Northwest Center

May 25 marked a civil rights milestone: the 50th anniversary of Washington State House Bill 90 – Education for All, the first law in the U.S. to grant public education to people with disabilities. Before the bill was passed in 1971, “Our children were denied not only education, but the right to medical insurance coverage, to attend events, to go to church school,” says Janet Taggart, one of the law’s authors. Those injustices led Taggart, whose daughter had a disability, to found Seattle-based nonprofit Northwest Center with other local mothers (the late Cecile Lindquist, Evelyn Chapman and Katie Dolan). Then they enlisted two University of Washington law students to write a law so that every child in the state could get an education. Members of the team also helped write national legislation named for their original bill, the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, known today as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. “Things are better now,” Taggart says. “But there is still much to do.” That’s why, when Northwest Center hosted an event honoring Education for All, a panel discussed not only the bill’s legacy but also the future of special education. The discussion featured Taggart, former Washington governor and senator Daniel J. Evans (who signed the bill into law) and lawyer and Education for All author William “Bill” Dussault, along with Richard Mullen, coordinator of outreach and advocacy for the Arc of King County; Jae Kim, information and resource coordinator for the Arc of King County who also has a disability; speech-language pathologist Christine Simonitch; Carrie Fannin, executive director of the Children's Institute for Learning Differences; and two lead teachers from Northwest Center Kids, Jessamyn “Jessie” Lemus and Ausha Martin. The work, and the conversations, continue, including the first Early Childhood Summit in October.

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Evans: Fifty years ago, we were in a deep recession, so the legislative session was a difficult one and we were just trying to hang on. I wasn't terribly interested in starting something new that would get in the way of that survival exercise, but the bill authors were a powerful lobby. There is nothing more powerful than people who care deeply about an issue.

Northwest Center: What can we learn from what the Education for All authors achieved?

Taggart: I'd like to see a coordinated parent, professional and advocate organization for children with disabilities, with a single legislative issue to promote annually. Based on the model that we used to promote Education for All, I'd like to see a system of providing national, organized lobbying to bring meaningful oversight to provide for and protect our children.

Northwest Center: How can we help move inclusive education forward?

Dussault: We've passed wonderful laws over the last 50 years, originating out of House Bill 90. There are no disability policemen to make sure this happens, except the people directly involved. Individuals with disabilities need to be incorporated as advocates in this movement. That leads to real inclusion.

Fannin: Schools have gotten much better at working with kids whose disability you can see. The gap continues to exist with those kids with neurodevelopmental disabilities or delays, whose way of coping with their environment at school gets framed under the umbrella of “bad behavior.” We have to identify what is interfering with the child's learning, and then we can disrupt the cycles of failure, restraint and seclusion, and the school-to-prison pipeline. And our educators need the freedom to try multiple approaches to decide what allows for taking risks and learning.

Kim: I was put in a special education class from fourth grade until high school. I barely did academic work. It feels like I have a hole in my education. If I could rebuild special education systems, it would examine the model focusing on support and accommodations. I would train teachers how students should be challenged to learn with their peers in order to be successful.

Lemus: What I hear from families is that what we provide at Northwest Center Early Learning is difficult to replicate in K through 12 because of the emphasis we put on social and emotional development, smaller class sizes and parent supports. Many families call on us for school-age care because their kids have less after-school opportunities and programs.

Martin: So many organizations don’t have the knowledge or confidence to include all children. Northwest Center’s IMPACT team can work with those organizations to help teachers learn how to implement inclusion.

Simonitch: When my kiddo [with disabilities] was in fifth grade in Seattle Public Schools, even though he was in a self-contained classroom, they were paired up with a general education class. It was great. Every time they went on the playground, the kids really went out of their way to include them.

Northwest Center: What are some successes that you’ve seen?

Mullen: If more parents can be informed and equipped, especially in the African-American community, we can seek a better outcome. I created a group called the Hope Collective of parents who are interested in understanding how the legislative process works so that positive change can be part of their reality. There have been amazing family members who have risen to the occasion to advocate and make sure that their loved ones have what they need. I feel that it's a great momentum.

Dussault: It comes back to Janet's comments. There needs to be a consolidated approach with a single focus across multiple states. We need answers that focus on individual solutions even as we look at broad scope legislation.

Taggart: We all need to monitor present legislation and how effective it is. Stay in touch with your political leaders. So much of what we do depends on national politics. We've got to understand that, and we've got to find a way to work with it. We have a big job to do.

Northwest Center: Any parting advice?

has led inclusion efforts since 1965: our founders wrote the first laws guaranteeing all children an education. Our therapy, education and employment services for people with disabilities maximize potential and create diverse schools and workplaces that benefit everyone.

Northwest Center

In this Washington State Archives photo, Governor Dan Evans signs HB90 into law on May 25, 1971. With him are the bill’s authors: NWC founders Janet Taggart, Cecile Lindquist, Evelyn Chapman, and Katie Dolan, and UW law students Bill Dussault and George Edensword-Breck.

Dan Evans

Janet Taggart

William “Bill” Dussault

Carrie Fannin

Jae Kim

Jessamyn “Jessie” Lemus

Ausha Martin

Christine Simonitch

Richard Mullen

Read the Education for All timeline

CLOSE TIMELINE

MEET THE PANELISTS

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2021

Founded by Seattle moms who refused to take “No” for an answer when their kids with disabilities were barred from school, Northwest Center is dedicated in 1965. The school is housed in two unused Naval Supply Depot buildings at Pier 91 in Interbay. During the dedication, a key is presented to eight-year-old student Debra to officially open the doors. She’s shown here with Senator Henry M. Jackson and Rear Admiral W. E. Ferrell.

Education for All timeline

Wanting to guarantee education for all children with disabilities, NWC founders Katie Dolan, Cecile Lindquist, Evelyn Chapman, and Janet Taggart begin writing a law mandating education for all in Washington state. They recruit University of Washington law students William Dussault and George Edensword-Breck and draft 29 versions of the law before they’re satisfied. “I told all of them the same thing: If you want something passed, you have to contact and convince legislators—and there are 148 of them. Most organizations would say, ‘Oh, that’s impossible.’ Not Cecile and Katie. Nothing slowed them down.” – Former Washington State Governor Dan Evans

Northwest Center marks the 50th anniversary of House Bill 90 – Education for All with a virtual panel discussion featuring leading voices in disability rights and education including HB 90 authors Bill Dussault and Northwest Center founder Janet Taggart, and former Washington Governor Dan Evans. “If you can get people and parents and legislators and advocates all across the country focused on a single issue, you have built an enormous title wave of support. I think that would be a key element in making continuing progress in inclusive education.” – Former Washington state governor and senator Daniel J. Evans

Northwest Center’s 80-plus-member Mother’s Guild expands advocacy on a state and national level, lobbying representatives by driving to the statehouse, making calls, and sending letters. This newspaper photo shows founder Janet Taggart, standing, with Mother’s Guild members Alice Schmoker and Betty Neely. “We just had to call one or two mothers and they would immediately make calls to Olympia. They were absolutely the underpinning of all the political work we did.” –Janet Taggart, Northwest Center founder & Education for All author

With the assistance of Governor Dan Evans, cousin of Cecile Lindquist, Washington State House Bill 90 is introduced at the state legislature. It mandates that public schools educate children with disabilities or lose some of their funding. “Our bill was stuck in the rules committee. One of the legislators did not want there to be sanctions. They told us we’d have to talk to every legislator by Tuesday. This was on Saturday. We went to Olympia on Monday, we contacted all 98 members of the House, and the next day it went on the floor and it passed.” –Cecile Lindquist

Governor Dan Evans signs House Bill 90 – Education for All into law. He is shown in this Washington State Archives photo with the team who wrote and got the law passed in just two years: Northwest Center founders Janet Taggart, Cecile Lindquist, Evelyn Chapman, and Katie Dolan, and UW law students Bill Dussault and George Edensword-Breck. The first right-to-education lawsuit in the country, Pennsylvania Association for Retarded Children v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is brought by the Public Interest Law Center in Philadelphia to overturn state law and secure a quality education for all children. The case is settled before the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of PA with a consent decree in which the state agrees to provide a free public education for children with “mental retardation.”

NWC founders Katie Dolan, pictured, and Janet Taggart found Troubleshooters for the Handicapped (now Disability Rights Washington) to help Seattle families negotiate disability benefits. This inspires federal legislation establishing Protection & Advocacy agencies in every state. Philadelphia’s Public Interest Law Center files PARC II to enforce the consent decree against the School District of Philadelphia. Mills v. Board of Education of District of Columbia rules that students with disabilities must receive public education. The U.S. Bureau of Education for the Handicapped finds that fewer than half of the 8 million U.S. children who qualify actually receive special education.

Members of the Northwest Center Education for All team pay their own way to Washington, D.C. to work on the federal law inspired by and named for the state law they created – the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, otherwise known as Public Law 94-142. This cover story on Northwest Center’s parent lobbying appears on the cover of The Seattle Times Magazine in 1977. President Gerald Ford signs the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (Public Law 94-142). This law requires all states that accept money from the federal government to provide equal access to education for children with disabilities, in addition to providing them with one free meal per day. States have the responsibility to ensure compliance under the law within their public-school systems.

With a federal grant, Northwest Center develops a fully integrated education and therapy model where children with and without disabilities learn and play together. Early Intervention (now known as Early Supports) is soon added for children birth to age 3, a pioneering program including therapy in the family’s home rather than a clinical setting. This photo from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer runs in 1982 with this caption: “Tom Larson, special education teacher in the Northwest Center for the Retarded preschool, plays and sings folk songs to the infants and toddlers.”

President Ronald Reagan signs the Handicapped Children’s Protection Act, a law that gives parents of children with disabilities more say in the development of their child’s Individual Education Plan, or IEP. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), drafted by the National Council on Disability, is introduced in the House and Senate.

The final version of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, 42 U.S.C. § 12101, is signed into law on July 26 by President George H. W. Bush. The ADA affords similar protections against discrimination to Americans with disabilities as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 enacted for race, religion, sex, national origin, and other characteristics. The ADA also requires covered employers to provide reasonable accommodations to employees with disabilities and requires accessibility of public accommodations. With Public Law 101-476, Congress calls for significant changes to Public Law 94-142 (the Education for All Handicapped Children Act). Traumatic brain injury and autism are added as new disability categories, and Congress also mandates that as a part of a student’s IEP, an individual transition plan must be developed to help students transition to post-secondary life.

Northwest Center becomes an Early Intervention Part C provider, receiving federal, state and local government funding to provide services to children ages birth-3.

The Education for all Handicapped Children’s Act becomes the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. President Bill Clinton reauthorizes the act with several key amendments that emphasize providing all students with access to the same curriculum. States are also given the authority to expand the “developmental delay” definition from birth through 5 to include students up to age 9.

Congress amends IDEA, calling for early intervention for students, greater accountability, and improved educational outcomes, and raising the standards for instructors who teach special education classes. The amendment also requires that if students from minority groups are placed in special education for reasons not related to a disability, school districts must shift up to 15 percent of special education funds to general education.

On September 25, President George W. Bush signs the Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act of 2008 ("The Act"). The Act makes important changes to the definition of the term "disability" by rejecting the holdings of several Supreme Court decisions and portions of EEOC's ADA regulations. The effect of these changes is to make it easier for an individual seeking protection under the ADA to establish that they have a disability. Bridging the gap for students with disabilities who are aging out of school, Northwest Center Employment Services joins the School-to-Work program, partnering with King County’s Developmental Disabilities Administration and the Washington State Division for Vocational Rehabilitation. Today, our Transition Services team assesses job skills, provides training, and secures employment as beneficial to the employer as it is meaningful to the employee.

Under the leadership of King County Executive Dow Constantine, King County staff examine how the county can improve outcomes and support individuals and communities to achieve their full potential. This vision becomes the Best Starts for Kids Levy (Ordinance 18088), approved by King County voters in November 2015. More than 1,000 community members and an additional 1,000 youth provide input via focus groups, interviews, and surveys, shaping Best Starts for Kids’ values, focus, and approach to change. Northwest Center celebrates its 50th anniversary as the largest community service organization in the Pacific Northwest, reaching more than 1,000 families annually and serving children and adults of all abilities. This image shows one of the earliest classes and a recent group of NWC students.

In partnership with King County and the City of Seattle, Northwest Center Kids opens an early childhood education center in the Chinook building downtown, licensed by the Washington Department of Early Learning to provide inclusive learning and play to children with and without disabilities, ages 6 weeks to 5 years.

Recognizing that as many as 22,000 children with disabilities in King County alone are unable to find inclusive early learning, Northwest Center Kids secures a Public Health – Seattle and King County, Best Starts for Kids of King County's Child Care Health Consultation grant to launch IMPACT (Inclusion Mentorship Program for increasing Access in Childcare Team). IMPACT trains early learning and childcare providers to welcome children of all abilities, with a goal to reach 6,000 children in three years. In just two years, IMPACT reaches 17,000 children in King County.

Photo courtesy of Northwest Center