Disability rights advocates urge Education Secretary DeVos to ensure special education students receive equal services - The Washington Post

Disability rights advocates urge Education Secretary DeVos to ensure special education students receive equal services - The Washington Post

Disability rights advocates urge Education Secretary DeVos to ensure special education students receive equal services

One of the biggest challenges for school districts across the country that are delivering distance learning to millions of students at home because of the covid-19 crisis is providing legally required services to students with disabilities.

Under the federal Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, school districts must offer all students an equitable education or they are not supposed to offer it to any of them. Not many school systems have come up with a way to extend online learning and other critical services to the 7 million children with disabilities across the country. And some districts, because they cannot provide special education services at home, aren’t offering online instruction to any student.

Now, there is tension between groups that advocate for these students — who each have an Individualized Education Program or IEP — and organizations that represent special education administrators. The advocates are demanding that school districts deliver education equitably, as the law requires, while administrators say they cannot do the same things they did when schools were open and need some flexibility.

For parents trying to replicate school for children with disabilities, a confounding task

Two groups of administrators — the Council of Administrators of Special Education and the National Association of State Directors of Special Education — jointly sent a letter to Congress asking for flexibility on IDEA timelines, such as when districts must respond to legal complaints or review a student’s IEP.

The letter (seen in full below) says in part:

Local education agencies (LEAs) are facing a great deal of compliance challenges which are taking our focus from educating children with disabilities and shifting focusing our effort on paperwork. Without flexibility, we will generate endless cycles of reporting about how COVID-19 caused money to be unspent, evaluations to be delayed, and services and supports that are in IEPs that are not able to be implemented. We are concerned about requesting numerous meetings and activities of families who are already experiencing many stresses and challenges. For this reason, we are asking for temporary and targeted flexibilities in implementing IDEA during this pandemic so that we can keep our focus on collaborating with parents and families and on providing appropriate services to students with disabilities. In no other situation in our organizations’ history can we find a time where we have asked for limited flexibilities in implementing the IDEA.

Advocates said they disagree.

Sign up for our Coronavirus Updates newsletter to track the outbreak. All stories linked in the newsletter are free to access.

The Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities (CCD) and the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates (COPAA) wrote letters (see below) to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos about special waivers from federal law regarding the education of students with disabilities.

Congress, in its recent $2 trillion economic stimulus package, known as the Cares Act, included a requirement that DeVos report back by late April on whether she needs congressional approval to provide school districts with waivers to IDEA during the pandemic. DeVos has not said publicly CONTINUE READING: Disability rights advocates urge Education Secretary DeVos to ensure special education students receive equal services - The Washington Post