Program

IDEA50ny is a conference in and for New York with national scope and impact; its lens is New York, but its focus takes in the full span, reach, and ambition of the statute.

Three days in June 2027, marking fifty years after the first federal regulations implementing the IDEA took effect, IDEA50ny will consist of meetings, workshops, and activities, organized along six themes (that number reflects an unfolding work in progress and may well change) . 

Each theme in a distinct venue, each venue with streaming links to the other five, allowing all attending to craft custom programs that most appeal to them. 

The themes array along various dimensions that weave in and out across the conference.  

The sessions will include peer-reviewed and commissioned reports, original research, analyses, critiques, proposals, activities, and experiential modeling of ways to work across discipline and role in shared pursuit of the aspirations of the law.  Affiliations with a range of relevant professional and scholarly journals will provide forums for publication of conference work product.

Day 1 focuses on the past and present.  Up to four presentations each day for each theme, with panels of responding expert commentators from a range of perspectives and role.  Recognition and assessment.  Ratification and critique.  Framing the challenges yet to be addressed.

Day 2 builds a foundation for future work.  Methodologies, processes, proposals, data, analyses, policy recommendations, identification of best practices. Assembling a toolkit for progress, for restoration, for repair, and for reimagination.

Day 3 explores experientially a variety of models for collaboration across roles and disciplines.  Attendees disperse among the various venues to share and report, and to build action agendas from those reports: Strategizing how to internalize best practices, rather than have them be imposed; how to share and operationalize aspiration. Proposals. Pledges. Partnerships. Plans.

The final plenary session reports out the elements of the conference’s work most expressive of the pride, hope, and foundation for mutual trust that the conference hopes to elicit.