1975

President Ford reluctantly signs the Education of All Handicapped Children Act (EHCA), which demanded that “all handicapped children between the ages of three and eighteen have available to them . . . a free and appropriate education.” They also had the right to nondiscriminatory testing, evaluation, and placement procedures, the right to be educated in the “least restricted environment” available, and the right to challenge school decisions (Sealander, 167, 278ff.). EHCA gave handicapped students a right ‘regular’ ones [students] never possessed – to an ‘individualized education plan’” (279).