The political rhetoric or public policy that sets social objectives for education that I selected to discuss is the Alice Cogswell and Anne Sullivan Macy Act. The social objective of this Act, if passed into law, is to have equal education for deaf and hard of hearing students, including the use of transformative/reflexive pedagogy. I know about this Act from a friend whose child was deaf and struggled with obtaining a public-school education equal to his hearing peers. A quick video entitled Public Policy: Education for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students was posted on February 6, 2018 by Communication Services of the Deaf1. The proposed law is still in bill form.

Earlier, the 1975 Education for All Handicapped Children Act, since renamed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), was enacted to provide in-school communication services for deaf and hard of hearing children. But it did not address the quality of education, nor pedagogy. The United States Supreme Court ruled in 1982 in Board of Education versus Rowley that only a bit more than the minimum education needed to be provided to deaf and hard of hearing children in local schools. There was no requirement to provide education that challenged students to learn, to aim for increased learning. The Supreme Court decision did not require schools to improve education to match the level and quality of education provided for students without disabilities. It also did not require sign-language interpreters in schools. American Sign Language was acknowledged as the language used by deaf students, so interpretation in schools could now occur.

he Alice Cogswell and Anne Sullivan Macy Act2 is still getting co-sponsors this year. In the United States House of Representatives, the bill (H.R. 4822) was sent in October 2019 to the House Committee on Education and Labor3. At the same time, the United States Senate read the bill (S.2681) two times and sent it to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions4. So, while transformative/reflexive learning is being embraced in some classrooms, there is no legal requirement to have equal opportunities for deaf and hard of hearing students.

1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGrto8pTHW0

2 https://cogswellmacyact.org/

3 https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/4822?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22deaf%22%5D%7D&s=1&r=5

4 https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/2681?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22deaf%22%5D%7D&s=1&r=4