Zero Reject

Background

Prior to the enactment of a federal special education law in 1975, over 1 million children with disabilities were excluded from public schools or served inadequately. While many states attempted to serve students with mild disabilities, officials regularly denied services to those who had severe and multiple impairments. School codes often permitted the exclusion of students who were deemed “uneducable or untrainable,” those who were judged as unable to benefit from further education, or those who did not have a mental age of a 5-year-old.

Officials in public schools often turned away students who were not yet toilet trained, and children were routinely placed on waiting lists or told to return when they could observe additional progress. In response to this widespread exclusion, the zero reject principle of the IDEA mandated that local educational agencies provide educations for every student with a disability, without conditions or exceptions. Even though the term zero reject is not used in the language of the IDEA, the concept is clearly embedded in the federal law as clarified by case law.

The seminal case involving zero reject arose in New Hampshire, where a local school board sought to stop paying expenses associated with providing services for a student in a residential facility who suffered from multiple profound disabilities. The board maintained that it should not have to pay for all of the child's expenses, because most had little, or nothing, to do with education. The board also believed that the child did not qualify for special education due to his inability to benefit from instruction and his limited learning capacity.

Reversing in favor of the student in Timothy W. v. Rochester, New Hampshire, School District (1989), the First Circuit clarified the reach of the concept of zero reject in ruling that that the severity of the student's handicapping conditions did not justify the denial of services. The court emphasized that the zero reject principle ensured that a student's potential for educational benefit could not be a prerequisite for enrollment or receipt of services.

Practice

As reflected by the principle of zero reject, the severity of students' disabilities simply cannot be a consideration for exclusion or the denial of services. Accordingly, all eligible students with disabilities must continue to receive services regardless of where they are placed. In fact, the denial of services to students with disabilities who have been expelled or are placed in any of the other array of settings is in direct violation of the zero reject principle.

...