Until Congress honors its promise to fully fund the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), our nation's schools are forced to use state and local funding to subsidize the federal government's commitment to students with disabilities. Federal IDEA funding is currently only about half of what was promised.

In 1976, the federal government promised to pay 40 percent of the additional costs of providing a free and appropriate public education for students with disabilities. This additional federal funding was promised to be appropriated for our schools by 1982 and beyond. While children with disabilities continue to receive the services guaranteed by the federal law, states and local school boards must make up the annual federal shortfalls.

Mark wants to remedy this inequity. Therefore, since being elected to the Senate, he has offered legislation, on five separate occasions, to fully fund the federal government's promised share of IDEA expenditures. Mark's efforts to require full IDEA funding have been rejected by the Senate majority. Recently, however, the Senate passed a full-funding amendment which Mark supported, but the measure was later stripped out of the final bill by the House of Representatives. If the federal government honored its commitment to fully fund its share of special education expenditures, Minnesota schools would receive approximately $250 million per year in additional federal resources – freeing up state and local funding to reduce class sizes, invest in technology, improve curriculum, and provide all children with a safe learning environment.