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Beach Center on Disability

AN AFFILIATE OF THE LIFE SPAN INSTITUTE & THE DEPT. OF SPECIAL EDUCATION

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What It Is

Core concepts are those 18 indispensable (core) ideas (concepts) underlying all of disability policy. To identify the 18 core concepts, we analyzed federal laws, United States Supreme Court decisions, and other courts' decisions, and we interviewed federal and state policy experts. We identify the laws and decisions related to each core concept in a Matrix.

The core concepts play two roles. They influence the creation of policy ("books"). They also influence its implementation ("streets"). Our Analytical Framework illustrates these roles. 

We also show how the core concepts reflect ethical, and administrative principles by organizing them into an illustration.

What We're Doing

Our research about the role of the core concepts relates to six different arenas of policy:

• The early years of life – early intervention or early childhood education
• The late-adolescent years and beyond – transition from school to adulthood and control over Medicaid and state funds
• The school-based years and Individuals with Disabilities Education Act
• Supporting families throughout their life-spans
• The legal issues related to the Human Genome Project
• The policy decisions for a person with a disability who needs life-sustaining treatment and seems to be at the end of life.

 To make it easy for a policy analyst to identify the core concepts in a statue, regulation, or court decision, we created a Computer Assisted Policy Analysis Tool (CAPAT).