A story that has been breaking stateside in the last couple weeks but probably has not gotten its due attention, either here in the U.S. or abroad, is the recent failing of the Texas Education Agency (TEA) to ensure that disabled children across the state of Texas - the second-largest of the United States - are being provided adequate access to special education resources.
The Department of Education led by (the generally on the wrong side of things) Betsy DeVos condemned the state's existing policy, which contains an "enrollment target" resulting in a surplus of children denied support they sorely need, and to which they are entitled. A massive overhaul on the more than ten-year-old policy has been called for.
Check out the New York Times article reprinted below for "just the facts, ma'am" and then go to this link for a heartbreaking behind-the-scenes look in the San Antonio Express-News: http://www.mysanantonio.com/opinion/commentary/article/Federal-special-education-violations-need-12505606.php
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Texas Illegally Excluded Thousands From Special Education, Federal Officials Say
For
years, Texas education officials illegally led schools across the state
to deny therapy, tutoring, and counseling to tens of thousands of
children with disabilities, the federal government said Thursday.
In
a letter to the Texas Education Agency, which oversees education in the
state, regulators from the federal Department of Education said the
state agency's decision to set a "target" for the maximum percentage of
students who should receive special education services had violated
federal laws requiring schools to serve all students with disabilities.
The
target, enacted in 2004 and eliminated last year, was set at 8.5
percent of enrollment, and school districts were penalized for exceeding
that benchmark, even though the state and national averages had both
long been about 12 percent. As a direct result of the policy, regulators
determined, the share of students receiving special education services
in Texas dropped from 11.6 percent in 2004 to 8.6 percent in 2016 — a
difference of about 150,000 children.
In
the letter, federal regulators ordered the state to design a plan to
identify students who were inappropriately kept out of special education
and to figure out how to help them, among other corrective actions.
The
order brought to an end one of the Department of Education's most
extensive reviews in recent history. Investigators spent 15 months
holding public forums, interviewing teachers, and visiting school
districts. The letter represented the first major state monitoring
decision approved by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who at times has
been criticized for relaxing some special educations regulations.
"Every
child with a disability must have appropriate access to special
education and related services that meet his or her unique needs," Ms.
DeVos said in a statement announcing the regulatory action. "Far too
many students in Texas had been precluded from receiving supports and
services."
Texas
state officials had denied for months that any child had been
inappropriately kept out of special education. But the state's governor
and education commissioner responded to the federal review on Thursday
by pledging corrective action.
"The
past dereliction of duty on the part of many school districts to serve
our students and the failure of the TEA to hold districts accountable are
worthy of criticism," Governor Greg Abbott wrote in a letter to the Texas
Education Agency, referring to the agency by its initials. "Such
failures are not acceptable, and the TEA must take steps now to
significantly increase the oversight provided to ensure our special
education students are receiving the services they deserve."
Mr.
Abbott, a Republican who took office in 2015, ordered education
officials to draft a corrective action plan within seven days.
Education
Commissioner Mike Morath issued his own statement, noting that the
state already had increased resources for parents and hired 39
additional special education workers across the state.
"I am committing today that there will be more," he said in the statement.
The
federal review was prompted by a 2016 investigation by the Houston
Chronicle, which revealed the enrollment target. The newspaper quoted
dozens of teachers saying that the target had forced them to withhold
services from students with autism, attention deficit hyperactivity
disorder, dyslexia, mental illnesses, speech impairments, or even
blindness and deafness.
In
the resulting outcry, Texas lawmakers ended the policy and passed
several bills overhauling special education. Still, the federal review
found that years of pressure from state officials to enroll fewer
students in special education had created a culture of noncompliance
with federal law that had outlasted the policy.
Among
other issues, the federal regulators found that many Texas schools have
trained teachers not to try to find out whether struggling students
qualify for special education until regular classroom teaching
techniques like "Response to Intervention" have been tried for years
without success. That approach runs counter to federal law, which
requires schools to evaluate students as soon as a disability is
suspected.
The
letter said regulators identified a statewide pattern of evaluations
being "delayed or not conducted for children who were suspected of
having a disability because these children were receiving supports for
struggling learners in the general education environment."
Advocates
for children with disabilities praised the federal government's action
on Thursday, while cautioning that there was more work to do.
"The
Commissioner of Education must immediately embrace the corrective
actions required by the U.S. Department of Education and take additional
steps, in collaboration with stakeholders, to ensure that all students
who were previously denied special education services now rightfully
receive compensatory services," said Dustin Rynders, the education
director at Disability Rights Texas, an advocacy group based in Houston
that receives federal funds.
Mr.
Rynders was the first advocate to discover the state's enrollment
target. He filed complaints about it with state and federal officials in
2015, but he was ignored.
"Texas
students with disabilities who have been ignored and shunned by the
special education system have some measure of validation today," he
said.
