other educational needs that results from their disability. A statement of special education and related services and supplementary agent services to be provided to the child or on behalf of the child, and a statement of the program modifications in support for school personnel that will be provided for children to do the following: one, advance appropriately toward attaining the annual goals; two, be involved in and progress in the general curriculum; three, participate in extracurricular and non-academic activities; and four, be educated and participate with children with and without disabilities.

How Well Our Students are Progressing Towards Meeting Their Goals Now we'd like to talk about another issue -- the need to determine how well our students are progressing towards meeting their goals. Judy?

JUDITH HEUMANN: Thanks, Tom. It's every family's right and every family's responsibility to have an accurate view of how their children are doing in school. This is a responsibility for the state and local school districts as well. The '97 amendments require that for states to be eligible for funding under IDEA, children with disabilities must be included in general state and district-wide assessment programs with accommodations if necessary. The accommodations that will be provided must be detailed in the student's IEP. The amendments also address time lines and reporting of student scores. And if that student requires an alternate assessment, in the relatively few situations where this is the case, states and local education agencies must arrange for these assessments no later than July first of the year 2000.

This brings us to another important point which is how the performance of these students should be reported. The answer is simple: the state education agency must report assessment performance to the public with the same frequency and in the same detail that's reported for non-disabled children. I definitely need to note here that OSERS can provide a great deal of additional help to you in this area. Funded through IDEA, we have established the National Center for Educational Outcomes which provides technical assistance in this area. We also have five regional resource centers to provide guidance on assessment. These are listed in your packets and on our Web site.

Input of the Regular Education Teacher Now let's talk about a factor that is critical in helping these children get the high marks we want them to achieve -- the role and input of the regular education teacher. Tom?

THOMAS HEHIR: Thanks, Judy. Prior to 1997, IDEA did not require a regular education teacher to be a member of the individualized education program team. According to teachers and other school personnel, this was a mistake. As families, educators, policymakers and virtually everybody knows, teachers have the most important impact on a child's academic success. They are the direct link between teaching and learning. We need to give these teachers credit for their insights and experience, and ensure that they inform the road maps that will guide children to their goals.

Here are the specific ways IDEA '97 makes this happy -- happen. (Laughs) And makes us all happy. (Laughter) First, the rule. In simple terms, the IEP team for each child with a disability must include at least one of the child's regular education teachers if the teacher is or may be participating in the regular education environment. Now, the room for flexibility. If that child has more than one regular education teacher, for example, the local education agency may designate which teacher will be on that team. We realize that teachers have limited time and unlimited tasks, and we do not want to add to that list. What we want to do is to get teachers' insight and expertise. We need teachers to participate in the discussion about the child's involvement in, and progress in, the general curriculum, and in the regular education environment. They should also take part in decisions about the supplementary agent support for teachers and other staff that are necessary for the child to progress in that environment. The teacher need not participate in discussion about matters such as physical therapy if the teacher is not responsible for implementing that portion of the child's IEP. The decision about whether the teacher should be present at each meeting and the level of the teachers' participation are matters that must be determined on a case-by-case basis -- by the school district, the parents, and the other members of the IEP team. What's most important is that all involved in this process apply their skills in the most effective way possible. Each of the child's teachers and service providers must be informed of his or her responsibility related to the child's IEP whether or not they attend the meeting, and to the specific accommodations in support that need to be provided to that child.

The Connection Between Graduation and the Right to a Free and Appropriate Public Education Now let's take a closer look at one of the most important milestones in every student's life -- high school graduation -- specifically the connection between graduation and the right to a free and appropriate public education. Judy?

JUDITH HEUMANN: Thanks, Tom. We all know that a regular high school diploma is a critical path toward higher education or employment, yet many children with disabilities have been denied the opportunity to get the same high school diploma as their non-disabled peers. The regulations move us all toward a key objective: ensuring that both students with disabilities and their non-disabled peers are striving for this very important goal. Let's start out with our responsibility to involve students and their families.

From the freshman year on, it's very important for educators, students and families to focus on the goal of graduation, and to chart the best course for getting there successfully. By the time the student is in the senior year, the child's family should have an accurate sense of his or her progress. When school districts are ready to propose graduation with a regular high school diploma, they need to give written notice to the families. The reasoning for this should be common sense. Education is a continuing process and families and students need time to plan an effective transition for the next steps in that process. This written notice must include a variety of details that are clearly defined in the regulation, and it must come within a reasonable time for the parents to plan for the transition.

How does this affect the reevaluation of students? Simply put, students aging out of school and students graduating with the regular high school diploma need no reevaluation. Which leads us to another important question: When is the right to a free, appropriate public education terminated? It's terminated when a student graduates with a regular high school diploma or when a student is no longer within the eligible age range. Exiting or graduating a student with a disability without a regular high school diploma does not end that student's eligibility for special education services, and it's not a change in placement requiring notice. If a high school awards a student with a disability a certificate of attendance or other certificate of graduation instead of a regular diploma, the student is still entitled to services under IDEA until he or she reaches the age at which eligibility ceases.

The things I've just discussed are all related to key issues in the lives of most disabled students, but there are others as well. In a minute, Tom and I are going to look closer at the regulations related to discipline, attention deficit disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. And as Corinne mentioned, we want to reserve time to answer as many of your questions as possible. We've included information about other issues in the regulations such as the definition of the school day, the role of native languages, charter schools and private schools in the IDEAs that Work participant packages that are now available on our Web site. In addition, you'll be able to learn more from the numerous technical assistance opportunities that will be coming to you over the next few weeks, months and years.

I want to reiterate our commitment at OSERS to be a resource for the important work that all of you are doing. We have a very aggressive schedule of technical assistance activities underway, many of them designed to help implement the final regulations smoothly and effectively at the grassroots level. These include extensive information on our Web site, interactive chat rooms on our Partners Web site, video and audiotapes for our teleconferences, articles and newspapers, magazines and journals, and presentations at conferences. We've invested heavily in research to identify and demonstrate the principles and practices that are succeeding. As you'll note from some of the videos you're about to see, the educators and researchers who have played a role in this have some excellent insights for all of us. Tom?

THOMAS HEHIR: Thanks again, Judy. I'd like to also add that being a good resource also means being a good listener. When we released the regulations last week, we talked about IDEA '97 as a working reality, not a promising experiment. Part of what makes it a working reality is the excellent work that you do every day and we appreciate it.

Children with Attention Deficit Disorder and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder Now I'd like to spend a few moments talking about how the regulations address the needs of children with attention deficit disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. To ensure that children with disabilities who are eligible to be served, ADD and ADHD are included as examples of conditions that could lead to a child being identified as other health impaired. Our objective here is to make it clear to educators, parents and others that children with ADD/ADHD may be eligible for special education and related services under IDEA. For some, this is going to raise a question: Are children with ADD/ADHD automatically eligible for Part B services? As with other disabilities, the answer is no. The child must have a condition that meets one of the disability categories in which adversely affects the child's performance. The child must further need special education in related services because of that disability.

Video Clips: OSEP-Sponsored Videos "Facing the Challenges of ADD" and "One Child in Every Classroom." We know that this is an important issue for many of you. The video clips that show an OSEP-sponsored video about to follow. This is called "Facing the Challenges of ADD" and "One Child in Every Classroom." These demonstrate that these children can succeed if identified and provided research-based instruction. Now we'd like to turn the discussion over.

IRA SALAFSKY, MD (Video): There is not an exact single blood test that I can perform that says, "Yes, this child has ADD." Someday when we understand the biologic basis of this condition, we may have such a test. Right now we don't, and so the diagnosis really depends on assessing the behavior of the children in a variety of situations for the diagnosis of ADD. I think we really need other professionals to help us as well -- maybe psychologists, formal testing -- a variety of measures that will then really pinpoint what the problem is and then how to approach it.

CAROL LLOYD (Video): Well, I think as a classroom teacher, you're definitely aware of your children within the first week to two weeks of school as far as their behavior and their academic needs, so you automatically sense some children just not being able to really sit and focus, attend to the task, and you all of a sudden find yourself revising your strategies to accommodate each child. So I think throughout the 15 years that I've taught, I've always had children that can't attend for whatever reason. (Video ends)

Discipline THOMAS HEHIR: Now we'd like to turn the discussion over to the topic of discipline. Judy?

JUDITH HEUMANN: Thanks. I'd like to start out by saying that I know this is a critical and sometimes controversial issue. It speaks to concerns that are close to the hearts of parents, students and educators alike. It's also a complex issue. Facing it honestly and effectively can be likened to a good balancing act. It requires us to balance the need to educate all children in a safe environment and the need to protect children with disabilities whose disabilities cause them to behave in troubling ways. We also recognize and want to respond to your need for information about practices that are effective for doing this. In other words, to provide you ideas that work for managing behavior in classrooms.

As we proceed, I'd like to offer a bit of perspective. Based on available data from the state, less than one percent of all disabled children are involved in serious disciplinary problems, and only about five percent of the six million students with disabilities served by special education are expected to be suspended for one or more times during a school year. Granted, this is a small percentage, but it looms large in the minds of the public. Fortunately, the new regulations offer clear guidance on how we can balance the needs and rights of individual students with the right of all students to be educated in a safe environment.

The regulations should also be reviewed in a context of practices that we know are working. We have invested in research that demonstrates how a variety of strategies can be implemented and the tremendous results that can be delivered. If you look closely at IDEA and at the technical assistance in the IDEAs that Work information series, you'll find a number of resources to help you develop the early intervention, effectively trained personnel and behavioral assessments that can help you get the same results. Just as communities in this area, the Department of Education has worked with a variety of organizations to develop a very informative publication "Early Warning, Timely Response: A Guide to Safe Schools." The guide presents a brief summary of the research on violence and prevention, and intervention and crisis response in schools. It explains the early warning signs to look for and the actions steps that can be taken to prevent violence and other troubling behaviors. We also have a publication entitled "Safe, Drug-Free and Effective Schools for all Students: What Works" which focuses directly on schools that have effectively reduced discipline problems and improved the learning and behavior of all students including those with disabilities. IDEA '97 also contains provisions that promote proactive measures to help prevent discipline problems. These are based on some key facts that research and practice have supported time and again.

As you'll see in the upcoming videos, we know from extensive hands-on experience that when school personnel have knowledge about how to change behavior and the freedom to apply it, they can bring about phenomenal improvement. One thing that we've learned -- and many of you have reiterated this -- it's expulsion and exclusions from schools don't take any of us very far. They do little to address the causes of the behavior that makes us want to discipline a child in the first place. Often, they exacerbate the problem and lead to even more serious consequences in later years. Research shows that early identification of problems and positive interventions by families and educators greatly minimizes the need to remove children from the educational environment down the line. Simply put, we know kids are safer in the schoolhouse than they are on the street.

VIDEO CLIPS: OSERS-Funded Center on Positive Behavioral Intervention and Support. So what does work? What can we do to replace negative behaviors that interfere with children's learning with positive behaviors that are critical for ensuring that they succeed? A good bit of the solution comes down to three words: positive behavioral support. Here to tell us more about this are George Sugai and Rob Horner from the University of Oregon, both of whom are very active in the OSERS-funded Center on Positive Behavioral Intervention and Support. Rob and George also work with four additional partners at the University of Missouri, the University of Kansas, the University of Kentucky and the University of South Florida.

GEORGE SUGAI (Video): The center and its work probably includes concerns and issues around regulations as well as goes beyond them. What I mean by that is that we spend much of our time looking at how we can serve all children in schools. And at the prevention level we're interested in how do we keep children from acquiring behaviors that get in their way of succeeding in schools both academically and socially. We're also really interested in how do we assist kids who already have behavioral patterns that interfere with their success in school. We're also interested in, well, what happens when a child has very difficult, high intensity behaviors for whom significant supports are required. We believe that the practices that we are trying to provide and give to schools, families and communities to try to address those challenges, both at the prevention and intervention level, enable them to best meet the needs of the kids, improve their lifestyle and so forth.

ROBERT HORNER (Video): Schools today face a very difficult challenge. The rate and the magnitude and the intensity of violent and destructive behavior that teachers and administrators are facing in children is unprecedented. Children today are struggling. And our schools are struggling to respond to them effectively. The old tools, the tools that our society typically uses which is to reprimand and punish and exclude children really don't work. And the "get tough" philosophy is, in many times, good politics and lousy education. So what's happening is we've got a history of actually trying to change the culture of our schools by being very firm, very harsh with children who behave inappropriately, or we suspend them, exclude them, we find other places for them to go. Basically, that's not working for us educationally.

Positive behavioral support is a different approach. It says, "If we're going to be successful with a wide range of children, we need to make our schools more accessible environments. We need to think about what works, what works well. And the exciting point for us, the thing that is making the research that's been funded in IDEA of special excitement is that the things that you do, the use of behavioral and positive strategies to work with the more difficult kids, actually have dramatic advances and improvements for all the kids.

So, for example, here's a school that we've been working with for four and a half years. And the initial work was based on problems at the school. The school came to us and they said, "Listen, we're inundated with office discipline referrals." Now, this was a middle school which provided education to children in grade six, seven and eight. There were 530 children attending this school. During a nine-month period, during one academic year, there were 2,600 incidents in which children were sent to the office because they had engaged in such egregious behavior that they got kicked out of class or were sent for discipline, right? Twenty-six hundred times, 57% of the whole student body got sent to the office at least once. And they came to us and we said, "What can we do to make a difference?"

Well, the first thing is we said, "Look. If you want to change a culture, you don't do it with one person or just the principal by himself or herself; you do it with a team." So what the school did is they defined a team. The team included the administrator, the team included grade representatives from sixth grade, seventh grade, eighth grade. The team identified and had the agreement from the faculty that changing the behavioral culture of that school is one of the top three goals. They also set up systems within the school so that they rewarded appropriate behavior, and they continued as they have all along, to not allow inappropriate behaviors to go unconsequented. They did, in fact, keep sending people to the office. They did, in fact, keep saying, "This is not okay," alright? But in addition to saying, "This is not okay," they really built in an ongoing system that was positive. In that first year, they produced a 44% or 46% reduction in office discipline referrals.

GEORGE SUGAI (Video): When we work with schools, one thing we've always told them, "If you have children with significant behavioral difficulties, or if you're concerned about kids acquiring those kinds of behaviors, you've got to look systemically. You can't just select a series of practices or strategies and apply those and assume that they will work and sustain themselves." So, when we work with administrators, one of the first things we say is, one, "We need your leadership." Second thing we say is, "Establish a critical mass of people in your school who can become the vehicle for moving positively and let's go forward." In particular, we establish a team. (Video ends)

Removal for up to Ten School Days At the end of the program, we will list a variety of resources for additional information. One of the first questions I got last week was related to the number of days for which a child with a disability can be removed from school if a discipline-related problem arises. The regulations clarify that school personnel may remove a child with a disability for up to ten school days and for additional removals of up to ten school days for separate acts of misconduct as long as the removals do not constitute a pattern. Schools do not need to provide services during the first ten school days in a school year that a child is removed. During any subsequent removal that is less than ten school days, schools must provide services that are determined necessary to enable the child to appropriately progress in the general curriculum and advance toward achieving the goals of their IEP. In cases involving removals for ten school days or less, school personnel, in consultation with the child's special education teacher, make the service determination.

Another question we have heard relates to what happens during removals of more than ten school days? During any long-term removal for a behavior that is not a manifestation of a child's disability, schools must provide services that are determined necessary to enable the child to appropriately progress in the general curriculum, and appropriately advance toward achieving the goals of his or her IEP. In these cases in which a child is removed for behavior that is not a manifestation of his or her disability, the IEP team makes the service determination.