SPED Timeline

The oldest existing school for the deaf in America opened on April 15, 1817. The school became the first recipient of state aid to education in America when the Connecticut General Assembly awarded its first annual grant to the school in 1819.

A group of administrators established the CEC in 1922 as the International Council for the Education of Exceptional Children. Its name was changed to the Council for Exceptional Children in 1958. The organization established various awards during the 1960s, such as the CEC Outstanding Public Service Award.

American child psychiatrist Leo Kanner, M.D., publishes a paper describing 11 children who were highly intelligent but displayed "a powerful desire for aloneness" and "an obsessive insistence on persistent sameness." He later names their condition "early infantile autism."

Pennsylvania Association for Retarded Citizens (PARC) v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, 334 F. Supp. 1257 (E.D. Pa. 1971), was a case where the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania was sued by the Pennsylvania Association for Retarded Citizens (PARC), now The Arc of Pennsylvania, over a law that gave public schools the authority to deny a free education to children who had reached the age of 8, yet had not reached the mental age of 5.

Section 504 is a part of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 that prohibits discrimination based upon disability. Section 504 is an anti-discrimination, civil rights statute that requires the needs of students with disabilities to be met as adequately as the needs of the non-disabled are met.

This act required all public schools accepting federal funds to provide equal access to education and one free meal a day for children with physical and mental disabilities. Public schools were required to evaluate children with disabilities and create an educational plan with parent input that would emulate as closely as possible the educational experience of non-disabled students.

Amends the Education of the Handicapped Act to authorize the award of reasonable attorneys' fees, expenses, and costs to the parents or guardian of a handicapped child or youth who is the prevailing party in a civil suit under such Act to protect the child's right to a free appropriate public education.

First introduced in the 100th Congress, the ADA bans discrimination on the basis of disability in the areas of employment, public accommodation, public services, transportation and telecommunications. President George H.W. Bush signed the ADA into law on July 26, 1990.

The No Child Left Behind law—the 2002 update of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act—effectively scaled up the federal role in holding schools accountable for student outcomes.

Peyton Manning's last game in the NFL.