University of Virginia
Curry School of Education

Links to Current Information about Amendments to

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act

These links provide an admittedly incomplete list of resources for people who are interested in learning more about the recent amendments to IDEA. I hope to update them as I acquire more information.

• ACTION: Final regulations: Here are links for copies of the final regs., made available 12 Mar 1999. (Warning, these are large files.)
  • Final Regs as a pdf file (about 5 million bytes; requires Adobe Acrobat)
  • Final Regs as a txt file (about 1.5 million bytes; you can then use the save feature of your browser to have your own copy)
• OSERS' site, including current information on regulations, updates, full-text of the IDEA Amendments of 1997, and other resources.
• The text of the amendments can also be found by going to The Library of Congress' Bill Text Page, and entering "h.r. 5" or "sen 717" in the search box there; you'll be able to get it in html of pdf form there.It's also available as text via ftp from Thomas.
• Proposed regulations appeared in the Federal Register of 22 October 1997 and are available from several sources:
  • The Department of Education has the proposed rules available.
  • From the US Government Printing Office, one can get a copy in portable data format or as an ASCII text file (these are large files, so make sure you have time to download them.
  • The Council for Exceptional Children's Public Policy group provided links to the documents in three parts
  • Law groups concerned with special education law have made the regs. available, including EDLAW's link to three separate segments and LRP Publication's links also providing the documents in three parts.
• IDEA Reauthoriziation Home Page of the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources.
• IDEA Staff Draft from the House of Representatives Committee on Education and the Workforce
• Notes from the Council for Exceptional Children's public policy office and particularly its page providing a summary and press release on the amendments' passage.
• The Arc's "Capital Insider," a part of its government affairs office
• LDA's page of recommendations about IDEA.
• LRP's comparison of features of the working-group's amendments to IDEA and the previous version.
• EDLAW's added materials on the amendments, too.