Special Education

Some Indianapolis children received special education services even before the city had a free, public school system. These services were made available by the Indiana state schools for the deaf (est. 1843-1844), the blind (est. 1847), and the feebleminded (est. 1879). These services were inadequate, however, to meet the city’s needs, and by 1898 Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS) organized its first special education class, a separate (ungraded) class for grade-delayed pupils. This was followed in 1906 by the establishment of a “special school” (two classes) for truants and incorrigibles. The “school” label indicated that these classes were composed of students from the entire school system, but the children were exclusively boys who typically were identified as students with high levels of energy or behavioral problems. The curriculum emphasized practical subjects to encourage early employment.

There were two classes for grade-delayed students by 1908-1909, with Katrina Myers as the head teacher. That same year, at least seven other teachers were assigned to various schools to provide individualized instruction to such students. By 1911 these teachers each saw 50-75 children per semester. That year also saw the opening of two “fresh air” classes, at least one of which was for tubercular students. The head teacher for the fresh air classes, Jeanette Williams, later administered much of the special education program for the entire school system.

By 1912, the special classes supervised and taught by Myers were referred to as classes for “mentally defective children,” and the Simon-Binet intelligence tests were used to select the students. Each class had a maximum of 16 students coming from throughout the school system. By 1913, the school for truants and incorrigibles had three teachers who together managed approximately 65 students at any one time and about 120 per year.

Programs for students with physical disabilities began to appear in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1925, for example, Superintendent E. U. Graff announced plans to construct a separate school for “crippled” children whose physical disabilities prevented them from attending regular classes. This school was to have two specially trained teachers, and it was expected that 20-25 students would attend when it opened. By 1935, this school was replaced by the James E. Roberts School and had an enrollment of 200 students. A class for students with vision impairments started in 1928 with a second class added in 1939. By 1952 there were five such classes. The first class for students with hearing impairments began in 1935. In each of these cases, the Indianapolis schools instituted these programs for students with intellectual and physical impairments before the Indiana General Assembly formulated specific policy directives or made financial appropriations for such educational services.

During the 1920s, the Indianapolis school systems also appeared to be searching for terminology to describe these developing special educational services and for ways to administer them. The labels attached to both the classes and the students changed several times during this period. The classes for “truants and incorrigibles,” for example, were folded into the classes for the “mentally defective” which, in turn, became classes for “atypical” students. Further, the “atypical” designation encompassed students with either physical or mental handicaps. By the early 1930s, there were at least 17 classes for these “atypical” students as well as five fresh air classes, several classes at the school for students with physical impairments, and three other classes for various other “special” pupils.

Other than the designation of the head teacher of a group of special classes as “principal,” the first general administrative appointment in special education was made in 1918 when Myers became the director of the “Department of Backward and Defective Children.” This department was not mentioned again in the system’s administrative directory for six years, but it reappeared in 1924. In 1926 Myers no longer appeared in the administrative directory and Williams was listed as the director of the “Department of Education of Exceptional Children.” By 1929, Williams became the director of “Instruction of Exceptional Children.” By 1934 the administration had settled on more current terminology and established an assistant superintendency for “Social Services and Special Education.”

The next major expansion of special educational services took place in the 1950s and focused on both ends of the academic spectrum. After offering several experimental programs to certain elementary school pupils in 1951, the school system officially organized two classes for gifted students, one each in the fifth and sixth grades, for the 1952-1953 school year. Subsequently, students could continue in the gifted program through the eighth grade. Administered by the Department of Special Education, this program enrolled 45 in the first year. Within three years the Indianapolis schools offered eight classes for the gifted with a total enrollment of 205 students drawn from 60 schools. As with earlier special classes for students with mental and/or physical disabilities, the gifted classes were housed in designated schools to which students from other schools could be transported. The minimum entry requirement for the gifted classes was an IQ of 125.

In 1953, the administration announced plans to establish another separate school, this time for the very low IQ students with scores below 50, the minimum standard for public instruction. The curriculum in this school was to be largely vocational. Unlike the growth in services for gifted students, however, by the end of the decade, there was still only one class for these low-IQ students.

Since the 1960s and through the 1990s, the face of special education in Indianapolis as elsewhere has been shaped largely by the federal government. The programmatic direction for the delivery of special educational services moved away from the separate facilities that characterized the system for over a century and toward mainstreaming all “special” children, whenever feasible, within the boundaries of the regular classroom. As of 1992, roughly 7,200 students in IPS (about 15 percent of the total) received special educational services. The vast majority of these students were categorized as “learning disabled.” Some 500 staff, mainly teachers, were assigned to a program considered state of the art at the time, thus continuing the city’s tradition as a midwestern leader in the special education field.

*Note: This entry is from the original print edition of the Encyclopedia of Indianapolis (1994). We are currently seeking an individual with knowledge of this topic to update this entry.