WASHINGTON — The U.S. Education Department is looking to move the $15 billion Individuals with Disabilities Education Act program outside of the agency, the Washington Post Ěý°ŐłÜąđ˛őťĺ˛š˛â.

In a statement to States Newsroom, department spokesperson Madi Biedermann did not explicitly confirm the report, but said the department is generally looking for ways to move its operations to other agencies. President Donald Trump has pledged to eliminate the Education Department.

The agency “is exploring additional partnerships with federal agencies to support special education programs without any interruption or impact on students with disabilities, but no agreement has been signed,” Biedermann wrote.

Biedermann said Education Secretary Linda McMahon “has been very clear that her goal is to put herself out of a job by shutting down the Department of Education and returning education to the states” and that McMahon is “fully committed to protecting the federal funding streams that support our nation’s students with disabilities.”

Trump’s administration moved to lay off 465 department employees, including 121 at the , earlier this month amid the ongoing government shutdown.

A federal judge has  from carrying out the layoffs, but the ruling provides only short-term relief as legal proceedings unfold.

The department’s many responsibilities include guaranteeing a free public education for students with disabilities through IDEA.

Trump has already suggested rehousing special education services under the Department of Health and Human Services.

HHS secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.  in March that the agency is “fully prepared” to take on that responsibility.

Fully transferring responsibility for IDEA would require an act of Congress — a significant undertaking given that at least 60 votes are needed to break a Senate filibuster and Republicans hold just 53 seats.

Teaching to a mythical average leaves far too many students bored and disengaged. No wonder has more than doubled to 30% since 2020.

The recently published third annual State of the American Student report from the Center for Reinventing Public Education made a convincing case for a more flexible approach. “Of course, there are few truly ‘average’ students. Every young person who was affected by the pandemic had a different pandemic experience and pandemic recovery support,” the report found. 

It urged: “The pandemic and the ensuing harm to academic progress for a vast swath of America’s students should force a broader reckoning with public education’s underlying systemic failure. In the current system, labeling some students as ‘exceptional’ implies that most students are not, shunts students with the greatest needs into silos where they are denied opportunities to excel, and places a counterproductive stigma on targeted support that many students require to address gaps in their learning.”

Instead, if educators start designing education for students on the margins — the special populations who were disproportionately harmed by the pandemic — all students will benefit.

Children vary in how they engage, make meaning of content and communicate their thinking. Because learner variability is the norm, educators need to start designing for it. What would that look like?

To start, instructional materials would be much more varied and accessible: print, digital, text-to-speech or audiobooks. Students would choose which they would use, and they could count on regular feedback about their work. 

Next, educators would clearly identify a learning goal (i.e. finding the theme of a text or the causes of the Civil War) and design curriculum and instruction to give students options for reaching that goal in multiple ways. For example, educators might use tools like word webs to help students draw on their prior knowledge; employ templates, graphic organizers and concept maps to aid them in taking notes; and design methods for assisting students in tracking their progress and understanding which tools and methods work best for them.

Scenarios such as these reflect the principles of , a framework for improving teaching and learning based on scientific insights. My organization, CAST, pioneered this approach in the 1980s and since has helped to spread it worldwide. Our set forth a roadmap to help educators, curriculum developers and others design for inclusion and reduce barriers to learning. 

Personalized instruction like this already is happening in some places.  

• Over the past seven years, CAST has trained more than 1,500 New Hampshire educators across 140 schools in Universal Design for Learning. Partnering with the state Department of Education, this multi-year initiative aims to transform teaching and learning across the state. Through a variety of techniques, including online learning and statewide workshops, educators worked to increase access and give students more power to direct their own learning by trying different methods and tools. Results are encouraging. Fifty-five percent of participants who responded to a 2022 survey reported that students have become more goal-directed, 47% noted an increase in students’ resourcefulness and 43% reported that their students were more motivated than they were before the teachers engaged in the training.

• Over the past six years, CAST has worked with California educators in 23 counties and 170 districts. We are equipping teachers and paraeducators with tools and strategies to give students with disabilities access to grade-level content standards in inclusive classrooms. Of teachers participating in a survey for evaluating the program, 57% reported increased observations of student motivation, engagement and ownership over their learning, and 70% reported higher inclusion rates of students with disabilities in general education classrooms than before they began using the design principles.

Making examples like these more of the norm will require overcoming inertia and resistance, including from traditional schools of education, which continue to have separate tracks for general and special education teachers. General education graduates of these programs are placed in untenable positions and, without the training or experience to do so, are told to deal with growing numbers of students who have individualized education plans. 

The emergence of artificial intelligence in schools can help, not just in aiding teachers with paperwork and other administrative tasks, but in customizing instruction and providing immediate feedback. When AI gathers, analyzes and reports data, teachers can spend more time planning engaging and relevant lessons and working directly with students to target instruction to their individual needs.

Children with disabilities will continue to receive services for their needs under the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act, but when educators personalize learning for all, those special education services won’t create the segregation that occurs today. When teachers more routinely meet students where they are, all children will benefit, perhaps in unexpected ways. For example, many technologies designed for one population have now become ubiquitous, helping everyone. Think closed-captioned subtitles on videos or speech-to-text conversions on cellphones. Those with low vision, dyslexia or who are deaf and hard of hearing may have been the first beneficiaries of these innovations, but they are hardly the only ones these days. 

Imagine a similar approach in education. Design for the margins. Impact the world.  

Hundreds of Connecticut special education students who have attended  have been subjected to restraints and seclusion, teachers without certification and improper services, according to a scathing report released Tuesday by the Office of the Child Advocate and Disability Rights Connecticut.

In one academic year, there were more than 1,200 reports of students being restrained or secluded in High Road schools, the report states.

Connecticut Child Advocate Sarah Eagan said a two-year investigation of six schools in Hartford, New London, Wallingford and other towns found “an alarming lack of oversight, systemic failings and often flagrant disregard for statutory requirements and state standards that protect the educational rights and safety of children.”

“Practices routinely fall short of state laws, education regulations, best practices, or all three. Changes need to be put in place without delay,” Eagan said.

High Road is one of the Connecticut’s largest state-approved private special education providers, and it primarily serves children from low-income school districts and receives millions in public funds annually, according to the report. 

The 57-page report said the state Department of Education, along with the school districts that sent students to High Road schools, failed to visit the campuses regularly and did not ensure compliance with the federal . 

“Many of the students at High Road Schools were grossly underserved both in terms of educational planning and service delivery,” the report said. “The investigation revealed widespread student disengagement and chronic absenteeism across High Road locations, failure to adequately assess and support students’ educational needs through individualized service delivery and perhaps most alarmingly, gross deficiencies in the number of certified special education teachers and other credentialed educational staff working with children and systemic failure to ensure and/or document that staff had undergone employment checks and criminal and child welfare background checks.”

About 316 students were enrolled at six of eight High Road schools in Connecticut during the 2021-22 academic year, with the student body being made up of about 80% boys and 70% students of color from across 38 Connecticut school districts.

Eighty High Road students, or about 25%, were outsourced from Hartford Public Schools, making the capital city’s public school district the “largest district consumer of High Road services,” according to the report.

The state Department of Education said it “vigorously disagree[d] with the conclusions” of the report, adding that the department has been, and is, “attentive to concerns that are brought forth to the State’s attention and engages in off cycle monitoring reviews.”

“During the period of investigation, from 2022 through February 2024, the CSDE received no complaints from parents, from guardians, from students, from attorneys, from parent advocates, or from local or regional school districts regarding High Road schools,” a spokesperson from the department said. “Of note, the CSDE’s Special Education Division annually receives approximately 1,000 filings in the form of hearing requests, mediation requests, or compliance complaints, yet during the period of time covered in the OCA/DRCT Report, not one of those thousands of filings pertained to High Road schools.”

A spokesperson from High Road told The Connecticut Mirror in an emailed statement that the report did “not accurately reflect the academic and behavioral supports at our schools” and that “over the course of two years, High Road Schools provided comprehensive responses that outlined these inaccuracies, as well as highlighted the specific improvements we implemented as part of this process.”

OCA, , and DRCT, , investigated the following campuses: High Road School of Hartford Primary/Middle, High Road School of Hartford High School, High Road B.E.S.T. Academy of Wallingford, High Road School of Fairfield County in Norwalk, High Road School of New London and High Road School of Windham County in Killingly from March 2022 to March 2024 through a series of reviews of educational files, classroom observations and interviews. 

DRCT also visited High Road School of Wallingford Primary School and High Road School of Wallingford High School but did not collect data or records, the report states.

Restraint and seclusion 

Connecticut leads the country in its placement of students with disabilities in “separate schools,” according to the report. 

Most are students of color.

In 2021-22, there were more than 1,200 reported incidents of students being restrained or secluded in High Road schools. Nearly 550 of those incidents were reported from High Road School of Hartford Primary/Middle School, the report states.

“It is concerning that students would be isolated in such a manner and with such frequency. Isolation without adequate and required efforts to address students’ needs also raise serious legal questions under the ADA,” the report said, adding that students were often taken out of classrooms into “time-out rooms” where they weren’t allowed to leave.

Jennifer Hoffman, assistant superintendent for special education and pupil services in Hartford, said  responding to the report that the district has worked OCA and DRCT to continue working toward becoming a “trauma-responsive system” and is in “collective acknowledgment that more works needs to be done, between external systems, to reduce the stressors for families that are sending students to school.”

Hoffman’s letter highlighted efforts to expand special education services and monitoring and oversight of students.

The district declined to provide further comment when contacted by the CT Mirror.

Staffing problems

The investigation found that almost half of the teachers employed at High Road did not have adequate teacher certification from the state of Connecticut or did not undergo proper background checks.

The report found that:

• “In the Windham County Program, 6 out of 8 educational staff had not had DCF background checks;
• In the New London Program, High Road failed to demonstrate that it had verified employment histories, including any concerns of prior student maltreatment, as required by state law;
• In the Fairfield County Program, High Road had not conducted a DCF or employee background check for approximately half of the staff;
• At Hartford-Primary, High Road had not conducted a DCF background check for approximately half of the staff;
• At Wallingford-BEST program, High Road conducted background checks for the majority, but not all of staff working with children.”

The report also said that the Department of Education had previously found that High Road “had not been consistent in conducting background checks” but never followed up.

“State records do not indicate further follow up by CSDE to ensure that corrective actions were implemented and sustained. OCA/DRCT’s investigation found that despite previous complaints, warnings, and directives and despite clear state law obligations and even contractual requirements … High Road failed to demonstrate that it consistently conducts background checks for employees working with children,” the report said.

The report added that school administrators “did not communicate staffing gaps to [local educational agencies]” and that data from both High Road and the state Department of Education “reflect a high vacancy rate for certified special education teachers and lack of adequate documentation for substitute teachers and individuals with ‘durational permits,’” including a “heavy reliance on long-term substitute teachers” who may not be “appropriately credentialed and approved” by the state.

There was also no documentation of physical education, art or music teachers at these schools. Nurses were not employed at all buildings, according to the report. 

Lack of individualized programming in the classroom

The report highlighted several deficiencies with student individualized education plans, or IEPs, and a lack of , which are used to determine the cause of certain behaviors and how to address them.

An analysis of 30 student records showed “little evidence … of individualized instruction, and general program descriptions refer only to a curriculum comprised of ‘four instructional rotations during which students are assessed academically, gain self-regulation skills, learn with district-aligned academic curriculums and utilize integrated technology,’” the report said.

“Records examined included inconsistent information, lacked evidence of comprehensive evaluations, individualized or personalized instructional or behavioral strategies, and did not indicate that progress or failure to progress were regularly reviewed within programs. Across sites there was an apparent lack of access to related services such as clinical/psychological consultation or service,” the report continued, adding that several campuses did not have occupational and speech language therapy “consistent with descriptions of students’ previous developmental, social/emotional, or educational histories.”

The investigation also found that “almost none of the students” received functional behavioral assessments (FBAs) or behavior intervention plans (BIPs) at several campuses. 

Nor did the schools have a board-certified behavior analyst on staff.

“High Road locations all employ school social workers and offer individual and/or group counseling. However, out of 30 student records reviewed by investigators, there were only two BIPs,” the report said. “Student data and individual student records also indicate frequent use of restraint and seclusion without adequate evaluation and response.”

The report illustrated several instances where students required behavioral help, but there was “little to no individualization.” It also illustrated when student behavioral needs were ignored and played out in the child’s academics later.

“Student A was placed at the Hartford Primary-Middle School program in Grade 3, at age 10, with a BIP created at his previous public school. Yet a program review later that year indicated he was performing below grade level due to a lack of access to education based on extended timeouts, raising questions about the degree to which his BIP was reflective of his current needs,” the report said. “In additional, Student A had multiple absences, slept for the whole day on multiple days waking only to eat lunch, and had significant academic delays. … Complex academic/behavioral/disengagement issues persisted from enrollment at High Road for 7 years without his needs being properly addressed.”

Other examples included a student who had 70 timeouts and seven restraints in her first year at High Road and a student with 69 restraints over a 15-month period and no BIP in his record. 

Disengaged students, unclear path forward

Almost 40% of students enrolled at High Road schools had 18 or more absences from school. Over 25% missed over 25 days of instruction, and 10% of all students missed over 50 days, according to the report.

But for students in the classroom, there were several instances where investigators “saw multiple students who were sleeping for prolonged periods during class and students who were completely disengaged from classroom activities.”

“Investigators consistently saw students who were left entirely to themselves during a 30-minute or even 45-minute class period, alone in a cubicle or at a computer, without any or only the briefest of interactions with a teacher or an aide,” the report said.

“During one observation, investigators observed a student sitting in a cubicle starting at the wall. The teacher approached him and spoke to him once during a 45-minute observation. He did not respond and no one else attempted to engage him during class,” the report added. “During an observation at the Fairfield High Road School, several students were observed sleeping, with investigators told that one of the students sleeps all the way up until the last period of the day to participate in science class.”

There were also several issues with progress monitoring and assessments, and inappropriate academic goals, the report said.

“Investigators were told [at the Windham County campus] that students’ progress is monitored daily, but the covering administrator (who was not certified as an administrator) told OCA that ‘students don’t have academic goals; they are here because of behavior,’” the report said.

Beyond academic trouble, the report said, the school did not provide transitional services for older students.

“For older students whose records were reviewed, access to special education until age 22 was terminated without clear transition plans or individualized programs that would provide options for post-secondary education or realistic development of vocational options and experiences, with appropriate social and mental health supports that could lead to successful transitions to adult life.”

Leadership failure and policy recommendations

OCA and DRCT criticized both the state Department of Education and local districts’ efforts to protect the students with disabilities enrolled in High Road schools.

The report said one district’s director of public services “had positive things to say about High Road schools and expressed no concerns” with High Road and that “other programs are worse.” He said there were no red flags around service hours.

However, investigators said that district had 13 students enrolled in High Road programs, and five students missed a combined 306 days of instruction without a BIP in place. 

“Although certain districts indicated they conducted site visits and records review following the letter, the incongruity between the districts’ stated satisfaction with the provision of services and OCA/DRCT investigative findings regarding staffing irregularities, lack of background checking, inadequate records, lack of related service delivery and individualized behavioral intervention plans, and chronic absenteeism is difficult to reconcile,” the report said.

The investigation found that many districts across the state did not conduct site visits and did not ask substantial questions about services or staffing.

“In response to questions about whether the districts conducted any observations of its students enrolled at the schools, only 3/18 districts responded affirmatively,” the report said. “Most districts were unable to provide the ‘names, positions, qualifications and/or any certification of all personnel providing instruction, including special education and related services, to the students while attending High Road.’ One district maintained that CSDE is responsible for ensuring that High Road schools have qualified staff employed.”

At a state level, the report said, the Department of Education had concerns about background checking and inadequate student records, but there were no findings of follow-ups or corrective action.

The report said the state Department of Education did not properly monitor and ensure compliance with federal and state law.

The final pages of the report recommended that state law be amended to “require strengthened CSDE oversight of state-approved private special education programs” and mandate transparency from the education department’s monitoring and enforcement of federal law.

This story was originally published on CT Mirror.

As we noted in our inaugural , students with disabilities lost out on critical therapies and foundational learning and socialization opportunities during the early days of the pandemic. Nearly half (44%) of parents of students with cognitive disabilities that schools abandoned their child’s legal right to access an equitable education when they moved to remote learning, according to Understood, a national nonprofit that supports those who think and learn differently.

To establish a baseline understanding of the impact on those students, and to begin to track progress toward helping them recover the knowledge, skills and supports they missed during the pandemic, CRPE commissioned the nonprofit to convene a panel of experts to review the latest research. The goal was to summarize what we know, don’t know and need to know going forward to help students with disabilities.

The top line finding of our is — disturbingly — that we about how such students are faring. Less than a third of most rigorous academic studies in the past year disaggregate outcomes for students with disabilities. Most of those few studies are limited to a specific state or locale, which means findings are hard to generalize. Nearly all the studies focus on grades 3 to 8, where state test scores are most readily available. 

Scores on standardized math and English assessments declined for all students and the same is true for students with disabilities. Results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress showed somewhat sharper drops for students with disabilities than for other children. Different studies show similar or even fewer declines. But any drop in achievement for this group of students should be concerning, as they typically score below their traditionally developing peers to begin with.

We know next to nothing about post-high school outcomes like college enrollment or persistence or employment. High school graduation rates rose for students with disabilities during the pandemic, but it’s unclear if that was a good thing. Requirements were loosened for almost all students, and basic support services for the transition out of high school were fundamentally disrupted. 

Another major barrier to parsing the research: Results for students with disabilities are usually reported as a monolithic block, rather than in categories that would note the variation and complexities of real children who have very different abilities and diagnoses, from emotional and behavioral disorders to physical disabilities. The research rarely divides the data to note students with disabilities who may also be facing other challenges, such as economic disadvantage, racial discrimination, or being an English learner or recent immigrant. Our State of the Student report stresses that the averages seen in these reports obscure critical variations in student needs. 

The review found little, if any, research on mental health and behavioral outcomes disaggregated for students with disabilities. One exception: a study from a large urban district that shows suspension rates for children with disabilities, particularly Black boys, temporarily increased after a return to in-person learning. 

Ameliorating these impacts for students with disabilities may be more difficult than for other students, our new report shows. The research indicates a spike in the number of underqualified special education teachers working in classrooms. In Pennsylvania, the number of emergency-certified special education teachers nearly doubled from 2018 to fall 2020. Nationally, 45% of schools reported at least one vacancy in special education teaching staff positions, according to new from the National Center for Educational Statistics. 

Federal special education law requires school districts to compensate students with disabilities for lost instructional or therapeutic time. But staffing challenges means many schools are likely stretched just trying to deliver regular instruction, much less compensatory services. Across the country, some districts have wrongly asserted that they are not required to compensate for pandemic-related lost instructional time. Only about one in four parents of children with disabilities have received information about compensatory services, and fewer than one in five parents said their child had received those services, according to a conducted by a legal group that protects the rights of students with disabilities. Nearly nine out of 10 parents, however, reported their child experienced learning loss or regression during the pandemic. 

Our panel of scholars recommended three steps policymakers can take to better help these students: 

• Invest in data and research to track short- and long-term outcomes for students with disabilities and to disaggregate results to specify disability status as well as other factors like race.
• Provide technical assistance to districts struggling to meet such students’ needs.
• Identify and disseminate examples of innovative and effective strategies for educating students with disabilities.

For me, that last point is critical. New online learning tools, innovative staffing models and creative community partnerships can help schools address the immediate needs of students with disabilities. They might also help meet the needs of millions of other children who face unique learning obstacles or emotional challenges. American schools are facing wicked problems. But if educators and communities can explore and implement new approaches to help students with learning differences, the most effective changes might help build toward something better for all students, as well.

“I can only imagine the bottleneck of litigation that is coming,” Kelman said. “I have clients to this day who have not heard from their teachers or their service providers.”

Because of the abrupt switch to remote learning when COVID-19 swept the country, districts nationwide have struggled to follow through with the services students are required by law to receive. It was made even harder by the fact that individualized education programs, or IEPs, that determine services for each special education student were never meant to be delivered virtually. These services might range from extra tutoring or speech therapy to extensive, one-on-one assistance for students with severe and complex health needs.

In Los Angeles, Jabril Scott, who is entering kindergarten this fall, is supposed to receive speech, occupational and physical therapy. But “for the first month [of school closures], we didn’t hear anything from any therapist at all,” said his mother, Noel Scott.

When a therapist eventually contacted the family, they sent links to handouts for at-home activities. “It was just really silly,” Scott said.

released in May showed that almost 40 percent of parents whose children typically receive individual support in school did not get those services during school closures. Those with IEPs were also twice as likely to be doing little to no remote learning, and were just as likely to say that distance learning was going poorly.

Before schools closed, Jabril, who has Down syndrome, was also supposed to receive a device that helps him communicate. But when Noel Scott asked about it, she was told the office where the device was kept was locked. With schools in Los Angeles remaining closed for the beginning of the year, she’s not very hopeful that remote services will improve.

“Especially if we’re going to be doing online distance learning, there has to be a lot of engagement for him to participate in that,” she said.

Special education students “struggled the most,” Mississippi State Superintendent Carey Wright said recently in a call with reporters. She added that her department has “heard from parents who did not feel that their children received what they should.”

Special education families across the country have stories like the Scotts’ this year. But whether districts provided services for students with special needs during school closures also varied tremendously and depended on a range of factors, including agreements negotiated with unions, if districts already had one-to-one device programs, and teachers’ own family circumstances.

Some districts and regional education agencies that provide special education services say they are already being sued, and they expect litigation costs to further strain budgets when many are already facing cuts. Their reports come as the Senate is considering another pandemic relief bill that leading Republicans have said should include liability protections.

But John Eisenberg, executive director of the National Association of State Directors of Special Education, said that across the board, states have not yet seen a flood of lawsuits. While some districts might be receiving more complaints based on how responsive schools were to families during the school closures, the majority of complaints “get resolved with a phone call,” he said.

Even so, at least two cases have received attention so far. And with a growing number of districts announcing they will remain closed for the start of the school year, the issues prompting complaints could continue into the coming year.

In New York City, a disability rights attorney has signed 200 parents from 10 states onto to reopen schools so students can receive in-person services. With a radio advertising campaign, he’s seeking more families to join. And in Hawaii, aims to make it easier for districts to make up for the special education services students didn’t receive during the closures.

The reopening debate is spurring additional litigation — both in states that are aggressively reopening schools and those that are not. In Florida, education groups over Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’s order to reopen schools, leaving many special education families conflicted.

Parents “know that their children need specially designed instruction delivered in the classroom,” said Ann Siegel, the director of advocacy, education and outreach for Disability Rights Florida. But in other cases, she said, virtual instruction was more individualized and positive.

In California, where Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, has issued restrictions stating which schools can reopen, a conservative group last week, arguing that students with disabilities are among those hurt the most by distance learning.

A small survey of in the Los Angeles Unified School District showed that less than half of the respondents said their children received services during the three months that schools were closed in the spring. Others said the therapy provided wasn’t effective.

Fearing ‘legal challenges’ 

AASA, The School Superintendents Association, lobbied hard for the federal government to lift the requirements of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act during this crisis, and they continue to look for such in the next relief package, as well as “protection against related litigation.”

Although the Coronavirus, Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act passed in March allowed for the waiver of major elements of the special education law, U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos against lenience. She urged districts to demonstrate “ingenuity, innovation and grit” in serving students with special needs through distance learning or other methods. She also hasn’t granted a request from the Council for Exceptional Children for over IEP timelines.

Some districts acted on their own, however, asking parents to waive their rights to services for their children, but such moves have been declared to be legally out of bounds. The New Jersey Department of Education, for example, issued saying such waivers violate state and federal laws.

In a this month, AASA, the National School Boards Association and the Association of Educational Service Agencies said 9 percent of respondents in those service agencies have received due process complaints related to the pandemic — essentially demanding what families are entitled to under the law. In addition, 30 percent of school districts and 38 percent of the regional agencies said they were expecting complaints.

Anonymous comments included “I fear that the cost of litigation could potentially bankrupt our district” and “We are a very small independent district, and a single due process hearing could, in reality, close down the district.”

The survey report notes that a single due process complaint can cost as much as $50,000, even if the parties mediate an agreement. About one-third of the special-education-related complaints districts said they had received focus on insufficient services, and 22 percent focus on compensatory services, which aim to help the students make the same amount of progress they would have if the services hadn’t been lost. Fifteen percent of the complaints focus on IEP meetings.

The report blames the Trump administration, saying that “policy support has been inadequate” and that while DeVos offered flexibility in how services were provided, “the ambiguity of federal or state policies could lead to legal challenges for school practitioners.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican from Kentucky, has spoken repeatedly about providing liability protection in the next federal relief package. On Monday, he and Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas introduced the “,” which aims to discourage “insubstantial lawsuits” against a variety of institutions, including school districts. But Sasha Pudelski, assistant director of policy and advocacy for AASA, said the bill wouldn’t prevent complaints or litigation related to special education.

‘Good faith attempts’

Eisenberg said AASA and the other organizations are trying to “sell a narrative” and that there’s no indication that there’s an increase in litigation compared with a typical year. Districts see thousands of requests for mediation and due process complaints every year. last fall from the U.S. Government Accountability Office showed that requests for mediation — considered a less adversarial route than lawsuits — have increased over the past decade, while due process complaints have declined.

Wendy Tucker, senior director of policy for the National Center for Special Education in Charter Schools, added that if schools made “good-faith attempts” to provide services, remained in touch with parents during the shutdown and worked out compromises, they are less likely to see complaints. Most parents, she said, weren’t expecting perfection.

Linda Litzinger, a public policy specialist with Texas Parent to Parent, a statewide advocacy organization, agreed. She said parents have complained the most about a lack of communication from districts regarding how and when services would be delivered.

“[Parents] gave the schools a lot of leeway, and that worked for a while,” she said. But when weeks passed and parents still hadn’t heard from their children’s special education teachers or classroom aides, “the frustration mounted.”

A lot of parents, she said, are “on pause” because they want to know what districts are planning for this fall before they file a complaint or join a class action.

As in New Jersey and , Litzinger said some families in Texas were asked to sign waivers absolving districts from special education laws or from following what is in a student’s IEP during school closures. Her group has told them, “Please don’t sign anything,” and to get an expert to review it. A parent in the Northside Independent School District, for example, was asked to sign a temporary “continuity plan” explaining how services would be modified while schools were closed.

Eisenberg said such waivers “would not pass legal muster.” And Phyllis Wolfram, executive director of the Council for Exceptional Children’s school administrators organization, said she has advised districts not to send blanket waivers to families and to instead “continue to work individually with families on what they could provide.”

‘A mixed bag’

Still, remote learning benefited some students with special needs, even if they didn’t receive all of the services in their IEPs. Tracy James, a grandmother in Escambia County, Florida, called distance learning — and her thoughts on schools reopening — “a mixed bag.”

While at home, her oldest grandson, Kyrian, who is entering first grade, avoided behavior problems that sometimes landed him in the “seclusion or isolation room” at school. But he missed out on the speech therapy he would have received in the classroom. Her younger grandson, Karsen, is entering the state pre-K program. Because he’s still developing language, James said, he needs the “initial in-person engagement” of a classroom.

For this fall, she and her daughter have decided on a virtual school option for Kyrian and have been promised that he’ll receive speech therapy later on.

And other families were impressed with how their schools handled the shift to remote instruction. Wendy Mauer, whose son Carter attends Suchma Elementary School in the Conroe Independent School District north of Houston, even dropped a complaint filed with the state education agency over his IEP because of the school’s approach, which included home visits by her son’s teachers.

“We had several IEP meetings online, and communication with staff was completely responsive,” Mauer said. “When I expressed his work was not with accommodations, they immediately provided that service. The district also had an outstanding online learning portal for parents to navigate for resources and activities by their district curriculum specialists.”

Looking toward the new school year, Wright in Mississippi said, many districts are planning to include those with special needs in the “first tier” of students who are brought back into schools for in-person teaching.

“This is a place we’ve never been. And I’ll be up front about it, I don’t have all the answers,” she said. “We’re all trying to right this ship.”

Some states are already using federal relief funds to help districts do a better job of providing special education services. Oklahoma, for example, has drawn from both the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund and the Governor’s Emergency Education Relief Fund — part of the CARES Act — for a that can be used for special education services. Of the 345 districts receiving the grants, 74 said they would use the funds for that reason.

In June, the Tennessee Department of Education announced that school districts would receive an extra $5 million on top of what they would normally receive in federal funds for special education to cover additional services, often delivered in the summer or after school.

But that was back when state and district leaders were likely thinking students would be returning to school next month as normal. Now there is no clear end to what services the additional instruction or therapy would be compensating for.

“It sounds like a good idea, but now we’re months later,” Tucker said.

‘Enormous academic needs’ 

Some experts say both school districts and parents need to move beyond the question of how to duplicate special education services — as spelled out in an IEP — in an at-home setting. An IEP includes specific goals for each student. But it also details the types of services or accommodations needed to help the student reach those goals, as well as where and how often those services will be delivered.

As long as parents’ demands focus on specific hours of therapy sessions, for example, there will be an uptick in litigation, said Nathan Jones, an associate professor of special education at Boston University. He also recently co-authored a reopening focusing on special education.

While students have a right to what’s in their IEPs, he said, it’s more important now to focus on what students need academically to regain what they’ve lost and to make progress when school resumes. How, he asked, are schools “going to meet the enormous academic needs students present when they walk in the door, whether it’s in person or virtual?”

He highlighted New Hampshire Gov. Christopher Sununu for IEP teams to meet before the end of the school year, to offer extended school year services if needed, and then to have another IEP meeting within 30 days after the school year starts.

Rather than encouraging families to file complaints, Siegel in Florida said she’s advising families to focus on making sure their children are assessed when school starts and to determine what additional services will be needed.

“Honestly, this is not a point-your-finger blame game,” she said. “We’re in this pandemic together.”

Betsy DeVos released last month a  and a  that make it clear that districts will not be held accountable for their inability to serve special education students during extended school closures due to COVID-19.

These documents merely state districts’ obligations to special education students from a legal standpoint: “To the greatest extent possible,” the guidance says, the school must provide students with disabilities the services identified in their Individualized Education Plans.

The federal government should have gone further in clarifying best practices to support students with disabilities so they, too, can receive robust learning opportunities remotely — much like their general education peers.

While compliance is necessary, it is not sufficient for the roughly 6.7 million students who receive special education services. We cannot lose the human element in all of this. All children, and particularly children with disabilities, thrive on routines and clear expectations. This sudden switch to no school for an extended period of time puts students with disabilities in a more vulnerable position than ever before, especially those facing intersectional disadvantages — like students with disabilities who are also economically disadvantaged and/or English learners.

Rather than focusing on compliance, there’s an incredible and potentially game-changing opportunity right now to disrupt the status quo of special education.

In our current system, adaptive technology (enhancements to existing technology that allow users to interact differently with that technology — such as screen magnifiers) and assistive technology (devices made to improve the functions of people with disabilities — such as software that converts electronic text to spoken word) are underused tools that many students with special needs cannot access. Now is the time to change that. Rather than talking about compliance, let’s discuss how we can finally provide all students with disabilities the technology they need and deserve.

Among students with disabilities, there’s an extremely wide range of learning styles, as well as an extremely wide range of physical and cognitive abilities. Although there will never be a one-size-fits-all approach, there are numerous assistive and adaptive technology solutions to choose from in order to fit the diverse needs of students with disabilities.

For students with moderate to severe disabilities, assistive technology provides opportunities to perform tasks with greater ease and independence. A few assistive technology examples include screen readers, text-to-speech synthesizers, sip-and-puff systems, trackballs and braille embossers. These sorts of solutions can be life-changing. For example, my sister’s friend recently started using , an augmentative and alternative communication app, which has greatly enhanced her ability to communicate with others — life-changing, to say the least.

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act mandates that to all students with disabilities. Given that , school districts have typically not been able to afford the wide range of technology devices needed to accommodate all students with disabilities.

This is the opportunity.

In response to COVID-19, Congress last month passed the CARES Act, which provides through the . Although none of this money is earmarked for special education, states and districts can — and should — allocate a significant portion of this money to special education — and adaptive technology, specifically — to ensure that all students have the technology they need to fully participate in distance-learning opportunities.

Teachers and school leaders can also employ simple solutions to ensure that their online lessons are accessible to a wider range of learners. Students with disabilities can benefit from simple enhancements, such as word prediction software, video captions, computers with voice output and/or visual output, large print, clear color contrasts, and simple and predictable graphic design layouts. Some of these enhancements are free, like creating lessons with larger print, but other higher-tech solutions, such as screen readers, will cost money. Once again, states and districts need to prioritize funding for accessible technology immediately.

The best part of all of this is that when we focus on meeting the needs of our most diverse learners, we — by default — create material that is more accessible and engaging to all students. When a teacher creates a lesson with clear contrast to meet the needs of his visually impaired student, for example, another student with poor lighting in their home, yet another student who has yet to be diagnosed with a visual impairment, and another student who chooses to do their lesson outside in the sun also benefit from the lesson with clear contrast.

This sort of thinking is consistent with — an approach to curriculum that minimizes barriers and maximizes learning for all students. As teachers shift to online classrooms due to COVID-19, there’s a unique opportunity to implement UDL principles, which will ensure that online lessons are accessible to a wider range of learners.

“UDL aims to change the design of the environment rather than to change the learning,” . “When environments are intentionally designed to reduce barriers, all learners can engage in rigorous, meaningful learning.”

When it comes to special education during COVID-19, we need to flip the script and talk about opportunity, not compliance. Let’s work together to pool resources — federal and state funding, resources from big tech companies and grants from foundations — to provide all special education students with accessible technology and, while we’re at it, disrupt the status quo of special education in America.

To get the ball rolling, share your online resources for special education students using #SPEDCOVID19.

Kathleen Callahan is a senior analyst at , working on bridging the gap between research, policy and practice in order to alleviate systemic inequities in education. Her personal and professional passion is advocating for students with disabilities.