New of these schools, shared exclusively with The 74, was published Thursday by Education Reimagined, a national nonprofit that helps schools implement . It’s an approach where young people have ownership of their education, learn in their communities and show their knowledge through multiple ways, not just tests, according to the nonprofit. 

Over the 2024-25 school year, Education Reimagined studied in St. Paul, Minnesota; in LaFayette, New York; and in Mukwonago, Wisconsin —  a mix of urban, suburban and rural communities that enrolled a total of 388 K-12 students. More than 45% had individualized education programs or 504 plans — documents that spell out how needs will be met under the Americans with Disabilities Act. 

“In all the sites we studied, the systems are designed to fit the learner and their needs, not the other way around,” said Khara Schonfeld, one of the organization’s researchers. “They’re seeing differences as the norm as opposed to the exception. That means learners are showing up.”

That included mindsets that shifted how staff understood learning differences and student potential; different organizational structures; and key daily practices for student support and success.

The approach has produced positive academic results. At Norris School District, students with IEPs increase reading performance by an average of 8 percentage points and math by 4 percentage points per trimester. Avalon students with IEPs consistently for students with IEPs on math and reading tests. 

In the LaFayette Central School District, the opening of LaFayette Big Picture in 2008 correlated with graduation rates for students with IEPs in the district rising from a range of 50% to 70% to a scale of 95% to 100%.

Students who enrolled in these schools also experienced a decline in behavioral incidents and became more engaged in their education, according to the research.

“A lot of the learners came with past trauma, including education trauma — they had a hard time in previous schools,” she said. “So it all really focused on this idea of healing and making sure that they felt safe and cared for. We had a couple of alumni say, ‘I went to the school. I can talk to anyone about anything that I want to get or find out because the school taught me how to do that.”

Schonfeld said common accommodations students with disabilities need in traditional classroom settings are provided to everyone — a key factor in the learner-centered system’s success.

In Minnesota’s Avalon School, staff begin each day with a session where students and their advisors connect in a sensory-friendly setting  — an environment that reduces stimuli like harsh lighting and loud noises. Norris School District’s single campus, where 75% of the students have IEPs, celebrates small accomplishments that might go unnoticed, such as a student’s ability to hold an entire conversation, the case study said.

Leadership structures are also different at these schools. Avalon, a charter school, has a teacher-majority board that allows educators to redesign schedules and positions. LaFayette Big Picture School pairs students with mentors, while Norris School District has staff meetings every day.

Some daily practices include offering internships onsite to ensure students don’t have to be “ready” to travel outside the building to experience career education. The schools also interpret disruptive behavior as communication about unmet needs rather than misconduct, according to the research. For example, Avalon School uses a strategy called relational repair, where educators ask reflective questions after a disruptive behavior to build trust with students. At Norris, students are taught to name feelings to help staff find the right support during a behavioral incident.

This learner-centered framework has a positive ripple effect with families and educators, Schonfeld said. Parents of students at all three schools have shared they no longer have to fight for their child’s special education accommodations. 

Teachers also feel more supported and satisfied with their jobs, the researchers found. Avalon School has maintained a 90% year-to-year retention rate over two decades, with current teachers averaging 10 years of experience. At LaFayette, more than half of the staff have been at the school for at least nine years.

After a , the department’s Office for Civil Rights said the district must create a new division focusing on students with disabilities, improve transportation services for those students, and take steps to better identify and accommodate their needs.

“The district must take immediate action to remedy their violations and protect the rights of current and future students to a free and appropriate public education,” Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey said in a statement. 

The proposed resolution agreement also requires the district to train staff, including bus drivers, on any updated policies. If officials don’t agree to the terms, OCR “may initiate enforcement,” the announcement said. 

The district, which said from the outset that it would cooperate with the department, is “carefully reviewing” the findings, a spokesman said, adding that OCR makes important points about providing clear information to parents and getting their children to and from school. 

Neither the department nor the district, however, has made the full results of the investigation available.

With OCR largely focusing its resources on investigating districts that allow students to compete in sports or use bathrooms based on gender identity, the D.C. investigation is one of the few disability-related cases it has launched and completed since President Donald Trump returned to office. A from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, which sparked the probe, found that the district has one of highest rates of special education complaints in the nation. An advisory committee to the commission determined that young children in the district were under-identified for special education services or accommodations for disabilities and that parents were often encouraged to file lawsuits in order to get their children help. 

“That obviously favors those who have means, can hire an attorney and know how to get through the system,” said Craig Leen, former vice chair of the advisory committee. A civil rights attorney who served in the Labor Department during Trump’s first term, he also struggled to get services for his daughter. Now a senior at a charter school in the district, she has autism and an intellectual disability.

The bus was often late or didn’t arrive at all, creating disruptions to his daughter’s routine, Leen said. Since the investigation began, he said he’s seen improvements. The bus comes on time, and to keep parents updated, the Office of the State Superintendent of Education, which oversees transportation for students with disabilities in both DCPS and charter schools in the city, is developing a bus .

The district, according to the spokesman, is working with the state agency to “improve real‑time visibility into bus delays to make certain students do not lose instructional time or access to required services.”

Leen said he’s not concerned about Education Secretary Linda McMahon’s plans to transfer OCR or the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services to another federal agency as she continues efforts to phase out the department. 

“My main concern is that they have a designated agency addressing special education,” he said. 

Many of the advisory committee’s recommendations were based on testimony from Maria Blaeuer, director of programs and outreach with Advocates for Justice and Education, Inc., The organization trains parents and provides to families who haven’t been able to get services for their children.

The organization is “thankful that OCR is paying attention to the many challenges that students with disabilities in the District of Columbia are facing,” Blaeuer said. But she added that it would be premature to comment on the department’s announcement “without access to the actual determination” or until a resolution has been reached.

More than 50 Minnesota school districts continue to use so-called seclusion rooms, according to data obtained by the . Districts use seclusion rooms for children with a disability and who are at risk of harming themselves or others.

This practice is banned or extremely limited in 21 states.

The 50 school districts maintain 194 registered seclusion rooms across 100 school buildings across the state, according to the records.

For the first time, the Minnesota Disability Law Center set out to document the state’s seclusion rooms, photographing more than 80 of them and documenting their locations in a report titled “.”

“I think the average person does not know this is happening in their schools. When they see the rooms and they find out how they’re used, the average person is appalled and is very upset and curious as to why this antiquated and traumatizing practice is still allowed in our schools,” said Jessica Heiser of the Minnesota Disability Law Center in an interview with the Reformer.

Multiple school districts in Minnesota do not practice seclusion, including Minneapolis Public Schools and Fridley Public Schools. Neither Spiro Academy nor Intermediate District 287 — which both specialize in serving students with disabilities — use seclusion.

During the 2023-24 school year, show that 553 students with disabilities were subjected to 3,451 instances of seclusion. In the 2024-25 school year, after seclusion was banned for students in third grade and below, 358 students were subjected to 1,867 episodes of seclusion.

The most recent from the U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights states that repeated use of seclusion for the same student by a school is likely a violation of the student’s rights.

Heiser said she believes one reason Minnesota has been slow to eliminate seclusion is because the policy affects a small number of students, and remains mostly hidden from the general public — and even from educators, school staff and parents of school-age children.

“Nobody wants their kids in one of these rooms. As a parent, I cannot look at this room and say in good grace that there is a single child that deserves to be locked in a cinder block room in a school,” Heiser said.

In 2023, the Minnesota Legislature passed a law that banned seclusion for students with disabilities from birth through third grade. At the time, the Minnesota Department of Education recommended that the state work towards eliminating the practice entirely by the start of the 2026-27 school year.

But progress towards that goal has halted in the Legislature. Sen. Judy Seeburger, DFL-Afton, proposed legislation last year to rollback the 2023 law banning seclusion for the youngest students. Seeburger also led a , which met 11 times between August and January. In the group’s , Seeburger explained how her adult son was subject to seclusion as a student and why she believes the practice was beneficial.

“The seclusion working group, everybody around the table, except Sen. Seeberger, said ‘We don’t want this practice,’” said Jessica Webster, an attorney at Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid. “What a bizarre place for us to be standing that all of the voices agree that this is a harmful and traumatic practice that we shouldn’t be using, but we’re still using it.”

Seeberger did not respond to an interview request.

The working group’s meeting materials show a dozen letters that support letting schools continue to use seclusion, with varying degrees of support for rolling back the 2023 ban on using them on younger students. Five of the letters come from a single school district, Intermediate School District 917, which serves as a special education cooperative for nine districts in the south metro. Another five come from other special education cooperatives around the state. Intermediate and cooperative districts typically provide services for students with disabilities who often require services that are provided in separate school buildings.

Black students with disabilities are disproportionately subjected to seclusion, making up just 12% of students with disabilities in Minnesota but subject to 22% of all instances of seclusion.

“It is unquestionable in every state, including our own, that seclusion and restrictive procedures in general, like holds on children and locking children in rooms by themselves, is used against boys of color with disabilities more so than any other demographic,” Heiser said.

Heiser added that multiple federal investigations have led to banning seclusion in particular states or school districts because data show it is disproportionately used on boys of color.

Seclusion is primarily used on students between the ages of 6 and 10. Before the ban was implemented for students in third grade and below, these children with disabilities made up about one-third of students with disabilities in Minnesota, but were subject to more than two-thirds of all episodes of seclusion. In the same year, 16% of students with disabilities were ages 16-21, but they made up just 7% of the students subjected to seclusion.

After the K-3 seclusion ban, in the 2024-25 school year, 6 to 10 year olds still made up about one-third of students with disabilities, but they accounted for only 46% of all episodes of seclusion.

Heiser says that some defenders of seclusion say it is necessary because the children can become violent and could hurt someone if not locked in a room. But she calls this a “red herring.” She said it is “common sense” that an older child would be bigger and stronger, and thus more likely to cause injury to another person. She said there’s a simple explanation for why younger children are more likely to be subjected to seclusion: They’re smaller.

“It really just comes down to how easy is it to grab a kid and put them in the closet? It’s easier when they’re littler,” Heiser said.

Students with autism or whose disabilities are categorized as emotional or behavioral disorder are disproportionately more likely to experience seclusion. Just 10% of students with disabilities are in the emotional or behavioral disability category, while they experience about 2 of every 5 seclusion episodes. Students with autism make up about 16% of students with disabilities but experience more than one-third of all seclusion episodes. This did not change after seclusion was banned for K-3 students.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Minnesota Reformer maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor J. Patrick Coolican for questions: info@minnesotareformer.com.

Imagine knowing exactly what you want to say, but the words don’t make it from your brain to your lips. You know how you want to move, but your body fails to comply. You’re thirsty, but your hand refuses to reach for your cup. You see the traffic but can’t stop your feet. 

It’s what I refer to as a brain-body disconnect. My brain knows what I want to do, say or stop doing, but my body doesn’t usually comply.

This is the reality of millions of people living with autism who have unreliable or minimal speaking skills or can’t speak at all. This is the reality of living with something called full-body apraxia, a term I hadn’t heard until recently, despite my 30 years of being diagnosed with this and or that disorder. But apraxia perfectly sums up my lifelong struggles.

Apraxia is a neurological condition that affects an individual’s ability to plan and carry out intentional movements, even though the physical ability and desire to complete the action are present. It’s a disorder that can very easily deceive onlookers into believing the individual lacks an understanding of the most basic concepts of danger or human emotion, or that they fail to comprehend the simplest instructions — or are choosing not to comply. 

Most well-meaning autism professionals are creating and implementing therapies based on these inaccurate and dangerous assumptions: the assumption that their student’s inability to complete their assigned tasks are due to either a behavioral or cognitive impairment. This is despite the fact that many of us have the correct diagnosis of motor planning and/or sensory processing disorder. Many treatment providers fail to recognize how these motor and sensory differences might manifest when implementing hours of behavior training or when assessing our cognitive abilities. 

These dangerous assumptions lead to children with autism enduring hours of dehumanizing and at times abusive therapies. And these assumptions rob us of our right to receive an adequate education and limit our access to and acceptance of alternative therapies. 

We are burdened with the impossible task of proving our intelligence with bodies that are not fully connected to the intentions and instructions of our brains, with bodies that not only fail to move how we want, but in many cases, take over and do what they want. Often instead of what I intend, my body will say what it wants, point where it wants and complete loops that I have little to no control over. 

Because educators and treatment providers fail to understand this, our basic human rights are withheld until we are able to prove our intelligence, emotional awareness and worth. We are often not treated with dignity until we can prove that our outward appearances and actions are not a true reflection of our minds and hearts.

I was a victim of those dangerous assumptions for 30 long years. Educators and doctors repeatedly told my parents that I had the intelligence of a 4-year old, and I was relegated to living out my days in a windowless warehouse called a day program. These are programs designed to house those who society believes don’t know, understand or feel enough to recognize the inhumanity of the system in which they exist. 

This system holds overwhelmed families hostage, forcing them into accepting only their approved options. The experts running these systems are blind to our needs, and often dismiss parent questions and concerns, treating them as if they are unfamiliar with their own children.

That was my life, a lesson in patience and surrender. I was resigned to accept my bleak and uncertain future until my family learned about . This is a motor-based communication method that understood that my inability to communicate was due to a motor challenge rather than a cognitive one. 

It’s a therapy designed to support my regulation and my body movement, and has taught me how to override my body’s automatic actions and create new ones. It taught me how to coordinate my eyes with my hand in order to accurately point to letters on a letterboard to spell my thoughts. It’s a therapy that, within a year, had changed my life beyond recognition. It was no easy task. 

If my family would have taken my behavior as communication, which is common when you have nothing else to rely on, we wouldn’t have made it past the first few sessions. My body rebelled. The prospect of finally being able to communicate overwhelmed my system with excitement. I spent the first several months screaming and shaking uncontrollably, but with the skilled guidance and quiet determination of my practitioner, I slowly progressed from one large letter to all 26, from answering questions with only one possible response to spelling out my thoughts. 

It’s been a long journey but worth every moment. I’m now able to express my love for my family and my dreams and desires. And I can give my family strategies for helping me. This seemingly has changed everything about my life. 

I’m writing this article, pointing one letter at a time to my letterboard in the hopes of reaching the parents of nonspeaking autistics and the professionals supporting them. I am asking you to put aside everything you’ve been taught about your autistic child or student, everything you’ve been told or think you know, and imagine you might be wrong. Imagine they are in there, understanding everything but unable to show it. 

There is a growing community of parents, therapists and teachers who have discovered just that. They are uncovering what decades of experts have missed. Everything about my life changed when I was given a reliable means of communication. I am sharing my story because I am able to. I am one of the lucky few who have been freed from my prison of silence.

This piece was initially published in the .

These moves raise significant concerns that the federal government won’t be able to meet its legal obligations to students with disabilities under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act ().

Education Secretary Linda McMahon has numerous times that federal special education funding will continue flowing, no matter where the office and programs land within the government. But what she has not acknowledged — and what is troubling — is how moving the program to an agency like HHS inevitably shifts the focus of special ed from education to health care, thus pathologizing disabled students.

This is especially true considering HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has made about children with autism, calling them tragic and doubting their ability to lead full and meaningful lives. His statements indicate a belief that a medical diagnosis absolutely leads to tragic outcomes — which is simply untrue. 

Framing students with disabilities solely in medical terms hinders their potential for growth by narrowly confining them to a diagnosis and perceived limitations — resulting in low expectations in school. As recently as the , this allowed most states to exclude disabled students from academic assessments. Many schools encouraged their parents to keep their children at home on testing days.

Since then, the country has steadily moved away from low expectations for students with disabilities. Under the Biden administration, the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services issued specifically focused on setting a high bar for these children. The guidance included a focus on inclusive education practices to ensure students with disabilities have access to high-quality education with the opportunity to meet challenging goals. It also offered details about how states and districts could leverage federal funding to achieve those ends. 

Inclusive education practices are flexible and creative. Using such an approach, a team determining appropriate classroom settings during an Individualized Education Program meeting might decide that instead of placing a student in need of behavioral support in a segregated class of peers with disabilities, the student could be put in a general-education classroom, assisted by a paraprofessional or special education teacher. operates this way. Teachers or paraprofessionals accompany students with disabilities to general-education classes, providing behavioral and academic support in real time, innovatively and effectively meeting a child’s unique education needs. Instead of limiting children with disabilities, guidance and practices like these help students look to an expansive future. 

But between moving special education to HHS and the longer-term to convert IDEA grants into formula block grants, it will fall to the states to ensure that their special education laws and regulations are robust. IDEA includes minimum requirements for supporting disabled students. States can and should do more, including developing their own laws and guidance on issues like inclusion, challenging academic standards, teacher and service provider support and training, and requirements to provide services in an equitable manner to all students.

Families and advocates can work to hold states and districts accountable by, for example, pushing for state-level disaggregated reporting on timely provision of services, restrictive class and school placements, and disproportionate disciplinary practices. Additionally, states must work toward timely resolutions of and for any violations of disabled students’ civil rights. 

Leaving schools without timely access to federal funding to provide legally mandated services means students will unnecessarily struggle, and their lack of progress will be used as an indication of the failures of the current program. There have already been that shifts of education programs to other federal agencies have tied up resources in even more layers of bureaucracy. 

Shifting responsibility for specific IDEA and special education programs to HHS means that when states come looking for guidance, the staff with deep understanding of the interplay among civil rights, disability and education will no longer be available to help them. What guidance they do receive could be limited and unsupportive of students’ true intellectual, cognitive or physical capabilities.

Burying special education deep in the can only make things more difficult for children with disabilities. Finding essential services that families are desperate to reach will be like looking for a needle in a haystack. 

Last year marked the 50th anniversary of IDEA. What should be a time for celebrating milestones in increasing inclusivity and accessibility in America’s public schools has instead been fraught with fear and fights to retain the unique supports provided to disabled children through the Department of Education. It doesn’t have to be this way, and it shouldn’t. 

Harold Hinds, is a civil rights attorney and Ph.D. student at the New School’s School for Public Engagement, also contributed to this essay.

CHINA, Maine – When Saige Bird moved to Maine, her first order of business was to get support for her then 3-year-old son, who is autistic and has a speech impediment that renders him unintelligible to most people.

Over the past year and a half, she has struggled to get him the speech or other support he needs and is legally entitled to.

While Child Development Services — a quasi-state agency responsible for providing disability services to Maine children under the age of 5 — to a new model for serving 3- and 4-year-olds, a significant number of preschoolers who remain in the existing system are being left behind.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

Over the 2024-2025 fiscal year, 875 3- and 4-year-olds, or 15% of preschool-aged children served by Child Development Services, were on waitlists for 1,690 services including speech, occupational and physical therapy, according to data provided by the Maine Department of Education. Historically, Child Development Services has not kept track of waitlist data, but this is an increase from 2019, when a report requested by the Maine Legislature’s Education and Cultural Affairs Committee found that 10% of children requiring services were on waitlists.

When Bird’s son, whose name she asked be omitted for privacy reasons, was first referred to Child Development Services for evaluation, Bird was thrilled.

“I thought I was gonna get the help I need for my son,” she said.

But that excitement soon turned to disappointment.

Four months after her initial appointment, she received an email from a speech therapist, only to discover she was based in Texas and the sessions would be remote, which she didn’t think was a good fit for her son, then 4 years old, who is hyperactive and has a low attention span.

Another four months later, Child Development Services offered a preschool placement for her son at Augusta Children’s Center. She ultimately declined it due to, among other reasons, trouble scheduling around her son’s outside occupational and speech therapy.

“I know some people love the Children’s Center,” she said. “But it wasn’t right for my son and our family.”

Under federal law, children are supposed to receive all services they’re found eligible for within 30 days of being evaluated.

But that deadline is not always met.

“We are frequently hearing about waitlists and hearing that these waitlists are persisting,” said Jeanette Plourde, an attorney for Disability Rights Maine. “We continue to see parents being told in (Individualized Education Plan, known as IEP) meetings that (Child Development Services) doesn’t have the staffing, that there are no placements, that it’s just not possible to fulfill their child’s IEP.”

This, says Plourde, is simply not okay.

“Our state has an obligation to provide these services under federal and state law,” she said. “Full stop.”

Bird is one of many parents who gave up completely and opted to find her child the services he needs in a different way. Three to five days a week, Bird drives an hour and a half round-trip to and from Belfast for in-person speech, which Child Development Services determined her son needed, and occupational therapy, which she sought separately. Since January, she has spent at least $550 on co-payments for both services.

The Maine Department of Education, which oversees Child Development Services, is well aware of the agency’s challenges, , and is working to turn the tide by of providing preschool special education from Child Development Services to the state’s public schools, a mammoth task it says will better serve preschoolers by utilizing the state’s resources more efficiently.

But while Child Development Services works to implement this systemic change, there’s not much that can be done for the children who aren’t getting their needs met, said Child Development Services State Director Dan Hemdal.

“It’s an unfortunate reality of early childhood special education in the state,” said Hemdal of children ending up on waitlists.

Hemdal and others say that a lack of preschool placements and providers — including speech, occupational and physical therapists — can make it difficult, if not impossible, to match preschoolers with the resources they need.

But while the state works to create a system that better serves preschoolers with disabilities, children across the state lose valuable time.

The first five years of life are crucial for development and can shape the trajectory of a child’s life.

“You only have a certain amount of time while the brain is this plastic,” said Nancy Cronin, the executive director of the Maine Developmental Disabilities Council. “This is a magic time for development that no child can afford to lose.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Maine Morning Star maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Lauren McCauley for questions: info@mainemorningstar.com.

We’re often left out of schoolwide instructional conversations. We don’t always have mentors who understand our setting. And there’s still resistance in some buildings to true inclusion and co-teaching. 

But when it comes to reading, especially in special education, we celebrate small victories. A student decoding her first word. Another raising his hand to read aloud. A reluctant reader smiling as she opens a book. But those moments — joyful as they are — shouldn’t be rare. And they shouldn’t feel miraculous. They should be common. 

I’ve been a special education teacher for seven years. And I’ve seen firsthand what happens when we as teachers believe in students with disabilities — and give them structured, high-quality reading instruction. I’ve also seen what happens when we don’t. 

Far too often, we quietly accept that some kids, especially those with individualized education programs, just won’t learn to read. That they’ll always struggle. That their reading growth will be slow, if it comes at all. We build systems that manage that failure. We adjust our expectations. And we wait. 

This year, I stopped waiting.  

For years, I cobbled together lessons from online worksheets and Pinterest printables, trying to meet each student’s reading needs during 30-minute blocks that felt shorter every day. I’m often responsible for more than 40 students across kindergarten through fifth grade, with service times ranging from 30 to 300 minutes per week. 

I had no curriculum, no sequence, no scaffolding — and worse, no results. 

That changed this past year when, for the first time, I began using an evidence-based, structured, supplemental foundational curriculum. I’m not in the business of promoting one curriculum over another, but you can find programs like this from , , , and others. Whatever you choose, ensure it’s research-based, structured, focused on foundational reading skills, and proven-effective for the resource room population.

 My program followed a consistent daily routine, built-in review, and offered skill checks that I could actually use to inform my IEP goals. Once my students understood the structure, they knew what to expect. They knew where we were going. And they started to believe that they could get there. 

Many of my students went from dreading reading instruction to asking to come early. They saw their own progress and became more motivated by it.  

This was the year I saw the most academic growth of my career. 

Students with disabilities face daily uncertainty in school: instructions they don’t understand, tasks they’re not ready for, expectations that shift depending on the classroom. This is why routines and procedures matter so much. 

From the first week of school, I taught every group the expectations of our classroom. Together, we created a classroom contract around three core values: Be kind. Work hard. Respect our learning environment. We didn’t just sign it — we lived it. Eventually, students began referring one another back to it. It gave them ownership. It gave them structure. 

That consistency made my room feel safer. And when students feel safe, they can take academic risks. They can read aloud. Ask questions. Try again. 

Even for students I saw just once a week, the structure stuck. That’s the power of routine. It doesn’t just save time — it builds trust. 

One of the most important lessons I’ve learned is about language — and how much of it our students are expected to process at all times. For students with disabilities, especially those with ADHD or slow processing speed, every word we say adds to their cognitive load. That’s why I’ve learned to cut “language clutter” wherever possible. 

Instead of giving constant verbal feedback, I use gestures or visual cues. I simplify my instructions. I give students room to think. This shift has made a remarkable difference — not just in student focus, but in confidence. 

Teaching isn’t about how much we say. It’s about how much our students can absorb, make sense of, and apply. 

This past year affirmed what I’ve always believed but hadn’t always seen: students with disabilities can make significant reading growth — when we give them the proper support. 

That starts with structured instruction that’s actually usable in a resource setting. It means giving special education teachers access to curricula that are efficient, repeatable, and grounded in research — not just programs that check a box. 

It also means investing in mentorship and training tailored to the realities of resource classrooms. New teachers need more than general guidance — they need support from people who understand their schedules, caseloads, and instructional demands. Educators need to understand the reading brain, the science behind structured instruction, and what real IEP implementation entails. 

Finally, we need to create school cultures where general and special educators collaborate, rather than compete — where co-teaching is supported from the top down, and students benefit from a unified team. 

As I move into a new role as a reading specialist this coming school year, that’s where I’m putting my energy. I want to help other teachers implement IEPs with fidelity, understand the reading brain, and make structured literacy work in real classrooms. 

We don’t need to wait for perfect conditions. We just need to start with what works, stay consistent, and hold onto the belief that every student — especially those with IEPs — deserves the chance to become a reader. 

But after this weekend, when President Donald Trump Bowen, who specializes in primary care pediatrics, fears a new obstacle: her patients might lose access to the publicly funded health insurance that makes her work possible.

“Before they had insurance, but then they couldn’t get to the provider,” Bowen said. “Now you’ll have providers coming out — but they won’t have the insurance.”

Experts say Bowen’s concerns are not unfounded. The sweeping, which Republicans pushed through Congress last week without any Democratic votes, will cut federal spending on Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program benefits by $1.02 trillion and increase the number of uninsured Americans by 7.8 million people over the next decade, according to estimates by the nonpartisan

Cuts to the Medicaid budget will have “just tremendous impacts,” Bowen added. Schools receive about $7.5 billion annually from , a popular joint federal and state health program that insures nearly 70 million Americans, most of whom are low income. For more than 30 years, it’s paid for services in schools for students with disabilities as well as low-income students.

If all provisions in the bill are enacted, it will lead to enrollment drops in the , which provides low-cost health coverage to children in families that earn too much money to qualify for Medicaid, and a $125.2 billion reduction in Medicaid by 2034, the Budget Office predicted, though it’s not clear just how many kids would be impacted. 

The cuts will come through a variety of mechanisms over the next decade, ranging from immediately enacted provisions that curb states’ ability to raise their share of Medicaid funding to new federal limits on eligibility — including work requirements for parents of kids 14 years or older — which will go into effect in 2027. These, in particular, could harm children, who are less likely to be covered themselves if their parents lose access, according to Anne Dwyer, an associate research professor at Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families.

“Like many, we’re still unpacking exactly what this will mean for states and for individuals covered by Medicaid and for students in schools,” Dwyer said. “Some of these cuts are immediate and some go into effect over time.” 

Republican lawmakers, though, argue they’re actually Medicaid recipients by removing undocumented immigrants and others they say never should have had access in the first place.

While there weren’t any provisions in the bill that directly slash school-based Medicaid services, the 20-plus Medicaid provisions it does include will ultimately place immense financial pressure on states to make up for the lost funds, which will have trickle-down impacts on schools, according to Dwyer.

In response, states will either have to raise taxes, or make further cuts within their Medicaid programs — the more likely option, Dwyer said. They could also look to backfill budget shortfalls by slashing other school-based programs.

“It’s just hard to imagine a scenario where states are faced with these levels of cuts, and individuals across the program aren’t impacted,” she said. 

School-based Medicaid makes up less than 1% of the overall program’s budget, but is still the fourth-largest federal funding stream for districts and allows them to pay for a swath of resources, including therapies for students with disabilities, school nurses, mental health care and specialized equipment, such as wheelchairs. 

The loss of funds will significantly impact how schools are able to cover mandatory services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, according to Mia Ives-Rublee, the senior director for the at the Center for American Progress, a left-of-center think tank.

Kids who are eligible for Medicaid through expansions or waivers — state-based mechanisms that widen access to some people who wouldn’t normally qualify — are particularly at risk of losing services, since their eligibility isn’t required by federal law, said Ives-Rublee. 

But, she added, children will largely remain more protected than adults since a number of pediatric services are mandated at the federal level, including preventative screenings, check-ups and vision and hearing services. 

Still, if fewer children are enrolled in Medicaid overall, it will reduce the pool of money that goes towards school-based services leading to fewer resources and providers.

“What we will start seeing, and what we’ve seen in previous states, is that there will be a chunk of people who will just lose eligibility … because they either don’t get the information about the new paperwork requirements, they don’t understand that they now have to do check-ins twice a year [to determine eligibility vs. once a year] … and they might miss a recertification process,” Ives-Rublee added.

The changes could also result in fewer social workers or school-based psychologists and decreased access to health care — especially in rural and urban communities, according to a opposing any proposed cuts that was spearheaded by the Medicaid in Schools Coalition and signed by 65 organizations.

of districts use Medicaid funding to pay for the salaries of health professionals, according to 2017 data. And — 40 million — are now insured through Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

In Alabama, where Bower sees patients, over are enrolled in these programs.

“If you put all the kids in the country together, they’re the largest group of impoverished people,” said Bowen, who also serves as the president of the National Association of Pediatric Nurse Practitioners, “and they have no political voice … They rely on adults to hopefully do the right thing so that they can grow up and be healthy and contribute to this country …. but if they’re sick, they’re hungry, they can’t be educated. It’s an all-around impact.”

These impacts will be challenging to track, though, as they play out over the next decade, experts warn — especially less tangible ones like the amount of time states will spend trying to untangle how to implement the bill’s complex provisions.

“We’re in for a long haul here,” said Dwyer. “A lot of these changes aren’t going to be overnight. They’re going to be over the next months and years to come. And so I think just documenting what’s happening, what’s working [and] where pressures are coming up will be really important.”

The need for a reliable compass is greater now more than ever before. Significant budget cuts and efforts to weaken the Department of Education call into question the federal government’s role in ensuring educational excellence. As policy and research leaders at the National Center for Learning Disabilities, an organization with nearly 50 years of experience advocating for the rights of individuals with learning disabilities, we fear the country may be entering an era in which we will be navigating this path without a reliable compass.

NAEP, often referred to as the “Nation’s Report Card,” is the only standard assessment administered to students in all 50 states, allowing Americans to see trends in educational attainment over time. NAEP data is an invaluable indicator for understanding areas of growth and identifying unmet needs for students with learning disabilities. The center publishes NAEP Data Snapshots in and to compare the achievement of students with learning disabilities to that of all young people. Research and experience demonstrate that students with learning disabilities can achieve at the same level as their peers when given the appropriate support. Thus, these NAEP snapshots are a powerful tool for highlighting persistent discrepancies that warrant additional investment and innovation, and celebrating and learning from progress. 

Not long ago, substantial numbers of students with disabilities were barred from taking  NAEP. Only 15 years ago, over a third of students with disabilities were excluded from the test-taking sample. In 2009, representatives of the center testified before the National Assessment Governing Board to have students with disabilities included in the assessment. Since then, there has been progress. In 2024, about 89% of students who identified as having disabilities took the reading assessment. Their performance is part of the national conversation about how the nation navigates the journey toward educational excellence together.

NAEP also spurs innovation. Technology is changing rapidly, and because students take the exam on the computer, that data can be used in informative and transformative ways. Researchers have used not just the NAEP results, but also information about the testing process to help better understand how students interact with exams. For example, because of , it is clear that it isn’t just students with disabilities who use built-in accessibility features like text-to-speech.

In February, NCLD was alarmed to learn that the National Center for Education Statistics, the primary agency responsible for administering NAEP, had been reduced to a staff of three. Both administering the test and disaggregating and reporting the resulting data are critical work requiring expertise and staffing that are now at a skeletal level. Though Education Secretary Linda McMahon has stated that NAEP is safe and will be given as planned in 2026, we have many questions and concerns about its future and the ability of researchers in the field — disability advocates in particular — to use the data as we do now. The president’s budget request for Fiscal Year 2026 proposes a 29% cut to funding for NAEP, which only adds to our concerns about the test’s administration next year.

Policymakers at all levels need reliable data upon which to base their decisions. Researchers need valid and reliable achievement data to understand trends as well as differences in needs across states and student characteristics, including disability status. NAEP allows policymakers to compare their state with others nationwide, encouraging the adoption of best practices and reforms that have worked elsewhere, like Science of Reading-based reforms. At the national level, advocates like us use NAEP results to push for changes in legislation or investments that support students with disabilities.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the passage of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Yet, today, the federal government continues to underfund both special education and the broader effort to ensure all students, especially those from underserved communities, have the resources and opportunities they need to succeed. 

Educators, researchers, advocates and families committed to disability rights and inclusive education must speak up about the importance of NAEP data. This information has long helped school leaders and policymakers understand where students are excelling and where they are being left behind. Without this insight, funding, accommodations and student resources decrease, and NAEP data becomes a mirror, not a map forward.

Carter was in first grade when the suspensions began. His mom describes it as the year “all hell broke loose.”

As he made his way through the public school system in York County, South Carolina, the now-15-year-old, who has multiple disabilities, continued to struggle.

The situation reached a crescendo in 6th grade, when Carter was suspended out of school for 7.5 days and in school about a dozen times, according to school district records and his mother’s estimates. This was in addition to numerous lunch suspensions — during which he was forced to sit at a table alone in the cafeteria — and bus suspensions, which meant Carter couldn’t ride school-provided transportation. His offenses, Kimberly Tissot, his mom, said, ranged from minor ones,  like “incessant talking” and “cussing,” to the more extreme, including breaking one classmate’s glasses and threatening another.

While Tissot understands why these behaviors needed to result in clear consequences, she argued that every one of them was a manifestation of her son’s disabilities, which include ADHD, fetal alcohol syndrome, a disability involving written expression and a mild intellectual disability. They could have been avoided, she said, if Carter’s school had followed his Individualized Education Program, which lays out the supports and services the school is legally mandated to provide Carter so he can progress and learn.

Ultimately, her son, who has difficulty connecting his actions to their ramifications, was left confused and convinced, “he’s in trouble because he’s bad,” said Tissot, who is also the president and CEO of , an advocacy organization. 

Carter is one of hundreds of thousands of students with disabilities across the country who are suspended from school each year. It’s long been documented that this population of kids is generally more likely to face exclusionary discipline , but because of where he happens to live, Carter is particularly susceptible: No state removes students with disabilities from school for 10 days or fewer at a higher rate than South Carolina.

There, some 15% of special education students faced out-of-school suspensions for up to 10 days in the 2022-23 school year — nearly twice the national average, according to The 74’s analysis of the most recently available data.

These numbers may also be a substantial undercount, according to experts who told The 74 they’ve witnessed widespread in South Carolina — in some cases to avoid the legal protections that kick in for students with disabilities once they’ve been kept out of the classroom for more than 10 cumulative days. Tissot said she was asked to pick Carter up from school without an official suspension on multiple occasions, a practice she knew to push back on only because of her advocacy work. And she said she only learned of some of Carter’s in-school suspensions, which weren’t all officially documented, from him.

Macaulay Morrison is assistant director of a at the University of South Carolina Law School who represents special education families in their legal battles with schools.

“It’s just reflective of the state of public education of South Carolina as a whole,” Morrison said of the IDEA suspension data. “Sometimes it’s easier for schools to exclude these students than it is for them to figure out how to support them.”

In response to The 74’s findings, a South Carolina Department of Education official said they remain “committed to ensuring that all students, including those receiving special education services, are supported in safe and positive learning environments.”

The department has established a goal of working with districts to reduce suspension rates for students with disabilities to 9% or less — significantly lower than its current rate, but still higher than the national average — by working with advocacy and support groups, like the Behavior Alliance of South Carolina, to provide conferences, institutes and training opportunities.

And the department will continue to “closely monitor student discipline data to track progress toward this target … including assisting with district reviews of disciplinary referral data, revision of policies and procedures, and the development of targeted improvement plans at both the school and district levels.”

South Carolina was the only state whose numbers were not broken down by race after state officials notified the U.S. Department of Education of data quality concerns, according to federal Education Department staff. The South Carolina state education department official told The 74 that they provided corrected data once they were made aware of the issue, but that update was not reflected in the final federal dataset. 

The federal Department of Education did not respond to repeated requests for comment from The 74.

The IDEA dataset is particularly significant because it’s the first to document disciplinary rates among students with disabilities at the national level post-pandemic, a time when . The U.S. Department of Education’s more frequently scrutinized has long shown disparities in discipline between students with disabilities and their general education peers but the most current available complete numbers are from the 2021-22 school year — when most kids were back to in-person learning but some districts were still offering a hybrid model and still others were allowing kids to

The 74’s analysis of the more recent IDEA data of some 7.5 million students with disabilities across three suspension categories reveals the differences experienced within this vulnerable student group. For example, in addition to South Carolina, special education students living in North Carolina, Delaware and Nevada are far more likely to be excluded from school than students with similar disabilities living in Vermont, Utah and New York.  

The IDEA data, which is released annually, shows that race — also a well-established to suspensions — plays a role among students who are already facing disproportionate discipline. While Black students made up 16% of all students with disabilities nationally, they accounted for nearly a third (31%) of all those students suspended out of school for 10 days or less. 

In some cases, race and geography combined in striking ways in the IDEA data, such as in Nebraska, where almost 1-in-10 Black students with disabilities were removed from school for more than 10 days (a figure which includes in-school and out-of-school disciplinary removals) in 2022-23 — more than any other group in any other state.

Other key findings of the The 74’s analysis include:

• Nationally, boys are more likely than girls to be identified as having a disability, and — even when that’s considered — are disproportionately removed from classrooms: While about two-thirds of students with disabilities are male, they account for about 75% of special education students removed from school for any duration of time.

• On average nationally, just over 7% of all students with disabilities received at least one out-of-school suspension for 10 days or fewer.

• Black students with disabilities are disproportionately suspended out of school for 10 days or less in every state, to varying degrees. In Georgia, for example, they make up 39% of those with disabilities, but 59% of those who were suspended. In Delaware, Black students make up just over a third of those with disabilities, but over half of those suspended.  In five states (Indiana, Nevada, Iowa, Nebraska and Wisconsin), at least 20% of Black students were suspended out of school for 10 days or fewer. 

• In both West Virginia and Pennsylvania, almost 1-in-10 Hispanic children with disabilities were suspended for 10 days or less outside of school — more than any other state for this group, though closely followed by Nevada, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin.

• In South Dakota, 17% of students with disabilities who identified as Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander were suspended for 10 days or less in school — a greater share than in any other state.

• California suspends students with disabilities for 10 days or fewer in school at the lowest rate (0.8%), and Vermont suspends them out of school at the lowest rate (3%).
  
• No state removes students for more than 10 days at a higher rate than Missouri (4%), 2.5 times the national average.

While supporters of stricter school discipline argue suspensions and expulsions are necessary to keep schools safe, research also shows that these measures are associated with a host of negative outcomes, including , and a lower likelihood of and greater involvement with the

exclusionary discipline, which children with disabilities are more frequently subjected to, does not seem to positively impact students’ future behavior and, for younger students, may even exacerbate it. 

For students with disabilities, the loss of instruction time can be particularly devastating, said Amy Holbert, CEO of , a training and information center for families whose children have disabilities. And especially when students receive out-of-school suspensions, it can put a strain on working families who suddenly have to scramble to find child care, she added.

These challenges have only worsened since the pandemic, according to Holbert, who said referrals to her organization for educational concerns have increased 128% since 2020.

The 74’s data analysis confirms “what advocates across the country have been saying over and over again about the students most likely to experience school pushout and get deprived of access to instructional time,” said Jennifer Coco, interim executive director of .��

It holds up an “important mirror” she added, “on who is getting appropriate interventions and who are the students that we still collectively need to do better by.”

‘The Wild Wild West of civil rights enforcement’

Keisha Sims-Williams’ son, Savion, was just 2 years old when she began to suspect he might have a disability. He was hyperactive and impulsive. Sometimes she’d call his name and he wouldn’t respond. And he would often walk on the tips of his toes — a characteristic more common in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Some of these behaviors made starting school particularly challenging. 

Sims-Williams said she told Savion’s Columbia, South Carolina, school as early as pre-K that he would need extra help. But instead of having him evaluated for an IEP they repeatedly removed him from school — both formally and informally — and ultimately relocated him to a transitional program, though not one for students with disabilities, she said. 

“His pre-K year it got so bad, he was out of school more than he was in,” she said, estimating Savion was suspended for at least 30 days that year. 

Ultimately, Savion was diagnosed with ADHD and autism by clinicians outside of school, but still he wasn’t evaluated for an IEP, which meant he went through his kindergarten year without the same protections around school removals as other students with disabilities. 

As a kid with a suspected disability, though, he should have still had access to at least some of those guardrails, according to Morrison, the South Carolina attorney, who later filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Sims-Williams family.

And so, Savion had another year filled with so many removals his mom lost count. 

“At some point it was like they were on a mission to get rid of him,” she said.

In November of his kindergarten year, Sims-Williams filed a formal written request for an in-school evaluation, but his IEP wasn’t developed until May or implemented until the following August.

“It took two years of me fighting and pleading in order for him to finally get an IEP and be heard and seen as he should,” Sims-Williams said. She believes if that IEP had come along sooner, her son’s early years in school could have looked a lot different.

“No child’s experiences in their education should have been as bad as my son’s,” she added. “They ruined his good years of school. They ruined it.”

Much of this was confirmed by the state’s response to the family’s lawsuit. The South Carolina Department of Education found that the district had violated a number of Savion’s rights as a student with a suspected disability — including by not evaluating him for an IEP in a timely manner and not officially recording removals or creating a behavior plan once he hit 10 days of removals. These failures ultimately led to even more suspensions, according to court records shared with The 74.

Since extra supports were implemented, school has been significantly better for Savion. He’s been on honor roll, won awards and no longer cries when she drops him off each morning.

Still, “he’s had some bumps here and there,” she said, noting the now-7-year-old was suspended out of school for about eight days throughout first grade, but “compared to 20 or 30, that’s progress to me.”

“I’m hoping next year we’re down to five. Or none.”

Savion’s race, gender and disability status all make him particularly likely to be suspended, as does the fact that his family also lives in South Carolina. The Palmetto State leads the nation in , as well.

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act provides protections to students who have been removed from school for more than 10 days, but much of the enforcement is left up to schools, districts and states, leading to a patchwork landscape, according to interviews with over two dozen advocates, experts, parents and attorneys. 

“Schools don’t seem to have any incentive to improve their processes and procedures because there isn’t anybody holding them to task,” said Mike Mathison, a juvenile justice resource attorney at the Children’s Law Center at the University of South Carolina Law School.

And in certain cases — like Savion’s — even if a student has a documented disability, it can be challenging to get schools to provide an IEP in a timely manner, leaving vulnerable kids unprotected. 

The disproportionate removal of students with disabilities — especially for boys and those who are Black — experts told The 74 is the result of a confluence of systemic issues including discrimination, teacher and school counselor shortages and a dearth of training in positive behavior management techniques, like establishing strong relationships with students and clear routines. Added to that are administrators not understanding or enforcing students’ IEPs or the law, parents not knowing their kids’ rights, a return to top-down “zero tolerance” disciplinary policies and a lack of federal accountability.

This trend of disproportionality is well established: In the 2017-18 school year, 9% of students with disabilities were suspended, compared to 4% of their general education peers, according to a 2022 from the Learning Policy Institute — largely based on analyses of four years of Civil Rights Data Collection. For Black students with disabilities, that figure was even higher: 20% were suspended. 

Students with disabilities are also more likely than their peers to be punished for “broad and subjective categories” of behavior like defiance, according to a 2024 investigation by  .

“There’s disadvantages of being Black when it comes to disciplinary outcomes, and there’s a disadvantage of being a student with a disability as well,” said Richard Welsh, associate professor of education and public policy at Vanderbilt University and author of “You can times that together … and that’s the definition of intersectionality.”

While disparities are cause for closer inspection — and can be evidence of discrimination — they alone are not proof of bias, cautioned Paul Morgan, director of the at the University of Albany. That being said, he added, even when controlling for differences in behaviors, Black students appear to be more frequently suspended than their peers. And a recent GAO report determined that Black girls are more likely to be removed from class than their white female peers for similar behaviors in the same schools.

Regardless of whether or not active discrimination is at play, the disparities are at least “a sign of weak systemic practices” and “a call to action,” said Coco, from The Center for Learner Equity.

Despite this, in April, President Donald Trump released an saying he intended to roll back Biden administration discipline guidance, which encouraged school districts to collect, analyze and adjust their policies in light of disproportionate racial outcomes. Trump argued that approach actually weaponized federal civil rights laws in ways that discriminated against white students.

Critics have the executive order, titled Reinstating Common Sense School Discipline, will only further widen disparities for students of color and students with disabilities, especially as  more than consider a return to stricter student discipline policies, including four that have already done so. 

“Common sense is students in school every day learning, and students can’t learn if they’re not in school,” Coco said. “I recognize we need to keep schools safe, so to me a common sense investment is saying, ‘How do we ensure that schools are a place where students are getting access to what they need to thrive and be successful, both in terms of education and wraparound supports?’”

Trump has also been systematically working to dismantle the Education Department, which could mean even less federal accountability and data collection moving forward, said Dan Losen, senior director of education at the National Center for Youth Law.

“We’re in the Wild Wild West of civil rights enforcement,” he said.

A ‘huge oversight’ in IDEA enforcement

The federal law defining the rights of students with disabilities was first passed in 1975 and then updated and renamed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in 1990. IDEA mandates a “free appropriate public school education” for eligible students ages 3-21. In the 2022-23 school year that included or 15% of all those attending public schools — a two percentage-point increase from the 6.4 million students covered under IDEA a decade ago. The federal guidelines provide baseline regulations that states must follow, but some — like New Jersey — have implemented stronger protections as well. 

Under IDEA, states must submit annual data about students who receive special education and related services to the Education Department, including the data analyzed by The 74.

And the law provides certain protections around disciplinary removals: If a student with a disability is removed from their classroom for more than 10 days, IDEA mandates a process called a Manifestation Determination Review, a hearing during which a group — including the parents and the student’s  IEP team — meets to determine if the child’s behaviors were either related to their disability or the result of a failure to implement their IEP. 

If the answer to either of these questions is “yes,” the school can’t move forward with the removal and has to instead make a plan to provide updated support.

Experts and parents told The 74 that once a student is diagnosed with a disability, schools tend to become particularly cautious about hitting that 10-day mark and triggering the legal review process. In some cases, that means educators pay closer attention to implementing a student’s IEP. But, in others, schools attempt to skirt the system by suspending students “off-the-books.” 

And when schools do implement the hearing process, they don’t always do so thoroughly or with intention, sometimes just “doing [it] to check the box,” said Morrison, the South Carolina attorney.

A recent , for example, found that New York City’s public schools routinely flout these federal guidelines by not properly considering a student’s disability during hearings. 

It can be challenging to hold schools and districts accountable for faithfully implementing these hearings, since the federal government isn’t collecting data around them, according to Losen, from the National Center for Youth Law.

“For monitoring the enforcement of these supposedly important protections, we don’t get to see any of that data,” he said. “Nothing. And I think that’s a huge oversight.” 

Carter, the South Carolina student suspended multiple times throughout his school career, is now leading his own IEP meetings and learning to control his behaviors, his mother told The 74. 

Tissot said he made it through the past school year without any suspensions — a first for him — and this fall he’ll start high school. His mom describes the teenager as a sweet, talkative kid who loves to try new foods — “He’s a little foodie!” — play video games and make people laugh.

While Tissot is proud of Carter’s progress, she also worries he’s still not where he needs to be academically, and his history of repeated suspensions has heightened his anxiety at school. 

“He has told me that he tries so hard to control himself that he’s unable to concentrate,” she said.

And she worries for other students with disabilities who don’t have the same resources Carter has — like a mom who’s an advocate in the field — a fear that’s only intensified under the Trump administration.

“The future is not looking good for kids with disabilities who require IEPs,” she said. “It’s very scary because they’re taking away the federal oversight right now so really relying on parents to enforce it. And, I mean, that’s not going to work at all.”

Now, with the rise of private school choice, lawmakers are on the verge of further eroding their commitments to students and families. Instead of fully investing in IDEA and embracing its promises of ensuring all children can access and receive the services they need — something America has never done — Congress is considering passing the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill” (), which would only further undermine the rights and opportunities of students with disabilities. 

The bill would by slashing Medicaid and other funding for programs that help students with disabilities in public schools. But the require private schools to admit these children, or provide the same level of services as a public school must. Other than unenrolling and switching schools yet again, families of kids with disabilities would have no way to hold these schools accountable for providing services.

I know firsthand what accountability looks like in a private school setting — and it’s bleak. My son was recently evaluated for special education eligibility because of developmental delays, a process we navigated independent of his private preschool. Soon after his diagnosis, the school began calling family conferences to complain about his behavior, having never raised any concerns during the two previous years. The school alleged he was having trouble listening, completing classwork he doesn’t enjoy, and standing or sitting still; it demanded that we find, pay for and send a therapist to school. 

My son is 4 years old. When he’s running around, it’s because he’s pretending to be Sonic the Hedgehog — typical preschool behavior. The school administrator said they were at a loss for what to do, and that if we didn’t fix my son’s behavior, then the school was no longer a good fit. The school relinquished any responsibility for how they might adapt to meet my son’s needs. It felt like they had made a unilateral decision to push him out once they realized he had developmental delays. 

As an attorney and advocate for children with disabilities, I’ve spent nearly two decades working to ensure that schools are welcoming places for families, providing instruction that meets the needs of all students. I’ve sat in versions of this meeting dozens of times with kids of all learning profiles. But experiencing it as a parent, I felt shame, defensiveness and anger. Private school choice is intended to empower parents to find the education that best meets their children’s unique needs and different learning styles. Yet, a school of choice was telling me that it was choosing not to serve my son.

The administration wasn’t responsive to my suggestions for what it could do differently to engage with my son — and they don’t have to be. It’s a private school. It is free to define a narrow box of acceptable child behavior and wait for kids to fit into it. The private school is not accountable for the same expectations and responsibilities that I can expect of my local public school, where my son now receives specialized instruction, along with speech and occupational therapy. Expanded private school vouchers and the policies espoused in H.R. 1 could result in thousands more students being put in the same position as my son.

I am not one to defend maintaining the status quo for students with disabilities across the nation. But the country can and we must do better. America’s children and adults with disabilities can be undone only by actively prioritizing their inclusion. As citizens, we cannot passively assume it will happen.

Giving up on the promise of IDEA and disinvesting in public schools is not the answer. Neither is lowering the bar for services and somehow expecting better results. The solution lies in a relentless commitment to quality and accountability. This means adequate local and federal resources and meaningful accountability structures to support all public schools and policies that help all children. Congress must honor the promise made 50 years ago and reject H.R. 1. 

If the justices had agreed with the district’s longstanding argument, children with disabilities would have had to prove their school system intentionally acted in bad faith in denying them in-school accommodations. In “friend of the court” briefs, numerous advocacy groups had warned that holding special education students to a different — and extraordinarily strict — definition of discrimination would have made it virtually impossible for families to assert their rights. 

The court agreed, saying everyone who files suit under the ADA should have to meet the same standard of “deliberate indifference,” or disregard for an individual’s need for accommodations.

“That our decision is narrow does not diminish its import for A.J.T. and ‘a great many children with disabilities and their parents,’ ” Roberts wrote, citing language from a lower court decision. “Together they face daunting challenges on a daily basis. We hold today that those challenges do not include having to satisfy a more stringent standard of proof than other plaintiffs to establish discrimination under Title II of the ADA and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act.”

In a concurring opinion, Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson elaborated, citing examples of discrimination that, intent notwithstanding, must still be addressed. 

“Stairs may prevent a wheelchair-bound person from accessing a public space,” Sotomayor wrote. “The lack of auxiliary aids may prevent a deaf person from accessing medical treatment at a public hospital; and braille-free ballots may preclude a blind person from voting, all without animus on the part of the city planner, the hospital staff or the ballot designer.”

“Today’s decision is a great win for Ava, and for children with disabilities facing discrimination in schools across the country,” said Roman Martinez, a lead attorney on the case. “This outcome gets the law exactly right, and it will help protect the reasonable accommodations needed to ensure equal opportunity for all.”

In a statement to The 74, a district spokesperson said the high court “declined to decide what the particular intent standard is for such claims,” noting that “the case will now return to the trial court for next steps consistent with the court’s ruling.”

In 2015, when Ava was in fourth grade, her family moved from Kentucky to Minnesota. Because her severe form of epilepsy causes frequent seizures during the morning, she had been allowed to attend school in the afternoon and early evening. Initially, the Osseo district agreed to a modified schedule, but reneged after the family moved, saying it was unwilling to provide services outside the normal school day. 

The state administrative law judge who heard the family’s initial complaint called the district’s arguments “pretextual,” saying it was more concerned with “the need to safeguard the ordinary end-of-the-workday departure times for its faculty and staff” than with outside evaluators’ assessments of Ava’s needs. 

As the case made its way to the , the district had consistently argued Ava had to prove the school system acted out of ill intent — a standard that would have applied only to K-12 students. But in the brief it submitted before oral arguments, Osseo , saying that a showing of bad faith is required in all ADA cases, not just those involving schools.

The April 28 hearing erupted in rare verbal fireworks when Justice Neil Gorsuch took exception to a statement by the district’s attorney that lawyers for the U.S. Department of Justice, who sided with the family, were “lying” when they said the district had changed its argument. Justice Amy Coney Barrett characterized the district’s shift as “a pretty big sea change,” while Jackson questioned whether the district was saying the ADA does not necessarily require accommodations for people with disabilities.  

In their concurring opinion, Sotomayor and Jackson noted that when they wrote the act, lawmakers addressed the question at the heart of the case head-on: “Congress was not naïve to the insidious nature of disability discrimination when it enacted the ADA and Rehabilitation Act. It understood full well that discrimination against those with disabilities derives principally from ‘apathetic attitudes rather than affirmative animus.’ ”

The decision comes at a time when disability protections have come under fire from the second Trump administration and a number of Republican governors. In October, motivated by new rules that said gender dysphoria could be considered a disability, 17 states . Gender dysphoria is the clinical term for distress caused when a person’s gender does not match their sex assigned at birth.

That suit, Texas vs. Kennedy, originally sought to have Section 504, the portion of the ADA that outlaws in-school discrimination, declared unconstitutional. The states have since dropped that demand from the suit but are to overturn rules prohibiting discrimination in a wide array of public settings. 

Whether the states will continue to press the new, broader case in the face of Thursday’s decision remains to be seen.

For their part, disability advocates were quick to celebrate. The district’s position was “flatly inconsistent with the law and would have stripped millions of people with disabilities of the protections Congress put in place to prevent systemic discrimination,” said Shira Wakschlag, senior executive officer of legal advocacy and general counsel for The Arc of the United States, which submitted a brief on the issues. “The very foundation of disability civil rights was on the line.”

“Medicaid is there to catch us all when we fall,” said Amidon, who lives in Manistee, Michigan. “It’s not just for people who’ve always needed it; it’s for people like my family as well, who never thought that we would be in a position to rely on it. Without Medicaid and these early intervention services, our family would be facing a much different reality.”

As plans for cutting hundreds of billions of dollars in Medicaid take shape and, parents and child health advocates are warning about collateral damage. Namely, the healthy development of young American children.

Nationwide, 31 million children rely on Medicaid, and experts such as Julie Kashen, senior fellow and director for women’s economic justice at , have, saying, “Reductions in coverage could worsen the health of those children and their communities.” 

While Congressional debate is largely focused on cutting coverage for low-income adults and limiting states’ ability to raise taxes for healthcare spending, the impact could well cause children to lose services and access to health care. 

“There’s not a lot of fat to cut in Medicaid,” Elisabeth Wright Burak, senior fellow at the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families said on a . “Cuts would put states in a very difficult position of making hard decisions between spending more or rolling back existing coverage or services.” 

Medicaid, a state-federal partnership, supports American families in many different ways. The health coverage it provides to low-income children has been shown to . Nearly are covered by Medicaid, and it is a major funder of community health workers. 

Medicaid also helps fund part C of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which provides early intervention screening and services., the program is designed “to enhance the development of infants and toddlers with disabilities, to minimize their potential for developmental delay and to recognize the significant brain development that occurs during a child’s first three years of life.” The program provides early intervention screening and services with resources that

Nationwide, about 540,000 children under age 3 receive Part C services, and about half of them are enrolled in Medicaid, from the Infant and Toddler Coordinators Association. Part C saves taxpayers money by minimizing long-term costs for children with disabilities, promoting school readiness and reducing the prevalence of severe disabilities in adulthood. These benefits have been extensively documented:

• These services are proven to support outcomes for infants and toddlers with .
• As a result of early intervention services, did not need special education by the time they reached kindergarten.
• Infants and toddlers with disabilities who receive services under Part C — with two-thirds substantially improving and about one half catching up to a level appropriate for their age.

Every state has different Medicaid , which can limit the support that children receive. In Texas, 75% of the state’s Medicaid enrollees are children, said Adriana D. Kohler, policy director of , a children’s advocacy nonprofit. About 2.8% of the state’s children under age 3 receive Part C services compared to 7% nationwide, the show “It’s pretty complicated for the early intervention providers,” Kohler said. “We leverage over a dozen different funding sources, and Medicaid is a critical source of funding.”

Owing to in Medicaid that Texas lawmakers enacted in 2011, the number of early intervention providers dropped from 58 to 40, while enrollment in the Part C program dropped by 20% to 30% in some areas, according to Kohler. “You had to be a more severe case or have higher needs in order to qualify,”  she said. “These programs are having to do more with less.” 

Texas is also that has not agreed to the Medicaid expansion approved in the Affordable Care Act, meaning that uninsured adults living under the poverty line cannot access Medicaid unless they are pregnant, gave birth in the past year, have a disability or live in a nursing home. 

Burak underscored the particular risks for children’s health care in states that did not expand Medicaid and rely on taxing managed care organizations to pay for services. A proposal now before Congress would prohibit such meaning states like Texas would likely be forced to cut back on coverage or services for kids.

The consequences are real and immediate. Many districts are struggling to plan effectively for the upcoming school year amid the uncertainty. Meanwhile, the 7.5 million students served under IDEA — 15% of the U.S.  student population — continue to face stark disparities: achievement gaps of more than 40 points on national assessments, twice the suspension rates, three times higher dropout rates, and dramatically lower college enrollment compared to nondisabled peers. Despite 50 years of federal mandates, the current system still fails these students, raising urgent questions about what could happen if those safeguards erode.

I’m not writing to simply sound another alarm. The reality is that when federal protections unravel, state and local leadership becomes the first line of defense. That responsibility can feel daunting, but it also comes with opportunity. In many places, local leaders are already stepping up, showing that progress is possible even in the face of uncertainty. In a midsize district in Vermont where schools committed to clear expectations, coaching and data-informed practices, the quality of students’ Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) improved on The Ability Challenge’s IEP rubric by 40% in a single year. Better IEPs directly help students because they accurately identify learning needs, set meaningful goals connected to grade-level standards and specify the right supports to help students succeed.

Leaders of this district and others who are moving forward aren’t starting from scratch. They are drawing on what decades of research have made clear: that students with disabilities thrive when they learn alongside their peers in classrooms designed to support all learners. Success means improving processes to create clear pathways and align resources — rethinking how schools group students, measure progress and embrace learning differences. Effective leaders build inclusive systems that ensure compliance while improving outcomes.

Here are a few key steps schools  and districts can take (and states can reinforce) to protect students with disabilities and enhance learning for all students:

Champion inclusive education as a whole-school benefit. consistently shows that focusing on making schools and classrooms more accessible benefits everyone, not just students with learning differences.  Schools that invest in these practices can avoid wasting resources on separate classes or duplicate services and create a more collaborative workplace where teachers feel valued and effective. 

Invest in collaborative models. The most successful schools have a common feature: They maximize the time general and special educators work together to plan instruction and build on each other’s expertise. One D.C. charter school that developed an interdisciplinary team to address behavior issues , shifting teachers’ time from managing individual students’ actions to increasing instruction for everyone.

Redesign schedules to maximize capacity. Planning a school schedule can be a highly intensive process that involves many priorities and moving parts. Fitting them together takes a great deal of attention, and technical tasks like student and staff grouping and scheduling can be overlooked. A Northeastern middle school strategically redesigned its schedule to ensure that special education teachers integrated specialized instruction for students with IEPs within their grade-level reading and math classes. This created more efficient use of teacher time by reducing the need for separate pullout groups, provided all special education instruction required by student IEPs, minimized instances where students missed important content and allowed for weekly planning meetings for each teaching team.

Train leaders to coach for inclusive practice. Many general education teachers  —, by some estimates — report feeling unprepared to teach students with disabilities, not because they don’t care, but because they haven’t been given the tools or time. When instructional leaders provide coaching that addresses how students with learning differences engage with content, achievement improves. In another D.C. charter network where assistant principals were trained to identify and coach all their teachers on learning differences and specialized instruction, achievement gaps between students with disabilities and their non-disabled peers shrank to across grades. 

Develop creative solutions to maximize resources and impact. This could include neighboring school districts sharing costs of speech therapists or behavior specialists, partnerships with local universities or arrangements with third-party providers to train staff on inclusive teaching methods. These partnerships can fill gaps in expertise, provide guidance on implementation and help districts sustain momentum on improvement initiatives.

These examples show what’s possible when schools commit to accessibility for all students. Making this the norm means taking these successful approaches — collaborative teaching teams, strategic scheduling, shared expertise and inclusive classroom practices — and implementing them systematically across entire schools and districts.

While state and local leaders drive immediate change, strong federal protections remain crucial for ensuring consistency and access. History has shown that without federal oversight, vulnerable students face dangerously inconsistent support. Education leaders must both advocate for maintaining robust federal accountability and act boldly at state and local levels. State education leaders, superintendents and district administrators cannot wait — they must set clear priorities, allocate resources strategically and maintain essential services despite uncertainty. 

The cost of inaction is far greater than the investment required for change. While federal policies may shift, the imperative for building educational systems where disability doesn’t determine destiny is critical. The question is whether state and local leaders have the courage.

Today I sit on the sidelines, but with a heart tilted toward young people.

It seems that every day there is a wave of fresh cuts at federal agencies, including the U.S. Department of Education. I personally know a reading specialist who will not be able to return to her position next year because of these decisions. The cuts keep coming, and they will affect the education that schools are able to provide.

With each announcement, my stomach churns. Staff layoffs will be debilitating. I am also concerned that the proposed closure of the will reduce or severely limit access to vital support for students.

As a mother, a retired school nurse, and a woman of faith, I am pleading with elected leaders to invest in children — including our most vulnerable. Investing looks like ensuring that students and educators have what they need to thrive. It looks like maintaining consistent standards for the education of young people.

The Education Department is responsible for ensuring that schools meet the needs of neurodivergent students and those who need extra support to succeed academically. It also holds schools accountable for providing services to students of all ages and abilities. Shuttering the department means not only widening the achievement gap, but pushing children and young people into the cracks.

Our nation cannot thrive if we continue to perpetuate a system in which some students receive a quality education and others do not. Further, any family can find themselves in need of support, whether it’s for their child’s physical, mental or special education needs. Education in America should mean that regardless of where you come from or what you need, you will have an opportunity to have your needs met.

Moreover, if the federal agency  is fully dissolved, the responsibilities for mandating services and providing expertise will fall to the states. Every state operates differently, has different priorities and different challenges. Educational services may become wildly inconsistent. Students in Colorado could receive vastly different services than students in, say, Utah.

No essential service —which helps children, families and communities — should exist in a state of uncertainty. When faced with budgetary challenges or limited oversight, I fear that some schools may consider special education services and student accommodations as disposable.

Though I am no longer in schools, I am now the national president of United Women in Faith. Among our many campaigns for justice is a fight against “school pushout.” Pushout occurs through a patchwork of policies that disproportionately funnels children of color, children with disabilities, and students identifying as LGBTQ from the classroom into the criminal justice system.

Currently, it is estimated that for students with disabilities is about 40%, which is twice that of their peers without disabilities. Far too often, students with disabilities are unfairly maligned and funneled into the criminal justice system. 

We need a functioning Department of Education to ensure that preventative services and those provided under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) give children their best chance to succeed and not end up as just another statistic. I, along with my sisters at , will keep pushing for education justice, but this is not our fight alone. Everyone has a role to play to ensure students get what they need in schools.

Children are our future, and their education shouldn’t be an option or an afterthought.

Until the 1970s, numerous U.S. states used registries to identify disabled people to be subjected to forced sterilization and institutionalization. A number of states still maintain lists of autists.

“The history there is deeply, deeply disturbed,” says Larkin Taylor-Parker, legal director of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network. “It doesn’t usually end well for us. It has ended in murder — industrial-scale incarceration and murder.” 

In given to NIH leaders April 21, Bhattacharya said the registry will draw from an unprecedented compilation of public and private databases to be used for U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s controversial new study of autism. In addition to information collected by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the registry and research database will include pharmacy records, private insurer claims, lab and genetic testing information, treatment records from the Department of Veterans Affairs and Indian Health Service — even data from smartwatches.

Though the plan described is still too vague for advocates to know for sure, NIH might also tap state records that identify neurodivergent children who receive special education services. In the 2022-23 school year, almost 1 million autistic students attended U.S. schools.  

Bhattacharya promised “state of the art” protections to guard patient confidentiality, explaining that 10 to 20 groups of outside researchers would be allowed to use the data but not download it. It is unclear whether this meets any legal standard for privacy safeguards.  

As The 74 has reported, the man tapped to lead Kennedy’s study was found to have practiced medicine on autistic children without a license, prescribing a dangerous drug not approved for use in the U.S. and improperly giving them puberty blockers. 

Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaxxer, intends the study to find a link between autism and vaccines. More than two dozen studies have discredited the notion of any connection.

With few details released about how the NIH will compile data — some of which is subject to privacy restrictions at various federal agencies— it’s unclear how patient confidentiality will be maintained. 

NIH researchers are not bound by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, the main law that restricts who can access private medical information, and under what circumstances. Instead, the institutes to the Privacy Act of 1974, which protects “records that can be retrieved by personal identifiers such as a name, Social Security number or other identifying number or symbol” and, with limited exceptions, “prohibits disclosure of personally identifiable records without the written consent of the individual(s) to whom the records pertain.”

The privacy law was enacted in large part to stop federal agencies from sharing damning information about people singled out by former President Richard Nixon and former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover as political enemies. Since President Donald Trump’s second inauguration, privacy law experts have that Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has gone into sensitive government records systems without legal authority to do so. Some courts have ordered a stop to the practice.

“The thought of a federal registry of autistic people that includes incredibly personal data that makes us very easy to find deprives us of the privacy that other citizens enjoy,” says Taylor-Parker. “It taps some of my community’s deepest fears and the specters of some of the most horrifying episodes in our history.”

In the 1930s and ’40s, German and Austrian public health officials of “malformed children” to the Third Reich’s Ministry of the Interior for a list of those targeted for sterilization or death. Among those supplying names was early autism researcher and Nazi collaborator Dr. Hans Asperger. He identified nearly 2,700 children, most commonly citing “education problems” as the reason.

Until 2013, Asperger’s Syndrome was a diagnosis given to autistic children who were believed to be “higher functioning” — Asperger himself called the visibly intelligent children he experimented on “little professors.” 

Most advocates now recognize efforts to distinguish higher- and lower-functioning autists as false and harmful. In his presentation to NIH staff, however, Bhattacharya said the new research will consider the perceived severity of subjects’ autism. 

“I recognize, of course, that autism, there’s a range of manifestations ranging from highly functioning children to children that are quite severely disabled,” he said, according to . “And of course, the research will account very carefully for that.” 

This, too, terrifies Taylor-Parker, who notes that autistic people who are nonverbal or also have a developmental disability have historically been involuntarily placed in asylums and other facilities and are still often excluded from general education classrooms. 

“We already have a societywide problem…with ignoring the support needs of people who can hold down a job, can drive a car and maybe score well on an IQ test,” she says. “On the other hand, we ignore the capacities, the capability, the humanity of people who don’t do those things.”

Further, she points out, compiling as much diagnostic and prescription information on autistic individuals as possible is likely to uncover other private information that people fear could end up on future “disease registries.” 

“I’m very concerned about this becoming a slippery slope,” says Taylor-Parker. “There is very good research demonstrating that [autistic people] are trans and gender-nonconforming at above-average rates.”

In the interest of establishing the prevalence of autism and in some cases understanding which services are helpful, several states and two national philanthropies . With a goal of ensuring that as many children as possible are offered early intervention services, at least two contain identifying information. 

Good intentions notwithstanding, many autistic people oppose the existence of any registry, citing the historical danger they pose for disabled people in general. Indeed, recognizing this last year, New Hampshire lawmakers eliminated the state’s autism registry. 

Since Kennedy’s appointment, autistic people have repeatedly decried his plan to again attempt to link autism to vaccines, despite dozens of credible studies that have ruled out immunizations as a cause. His plan, they charge, would divert resources from research into therapies and services that can improve the lives of people with disabilities. 

Says Taylor-Parker, “That discussion sucks the oxygen out of the room when it comes to making life better for autistic people who are already here and who will be born in the near future.”

According to the NIH, will be posted in the coming days. 

In making moves to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education, like the large-scale layoffs and dramatic cuts to research grant programs, the Trump administration and Secretary Linda McMahon have promised to eliminate “bureaucratic bloat” without affecting programs mandated by federal law, like student loans, Title I funding, and support for students with disabilities. 

Even if it was possible to dismantle the department without impacting those programs (and it seems very unlikely), eliminating the department’s other valuable work—including in educational research—will have an outsized impact on the ability of our education system to serve all students well. 

As a career education researcher working for focused on access and opportunity for students with disabilities, I have witnessed firsthand the uniquely powerful role the department’s Institute for Educational Sciences (IES) plays in both supporting research directly and setting the agenda for how we measure effective educational practice. Though IES funds are a tiny fraction of federal spending, they play an essential role in focusing educational reform on evidence and data. 

Arguments for eliminating the department seem to center on the idea that few of its functions support teachers and students. Empirically, this is just plain wrong: goes directly to students, and 96% goes either to student loans or directly to states, localities and tribes. But even the less than 0.5% of that budget focused on research through IES goes beyond bureaucratic largess: It includes essential services and functions that allow schools to focus on their core work and give all Americans valuable information on how students are learning. 

The department’s research arm performs essential functions to maintaining high quality education in the United States. For example: 

• The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is the largest and only continual and nationally representative measure of what students in the United States know and can do. While McMahon has promised to keep the NAEP in some form, it’s important to remember that developing, administering, and validating the assessment is a massive undertaking requiring expertise in educational content and psychometrics; it is also overseen by a publicly accountable governing board that ensures the test accurately reflects key knowledge and skills in three grade levels across multiple subjects. Without this combination of expertise and the mandate of law, it would be impossible to deliver a comprehensive view of student achievement over time and across states. 

•  Research, development, and dissemination grants funded by IES are a critical source of funding for efforts to understand how to teach students well. High-profile efforts to fund and collect research at IES, such as the What Works Clearinghouse, have driven a national conversation on effective teaching and learning in areas like effective reading instruction, teacher training, and behavior management. Our national revolution in reading instruction has been driven, in no small part, by IES-funded research through the and other efforts. No entity outside the federal government has the size or scope to make these investments and ensure that the results of that work remain open to the public. 

• The 10 Regional Educational Laboratories (RELs) provide critical technical support to school districts large and small to apply research and data to the work of teaching and learning. Most districts aren’t large enough to afford dedicated research or data staff: for these districts, the local REL is often the only resource available to process student achievement data or learn from the work of other nearby districts. In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, the RELs have served as critical hubs of information about academic recovery, particularly for marginalized students. 

While each of these programs is tiny compared to the scale of the federal budget, they each provide unique value that could not be replicated by private foundations, state departments of education, or districts themselves. Further, IES has served as an important coordinating entity, connecting expertise in education that is otherwise spread across universities around the country and coordinating activities of many overlapping governmental agencies and organizations. 

Eliminating, reducing funding or dramatically altering these programs like these also has an outsized impact on traditionally ignored groups of students, like students with disabilities. Funding cuts have IES research focused on students with disabilities, including grants aimed at closing achievement gaps widened by the pandemic, improving training for paraeducators, and evaluating early literacy skills programs for students with diverse needs. There are few outside incentives encouraging research like this; in the absence of IES grants, it is unlikely such work would happen at all. 

Like every educational researcher, I don’t agree with every funding choice made by IES since its founding in 2002. Eliminating IES, however, would remove Congressional oversight from any aspect of how educational research is conducted or prioritized: and with it, the accountability that ensures that research focuses on the needs of all students. Perhaps more troublingly, lawmakers and superintendents would have significantly less evidence to drive decisions in policy and practice, like data on teacher shortages or whether costly education programs are actually effective. 

At a time when student achievement is stagnating, it can be tempting to change everything about how federal education programs function. But make no mistake: destroying the programs that give the federal government a voice in the education conversation isn’t reform, it’s giving up on public education, at a time when the stakes couldn’t be higher.

It is evident that the White House will not stop until it wipes out the most basic protections and supports for the American people, including the youngest children. The first step was the attempt to defund Head Start and Early Head Start, impacting 800,000 young children across the nation. This order was halted by a federal judge in Washington, thanks to the lawsuits filed by Democracy Forward and attorneys general from 23 states. 

The mass layoffs will severely hamper the department’s ability to execute on its core responsibilities. This move is a direct assault on millions of students, teachers and families. It is clearly a precursor to dismantling the department without congressional consent, which would have an even more devastating impact. The department serves and protects the most vulnerable children and young adults, ensuring that they have equal access to education. This includes:

• 26 million students from low-income backgrounds — more than half of all K-12 students — who rely on the department for reasonable class sizes; school meals; tutoring; afterschool and summer programs; school supplies such as laptops and books; parent engagement programs; and, in some cases, transportation

• 9.8 million students enrolled in rural schools
  
• 7.4. million students with disabilities
  
• 5 million English learners
  
• 1.1 million students experiencing homelessness
  
• 87 million college students who receive Pell Grants and student loans 

The department was created in 1980 with a single, crucial purpose: to ensure equal access to education and to promote educational excellence throughout the nation. Its creation followed decades of systemic inequities that left children in disadvantaged communities without the same learning opportunities as their more privileged peers. The department’s work has been a critical safeguard against discrimination in schools, whether on the basis of race, disability, gender or income. 

Without the federal government’s intervention and oversight, the more than 13 million children who live in poverty would be even more vulnerable to systemic inequities. The department ensures that federal dollars are distributed to those students most in need, ensuring that underserved children have the same opportunities for success as their wealthier peers. Without the federal oversight and the department’s support, these students will fall even further behind, and the national achievement gap will grow wider.

The federal government is the only entity that can ensure a baseline level of educational equity across the entire nation. The department holds states accountable for ensuring that all children, regardless of where they live or what their socioeconomic status may be, receive a quality education. If this accountability is removed, the children most at risk — those in underfunded schools, children of color, children with disabilities, English learners and those experiencing homelessness — will be the first to suffer. These children would be denied the critical services and protections they need to succeed in school and in life.

Moreover, the president’s plan to turn education policy over to the states would completely dismantle the federal safety net that ensures that the most vulnerable children are not left behind. Each of the 50 states has different priorities, resources and political climates. While some might be able to provide excellent educational opportunities, others will leave children behind, particularly in rural or economically disadvantaged areas. Inequities between states could widen to an intolerable degree, and the resulting lack of uniform educational standards would only further disadvantage the children who need the most help.

To be clear, the department cannot be dissolved at the whim of a sitting president. Under the Constitution, only an act of Congress can create or dismantle a federal agency. The president does not have the unilateral power to eliminate an entire federal institution that serves the educational needs of millions of children across this country. Attempting to do so would not only undermine the law, but also inflict tremendous harm to the very foundation of America’s educational system.

The idea that dismantling the department could somehow improve that system is not only misguided, but dangerously naïve.

It’s vital that we, as a nation, recognize the long-term damage this action would cause. The attempt to dismantle the Department of Education is not just an attack on a government agency — it is an attack on the future of America’s children.

To parents across the country: This policy is not only unconstitutional — it is a grave threat to your children’s future. Whether your child is in a classroom in New York, Los Angeles or a small town in the Midwest, the U.S. Department of Education has worked to ensure that their educational opportunities are protected, funded and regulated. A president who seeks to eliminate this essential agency is jeopardizing the future of every single student in America.

This is why we must all rise up and make our voices heard. We must demand that our leaders stop this dangerous plan in its tracks, that they fix what isn’t working and that they use this opportunity to reimagine public education and invest in a more effective, equitable system that gives all children the opportunity to succeed.

When teens and young adults with disabilities in California’s Poway Unified School District heard about a new opportunity to get extra help planning for life after high school, nearly every eligible student signed up.

The program, known as , aimed to fill a major gap in education research about what kinds of support give students nearing graduation the best shot at living independently, finding work, or continuing their studies.

Students with disabilities finish college at much lower rates than their non-disabled peers, and often struggle to tap into state employment programs for adults with disabilities, said Stacey McCrath-Smith, a director of special education at Poway Unified, which had 135 students participating in the program. So the extra help, which included learning how to track goals on a tool designed for high schoolers with disabilities, was much needed.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

Charting My Path launched earlier this school year in Poway Unified and 12 other school districts. The salaries of 61 school staff nationwide, and the training they received to work with nearly 1,100 high schoolers with disabilities for a year and a half, was paid for by the U.S. Department of Education.

Jessie Damroth’s 17-year-old son Logan, who has autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and other medical needs, had attended classes and met with his mentor through the program at Newton Public Schools in Massachusetts for a month. For the first time, he was talking excitedly about career options in science and what he might study at college.

“He was starting to talk about what his path would look like,” Damroth said. “It was exciting to hear him get really excited about these opportunities. … He needed that extra support to really reinforce that he could do this.”

Then the Trump administration pulled the plug.

Charting My Path was among more than 200 Education Department contracts and grants terminated over the last two weeks by the Trump administration’s U.S. DOGE Service. DOGE has slashed spending it deemed to be wasteful, fraudulent, or in service of that . But in several instances, the decision to cancel contracts affected more than researchers analyzing data in their offices — it affected students.

Many projects, like Charting My Path, involved training teachers in new methods, testing learning materials in actual classrooms, and helping school systems use data more effectively.

“Students were going to learn really how to set goals and track progress themselves, rather than having it be done for them,” McCrath-Smith said. “That is the skill that they will need post-high school when there’s not a teacher around.”

All of that work was abruptly halted — in some cases with nearly finished results that now cannot be distributed.

Every administration is entitled to set its own priorities, and contracts can be canceled or changed, said Steven Fleischman, an education consultant who for many years ran one of the regional research programs that was terminated. He compared it to a homeowner deciding they no longer want a deck as part of their remodel.

But the current approach reminds him more of construction projects started and then abandoned during the Great Recession, in some cases leaving giant holes that sat for years.

“You can walk around and say, ‘Oh, that was a building we never finished because the funds got cut off,’” he said.

DOGE drives cuts to education research contracts, grants

The Education Department has been a prime target of DOGE, the chaotic cost-cutting initiative led by billionaire Elon Musk, now a senior adviser to Trump.

So far, , many of which were under the purview of the Institute of Education Sciences, the ostensibly independent research arm of the Education Department. The administration said those cuts, which included multi-year contracts, totaled $881 million. In recent years, the federal government has spent just over $800 million on the entire IES budget.

DOGE has also that conduct research for states and local schools and shuttered four equity assistance centers that help with teacher training. The Trump administration also and that often work to improve instruction for struggling students.

. The Trump administration said the terminated Education Department contracts and grants were worth $2 billion. But some were near completion with most of the money already spent.

An NPR analysis of all of DOGE’s reported savings — though the Education Department is a top contributor.

On Friday, a federal judge issued an injunction that that might violate the anti-DEIA executive order. It’s not clear whether the injunction would prevent more contracts from being canceled “for convenience.”

Mark Schneider, the recent past IES director, . But even many conservative critics have expressed alarm at how wide-ranging and indiscriminate the cuts have been. Congress mandated many of the terminated programs, which also indirectly support state and privately funded research.

The canceled projects include contracts that support maintenance of the Common Core of Data, a major database used by policymakers, researchers, and journalists, as well as work that supports updates to the What Works Clearinghouse, a huge repository of evidence-based practices available to educators for free.

And after promising not to make any cuts to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as the nation’s report card, the department canceled an upcoming test for 17-year-olds that helps researchers understand long-term trends. On Monday, Peggy Carr, the head of the National Center for Education Statistics, which oversees NAEP, was .

The Education Department did not respond to questions about who decided which programs to cut and what criteria were used. Nor did the department respond to a specific question about why Charting My Path was eliminated. DOGE records estimate the administration saved $22 million by terminating the program early, less than half the $54 million in the original contract.

The decision has caused .

In Utah, the Canyons School District is trying to reassign the school counselor and three teachers whose salaries were covered by the Charting My Path contract.

The district, which had 88 high schoolers participating in the program, is hoping to keep using the curriculum to boost its usual services, said Kirsten Stewart, a district spokesperson.

Officials in Poway Unified, too, hope schools can use the curriculum and tools to keep up a version of the program. But that will take time and work because the program’s four teachers had to be reassigned to other jobs.

“They dedicated that time and got really important training,” McCrath-Smith said. “We don’t want to see that squandered.”

For Damroth, the loss of parent support meetings through Charting My Path was especially devastating. Logan has a rare genetic mutation that causes him to fall asleep easily during the day, so Damroth wanted help navigating which colleges might be able to offer extra scheduling support.

“I have a million questions about this. Instead of just hearing ‘I don’t know’ I was really looking forward to working with Joe and the program,” she said, referring to Logan’s former mentor. “It’s just heartbreaking. I feel like this wasn’t well thought out. … My child wants to do things in life, but he needs to be given the tools to achieve those goals and those dreams that he has.”

DOGE cuts labs that helped ‘Mississippi Miracle’ in reading

The dramatic improvement in reading proficiency that Carey Wright oversaw as state superintendent in one the nation’s poorest states became known as the “Mississippi Miracle.”

Regional Educational Laboratory Southeast, based out of the Florida Center for Reading Research at Florida State University, was a key partner in that work, Wright said.

When Wright wondered if state-funded instructional coaches were really making a difference, REL Southeast dispatched a team to observe, videotape, and analyze the instruction delivered by hundreds of elementary teachers across the state. Researchers reported that teachers’ instructional practices aligned well with the science of reading and that teachers themselves said they felt far more knowledgeable about teaching reading.

“That solidified for me that the money that we were putting into professional learning was working,” Wright said.

The study, she noted, arose from a casual conversation with researchers at REL Southeast: “That’s the kind of give and take that the RELs had with the states.”

Wright, now Maryland state superintendent, said she was looking forward to partnering with REL Mid-Atlantic on a math initiative and on an overhaul of the school accountability system.

But this month, termination letters went out to the universities and research organizations that run the 10 Regional Educational Laboratories, which were established by Congress in 1965 to serve states and school districts. The letters said the contracts were being terminated “for convenience.”

The press release that went to news organizations cited “wasteful and ideologically driven spending” and named a single project in Ohio that involved equity audits as a part of an effort to reduce suspensions. involve reading, math, career connections, and teacher retention.

Jannelle Kubinec, CEO of WestEd, an education research organization that held the contracts for REL West and REL Northwest, said she never received a complaint or a request to review the contracts before receiving termination letters. Her team had to abruptly cancel meetings to go over results with school districts. In other cases, reports are nearly finished but cannot be distributed because they haven’t gone through the review process.

REL West was also working with the Utah State Board of Education to figure out if the legislature’s investment in programs to keep early career teachers from leaving the classroom was making a difference, among several other projects.

“This is good work and we are trying to think through our options,” she said. “But the cancellation does limit our ability to finish the work.”

Given enough time, Utah should be able to find a staffer to analyze the data collected by REL West, said Sharon Turner, a spokesperson for the Utah State Board of Education. But the findings are much less likely to be shared with other states.

The most recent contracts started in 2022 and were set to run through 2027.

The Trump administration said it planned to enter into new contracts for the RELs to satisfy “statutory requirements” and better serve schools and states, though it’s unclear what that will entail.

“The states drive the research agendas of the RELs,” said Sara Schapiro, the executive director of the Alliance for Learning Innovation, a coalition that advocates for more effective education research. If the federal government dictates what RELs can do, “it runs counter to the whole argument that they want the states to be leading the way on education.”

Some terminated federal education research was nearly complete

Some research efforts were nearly complete when they got shut down, raising questions about how efficient these cuts were.

The American Institutes for Research, for example, was almost done evaluating the impact of the , which aims to improve literacy instruction through investments like new curriculum and teacher training.

AIR’s research spanned 114 elementary schools across 11 states and involved more than 23,000 third, fourth, and fifth graders and their nearly 900 reading teachers.

Researchers had collected and analyzed a massive trove of data from the randomized trial and presented their findings to federal education officials just three days before the study was terminated.

“It was a very exciting meeting,” said Mike Garet, a vice president and institute fellow at AIR who oversaw the study. “People were very enthusiastic about the report.”

Another AIR study that was nearing completion among first and second graders. It’s a strategy that helps schools identify and provide support to struggling readers, with the most intensive help going to kids with the highest needs. It’s widely used by schools, but its effectiveness hasn’t been tested on a larger scale.

The research took place in 106 schools and involved over 1,200 educators and 5,700 children who started first grade in 2021 and 2022. Much of the funding for the study went toward paying for teacher training and coaching to roll out the program over three years. All of the data was collected and nearly done being analyzed when DOGE made its cuts.

Garet doesn’t think he and his team should simply walk away from unfinished work.

“If we can’t report results, that would violate our covenant with the districts, the teachers, the parents, and the students who devoted a lot of time in the hope of generating knowledge about what works,” Garet said. “Now that we have the data and have the results, I think we’re duty-bound to report them.”

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. Sign up for their newsletters at .

OKLAHOMA CITY – A bill that would ban schools from using corporal punishment on students with disabilities passed the Senate on Tuesday despite concerns it removes local control and could go against parental wishes.

The state Department of Education has already prohibited the practice, but seeks to codify into state law a ban against deliberately causing pain by using physical discipline on students with federally protected disabilities.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

“I have never, ever, ever met a parent of a disabled child call for the beating of their child to make them better,” said Sen. Dave Rader, R-Tulsa, the author.

Rader said some of the protected disabilities include deafness, emotional disturbance, intellectual disability, visual impairment or an orthopedic injury.

It defines corporal punishment as the deliberate infliction of pain by hitting, paddling, spanking, slapping, or any other physical force used as a means of discipline.

Rader said corporal punishment could not be used by a school even if a parent agreed to it.

“Perhaps the parent of the child, in most cases, knows best what that child is going to respond to and how the child is going to perform his or her duties in the classroom,” said Sen. Warren Hamilton, R-McCurtain, who voted against the bill.

A U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 1977 allows corporal punishment usage in schools, but leaves it to states to set their own rules.

Traditionally, Oklahoma lawmakers have left those decisions to local districts, but the state Department of Education quietly barred the practice on children with disabilities starting in the 2020-21 school year. A 2017 law also prohibits the practice on children with the most “significant cognitive disabilities.”

During the 2017-18 school year, over 20% of  corporal punishments in Oklahoma schools were administered on , according to federal statistics.

Other forms of discipline are available, Rader said. The bill does not prohibit parents from using corporal punishment, Rader said.

Previous efforts to ban the practice have proven controversial. A similar effort last year cleared the state Senate, but died in the House.

Sen. Shane Jett, R-Shawnee, said Tuesday that banning the practice in schools amounts to “a top down socialist aligned ideological, unilateral divorce between parents’ ability to collaborate with their local schools to establish a disciplined regimen.”

He also said it “is a violation of scripture,” and cited Proverbs 22:15 which he said says “folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline drives it far from him.”

“There are going to be times when we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we won’t have to fear evil because your rod and your staff comfort me,” Rader responded.

Sen. Dusty Deevers, R-Elgin, said there could be negative consequences to removing a partnership between parents and local administrators and forcing the removal of a historically necessary and important disciplinary tool for order.

“This is not a blanket ban,” Rader said.

The vote was 31-16.

The measure moves to the House for possible consideration.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oklahoma Voice maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janelle Stecklein for questions: info@oklahomavoice.com.

The , signed by 65 organizations, was spearheaded by the Medicaid in the Schools Coalition, which advocates to protect and improve school-based Medicaid programs, which primarily serve students with disabilities and those living in poverty.

“Any cuts to Medicaid would reduce care for children with disabilities, undermine efforts to address the mental health crisis and exacerbate workforce shortages of school health providers,” said Jessie Mandle, the national program director at the and coalition co-chair. “Strong school-based Medicaid programs … rely on a strong Medicaid program overall, and so cutting Medicaid is equivalent to cutting school district budgets.”

Schools receive about $7.5 billion annually from , a popular joint federal and state health program that insures nearly 70 million Americans, most of whom are low-income. For more than 30 years, it’s paid for services in schools for students with disabilities as well as low-income students.

While President Trump said this week that Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security would in the GOP’s quest to deliver $4.5 trillion in tax cuts and beefed-up border security, in Medicaid funding decreases are being eyed in the House.

School-based Medicaid makes up less than 1% of the overall program’s budget, but is still the fourth-largest funding stream for districts and allows them to pay for a swath of resources, including therapies for students with disabilities, school nurses, mental health care and specialized equipment, such as wheelchairs. 

of districts use Medicaid funding to pay for the salaries of health professionals, according to 2017 data. New data forthcoming from The Healthy Schools Campaign suggests that the number is now even higher, Mandle told The 74. 

And — 40 million — are now insured through Medicaid or the , which provides low-cost health coverage to children in families that earn too much money to qualify for Medicaid. Previous that improving children’s health improves their classroom performance.

Meanwhile, the political confusion over whether Medicaid will be protected has done little to quell anxiety that the funding might be in jeopardy. 

A Feb. 19 statement to from White House spokesperson Kush Desai attempted to reconcile Trump’s comments shielding Medicaid with his support for the proposed House budget that targets it: “The Trump administration is committed to protecting Medicare and Medicaid while slashing the waste, fraud, and abuse within those programs — reforms that will increase efficiency and improve care for beneficiaries.”

Any spending caps or reductions to the federal match would shift the bulk of the mandated costs of providing health care coverage to states, according to the coalition’s letter. This could have “devastating” effects, leading to a cut in services for all students — not just those with disabilities — or increased local taxes.��

On the ground, this could result in fewer social workers or school-based psychologists, decreased access to health care — especially in rural and urban communities, a loss of critical supplies that allow children with disabilities to access the same curricular as their peers and noncompliance with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, the coalition states.

“We have a very underfunded special education system,” said Sasha Pudelski, director of advocacy at and coalition co-chair, “and this Medicaid reimbursement is a critical source of funding.”

“Trying to find the money within our local education budget to fill in gaps where Medicaid currently reimburses districts would be — in this funding environment in particular — an enormous challenge,” she continued.

Silvia Yee, policy director at the , which co-signed the letter, said it’s particularly important that many of these health-related services are available in schools because they are widely trusted community hubs and family touchpoints. 

The burden of cuts would be felt particularly by vulnerable families, she added: “The more you reduce the available resources to a lower-income family, the more you’re potentially digging a pit for that family, and it’s very hard to dig out of.”

Yee also noted that a rollback in federal funding could make it more challenging for students with disabilities to learn in an integrated setting with their peers, setting them up for “segregation for the rest of their lives.”

“All of these services can and should work together to help us achieve integration that’s not a burden on teachers [and] not a burden on schools,” she said. “Helping take care of children’s medical needs in school is a step forward. Taking that away is such a step backward.”

Before starting at his Harlem high school, Jeurry always assumed he was progressing appropriately in school, despite having significant learning challenges.

However, in his freshman year, he began to notice himself struggling to read longer words and more complex sentences.

As he grew increasingly overwhelmed, it became clear that the small classes exclusively for students with disabilities that he had been in since kindergarten had not adequately prepared him for high school.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

Still, Jeurry managed to pass nearly all his classes. His final meeting with his Committee on Special Education — which consisted of Jeurry’s mom and several faculty members — took place in December 2016. By then, the senior had earned 45 credits — 44 were required to graduate — and a C+ average, records show.

But Jeurry was devastated to learn that he would not earn a diploma.

The reason was based on a decision the committee made when Jeurry was in sixth grade and, according to records, never revisited while he was in high school. At that time, the educators concluded that Jeurry could not learn grade-level curriculum. They decided he would be “alternately assessed,” or evaluated based on lower achievement standards. New York State students who take alternate assessments through high school cannot earn a diploma, a prerequisite for military service, many jobs, and most degree- or certificate-granting college and trade school programs.

Heartbroken, he begged the faculty to find a solution during the 2016 meeting. “They didn’t even care,” Jeurry said. “They just wanted me to ‘graduate’ and get out.”

Jeurry, who is now 26 and was diagnosed with a mild intellectual disability after graduating high school, requested that his last name be withheld over concerns about the stigma surrounding intellectual disabilities.

Special education advocates say the systemic failures that led to Jeurry’s situation eight years ago continue to jeopardize the futures of similar students. Last school year, 6,116 New York City students took the New York State Alternate Assessment, according to state data. Federal law that states offer such assessments for students with disabilities who are incapable of taking state tests. Importantly, it also states that only “students with the most significant cognitive disabilities” can take the alternate assessment, and that schools must fully inform parents of the potential ramifications. (State education departments are responsible for ensuring compliance with these mandates.)

Too often, however, those standards are neither maintained nor enforced, special education advocates, teachers, and families told Chalkbeat. Instead, factors like under-resourcing, nebulous procedures, and a failure to equip parents to make fully informed decisions have led schools to place some students without significant cognitive disabilities on a non-grade-level, non-diploma track. Students who take alternate assessments are typically placed in non-inclusive, low-rigor settings, which can deprive them of academic and socialization opportunities.

At the December 2016 meeting, the members of Jeurry’s special education committee said their hands were tied. According to documentation from the meeting, Jeurry’s mother said “she was not made aware of the long-term effects of alternate assessment when it was first initiated or during any supplemental [meetings].”

“They would always tell my mom, ‘His diploma is going to be real,’” Jeurry said. “She kept believing them.”

In response to requests to interview state special education leadership, a New York State Education Department spokesperson said in an email: “NYSED is committed to working with schools and parents to determine the appropriate participation of students with disabilities in [the alternate assessment] and to fully understand the impact it has on these students.”

Since New York’s alternate assessment is used to meet federal special education law requirements, the spokesperson said, “there are very strict criteria for its development, administration, and applicability to students.”

Christina Foti, the city Education Department’s deputy chancellor for inclusive and accessible learning, acknowledged that there is room for more robust safeguards, and she said the Education Department recently recommended that the state consider several alternate assessment-related policy changes. They include clarifying definitions and participation criteria, requiring the use of a decision-making flowchart and checklist, and mandating that special education committees “conduct a complete and up-to-date battery of psychoeducational assessments” before making assessment decisions.

The Education Department is also pursuing local-level reforms, but officials are still in the early stages of developing a “definitive language and shift in practice [and] policy,” Foti said.

Inequitable outcomes for students on non-diploma track

In New York, special education committees determine annually how students will be assessed, usually starting around third grade. Although the state has established for the alternate assessment, deciding whether students meet those criteria can be a relatively subjective process.

obtained through a public records request show that students placed on the non-diploma track are disproportionately Black or English language learners. Last school year, 29% of New York City students who took the alternate assessment were Black, while Black children represented only 20% of all students and 26% of those with disabilities. More than 29% of students who were alternatively assessed were English learners, while such students accounted for just 19% of the school system’s overall population and 14% of students with disabilities.

There have been some signs of progress toward ensuring that only students with the most significant cognitive disabilities are placed on the non-diploma track. Participation is declining in New York City and statewide, and racial disproportionalities among alternatively assessed students decreased between the 2022-23 and 2023-24 school years, according to the data.

The New York City Education Department has worked to minimize subjectivity in assessment decisions “over the past five or six years,” said Arwina Vallejo, the department’s executive director of school-based evaluations and family engagement.

To more holistically determine students’ aptitude for grade-level learning and test participation, schools now administer “specialized assessments in reading, in writing, in math, in executive functions, in neurological abilities,” Vallejo said.

The Education Department also trains school psychologists in “culturally responsive, non-discriminatory assessment practices” to mitigate the impact of bias, she said.

But special education advocates and families say more must be done. School officials sometimes change the graduation track of children with mild intellectual disabilities or disruptive behaviors when they don’t have the will or means to try other options, said Juliet Eisenstein, a special education attorney and former assistant director of the Postsecondary Readiness Project at .

“It’s just a box that’s checked and not really talked about, because it’s an easier solution than figuring out a program that fits this more complex student profile,” she said.

Resources that could help such students — like one-on-one tutors or specialized placements — are often limited or nonexistent. This is especially true in New York City, where around 300,000 students qualify for special education services, and government audits have found that the Education Department regularly to meet its obligations to them. An estimated 2,300 special-education staff exist citywide.

Trevlon, 18, has been both alternatively and regularly assessed. He has a history of behavioral problems, an attention deficit hyperactivity disorder diagnosis, and an intellectual disability classification from the Education Department. Trevlon struggled to keep up academically in elementary school and attended a middle school in District 75, a citywide district that caters to students with significant disabilities. There, he received intensive academic and behavioral support and made major strides, but he was not on a diploma track.

Trevlon, who requested that his last name be withheld because a complaint he filed against the Education Department has yet to be resolved, said he was unhappy in the highly restrictive environment. He committed himself to proving that he could be successful at a community high school. By the time Trevlon graduated middle school as valedictorian of his eighth grade class, his special education committee had agreed that he could transition back to the diploma track and into a community school.

However, Trevlon was placed in a school that did not offer the learning environment the Education Department had determined most appropriate for him: a self-contained special education classroom for 15 students. Instead, he attended large classes that integrated students with disabilities and their general education peers. He said he struggled to focus and keep up. As he fell behind academically, he became increasingly frustrated and started acting out.

After his tumultuous freshman year, Trevlon was moved back onto a non-diploma track in a District 75 school, where he felt out of place and insufficiently challenged. He begged for a different placement that might offer a path back to community school — or a diploma, at least — but nothing changed, he said.

Knowing he would never have a “real” high school experience, Trevlon grew disillusioned, started attending school infrequently, and finally dropped out last year.

“It’s not just, ‘Oh, I stopped going to school because I don’t like school,’” Trevlon said. “I feel like the system gave up on me to a certain extent, as a Black male. … All I ever really wanted to do was to work and sit down and be like everybody else.”

Parents often unaware of children’s placement on non-diploma track

Schools are legally mandated to inform a student’s parents abou

t the long-term ramifications of the alternate track. However, special education advocates said they regularly work with parents who had no idea their children were on a non-diploma path — often until it was too late.

“Many parents do not even know to ask questions about alternate assessment, because they’re never informed,” said Young Seh Bae, executive director of the Queens-based and a parent of a student with disabilities. It’s only when graduation approaches that many parents say, “‘Oh, I didn’t realize my child wouldn’t receive a high school diploma … The school didn’t explain my child never will be able to go to college or get a license for certain things.’”

In New York, diploma-track students must pass a certain number of Regents exams, making it one of that require high school seniors to pass standardized tests to earn a diploma. (New York State is planning to Regents as a graduation requirement in fall 2027.)

Because Jeurry was on a non-diploma track and never took his Regents, he could only earn a , which cannot be used to apply for college, trade school, the military, or many jobs.

Jeurry was reading and doing math on a first-grade level by the start of middle school and on second- to third-grade levels by the end of high school, records show. Over the years, the Education Department classified him with several different kinds of disabilities, including a learning disability at one point and an intellectual disability at another. While he was a student, he was not evaluated by an outside provider, which some families by district professionals. Faculty members repeatedly told Jeurry’s mother he was incapable of progressing academically, his academic records show, and they eventually used his lack of progress to justify placing him on the non-diploma track.

From kindergarten through eighth grade, he remained in self-contained classes, receiving only speech language therapy as a supplementary service. In high school, Jeurry moved from a self-contained setting into integrated classrooms, which benefited him socially but only further highlighted how far his academics lagged behind his peers.

At no point did Jeurry’s special education committee suggest additional services or more intensive support, records show. Federal law mandates more intensive intervention if a special education student is not making progress toward his goals.

Kim Swanson, the principal of Jeurry’s high school who overlapped with him during his last year there, declined to comment on Jeurry’s situation. She said her school “always follows state guidance.”

The school’s special education committees have always informed parents of the ramifications of alternate assessment, but the school has implemented additional safeguards during Swanson’s 11-year tenure as principal, she said. These include sending home a that was developed by the state with input from the city Education Department (a requirement of all New York schools since 2019), and ensuring that faculty members discuss students’ progress toward their goals before special education committee meetings.

Vallejo, who oversees school-based evaluations, said the Education Department worked with the state to develop the form letter because “there was a point where little information was available to students and families regarding alternate assessment and the impact of that designation.” Education Department faculty are committed to fully involving students’ parents in assessment decisions and revisiting them annually, Vallejo said.

Special education advocates have lobbied the state for specific alternate assessment reforms for years, with little success — including a 2022 push for policy changes that could have helped demystify the assessment decision-making process.

In August 2024, for the first time in at least five years, the state policy tweaks of its own, including seeking feedback from special education advocates and families on how to clarify the existing eligibility criteria for alternate assessment and update existing decision-making tools and training materials.

After legal battle, NYC pays for more than 1,300 hours of services

Knowing that he wouldn’t receive a diploma, Jeurry skipped his June 2017 graduation.

He then languished in a city-funded for more than a year. In fall 2018, on the recommendation of a teacher, Jeurry contacted Advocates for Children. Within months, a pro-bono legal team arranged by the organization filed an action against the city school system, accusing it of denying Jeurry a free, appropriate public education as required by law.

While the legal process unfolded, Jeurry’s advocates helped him apply for his diploma through a “superintendent determination,” a for students with disabilities who are unable to earn the Regents scores needed for graduation but meet all other requirements. In June 2019, he received his high school diploma.

As part of the 10-month legal process, a neuropsychologist evaluated Jeurry and diagnosed him with a mild intellectual disability, concluding that he could have benefited from more rigorous support, such as one-on-one literacy tutoring.

The city ultimately agreed to compensate Jeurry for what he missed during his 14 years of school by paying for 1,308 hours of academic tutoring, life skills training, and transition services. For more than a year, he attended all-day tutoring sessions that started with phonics and built upward.

“At first, I was like, ‘It’s not helping,’” Jeurry said. But then, little by little, I started noticing my reading level going up … and I was like, ‘Oh, it is �ɴǰ��쾱�Բ�!’�ĝ

Although it has required him to work through significant education-related trauma, Jeurry now attends community college online while working full time. He’s considering transferring to a four-year institution after he earns his associate degree in business administration.

“I didn’t want to go back, but I had to do it, you know?” Jeurry said. “I needed to get a better education.”

Sarah Komar is a New York City-based journalist. She reported this story while at the Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

This argument misses a critical point: These policies provide families with new opportunities while taking no existing options away.

The commentary by Lauren Morando Rhim at the Center for Learning Equity expresses concerns that private schools are not bound by the same rules, regulations, and processes as public schools. But that’s precisely the point of alternatives. As Rhim herself noted in a previous , “The system can be very large and rigid,” often leaving students with disabilities marginalized by a one-size-fits-all approach. 

I’m hard pressed to find more compelling reasons to support giving families more options.

Public schools work well for many students with disabilities. But for families seeking something different, what’s the harm in allowing them to use their funds to choose a private alternative they believe will better serve their child? 

Public schools are governed by laws like the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which was enacted at a time when with disabilities were denied access to public schools. However, IDEA’s aspirational goals have not always translated into effective implementation across the nation’s 13,000-plus school districts. Many families face endless battles for evaluations, services, and compliance. For every success story, there are countless examples of parents left frustrated by the system.

It’s tedious that I must point this out, because there are just as many stories of parents satisfied with what their public school offers their child. But the world doesn’t run on generalities—it runs on the lived experiences of individuals. Some schools do better than others, and some adults do better than others. 

Florida passed the first statewide voucher program in 1999 specifically for students with disabilities. Today, over 90,000 students in Florida benefit from these programs, which cover tuition, therapies, tutoring, and other expenses.

Research supports their effectiveness. A from Boston University and the University of Arkansas found 93% satisfaction rates among families participating in Florida’s Gardiner Scholarship Program, an education savings account specifically for students with disabilities, compared to 85% satisfaction among families who are not participating. (The program is now part of the state’s newer Family Empowerment Scholarships for Students with Unique Abilities program.)

Participating parents reported significantly higher satisfaction rates in terms of the services and accommodations their private school provided compared to parents in public schools. These families valued the ability to choose schools and services that met their children’s specific needs—freedom that is often unavailable in public systems.

Unlike public schools, private school programs don’t necessarily have public meeting requirements, standardized test score reporting and federal disability law protections. Yet parents in these programs overwhelmingly report higher satisfaction. Why? These programs give families a right they don’t have elsewhere: the ability to control their educational funds and choose what works best for their child. 

One parent in the Florida study put it best, saying the option “opened up a whole avenue of feeling like I didn’t have to have him stay in a setting that I felt like he wasn’t going to be successful in. And without it, I don’t think he’d be where he is today.”

I won’t pretend every program is perfect. Bureaucratic red tape can make them harder to navigate, and experiences vary. But expanding options that outperform the status quo in parent satisfaction does not harm families of students with disabilities – it helps them. 

I have a son with autism. I’m motivated to find him a school where he’s welcomed, supported, understood, and loved. I want him to grow academically, socially, and cognitively. I hope he’ll make friends and be able to share highlights of his day. These basic human needs are obvious to any parent, yet they’re rarely mentioned in debates about regulations and government processes. 

With over 55 million schoolchildren in the United States, why dismiss choice and alternatives because they are not bound by a federal regulatory apparatus? That is often the very reason parents seek alternatives. Expanding options empowers families to find solutions that work for them—solutions that no one can dictate better than a parent.

Adam Peshek is senior director and senior fellow of Stand Together Trust.

Disclosure: Stand Together Trust provides financial support to The 74.

Texas is clawing back more than $607 million per year in federal funding for special education services, a move local school district officials say will likely worsen already strained budgets for students with disabilities.

The School Health and Related Services (SHARS) program provides hundreds of school districts critical funding for special education services, reimbursing them for counseling, nursing, therapy and transportation services provided to Medicaid-eligible children.

More than 775,000 students receive special education services in Texas, according to the Texas Education Agency. It is not as clear how many of them are eligible for Medicaid, though school district officials say many of the kids who directly benefit from SHARS come from low-income families.

But in the last year, the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, which manages the program at the state level, began imposing strict limitations on the types of services for which school districts are able to request federal reimbursement. The changes have accumulated into a $607 million slashing to the money school districts typically expect to receive under SHARS per year, according to health agency estimates.

Bewildered by the sudden changes, school district officials and special education advocates say little has been communicated about why these drastic changes are happening.

“We’re seeing an increased number of students that need more and more individualized care,” said Katie Abbott, special education director for a coalition of six East Texas school districts. “And yet, what are we doing?”

In response to their concerns, Texas has blamed the feds.

A found that Texas was improperly billing for services not allowable under the SHARS program. The report concluded the state would need to return almost $19 million, a fraction of the $607 million currently being left behind. It also required that the Texas health commission work to ensure it was complying with federal guidelines.

Afterwards, the commission submitted “every possible denial and request for the opinion to be overturned” but was unsuccessful, the agency told The Texas Tribune. The recent changes reflected an attempt to bring the state back into compliance, according to the commission.

But federal appeals officers, last year, said Texas produced “nothing at all” to dispute investigators’ findings that the state billed for unallowable services. The ruling also condemns the state for attempting to submit evidence after the deadline to do so had already passed.

Further, federal officials dispute the notion that Texas is being required to make certain changes to the SHARS program. In a statement to the Tribune, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services made clear that as long as states work within “broad federal parameters,” they have autonomy to make decisions about their programs.

School district officials say Texas has resorted to overcorrecting problems identified by the audit, flouting expectations from the federal government that the state administers the program using the least restrictive means possible.

Many school districts are formally appealing the funding cuts with the state, while other rural districts have decided to exit the SHARS program altogether because of the administrative burden recent changes have created. Those that remain are holding out hope that lawmakers will decide in next year’s legislative session to help fill the financial gaps left in special education services — a lofty expectation for a state with a poor track record in both and .

“We’re talking about our most vulnerable kids,” said Karlyn Keller, division director of Student Solutions and School Medicaid Services for the Texas Association of School Boards. “We can’t afford to continue to make these huge clawbacks in funding when we’ve got kids that need the service.”

‘Faces of kids’

With the slashing to SHARS funding, the Texas Education Agency estimates the deficit between school districts’ special education expenses and revenue from federal and state money will grow to roughly $1.7 billion per year.

Students with disabilities make up a little less than 10% of the Shiner school district’s 700 student population. Factoring in the recent changes to the SHARS program, the rural school district located east of San Antonio can expect to lose more than $79,000, according to state health agency data.

Superintendent Alex Remschel says the loss will eventually hurt the Shiner school district’s ability to recruit and retain personnel who work to administer the one-on-one, small group special education services their students need. The district currently has three special education teachers and about a half-dozen aides who support them in the classroom. The district shares special education resources with eight other districts as part of a cooperative, which Remschel said had to dip into its fund balance this year to fill the gaps left by the SHARS reductions.

“When I look at the dollars that we have, I see faces of kids,” Remschel said. “And I don’t think that the people that are making these decisions see the faces of kids and how kids are impacted, and that’s what tears at my heart the most.”

Jason Appelt, executive director of the special education cooperative the Shiner school district is a member of, questions Texas’ decision not to take full advantage of the money being provided by the federal government. In total, the special education cooperative’s nine rural districts work with about 900 students.

In previous years, the group received about $1 million in SHARS funding, Appelt said, a number that has since been cut in half. SHARS revenue makes up nearly a fifth of the cooperative’s budget.

“We didn’t have any way to plan for this,” Appelt said. “Our districts are very fiscally conservatively minded. So if something doesn’t change with this, it’s gonna be really tough on all these districts, because there’s not too many other places to cut from.”

Larger and wealthier school districts also say they are feeling the effects of changes to the SHARS program. Of the Katy school district’s approximately 96,000 student population, nearly 18% receive special education services, said Gwen Coffey, the assistant superintendent for special education. The district will experience a cut of almost $8 million, according to the state.

Coffey also said the health commission has made participation in the program more difficult in recent years with constant “changing and shifting and adjusting,” resulting in more documentation and paperwork for staff whose workloads are already full. She said the agency does not seem to understand exactly what it’s asking of school districts.

On Oct. 1, for example, the state health agency overhauled the way school districts can bill for personal care services provided to students in a group setting — like bathing, dressing and feeding — which districts interpret as requiring second-by-second documentation of how and when they’re assisting students. Districts say the change is not feasible considering instructors typically are busy with helping multiple children at once.

“I think the bigger question that we all have is, why? Why is it being changed? What’s the purpose?” Coffey said. “Because if the purpose of the Health and Human Services Commission is to ensure that funding and services are being delivered to those students who require them right in a timely and efficient manner, then how does this accomplish that?”

Succumbing to fear

Kami Finger, who serves as assistant superintendent for school support and special services at the Lubbock school district, said ongoing cuts and changes to the SHARS program indicate a “cultural issue” in Texas where instead of maximizing reimbursement dollars available to the state, the state health agency is succumbing to fear because of the federal audit.

“We’re too fearful that we’re not going to do it the right way to begin with,” said Finger, whose district is losing more than $5.4 million from the funding cuts, according to state estimates. “All of that’s coming together at the same time, creating this very precarious situation for district administrators to make decisions about what least effective programs and services we may have to strategically abandon as a result of that.”

The was conducted from October 2010 through September 2011 and zeroed in on the Austin and Dallas school districts. It concluded that overbilling occurred because Texas “did not always follow its policies and procedures to ensure that the costs claimed for direct medical services were accurate and supported.”

In an appeal decision issued last October, federal officials further concluded that Texas had “multiple opportunities” during the process to present evidence disputing investigators’ earlier findings but failed to do so — until after the time to submit evidence had expired.

“The Board therefore will not reconsider its decision to address an issue that could have been but was not raised earlier,” one part of the ruling states.

MSB School Services is a vendor that provides consulting and support to roughly half of participating school districts in the Texas SHARS program and has also worked with schools in other states administering the program.

While acknowledging there were problems with the program as identified in the audit, Tabbatha Callaway, CEO of MSB School Services, said she has yet to see any documentation from the state suggesting that Texas was required to make funding cuts as drastic as it has. Instead, she said, the health commission has done “a phenomenal job of, at this point, making this seem hard and complicated.”

She also said Texas school districts possess the documentation that likely would have helped the state in its response to the audit. But she said the commission has not taken steps to work with school districts.

“We’ve tried really hard to get them to meet with us, have conversations, figure out what’s going on, and we haven’t been able to gain the traction necessary to understand the issues,” Callaway said. “What I can say is that there are solutions to recover these dollars, and they need to be looked at.”

The state health agency said in a statement it is working with state education officials to ensure school districts are up to date on SHARS and conducts annual meetings and training to ensure awareness. In working to identify “a greater need” for transparency and support, the agency said it recently created a Medicaid resource and training team for participating SHARS districts.

However, with drastic changes having already gone into effect, many school district officials are reconsidering whether participating in the program is worth it, while some rural school districts that didn’t receive significant funding from SHARS are dropping out, said Keller of the Texas Association of School Boards.

“If you’re counting on these kinds of programs to help you fund and then they go away after the fact, then you’re left in very dire straits,” Keller said. “They’re just making the decision that they’re not going to participate. They’d rather have to figure it out and know that they have the funding than guess and then be caught short.”

Legislative intervention

School districts and special education advocates are still holding out hope the Legislature will step up by increasing funding for special education services and to a special education funding model based on the individual needs of a student rather than how much time a child spends in a special education setting. This could help school districts cover some of the personal care services students need, advocates say.

But increases to public school funding have been difficult to come by in the last year as those dollars have been wrapped up in Gov. ’s for a school voucher program, which would allow parents to use taxpayer dollars to fund their children’s private school tuition.

Texas also has a poor track record in administering federally mandated special education services. The state was previously fined for slashing funding for students with disabilities in a way that violated the Individual with Disabilities Education Act. Later, federal officials that Texas failed to prove it did enough to overhaul its special education system.

Neither the political terrain nor the state’s recent history with special education has stopped advocates from trying to be optimistic, however.

“I feel like special education funding is one of the very few, if not the only thing in education policy that all of the legislators agree on,” said Andrea Chevalier, director of Governmental Relations for the Texas Council of Administrators of Special Education.

Rep. , the Democrat vice chair of the House budget committee, said after a recent legislative hearing where state health officials explained their rationale for changes to the program, she is working with other legislators to determine whether the state is “over-course correcting” in a way that further harms school district funding.

She is also advocating for more communication and transparency, as well as making sure school districts aren’t losing out on dollars while they’re appealing the state health agency’s decision to cut funding.

Katie Abbott, special education director for the coalition of six rural East Texas school districts that share special education resources, said more funding “would be very much appreciated,” but the services that SHARS has helped schools fund are still required — with or without the additional help.

“We’re passionate about what we do for kids, so I don’t see services stopping,” Abbott said. “It’s just squeezing blood out of a turnip to figure out how to make that happen.”

Disclosure: Texas Association of School Boards has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete .

This article originally appeared in , is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

In the 2020-21 academic year, just 4.4% of charter school students with disabilities and 2.8% of those in traditional schools took Advanced Placement classes, versus 21% and 15% of general education students, respectively. 

Just 2.6% of charter school special education students and 3.4% of those in district-run schools took dual-enrollment college and university courses, versus 11.5% and 8% of their general education classmates. 

The number of youth with disabilities taking college admissions tests was less than 10% in district-run schools — half the rate of general education students. Almost 9% of special education students in charter schools took the ACT or SAT, compared with 13% of their non-disabled peers.

Researchers cautioned that those rates were likely impacted by COVID-related school closures and an increase in the number of colleges making the assessments optional. But they noted that the disparity has persisted since 2012.

“The bottom line is that the overall percentages are just unacceptable,” says Jennifer Coco, the center’s senior director of strategy and impact. “The research shows that 85% of students in special education are capable of achieving on grade level. There’s no barrier that’s stopping them if their needs are met.”

The report is the center’s fifth analysis of charter and district school enrollment of students with disabilities, based on the U.S. Department of Education’s Civil Rights Data Collection, which documents educational disparities. Analyzing recently released data from the 2020-21 school year, the new report is the first to look specifically at access to career- and college-readiness opportunities.

“In our minds, it’s a clear call to action,” says Coco. 

The center was launched in 2013 as the National Center for Special Education in Charter Schools, with a focus on improving conditions for children with disabilities in the charter sector. Though gaps have narrowed, charter schools have long enrolled fewer students who qualify for special education and are often ill-equipped to serve those with the most profound challenges. 

Charter schools were conceived in part as places where educators could innovate, and the most effective have refined approaches that create better outcomes for low-income children and students of color. But to date, except for a handful of schools, they have not identified better special education practices. 

The proportion of rose from 10.7% in 2018 to 11.5% in 2021, an increase of 87,444 children. During the same period, the number of students in traditional district schools who have Individualized Education Plan, the legal documents that spell out how their needs will be addressed, rose from 13.2% to slightly more than 14%. 

The disparity in enrollment between charter and traditional schools is almost entirely in elementary and middle schools; high schools in both sectors serve special education students at roughly the same rate. Charter schools are much more likely to serve disabled children , a practice that increases achievement for special education students. 

“85% of students in special education are capable of achieving on grade level. There’s no barrier that’s stopping them if their needs are met.”

The report notes 83% of charter school special education students spend more than 80% of their day in a regular classroom, compared with 67.5% in traditional schools. Just 1.3% of children with disabilities participate in gifted and talented programs in district schools, compared with 6.4% of all students. In charter schools, 0.6% of disabled pupils participate in gifted programs, compared with 2.4% of the general student body. 

In the 2019-20 academic year, some , according to the National Center for Education Statistics. They are less likely than non-disabled college students to attain a degree, however, raising concerns about making sure they graduate high school prepared for higher education.

In 2023, the for disabled students attending four-year colleges was 49.5%, compared with 68% of non-disabled students. Just 37% report their disability to their college, and of those who do, many don’t receive accommodations. A bill before Congress, the , would require colleges to make it easier for students to get disability supports.

Finally, the center took at 176 charter schools that have a specific focus on students with disabilities, especially those with autism, emotional disturbances and intellectual disabilities. More than half of these schools are located in Florida, Ohio and Texas. Further study is needed to understand why families choose these segregated schools and how student services may differ from those provided in district-run classrooms.