Education Sec. Betsy DeVos hindering Obama-era law meant to help disabled minority students
The Trump cabinet member wants to stall laws passed years ago to benefit nonwhite special education students, a group which Blacks have a 40 percent higher chance of being a part of
U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has reportedly been trying to block the implementation of an Obama-era law designed to help disabled minority students, for well over a year now.
According to Raw Story, despite repeated efforts by supporters to force her compliance, DeVos and her team have made several attempts to stall the implementation of federal regulations created by the Obama Administration to effectively address the racial disparities that appear in special education.
When those regulations were established under the 2016 Equity in IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Act), states were given until July 2018 to comply, which would mean having an active standardized program in place for monitoring how districts both identified and served minority students living with disabilities.
But just two days short of the deadline, at a time when states should have been gearing up to address the glaring disparities in how Black children with disabilities are treated, DeVos pulled the plug on the endeavor entirely, citing that she had concerns that the methodology could incentivize the use of racial quotas.
This comes months after the National Association of State Directors of Special Education, Inc., wrote a letter to DeVos pleading with her not to stop the process writing, “NASDSE does not believe that addressing equity should ever be put on hold.”
According to a report by Department of Education’s 2016 annual report to Congress on the CONTINUE READING: Education Sec. Betsy DeVos hindering Obama-era law meant to help disabled minority students - theGrio
