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A Relic of the Past: Idencaon, Placement and Review
Commiees in Ontario’s Educaon System
Luke Reid, Gillian Parekh
University of Toronto, York University, ARCH Disability Law Centre
Abstract
The Identication, Placement, and Review Committee (IPRC) process has been long established within
Ontario special education practice and provincial legislation. Borne out of advocacy for advancing the
right to education for children with disabilities, the IPRC process is now being critically explored as to
whether the process itself creates an infringement on students’ access and rights to quality education.
Drawing on historical and contemporary shifts in education policy and human rights in Ontario, this pa-
per presents the case that the current structure of the IPRC is outdated and may function as a signicant
barrier to students’ academic futures.
Keywords: disability, placement, identication, inclusive education, human rights
Identication, Placement and Review Committees (IPRCs) have a long history in Ontario’s education
system. IPRCs are enshrined in the Education Act R.S.O. 1990, c. E.2, as a means to identify students
with disabilities and to secure their placements in schools (OME, 2016). However, over the past several
years, the IPRC framework has increasingly come under re for the antiquated manner in which it fullls
this role. The process has been charged with being resource-heavy, requiring signicant ongoing contri-
butions from education professionals, and with the fact that there is little monitoring as to whether the
benets for students warrant the expense.
Although the IPRC is intended to address individual students, its inexible processes mandate the
usage of crude categorizations of student ability and frequently place students in standardized place-
ments, while simultaneously minimizing or excluding student involvement in the process. Additionally,
the IPRC process largely relies on the logic of a medicalized approach to disability (Connor, 2013), an
approach that focuses more on “xing” or rehabilitating children than it does on ensuring rights of access
for children with disabilities.
Many of these issues can be traced to the institutional history of the IPRC and the fact that many
of the roles that it was initially intended to ll are no longer as relevant as they once were. This paper
employs a critical disability studies approach to examine the history and the role that the IPRC process
currently plays in the Ontario public education system. As a theoretical frame, critical disability studies
employ an intersectional approach to engage in the politics of disability and to promote societal trans-
formation (Goodley et al., 2019). As the IPRC process is used to identify, categorize, and respond to per-
ceived capacity, critical disability studies provide an ideal investigative tool to critique this system and to
identify key elements necessary for systemic transformation and the advancement of disability rights.
Using this approach, this paper will highlight several areas where the IPRC process is either no
longer relevant or falls short of its stated objectives, and will query whether ‘the process’ is privileged
over outcomes for students. In doing so, this paper will discuss the core values which should drive policy
reform and will make some limited recommendations about how a more responsive framework can be
developed to better ensure that the rights of students with disabilities are upheld.
Canadian Journal of Educational Administration and Policy, 194, 51-63
52
Reid, Parekh, & Lattanzio
A Brief Overview of the Process
As noted above, the IPRC process is used to both identify students with disabilities and to place them in
a setting deemed ‘most appropriate’ depending on the committee’s conclusions around the student’s per-
ceived ability. Despite the subjectivity involved in the assessment of student ability (Parekh et al., 2018),
the IPRC process is highly regulated. In broad strokes, the IPRC typically involves a formal meeting held
at the student’s school, attended by stakeholders involved in the student’s education. Meeting attendees
can include the student’s parents, teachers, members of the school administration, representatives from
special education, relevant professionals (e.g., school psychologists, physiotherapists, speech patholo-
gists, social workers, etc.), and at times, though rarely, the students themselves. Although programming
and accommodations could be discussed at an IPRC meeting, there are only two legally binding deci-
sions that can be made through this process: 1) the identi cation of an exceptionality and 2) the deter mi-
nation of a student’s placement. Students can be identied with one or more of twelve possible Ministr y
dened exceptionalities1 and placed in one of ve Ministry determined placement options.2 If parents
are unhappy with the decisions made at an IPRC meeting, Ontario Regulation 181/98 lays out a process
through which parents can formally appeal identication and placement decisions.
A Brief History of the IPRC Process
In many ways, the shortfalls of the IPRC are a direct result of its institutional history. The IPRC, in its
present form, was developed in the context of great change in education across North America. Slowly
but surely, students with disabilities were gaining the right to attend school across the continent, a right
which had previously been denied to them in many jurisdictions (Dickson & McKay, 1989). Ontario was
no exception to this trend, in part because various advocacy groups across the province were continu-
ously pressing the government to provide more comprehensive access to special education services for
students with disabilities (Zegarac et al., 2008).
It was under these circumstances that Ontario’s Minister of Education nally announced in 1978 a
long-awaited plan to ensure that every student, regardless of disability, would have the opportunity to
benet from Ontario’s education system. This plan would ultimately result in the passage of The Edu-
cation Amendment Act, 1980 (“Bill 82”), a piece of legislation designed to make it mandator y for school
boards across the province to provide “appropriate” special education services to students with disabili-
ties (some school boards were in fact already providing these services).3 However, prior to the enactment
of Bill 82, the Ministry of Education determined that as a rst step, it needed to create:
…an early identication program to ensure that the learning needs of every child entering
the schools will be identied. (Stephenson, 1978)
The Ministry felt that such a system was “essential” if “remedial programs [were to] be provided
promptly” to students (Stephenson, 1978). At this point, even though some of the school boards that of-
fered special education services already had a provincially mandated “admissions board” for placing or
admitting students, few of them had developed any sort of early identication system to assess student
needs. With this in mind, the Government passed Ontario Regulation 704/78, which set up the Special
Education Program Placement and Review Committee (SEPPRC), which was a direct precursor to the
IPRC’s that we know today. In many ways, the new SEPPRC was not a radically new mechanism for
identifying and placing students but was instead a revised version of the admissions board (Keeton,
1979). Admissions boards were essentially three person panels which, true to their name, were primarily
responsible for determining whether to “recommend the admission of a pupil” to a special education
program.4 Many admissions boards also had the dubious distinction of being used to determine whether
Regular class with indirect support, regular class with resource assistance, regular class with withdrawal assistance, special
SThe Educaon Amendment Act,
The Department of Educaon Act at s. 44.
53
CJEAP, 194
students were “unable” to prot from instruction, a designation which essentially abrogated their right to
education in its entirety (Smith, 1980).5
Figure 1
Evolution of Identication and Placement Mechanisms in Ontario.
In any event, the new SEPPRC process, while an improvement over admissions boards in some
respects, suffered from many of the same aws, which were, in turn, passed down to the IPRC process.
For example, the SEPPRC preserved the heavily medicalized orientation of the admissions board and
provided almost no meaningful opportunity for parental (or student) input into placement decisions.
The important factor in all SEPPRC placement decisions was professional judgement, not the views or
experiences of parents and students. While it provided limited opportunities for parents to “consent”
to a placement decision (unlike the prior admissions board procedure), there was no meaningful appeal
mechanism for parents to challenge placement decisions (Keeton, 1979).6 When the IPRC was initially
in development in 1981, it seemed to be on track to maintain this draconian format until a limited and
somewhat ineffective appeal mechanism was nally “wrung from the government by the opposition
during heated debates” (Elkin, 1982, p. 323).7 It appears that after years of dealing with unaccountable
admissions boards and SEPPRCs, parental advocacy groups were chafng for a greater say in the new
IPRC process (Hodder, 1984). However, even with this limited concession, the government appeared
bent on maintaining the primacy of school boards in the new IPRC process, viewing the school boards as
the appropriate nal decision maker on these matters.8 This point of view appears to be reected in the
somewhat anemic appeal procedures that were ultimately introduced by the Ministry in 1982.
Beyond the issue of the outsized role of professional opinion and the inadequate mechanisms to chal-
lenge it, the government also maintained one of the other primary aws from the admissions board (and
SEPPRC) in the new IPRC process. True to its origins, the IPRC remained an “admissions committee”
which, by denition, could not make decisions about the type of programming, services, or accommo-
dations that students could receive in a placement. Like its predecessor panels (see: Keeton, 1979), the
focus is more on whether a student should be ‘admitted’ to a predened program rather than whether
the programming can be made to t the student.9 At its very root, the IPRC is a body that is designed to
categorize students and t them into the existing structures of the education system rather than a mech-
anism that is designed to provide individualized support for the student. As a result of these restrictions,
the IPRC is unable to make decisions about many of the critical elements related to a student’s education,
including those decisions about programming, in-school accommodations, and other supports designed
to facilitate building relationships with peers and teachers.
Administrave Convenience
Despite its problematic institutional legacy, there were good reasons for the introduction of the IPRC in
1981 - however, many of these were primarily administrative. As noted above, Bill 82 made it manda-
tory for school boards to provide special education services. This vastly expanded the scope of special
education services in Ontario, and despite the existence of the SEPPRC in some boards, it appears that
the Ministry of Education had only a rudimentary understanding of the scale of the project upon which
Pursuant to s. 34 of the Educaon Act
would exercise this ability.
54
Reid, Parekh, & Lattanzio
it was about to embark.10 This is evident from the 5 year transition period mandated by Bill 8211 and
comments by the Minister indicating that the Government was not “omniscient” and that careful study
was required in order to ensure that “educational programs [were available] for all exceptional children”
(Stephenson, 1980, p. 4394).12 The Government’s lack of knowledge was perhaps inadvertently echoed
by an MPP of the Liberal Opposition who on November 18, 1980 had only the vaguest notion of how
many students still needed special education services:
The best information I have is that there are between 80,000 and 100,000 students in this
province who still need special education. (Sweeney, 1980, p. 2944)
The imprecise knowledge of the scale of the commitment the Government was making likely
underscores one of the primary reasons for the development of the new IPRC process - namely that the
Government had only a limited estimate of how many students might be recommended for special ed-
ucation services and the type of services those students might access. This meant that the rst phase of
any program to reform the delivery of special education services in the province required a systematic
effort to identify who in fact was believed to need these services. This conclusion is reinforced by the
fact that after the rst IPRC regulation was developed (O. Reg. 554/81) and implemented, it was ultimate-
ly tied to the funding model for special education in 1982.13
Purpose of the IPRC
With this brief history in mind, we can glean three basic reasons for the existence of the IPRC model as
it was originally developed. These can be summarized as follows:
1. To ensure that children with disabilities are identied early so that special education services
can be provided to them promptly (see Minister’s comments above);
2. To assess the scope of the special education services that were required to implement Bill 82
and to properly fund them on an ongoing basis; and
3. More controversially, to establish a more robust appeal mechanism for placement decisions.
Each of these will be discussed in tur n with consideration towards whether it is still relevant today.
Early Idencaon and Prompt Provision of Programming
Idencaon
The history outlined above, as reected in the comments of the Minister of Education, suggests that the
early identication of children with disabilities is one of the primary reasons for the existence of the
IPRC. This is reinforced by Program Policy Memoranda No. 11 (still in force), released in 1982 by the
Ministry of Education, which explicitly puts forward this rationale:
Each school board is required to have approved and in operation by September, 1981, [IPRC]
procedures to identify each child’s level of development, learning abilities and needs and to
ensure that education programs are designed to accommodate these needs and to facilitate
each child’s growth and development…. (Ministry of Education, 1982, para. 1)
It is also important to point out that although the government emphasizes the signicance of early
identication and prompt services, in the early 1980s the IPRC was also making determinations about
eligibility for the special education programs as well.14 That is, it was functioning as a gateway to the
right to access an ‘appropriate’ education. This is of some import because, when the IPRC regulations
came into force, disability had only recently become a ground under the Human Rights Code (19 81) ,
and students did not yet have the same level of protection that they now enjoy under this legislation.15
Students could not use the Code, or the rights therein, to bypass the IPRC process as they potentially
The Educaon Amendment Act, 1980
The Educaon Amendment Act, 1980
The Educaon Amendment Act, 1980
Re Lanark, Leeds & Grenville County Roman Catholic Separate School Board and Ontario Human Rights Commission et al.,
& Campbell v. Toronto District School Board
55
CJEAP, 194
could today. This effectively meant that the only way to obtain these services was to be identied as ‘ex-
ceptional’ through the IPRC process.
Given the developments of the past forty years, we may now ask whether these objectives are still
important. We should be asking whether the IPRC process is still necessary to facilitate early identica-
tion and prompt service delivery as well as determinations about eligibility for services.
With respect to early identication, when we examine data from Ontario’s (and Canada’s) largest
public school board, the Toronto District School Board (TDSB), it is clear that students are being ‘identi-
ed’ and accommodated, at least by their teachers and schools, potentially years prior to engaging in the
formal IPRC process (Brown & Parekh, 2010, pp. 14-15).
Figure 2
New Individual Education Plans Assigned by Grade, over 2005-6, 2008-9. 2010-11 within the Toronto
District School Board (Brown & Parekh, 2013, p. 19).
Figure 3
New Formal Exceptionalities Assigned by Grade, over 2005-6, 2008-9. 2010-11 within the Toronto
District School Board Retrieved from (Brown & Parekh, 2013, p. 20).
As shown in Figure 1, the peak grades in which students are informally identied and receive an
Individual Education Plan (IEP) are between Grades 1-3. Interestingly, the peak grades in which stu-
56
Reid, Parekh, & Lattanzio
dents are formally identied and receive a for mal exceptionality through the IPRC process are typically
between Grades 3-5. As noted in the two gures, these patterns have been replicated over a number of
years and may illustrate the time it has historically taken to move from informal to formal identica-
tion. However, it also begs the question, that if students can be informally identied and accommodated
through an IEP, as well as placed in some self-contained special education programs (Parekh & Brown,
2019), what, therefore, does the formal IPRC process offer students and educators?
When it comes to determinations of eligibility for services, the IPRC has become hopelessly out-
dated. Changes in the legal landscape, including the evolution of human rights law and the development
of a more fulsome right to equal access to education have made the IPRC effectively irrelevant when it
comes to determinations about eligibility for special education services. The Human Rights Code now
more clearly mandates that school boards must provide proper programming and accommodations to a
student regardless of whether they have been identied by the IPRC process or not. This approach was
conrmed to be the policy of the Ministry in 2010 when it reassured the Auditor General that Boards
could provide “special education programs and services without a formal identication process” (Au-
ditor General, 2010, p. 389).16 In the TDSB, close to half of all students accessing special education
services have not gone through the IPRC process (Brown & Parekh, 2013). This suggests that the impor-
tance of the IPRC process as a gateway to accessing education services has diminished signicantly.
Despite the limited relevance of the IPRC as an eligibility mechanism to special education services,
we might still ask whether the early identication process the IPRC regulations create still yield some
benet for students. That is, is there some substantive benet that students receive when they are ‘iden-
tied’ with an exceptionality label and placed through the IPRC process? To answer this question, one
would have to weigh the possible benets against the established detriments of the IPRC process. The
available evidence suggests that the answer to this question is no.
Benets of Idencaon?
It is worth noting that even at the time the IPRC process was created, the categories of exceptionalities
were deemed “unscientic” and lacking any empirical basis.17 Those reviewing Bill 82 at the time sug-
gested that it was unclear why these labels were used as they did not appear to convey much in the way
of useful information to educators (Elkin, 1982).
Further experience appears to have borne out this concern. Educators and education research-
ers have noted that exceptionality categories encompass a great diversity and degree of impairment and
that being labelled with an exceptionality does not necessarily convey to an educator how a particular
student should be taught or accommodated (Mitchell, 2015; Ridgeway, 2017). For example, there are sev-
eral forms of learning disabilities encompassed within the ‘learning disability’ exceptionality label. In
this situation, teachers cannot assume that a particular pedagogical approach will work for all students
who have a ‘learning disability’ identication. It is more important that teachers develop a relationship
with students and learn how to functionally accommodate students in their classrooms. How teachers
differentiate their instruction cannot be determined on the basis of an identication label. In fact, ev-
idence demonstrates that designing a pedagogy based on a students’ exceptionality label or perceived
disability is not successful (see Mitchell, 2010; 2015 for an international review of empirical evidence).
The lack of useful information conveyed to a teacher through the IPRC process is further compound-
ed by the fact that, in practice, IPRC decisions are not often adequately reported or justied, and that
useful information to support teachers in the accommodation process is often unavailable through the
IPRC.18 The Auditor General made several recommendations to remedy this situation, including keep-
ing better records and ensuring the rationale for their decisions is thoroughly documented. Although
the Ministry has issued some guidance on this point since that time (Ministry of Education, 2017), it
57
CJEAP, 194
remains unclear how practice with respect to documentation and information sharing has changed on the
ground in response to these policies.
Beyond their limited practical utility, the identication process also presents further problems be-
cause the exceptionality labels used on students can carry connotations that are stigmatizing (Brantlinger,
2006). They shape how students feel about themselves, and the perception others hold both within and
outside the education system (Parekh, 2019). Labels can also inuence teachers’ expectations of students’
abilities (Mitchell, 2010), resulting in reduced access to important academic opportunities.
This is especially problematic when we consider the fact that many children from historically mar-
ginalized communities are disproportionality represented in some exceptionality categories and special
education programs (Connor, 2017; De Valenzuela, 2006; Parekh & Brown, 2019). Students who are ra-
cialized, male and/or live in lower income households are often overrepresented in some ‘high incidence’
or “judgmental” special education categories (Artiles et al., 2010). Scholars have argued that these out-
comes exemplify the operationalization of negative beliefs about particular groups. All of this suggests
that the ‘early identication’ process undertaken by the IPRC is of dubious value.
Benets of Placements?
Even setting aside the value of the labels used by the IPRC process, we can also question the role it
plays in placing students in self-contained special education classes, effectively propping up a segregat-
ed system of education. The IPRC mechanism is founded upon the principle that at least some students
with disabilities will benet from placement outside of the regular classroom. The IPRC is charged with
selecting which students will in fact “benet” from these segregated placements. However, the idea that
children should be identied and streamed into segregated placements based on disability was contro-
versial even in the early 1980s. Some commentators pointed out that there was no data to support the
practice of segregating children into homogenous ability groupings (Elkin, 1982) and that many studies
produced inconclusive results as to whether students with disabilities did better in segregated or regular
classroom settings (Robichaud & Enns, 1980).
Since that time, a great deal of research has continued to focus on this same question - namely,
whether it is better to place students in segregated environments or to educate them in inclusive class-
rooms. Generally speaking, the empirical research on the academic benets of inclusive education so far
has ranged from no observable differences between inclusive and special education placements to signif-
icant benets for students taught in inclusive classrooms (Mitchell, 2010; Hehir et al., 2016). On the other
hand, empirical research demonstrating the benets of segregated special education placements is scant
(Mitchell, 2010). In fact, the identication and segregation of students based on perceived ability have
been attributed to the reproduction of inequitable social, class and racial stratication in broader society
(Artiles et al., 2010; O’Connor, & Fernandez, 2006; Clandeld et al., 2014; Duncan-Andrade & Morrell,
2008) and there is a continuously growing body of evidence that supports inclusion for all students (Hehir
et al., 2016; Krings, 2015; Burello et al., 2013). Furthermore, the OECD has noted that education systems
that integrate their lower-achieving students perform better overall (OECD, 2012).
All of this suggests that even at the time the IPRC was developed, the system of placing students
in segregated classrooms stood on shaky empirical foundations. Since that time, research has suggested
that these foundations have become even more tenuous and that the implicit assumption built into the
IPRC, that some students will benet from segregated placements, is in fact, doing a disservice to many
students when it comes to providing them with a meaningful education.
Properly Funding the Educaon System
Given that the IPRC is showing its age when it comes to whether it benets students or assists teachers,
we can now begin to ask whether the IPRC process still fullls an important organizational role within
the school system. As noted above, it was not clear in the early 80s that the Ministry understood precisely
how many children with disabilities were going to require special education services. As such, it made
some sense to create a revised process which they could use to identify children with disabilities (with
convenient labels) and fund the services that they were presumed to require. The result was the IPRC,
which was then linked with the funding mechanism for special education.
However, problems soon emerged with this model. The Ministry soon realized that when funding
58
Reid, Parekh, & Lattanzio
was attached to the IPRC process, there was an observable spike in exceptionality identications (Green
& Forester, 2002) - an aptly named phenomenon termed ‘diagnosing for dollars’ (Rozanski, 2002). Be-
ginning in 2006-7, the Ministry began moving away from a model that employed ‘student-based claims’
as an indicator for funding (MOE, 2006, p. 32). Instead, the Ministry implemented a hybrid funding
model that employed the previous year’s High Needs Amount divided by that year’s Average Daily
Enrolment. Following this, the Ministr y transitioned to another model, the Special Education Statistical
Prediction Model (SESPM) (MOE, 2010). This funding structure uses a statistical model to predict the
number of students who have special education needs based largely on socio-demographic variables
(e.g., parental occupation, education, income, immigration status, etc.). The goal of this model is to pre-
dict how many students require special education services, identied or not (MOE, 2011). In doing so,
this model effectively sidesteps the IPRC process as the mechanism by which funding is distributed. All
of this is to say that any role that the IPRC may have had in the funding or planning process for special
education services has long since expired.
Establishing Appeal Mechanisms for Placements
The nal potential use or purpose of the IPRC process is the one that was “wrung” out of the govern-
ment during the debates about Bill 82, namely its role as a dispute resolution forum. Ironically, given the
resistance of the government at the time, this function may be the one that still holds the most relevance.
Many families still experience high levels of conict in the special education system (Reid et al., 2018),
and a path to appeal certain decisions (i.e., placement and identication) still exists within the connes
of the IPRC process. However, the utility of this process is limited to a large extent by the jurisdictional
limitations of the IPRC - that is, its inability to decide matters related to services and programming, one
of the primary areas of disagreement between schools and families (Reid et al., 2018).19 As discussed
above, this is a limitation largely inherited from the predecessors of the IPRC and harkened back to a
time when the focus of the process was solely on admission to special education programs. The Ontario
Human Rights Commission (2003) has noted that this limitation has continued to cause signicant frus-
tration to many parents and student advocates and has played a signicant role in hindering the effec-
tiveness of the IPRC as a dispute resolution forum. This may, in part, explain why the Special Education
Tribunal has seen very few new cases in the last decade (15 reported decisions as of May 2020).
To a limited extent, the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario (HRTO) has taken up the mantle as a
dispute resolution forum for special education, as it has a greater ability to deal with matters related to
services and programming. However, the HRTO is not an ideal process for the resolution of this type
of issue. Even with the expedited mediation timelines within the Child and Youth Division of the So-
cial Justice Tribunals (SJTO, 2017), the process at the HRTO can be cumbersome and lengthy and may
require the expenditure of signicant resources on legal counsel. The HRTO has also demonstrated
signicant reluctance to wade too far into the enforcement of the Education Act and, perhaps rightly, is
only concerned with whether school boards have broadly complied with Code guarantees.20 Ultima t ely,
this means that signicant gaps exist within the available dispute resolution mechanisms.
While this is a discouraging situation for many families and suggests a signicant need for reform,
it does point to the fact that there may still be a place for either a completely overhauled version of the
IPRC or a completely new process. In either case, the focus must be less on sorting and labelling students
and more on providing students and families with an effective dispute resolution forum.
Reforms
Any effort to refor m or replace the IPRC process should in la rge part, be guided by the goal of maximiz-
ing the rights of students with disabilities and better ensuring that they receive a meaningful education.
W. F. v. Oawa Catholic District School
Board
Schafer v. Toronto District School BoardSigrist and Carson v. London District Catholic School
BoardU.M. v. York Region District School Board
59
CJEAP, 194
This goal is at the heart of Canada’s international human rights obligations, embodied in Article 24 of
the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which commits Canada to realize a fully in-
clusive education system that is geared towards ensuring that persons with disabilities develop to their
fullest potential (UN General Assembly, 2007). General comment No. 4 (2016) on the right to inclusive
education more fully elaborates on this commitment, highlighting, among other things, the necessity that
States Parties:
1. Move progressively towards abolishing all segregated forms of education and move towards a
fully inclusive system (para 40);
2. Provide individualized programming and accommodations for students with disabilities (para
28-30);
3. Afford students with disabilities with a substantive opport unity to express their will and prefer-
ences with respect to educational issues and ensure that these preferences are given due consid-
eration (para 50, para 63(l)); and
4. Ensure that persons with disabilities “have access to justice systems that understand how to
accommodate persons with disabilities and are capable of addressing disability-based claims”
(para 65). (UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, 2016)
As noted above, and in part because of its institutional history, the IPRC largely fails to meet these
requirements. Its very existence is premised on the idea that education is delivered in a segregated envi-
ronment. Its “one size ts all” approach to placement virtually ensures that programming and accommo-
dations issues are often ignored in this forum. Its regulations also limit student involvement to those over
the age of 16 (see: s. 5 of O. Reg. 181/98), and it utterly fails to provide an appropriate forum to adjudicate
accommodation or programming issues.
While a fulsome review of all of the possible policy responses to these shortfalls is beyond the scope
of this paper, there are some obvious candidates for change or improvement in the current framework.
Eliminang Idencaon and Categorizaon of Students
As noted above, the identication and categorization of students in the current system has limited utility.
From both the student and teachers’ perspective, identication labels provide little benet and, in many
cases, are in fact harmful. As part of a systematic literature review exploring the barriers to inclusive
education, one of the key barriers to emerge were systems of categorization (Parekh, 2013). Some may ar-
gue that the identication of exceptionalities serves other purposes in the education system, like funding
processes or resource allocation. However, as noted above, Ontario’s experience with a funding mech-
anism based on labelling children with exceptionalities highlights the drawbacks associated with this
type of approach (i.e., ‘diagnosing for dollars’). The fact that Ontario has already transitioned to a model
that relies more on demographic variables to allocate funding indicates that the utility of these labels for
funding is limited. This suggests that without concrete evidence as to how these labels actually benet
students, it is difcult to justify continuing this practice. With this in mind, the role of the IPRC process
in labelling students should be brought to an end. Many jurisdictions around the world have been re-ex-
amining their processes of categorization and moving away from psychometrically dened categories
through the adoption of non-categorical or broader categorical approaches (Parekh, 2013).
Expanding Dispute Resoluon
The current version of the IPRC process has many aws from both a jurisdictional standpoint and with
respect to the fairness of the process. Any replacement for, or reform of, the IPRC process should be
geared towards minimizing these aws.
With respect to the issue of expanding the jurisdiction of the IPRC, this paper has canvased this issue
at length, so it is sufcient to say that any potential dispute resolution forum should be able to address the
full range of accommodation, programming and service issues that are often at the heart of disputes over
the education of students with disabilities. If policymakers opted for overhauling the IPRC, this would
involve altering Ontario Regulation 181/98 and s. 57 of the Education Act to ensure that the revised pro-
cess had the appropriate powers to make decisions about these issues.
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Reid, Parekh, & Lattanzio
Maintaining a Rights-Based Framework and Improving Procedural Protecons
Irrespective of the type of forum or process created, signicant protections must be in place to ensure
that all decisions made in this new forum are done in a procedurally fair manner and in accordance
with a robust human rights-based legal framework. The creation of a responsive new dispute resolution
process, or a revised IPRC process, must be driven by student needs, in particular the need to obtain
appropriate, expert, holistic and timely resolutions within an accessible and procedurally fair process.
New processes with the capacity to deal with a greater number of issues should not be an excuse to water
down school board obligations to their students.21
With this in mind, a number of procedural shortfalls in the existing IPRC process should be born in
mind when it comes to future reform. For example, as it presently stands, school boards appoint all of
the decision makers at the early stages of the IPRC process.22 Given that the dispute is typically between
parents and the board, allowing the board to appoint the decision makers in the case of the IPRC does
not engender trust in the process. The Centre for Appropriate Dispute Resolution in Special Education
(2010), in a review of effective dispute resolution mechanisms in the United States emphasized that one
of the key features of many successful systems was the presence of an impartial decision maker or me-
diator. The presence of an impartial decision maker or mediator ensures both greater trust in the process
and ensures that any potential bias in decision making is eliminated. Any reformed process needs to
include a compliment of impartial decision makers or mediators.
Other procedural shortfalls in the current process include ineffective disclosure requirements and a
lack of supportive resources to allow students and families to play a more meaningful role in the process.
Remedying these aws would mean creating a stronger disclosure requirement than that which currently
exists (see: s. 15(8) of O. Reg. 181/98) and introducing a wider range of resources to support proper ad-
vocacy. This could take many different forms, including perhaps the reinstatement of an expanded child
advocate. Other possible resources could include the option to obtain Independent Educational Evalu-
ations much like those provided under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) in the
United States, which according to some, has been a positive resource for some families when it comes to
maintaining certain types of accountability (Schrank et al., 2006).
Unfortunately, a thorough analysis of all of the procedural shortfalls and necessary reforms to the
IPRC process is beyond the scope of this paper. However, these suggestions should at least be illustrative
of the fact that far more could be done to ensure a fairer, more equitable dispute resolution process.
Eliminang Barriers to Student Parcipaon
As it stands, students under the age of 16 have no legal entitlement to participate in the IPRC process.
A new or revised process should abolish this requirement. In its place, a new participatory right should
be created with no age limitation. Student’s should be allowed to participate to the extent that they are
able to do so, and educators should be required to give their views due consideration in the education
planning process.
A More Inclusive Educaon System
Although these more specic reforms would be positive steps for students with disabilities, they will
mean little in the absence of broader and more systemic change within the education system. Simply
replacing the IPRC system with something more effective at resolving disputes will not achieve mean-
ingful change unless students have a more substantive right to inclusive education. To this end, the re-
forms discussed above must occur in the context of a wider reimagining of education policy in Ontario,
one which explicitly prioritizes discarding the old institutional legacies of our segregationist education
system and provides the necessary funding and resources to create classrooms that are truly inclusive
of all students.
21
process and the HRTO and dealing with res judicata issues which may arise from potentially overlapping jurisdictions.
22 O. Reg. 181/98: Idencaon and Placement of Exceponal Pupils at s. 11
61
CJEAP, 194
Conclusion
In light of this last observation, it appears clear that the institutional legacies of the IPRC are just a small
part of the larger more systemic problems that students with disabilities face when they are trying to gain
access to education. However, this analysis demonstrates the IPRC still plays a clear role in preventing
many students with disabilities from accessing a meaningful education. It is now incumbent on current
policy makers to face up to the historical legacies of Bill 82 and redesign the current framework in the
education to transform it into something that acts less as a barrier to education and more as a mechanism
that preserves the rights of students with disabilities.
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