Mark Dayton: “I am rising to support the conference report that is being proposed for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.…”

“I am rising to support the conference report that is being proposed for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. I support this legislation. I commend the conferees for their efforts to streamline, make less bureaucratic and less time-consuming, the current IDEA legislation and its administration. In Minnesota, my home State, special education teachers--in fact, some of our most experienced special education teachers--are leaving that field, leaving special education classrooms, because of the bureaucratic burdens, the time-consuming paperwork. They lament the time they cannot spend in those classrooms, the time lost to working directly with schoolchildren, in order to have to comply with all of the State, Federal, and local school district reporting requirements. Those reporting requirements are mostly well intended, and one layer of them is mostly necessary and appropriate. However, the second and the third layers of bureaucracy have become duplicative, redundant, excessive, and oppressive. Sadly, previous attempts to "reform" this bureaucratic overload have resulted, according to many of the teachers in Minnesota, in more, not less, reporting requirements, more forms, more time required away from their classrooms and from their students. No one benefits from that bureaucratic overload--not the special education students, their families, the teachers, or the taxpayers.”