Fifty Years of Progress in Meeting the Needs of Students with Extensive Support Needs

We start this commemorative piece on IDEA celebrating 50 years of progress for students with extensive support needs (ESN) who historically were categorically excluded from public school. Following, we briefly cover significant court cases, historical precedents, and paradigm shifts in the field that led to the passage of PL 94-142 in 1975. Next, we highlight some of the major advances and practice-changing innovations in designing appropriate educational programs for these students by answering questions about where and by whom these students should be taught, the content of their curriculum, and the instructional strategies used to teach them. In the third section of the article, we attempt to emphasize the philosophical underpinnings of the utilized practices and their implications for research and practice. We close in the fourth section offering some observations and recommendations that should be considered in efforts to provide students with ESN quality educational services and support. While the progress we have achieved is nothing less than extraordinary, there are still many questions to be resolved.