Federal Quota Program
  Annual Census and Registration

The “Act to Promote the Education of the Blind”, passed by the U.S. Congress in 1879, set up a federal system to provide school books and other adapted educational materials for students who are blind or visually impaired and have documentation of legal blindness.

By this Federal Act, Congress created a permanent annual appropriation for the specific purpose of "manufacturing and furnishing books and other materials specially adapted for instruction" of students who are blind in the United States and its Territories. As the first law enacted by Congress to support the education of students with visual disabilities, it has become a landmark. The Act and its resulting programs administered through the American Printing House for the Blind (APH) make specially developed educational materials more available and more effective today than ever before.

Initially, APH was chartered to emboss tactile books and to produce simple tangible apparatus. Today, APH continues this proud tradition by producing hundreds of textbooks in a variety of media -- braille, large type, electronic, and recorded form -- and by manufacturing and maintaining an extensive inventory of commercially-unavailable educational aids, tools, and supplies.

Federal Quota Program

The system through which these specialized materials are distributed is known as the Federal Quota Program. Through it, textbooks and aids are provided free to eligible blind students in educational settings ranging from early intervention programs for visually impaired infants to rehabilitation for elders who have age-related vision loss, from center-based and residential school programs to the regular classroom.

What is available through Federal Quota?

A wide variety of specially designed and adapted materials are available from APH... core curriculum materials for teaching reading, social studies, mathematics, and science...for assessing and improving the use of low vision...expanded core curriculum materials for cultivating emergent literacy and concept development...for facilitating sensory, motor, and perceptual development, for developing self-help and prevocational skills. Other examples of available research-based materials are braille teaching programs, talking computer software, low vision development programs, infant intervention materials, and motor skills improvement kits.
Educational tools include adapted audio recording equipment, devices for writing braille, and talking computer hardware. Special supplies such as braille and bold-line papers, special binders and notebooks, and other consumable materials used in the classroom are also available.

Procedure & Distribution of Funds in Arizona

In Arizona, the Federal Quota Program is handled statewide by the Arizona Instructional Resource Center of the Foundation for Blind Children, with the sole exception of the Arizona School for the Deaf and Blind, which registers the students in its programs separately. Please read on if you are a teacher or special education director/coordinator and want to find out what you can order for your visually impaired students or how much funding you can access.

The Arizona Department of Education contracts with FBC to provide statewide media service to all students in the state who are blind or visually impaired. This includes the provision of braille, large print, and other adapted educational materials that are available on Federal Quota Funds from the American Printing House in Louisville, Kentucky. The AIRC goes far beyond that contract by attempting to provide all braille and large print textbooks ordered for students, even when they are not available from APH.

The ADE media contract also encompasses the registration program of all students with a visual impairment, regardless of the severity of the vision loss, and it includes the registration in the Annual Census of persons who have documentation of legal blindness, and the establishment of a spending account based on per capita registration in that Federal Quota Program. Both registration programs are also administered by the AIRC.

Here’s how the annual Federal Quota registration procedure works:

1. APH sends out instructions to all account holders in the country. The AIRC follows and disseminates the instructions contained in APH’s FQ Census Registration Instructions.
2. Every year in early January, in a direct mailing, the AIRC solicits registrations statewide from all teachers of the visually impaired, special education directors/coordinators of all school districts, ASDB Regional CO-OPs, Charter Schools, Private Schools, as well as Agencies with students who are legally blind. It is crucial for the AIRC to have current addresses of all recipients and registrants. Every year, the return deadline for those registrations is February 15.
3. Based on incoming registrations and data on file at the AIRC, a preliminary FQ roster is created and e-mailed to APH by March 15. As additions are not allowed after that date, the AIRC includes all possibly qualifying students, even if verification and documentation were not received by the deadline. In the following review period, the AIRC finalizes Arizona’s FQ registration roster by checking its own files on accurate data, as well as by contacting teachers or others to verify information. This is a time-consuming process for the AIRC, as every year, there are approximately 1000 students on whom data have to be checked, completed, or verified. The AIRC’s time spent on the confirmation process could be cut down if all students were registered on time with complete and accurate details, updates submitted as they occur, and if students who no longer qualify or have moved, were reported to the AIRC with the pertinent reason for disqualification, such as improvement of vision, move, or graduation, etc.
4. Around the month of June, APH returns the roster to the AIRC as a an electronic list for review and correction. At that time, all unclear candidates are taken off and the corrected roster is created. Final corrections are made at that point and a certificate is filled out and signed by the Ex Officio Trustee that attests to the accuracy of the final roster.

Federal Quota Fund Distribution in Arizona

The FQ amount allocated to the AIRC by APH is based on per capita registration each year. The per capita amount is determined by Congress in the Annual Federal Budget Agreement. The allocation amount has to be spent by fiscal year end, no remainder can be taken into the next fiscal year, as unspent amounts will be lost. Often, the AIRC doesn’t know what the new allocation amount will be until well into the next federal fiscal year, sometimes until May. However, the new funds can be provisionally accessed based on the previous year’s allocation amount, so that there is no delay in the ordering process for students.

Different from other state media centers, the AIRC pools the amount to purchase adapted materials from APH as needed by all students with a visual impairment in Arizona’s school districts, not just those that are legally blind and on the current roster. There is no annual limit as to what can be ordered per student, until the total annual amount allocated to the AIRC has been depleted. The AIRC does not charge a fee for the loan of its adapted educational materials. As the AIRC operates on a lending basis, all materials, including equipment available on FQ funds, must be returned at the end of the school year, unless a renewal request is submitted, or unless the material ranks as consumable, eg. Paper, Transition Tote, etc. Recycling of expensive items ($150 and above) allows us to spread the materials to all students in need of adapted instructional materials.

The fund distribution to agencies registering with the AIRC for FQ funds differs only slightly from that of school districts.

Inge Durre—AIRC/FBC
Updated 12/21/2009