Denied: Schools push students out of special education to meet state limit
LAREDO – A few days before school began here in 2007, district administrators called an emergency staff meeting.
The Texas Education Agency had determined that they had too many students in special education, the administrators announced, and they had come up with a plan: Remove as many kids as possible.
The staffers did as they were told, and during that school year, the Laredo Independent School District purged its rolls, discharging nearly a third of its special education students, according to district data. More than 700 children were forced out of special education and moved back into regular education. 
Only 78 new students entered services.
Only 78 new students entered services."We basically just picked kids and weeded them out," said Maricela Gonzalez, an elementary school speech therapist. "We thought it was unfair, but we did it."
Gonzalez's account, confirmed by two coworkers and district documents, illustrates how some schools across Texas have ousted children with disabilities from needed services in order to comply with an agency decree that no more than 8.5 percent of students should obtain specialized education. School districts seeking to meet the arbitrary benchmark have not only made services harder to get into but have resorted to removing hundreds and hundreds of kids, the Houston Chronicle has found.
In San Felipe Del Rio CISD, in West Texas, officials several years ago stopped serving children with one form of autism.
In Brazosport ISD, on the Gulf of Mexico, employees were instructed in 2009 to end tutoring forDenied: Disabled kids forced out to meet special ed target - Houston Chronicle:
A Chronicle Investigation
In Texas, unelected state officials have devised a system that has kept thousands of disabled kids out of special education. Read other installments in the series here.