More than 50 Minnesota school districts continue to use so-called seclusion rooms, according to data obtained by the . Districts use seclusion rooms for children with a disability and who are at risk of harming themselves or others.

This practice is banned or extremely limited in 21 states.

The 50 school districts maintain 194 registered seclusion rooms across 100 school buildings across the state, according to the records.

For the first time, the Minnesota Disability Law Center set out to document the state’s seclusion rooms, photographing more than 80 of them and documenting their locations in a report titled “.”

“I think the average person does not know this is happening in their schools. When they see the rooms and they find out how they’re used, the average person is appalled and is very upset and curious as to why this antiquated and traumatizing practice is still allowed in our schools,” said Jessica Heiser of the Minnesota Disability Law Center in an interview with the Reformer.

Multiple school districts in Minnesota do not practice seclusion, including Minneapolis Public Schools and Fridley Public Schools. Neither Spiro Academy nor Intermediate District 287 — which both specialize in serving students with disabilities — use seclusion.

During the 2023-24 school year, show that 553 students with disabilities were subjected to 3,451 instances of seclusion. In the 2024-25 school year, after seclusion was banned for students in third grade and below, 358 students were subjected to 1,867 episodes of seclusion.

The most recent from the U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights states that repeated use of seclusion for the same student by a school is likely a violation of the student’s rights.

Heiser said she believes one reason Minnesota has been slow to eliminate seclusion is because the policy affects a small number of students, and remains mostly hidden from the general public — and even from educators, school staff and parents of school-age children.

“Nobody wants their kids in one of these rooms. As a parent, I cannot look at this room and say in good grace that there is a single child that deserves to be locked in a cinder block room in a school,” Heiser said.

In 2023, the Minnesota Legislature passed a law that banned seclusion for students with disabilities from birth through third grade. At the time, the Minnesota Department of Education recommended that the state work towards eliminating the practice entirely by the start of the 2026-27 school year.

But progress towards that goal has halted in the Legislature. Sen. Judy Seeburger, DFL-Afton, proposed legislation last year to rollback the 2023 law banning seclusion for the youngest students. Seeburger also led a , which met 11 times between August and January. In the group’s , Seeburger explained how her adult son was subject to seclusion as a student and why she believes the practice was beneficial.

“The seclusion working group, everybody around the table, except Sen. Seeberger, said ‘We don’t want this practice,’” said Jessica Webster, an attorney at Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid. “What a bizarre place for us to be standing that all of the voices agree that this is a harmful and traumatic practice that we shouldn’t be using, but we’re still using it.”

Seeberger did not respond to an interview request.

The working group’s meeting materials show a dozen letters that support letting schools continue to use seclusion, with varying degrees of support for rolling back the 2023 ban on using them on younger students. Five of the letters come from a single school district, Intermediate School District 917, which serves as a special education cooperative for nine districts in the south metro. Another five come from other special education cooperatives around the state. Intermediate and cooperative districts typically provide services for students with disabilities who often require services that are provided in separate school buildings.

Black students with disabilities are disproportionately subjected to seclusion, making up just 12% of students with disabilities in Minnesota but subject to 22% of all instances of seclusion.

“It is unquestionable in every state, including our own, that seclusion and restrictive procedures in general, like holds on children and locking children in rooms by themselves, is used against boys of color with disabilities more so than any other demographic,” Heiser said.

Heiser added that multiple federal investigations have led to banning seclusion in particular states or school districts because data show it is disproportionately used on boys of color.

Seclusion is primarily used on students between the ages of 6 and 10. Before the ban was implemented for students in third grade and below, these children with disabilities made up about one-third of students with disabilities in Minnesota, but were subject to more than two-thirds of all episodes of seclusion. In the same year, 16% of students with disabilities were ages 16-21, but they made up just 7% of the students subjected to seclusion.

After the K-3 seclusion ban, in the 2024-25 school year, 6 to 10 year olds still made up about one-third of students with disabilities, but they accounted for only 46% of all episodes of seclusion.

Heiser says that some defenders of seclusion say it is necessary because the children can become violent and could hurt someone if not locked in a room. But she calls this a “red herring.” She said it is “common sense” that an older child would be bigger and stronger, and thus more likely to cause injury to another person. She said there’s a simple explanation for why younger children are more likely to be subjected to seclusion: They’re smaller.

“It really just comes down to how easy is it to grab a kid and put them in the closet? It’s easier when they’re littler,” Heiser said.

Students with autism or whose disabilities are categorized as emotional or behavioral disorder are disproportionately more likely to experience seclusion. Just 10% of students with disabilities are in the emotional or behavioral disability category, while they experience about 2 of every 5 seclusion episodes. Students with autism make up about 16% of students with disabilities but experience more than one-third of all seclusion episodes. This did not change after seclusion was banned for K-3 students.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Minnesota Reformer maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor J. Patrick Coolican for questions: info@minnesotareformer.com.

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Sleep is a rare commodity at Lindsay Crain’s house. Most nights, she and her husband are up dozens of times, tending to their daughter’s seizures. The 16-year-old flails her arms, thrashes and kicks — sometimes for hours.

But these days, that’s not the only thing keeping Crain awake. The Culver City mother worries about how President Donald Trump’s myriad budget cuts could strip their daughter of services she needs to go to school, live at home and enjoy a degree of independence that would have been impossible a generation ago.

“Every family I know is terrified right now,” Crain said. “We still have to live our everyday lives, which are challenging enough, but now it feels like our kids’ futures are at stake.”

Trump’s budget includes to Medicaid, which funds a wide swath of services to disabled children, including speech, occupational and physical therapy, wheelchairs, in-home aides and medical care. All children with physical, developmental or cognitive disabilities – in California, nearly 1 million – receive at least some services through Medicaid.

Meanwhile, at the U.S. Department of Education, Trump has gutted the Office of Civil Rights, which is among the agencies that enforce the 50-year-old law granting students with disabilities the right to attend school and receive an education appropriate to their needs. Before that law was enacted, students with disabilities often didn’t attend school at all.

“We have a delicate web of services that, combined, support a whole child, a whole family,” said Kristin Wright, executive director of inclusive practices and systems at the Sacramento County Office of Education and the former California state director of special education. “So when the basic foundational structure is upended, like Medicaid, for example, it’s not just one cut from a knife. It’s multiple.”

Republicans have also suggested moving the office of special education out of the Department of Education altogether and moving it to the Department of Health and Human Services. Disability rights advocates say that would bring a medical – rather than a social – lens to special education, which they described as a major reversal of progress.

Trump has chipped away at other rights protecting people with disabilities, as well. In September, the U.S. Department of Transportation said it that requires airlines to reimburse passengers for damaged or lost wheelchairs. Trump has also repeatedly used the word “,” widely considered a slur, who say it shows a lack of respect and understanding of the historical discrimination against people with disabilities. It’s all if the administration plans more cuts to hard-fought rights protecting people with disabilities.

Fewer therapists, less equipment

The Medicaid cuts may have the most immediate effect. People with developmental disabilities typically receive therapy, home visits from aides, equipment and other services through regional centers, a network of 21 mostly government-funded nonprofits in California that coordinate services for people with disabilities. The goal of regional centers is to help people with disabilities live as independently as possible.

More than a third of regional centers’ funding comes from Medicaid, which is facing deep cuts under Trump’s budget. The money runs out at the end of January, and it’s unclear what services will be cut.

Schools also rely on Medicaid to pay for therapists, equipment, vision and hearing tests and other services that benefit all students, not just those with disabilities. In light of , it’s not likely the state could backfill the loss of Medicaid funding, and schools would have to pare down their services. 

Uncertain futures

For Lelah Coppedge, whose teenage son has cerebral palsy, the worst part is the uncertainty. She knows cuts are coming, but she doesn’t know when or what they’ll include.

“I go down this rabbit hole of worst-case scenarios,” said Coppedge, who lives in the Canoga Park neighborhood in Los Angeles. “Before this happened, I felt there was a clear path for my son. Now that path is going away, and it’s terrifying.”

Coppedge’s son, Jack, is a 16-year-old high school student who excels at algebra and physics. He loves video games and has a wide circle of friends at school. He uses a wheelchair and struggles with speech, communicating mostly through eye movements. He’ll look at his mom’s right hand to indicate “yes,” her left hand for “no.”

Coppedge and her husband rely on a nurse who comes four days a week to help Jack get dressed, get ready for bed and do other basic activities. Medicaid pays for the nurse, as well as other services like physical therapy. Even though Coppedge and her husband both work and have high-quality private health insurance, they could not afford Jack’s care without help from the government.

They also rely on the local regional center, which they assumed would help Jack after he graduates from high school, so he can remain at home, continue to hone his skills and generally live as independently as possible. If that funding vanishes, Coppedage worries Jack will someday end up in a facility where people don’t know him, don’t know how to communicate with him and don’t care about him.

“It feels like we’re going backward,” Coppedge said. “Half the time, I put my head in the sand because I’m just trying to manage the day-to-day. The rest of the time I worry that (the federal government) is looking at people like Jack as medical problems, not as unique people who want to have full, happy lives. It feels like that’s getting lost.”

The current uncertainty is stressful, but it’s even harder for families who are immigrants, Wright said. Those families are less likely to stand up for services they’re entitled to and are facing the extra fear of deportation. English learners, as well as low-income children, are disproportionately represented among students in special education, .

“That’s the other piece to all this — how it’s affecting immigrant families,” Wright said. “It’s a whole other level of anxiety and fear.”

Decades of progress on the line

Karma Quick-Panwala, an advocate at the nonprofit Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, said she worries about the rollback of decades’ worth of progress that was hard-won by the disability rights community. 

The , the 1975 law that created special education, actually predates the federal Department of Education. In fact, Congress created the department in part to oversee special education. Removing special ed would be a devastating blow to the disability community — not just because services might be curtailed, but philosophically, as well, Quick-Panwala said. 

In the Department of Education, special education is under the purview of education experts who promote optimal ways to educate students with disabilities, so they can learn, graduate from high school and ideally go on to productive lives. In the Department of Health and Human Services, special education would no longer be overseen by educators but by those in the medical field, where they’re more likely to “look at disability as something to be cured or segregated and set aside,” Quick-Panwala said.

“The disability rights community has worked so hard and gave so much to make sure people with disabilities had a right to a meaningful education, so they could have gainful employment opportunities and participate in the world,” Quick-Panwala said. “The idea is that they wouldn’t just be present at school, but they would actually learn and thrive.”

For the time being, Wright, Quick-Panwala and other advocates are reminding families that federal funding might be shrinking, but the laws remain unchanged. Students are still entitled under federal law to the services outlined in their individual education plans, regardless of whether there’s money to pay for it. The funding will have to come from somewhere, at least for now, even if that means cutting it from another program. And California is unlikely to roll back its own special education protections, regardless of what happens in Washington, D.C.

An imperfect but successful routine

Those reassurances are scant comfort to Crain, whose daughter Lena will rely on government support her entire life. Born seven weeks prematurely, Lena has cerebral palsy, epilepsy, a cognitive impairment and is on the deaf-blind spectrum. But she has a 100-watt smile and a relentless spirit, Crain said. Even after the whole family has been up all night, Lena insists on going to school and getting the most out of every day.

Funny and assertive, she has a few close friends and, like many teenagers, plenty of opinions about her parents. She loves her English teacher and spends most of her day in regular classrooms with help from an aide. Her favorite book is about Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani activist who won a Nobel Peace Prize for fighting for girls’ right to an education.

Between school and home visits from aides and after-school therapists, Crain feels the family has pieced together an imperfect but mostly successful routine for Lena.

“Our entire lives are about teaching her self-advocacy, so she can have the most independent life possible,” Crain said. “Just because you need support doesn’t mean you can’t have a say in your life. There’s been so much work around the culture and the laws and the education system to make sure disabled people can make their own choices in life. We’re absolutely terrified of losing that.”

This article was and was republished under the license.

It’s a role this deejay is thrilled to fill at a school that encourages him to express himself any way he can. The magnetic and jovial Omoloju, a student at The International Academy of Hope, is legally blind, hearing impaired and nonverbal. But none of that stopped him from playing by Buckwheat Boyz mid-lesson on a recent morning.

“OK, Josh!” his teachers said, swiveling their hips and smiling. “Let’s go!”

iHOPE, as it’s known, was established in Harlem in 2013 for just six children and moved to its current location blocks from Rockefeller Center in 2022. It now serves 150 students ages 5 through 21 and is currently at capacity with 27 people on its waitlist, according to its principal. 

The four-story, nonprofit school offers age-appropriate academics alongside physical, occupational and speech therapy in addition to vision and hearing services. Every student at iHOPE has a full-time paraprofessional, who works with them throughout the day, and at least half participate in aquatic therapy in a heated cellar pool. 

The school has three gymnasiums fitted with equipment to increase students’ mobility, helping many walk or stand, something they rarely do because of their physical limitations. 

Its 300-member staff includes four full-time nurses and its six-figure cost averages $200,000 annually depending on each child’s needs. Parents can seek tuition reimbursement from the New York City Department of Education through legal processes set out by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, arguing that the public school cannot adequately meet their child’s needs.   

iHOPE focused primarily on rehabilitation in its early years but is now centered on academics and assistive technology, particularly augmentative and alternative communication devices that improve students’ access to learning. Mastery means users can take greater control of their lives. Shani Chill, the school’s principal and executive director, said working at iHOPE allows her to witness this transformational magic each day.

“Every student who comes here is a gift that is locked away inside and the staff come together to figure that out, saying, ‘I can give you this device, this tool, these tactiles’ and suddenly the student breaks through and shows us something amazing about themselves,” she said. “You see their personality, their humor, and the true wisdom that comes from students who would otherwise be sitting there in a wheelchair with everything being done for them — or to them.” 

Some devices, like the one Omoloju uses in his impromptu deejay booth, track students’ pupils, allowing them to answer questions and express, for example, joy or discomfort, prompting staff to make needed modifications. 

Because he’s unable to speak, Omoloju’s parents, teachers and friends assess his mood through other means, including his laughter, which arrives with ease and frequency at iHOPE. It’s a welcome contrast to what came before it at a different school, when a sudden eruption of tears would prompt a call to his mother, who would rush down to the campus, often too late to glean what upset him. 

“One of the things we saw when we first visited (iHOPE) was that they knew exactly how to work with him,” Terra Omoloju said earlier this week. “That was so impressive to me. I don’t feel anxious anymore about getting those calls.”

Yosef Travis, father to 8-year-old Juliette, said iHOPE embodies the idea that children with multiple disabilities and complex syndromes can grow with the right support. 

Juliette has a rare genetic disorder that impacts brain development and is also visually impaired. She squeals with joy with one-on-one attention and often taps her feet in excitement, Chill said. 

“Juliette has grown in leaps and bounds over the past three and a half years and the dedication and creativity of the staff played a significant role,” her father said. “When she is out sick or on school vacation, we can tell that she misses them.”

Travis said his family considered many options, both public and private, before choosing iHOPE.

“iHOPE was the only one that could provide a sound education without sacrificing the necessary supports and related services she needs for her educational journey,” he said. 

iHOPE currently serves one child from Westchester but all the others are from New York City. Parents are not referred there by their local district: They learn about it from social workers, therapists, doctors or through their own research, the principal said. 

Those seeking enrollment complete an intake process to ensure their child would be adequately served there. Parents typically make partial payments or deposits upfront — the amount varies depending on income — while seeking tuition reimbursement from the NYC DOE. 

iHOPE does not receive state or federal funding but some organizations that aid its students by the Trump administration, reducing the amount of support they can provide to families in the form of services and equipment. 

Principal Chill said her school is devoted to giving children the tools they need, even if it means absorbing added costs. 

“We’ll get it from somewhere,” she said, noting iHOPE can turn to partner organization and to its own fundraising efforts to pay those expenses so that every child, no matter their challenges, can learn. 

‘He knows he is in the right place’

Omoloju’ symptoms mimic cerebral palsy and he also has scoliosis. He’s prone to viruses and other ailments, is frequently hospitalized and has undergone surgeries for his hip and back. 

“He is also very charming,” his mother said. “He likes to have fun. He loves people. I feel very blessed that he is so joyous — even when he’s sick. He is very resilient. I love that about him. He teaches me so much.” 

This is Omoloju’s fourth year at iHOPE. He’s in the upper school program — iHOPE does not use grade levels — which serves students ages 14 through 21. 

He has made marked improvements in his mobility and communication since his enrollment. And his parents know he loves it there: Josh’s father, Wale, saw that firsthand after he dropped his son off at campus after a recent off-site appointment.

“I wish I had a video for when Keith [his son’s paraprofessional] came out of the elevator,” his father said. “[Josh] was beside himself laughing and was so excited to see him. He absolutely loves being there. I know he is in the right place and we love that.”

Principal Chill notes many of these students would not have been placed in an academic setting in decades past. Instead, she said, they would have been institutionalized, a cruel loss for them, their families and the greater community. 

“These kids deserve an education and what that looks like runs the spectrum,” she said. “You can have classrooms that feel like a babysitting facility with kids in wheelchairs given colored paper and crayons, which makes no sense. Or you have a place like iHOPE, which takes advantage of the age in which we are.”

Chill notes that assistive and communication-related devices have improved dramatically in recent years and are only expected to develop further. She’s not sure how AI might transform their lives moving forward, but highly sensitive devices that can be operated with a glance or a light touch could be life changing, for example, allowing students to activate smart devices in their own living space.

“This is a great time when you look at all of the technology that is available,” she said. 

‘Moved to tears’

Miriam Franco was thrilled about the progress her son, Kevin Carmona, 16, made in just his first six months at iHOPE, she said. 

Kevin, a high-energy student who thrives on praise from his teachers, is also good at listening: Ever curious, he’ll keep pace with a conversation from across the room if it interests him. 

Kevin has cerebral palsy and a rare genetic disorder that affects the brain and immune system. He has seizures, hip dysplasia and is fed with a gastronomy tube. 

“He was able to receive a communication device, which opened an entirely new world for him and allowed him to express himself in ways he could not before,” his mother said. “He also became more engaged and independent during his physical therapy and occupational therapy sessions. His attention and focus improved when completing tasks or responding to prompts, leading to greater engagement and participation.”

His enthusiasm for the school shows itself each morning, Franco said.

“You can see how happy he is while waiting for the bus and greeting his travel paraprofessional,” she said. “It starts from the moment he wakes up and continues as he gets ready for school. In every part of his current educational setting, Kevin is given real opportunities to participate, with the support in place to make that possible.” 

Principal Chill said she cherishes the moment parents visit the site for the first time, imagining all their child is capable of achieving. 

“They  are moved to tears, saying, ‘Now I can picture what my child can do someday,” she said.

As a disabled American, it’s hard to express how profoundly this piece of legislation has impacted my life. Without it, I would likely be living in an , deprived of the rights and opportunities I have now. As the IDEA turns 50 this month, attacks from the Trump administration threaten to undermine the protections it provides millions of Americans like me.

The IDEA stems from the Supreme Court’s decision, which quashed the racist “separate but equal” doctrine and heralded the desegregation of American public schools, with Chief Justice Earl Warren segregation as a “denial of the equal protection of the laws.”

Disability advocates took notice of the decision, arguing that segregation based on disability is also inherently unequal. This led to a case called Pennsylvania Association for Retarded Children (PARC) v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in 1972, where a federal court ruled that disabled children have a right to education. Three years later, the IDEA was passed.

Thanks to the new law, I attended public school from pre-K through 12th grade, receiving vital services that prepared me for college and a robust career. Each year, my parents and I met with teachers and other specialists to carefully negotiate services and develop an individualized education plan, or IEP, that ensured my experience at school remained equitable.

It wasn’t until high school that I realized how important these meetings really were. From accessible buses to physical therapy to participating on my high school track team, the IDEA funded services so that I could continue learning alongside my non-disabled peers. It even ensured that I received adaptive driver’s education training during my junior year. Without the support these services provided me during my formative school years, I have no doubt I’d be in a much different place today.

Alarmingly, the Trump administration is now trying to eliminate the protections and services that the IDEA guarantees. For example, racial minority students with disabilities are often when they’re young and in later years, leading them to miss out on key early interventions. This can lead to Black and brown disabled students being placed in segregated classrooms and receiving punishment at higher rates.

In 2016, the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services finalized a rule requiring states to follow procedures to improve monitoring of schools that are disproportionately identifying and punishing disabled racial minority students. In August 2025, the Trump administration’s Department of Education to reverse that rule. If successful, it would likely mean a spike in educational discrimination against disabled Black and brown students who are already struggling.

The current administration is also attempting to eliminate IDEA funding by consolidating funding with other programs in a block grant and letting states decide how to spend those dollars.

Obtaining IDEA evaluations and services is already difficult, since it often requires parents to fight on behalf of their children. My parents spent countless hours pushing schools to provide the right services so that I could attend and fully participate in school and after-school activities. I was lucky enough that my parents had the resources and knowledge to fight for my rights under the IDEA.

Many don’t have the time, resources, or knowledge to successfully negotiate with schools, which leaves many disabled students to navigate their education through significant barriers.

My education led me to become the senior director at a policy think-tank in Washington, D.C. I’ve had the privilege of speaking before Congress and even a vice president to advocate for disabled people. But I fear the opportunities afforded to me may vanish for the next generation of disabled students in the U.S.Disabled people are already twice as likely to be and live in than non-disabled people. Obtaining an education is ways to help disabled people secure a stable income—and by weakening the IDEA, the Trump administration is trying to take those opportunities away. As the rates of rise, it’s more important than ever for us to protect and fund this essential civil rights law.

After trading taunts with a classmate one morning in March 2023, Tristan threw a punch that busted the other student’s lip. A teacher who intervened wound up with a bloody nose and swollen lip in the ensuing scuffle.

Then a ninth grader at Brooklyn’s Medgar Evers College Preparatory School, Tristan later took responsibility for starting the fight. “I hit him first — that’s where I was wrong,” said the teen, who requested his last name be withheld for privacy reasons.

School officials suspended Tristan for more than three weeks, among the longest punishments typically allowed . But while the case seemed open and shut, an impartial hearing officer later ruled that the lengthy suspension violated the teen’s rights.

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Tristan, who has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, received special education services to address impulse control and anger management. But the school failed to provide numerous counseling sessions that were supposed to help him learn to regulate his emotions, the hearing officer found.

During a legally required meeting to assess whether Tristan’s disability played a role in the fight, school staff did not consider his special education records, behavioral plan, or history of similar outbursts.

“There is no evidence that the [school’s review team] discussed any relevant documents,” wrote hearing officer Patricia Le Goff, who noted the school did not follow the required step-by-step process and Tristan’s mother was not allowed to offer her perspective. The hearing officer found that Tristan’s behavior stemmed from his disability and the school’s failure to provide counseling sessions.

Le Goff concluded that Tristan should not have received a lengthy punishment. But it was too late. Tristan had served his suspension.

New York City’s public schools routinely flout federal rules designed to prevent schools from removing children from class for long periods due to behavior related to their disabilities, a Chalkbeat investigation has found.

To examine the discipline process, Chalkbeat obtained hundreds of pages of special education records and rulings from impartial hearing officers who reviewed appeals from families whose children with disabilities received lengthy punishments. Those records — as well as interviews with more than a dozen parents, advocates, and school officials — reveal a pattern of schools failing to properly consider a student’s disability during the suspension process.

As a result, some students are serving longer punishments than legally allowed, a problem that disproportionately affects Black students. The removals can compound academic struggles among students who are often far behind their peers.

The problem stretches back years. Independent monitors who looked at nearly 1,400 suspensions between 2015 and 2018 found systemic flaws with the review process, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of findings that have not previously been made public.

“There are students who are being suspended weeks and weeks more than they should be,” said Andrew Gerst, an attorney who handled Tristan’s appeal while working at Mobilization for Justice, an organization that represents low-income families. “They should not be kept out of school one minute longer than they have to be.”

Students with disabilities are far more likely to be suspended compared with their nondisabled peers. As a group, they were removed from class 14,000 times last school year, about 39% of all removals and suspensions, despite representing 22% of the student body.

For long-term suspensions, which are less common and typically issued for significant misconduct, federal law requires an extra level of review. Schools must consider whether the behavior in question was related to a student’s disability or a failure to provide special education services guaranteed in their learning plan.

Trisha Clayton, Tristan’s mother, said the suspension review process left her feeling like the school wasn’t interested in supporting her son, and the lengthy punishment knocked him further off track. A different hearing officer later ordered the Education Department to pay for 900 hours of one-on-one tutoring in addition to other therapies to make up for inadequate special education support.

“He missed out on a lot of instructional hours,” Clayton said. “If you have a child with a learning disability or anger issues, they just don’t want to deal with those kinds of kids.”

Education Department officials said they could not comment on specific student cases, and the principal at Medgar Evers did not respond to questions.

School staffers on other campuses who have participated in suspension reviews said there are often good reasons to issue longer punishments, as they can help maintain a safe learning environment for other students and possibly deter future misconduct.

“Holding your teacher against the wall, or punching someone in the face, that’s not necessarily a manifestation of their disability most of the time,” said Anna Nelson, a former Bronx assistant principal who has participated in suspension reviews. “If a kid’s never been suspended before, it’s a message that really sticks with them.”

But advocates and parents say that schools often reflexively dismiss the possibility that a student’s disability played a role in their misconduct.

City education officials acknowledged in an interview with Chalkbeat that implementation of the suspension reviews can be uneven.

Over 600 Education Department staffers have been trained to make the reviews more collaborative, according to a department spokesperson, and officials have revised letters sent to families to better explain the process.

Stephanie Jemilo, a special projects director at the Education Department who oversees the training, said her team works with specific schools when they receive complaints from families. The goal is to make the meetings feel less punitive.

“It really is the process to say, ‘Hey, something‘s not working here, and let’s all come together and figure out what’s not working,’ ” she said.

Schools have long failed to account for students’ disabilities in the suspension process

All public schools are required to educate students with disabilities alongside their nondisabled peers to the greatest extent possible, a cornerstone of the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. The law is designed to prevent schools from using the discipline process to exclude those students.

When a student is suspended for more than 10 days, or if there’s a pattern of short-term removals, school staff must determine if the behavior in question was “caused by or had a direct and substantial relationship” to the student’s disability or the school’s failure to provide mandated services.

If the answer to either is yes, the student is supposed to return to class immediately, and the school is required to conduct a behavior assessment. (There are some exceptions for extreme violence, drugs, or weapons possession.)

To make that decision, school officials must hold a meeting called a within 10 days of the student’s removal from class. Schools must include parents and at least one staff member who knows the student, including a school psychologist or guidance counselor. Families are entitled to request others to join, such as a teacher who works with their child, and they can bring an advocate.

In theory, the process should be collaborative. But the final decision rests with the student’s school, an arrangement that families and advocates say is far from objective.

“It’s like somebody gets arrested and you go to the police station and ask them to have a hearing about whether they think that they were right to arrest the person,” Gerst said. “They have every incentive to stand by their decision.”

Problems with the city’s discipline process aren’t new, according to a Chalkbeat review of legal records and city data that has not previously been made public. A 2002 filed by the nonprofit group Advocates for Children claimed schools routinely used discipline to exclude students without properly considering their disability.

After a protracted legal battle, the city settled the case in 2015 and agreed to some reforms. They beefed up training and created a that spells out each step of the process schools must follow.

The city was also required to check whether schools were following the rules, sending independent monitors into nearly 1,400 suspension review meetings, a sample of the meetings held between 2015 and 2018. The monitors found glaring and systemic problems, according to reports obtained by Gerst through a public records request and shared with Chalkbeat.

For example, only 44% of suspension review meetings included “effective” discussion of the incident that led to the suspension and whether it was connected to disability-related behaviors, the monitors found during the 2017-18 school year. In 20% of cases that year, there was limited or no discussion of a student’s special education learning plan, raising questions about how the review team determined whether a student’s behavior was related to a lack of services.

Nicole Tuchinda, a professor at the Loyola University New Orleans College of Law who has written about the suspension review process, called those figures “disturbing” because they reveal schools frequently did not comply with key components of the law.

“It just shows it’s a sham,” Tuchinda said.

Failing to protect students with disabilities from longer punishments could further set back a group that is already disproportionately removed from their classrooms, are far , and .

One focusing on New York City found suspensions led to students passing fewer classes, increasing their risk of dropping out, and lowering the odds of graduating. Other research also that suspensions are linked to worse academic outcomes. Students who are suspended for more than five days are typically sent to alternate learning centers away from their school, an

Problems with the suspension review process are also more likely to affect students of color, . Between September 2021 and December 2022, more than half of the 1,825 suspension reviews involved Black students, even though only a quarter of students with disabilities are Black, .

Schools were more likely to find that white students’ behavior was related to their disability compared with their Black or Latino peers, according to figures obtained by Gerst.

Education Department officials declined to provide more recent figures and there is no federal data on the suspension review process.

The responsibility for ensuring the city is complying with federal special education laws falls to the state’s Education Department. State officials found some problems with the city’s suspension review process in 2023 that required “corrective action,” according to spokesperson JP O’Hare. He did not specify the nature of the problem or what specific action was required. The state Education Department has “not received any specific ongoing concerns” about the process, O’Hare added.

It is difficult to know how widespread problems with the review process are today: The Education Department stopped sending independent monitors to the meetings after they were no longer legally required.

Melinda Andra, a longtime advocate at the Legal Aid Society who has represented families in the suspension process, said there were some signs of improvement when the monitors were in place.

Now, she said, “Things have kind of backtracked.”

‘Everybody was just on the attack’: One family felt alienated by suspension review

Danet Ferguson’s son, Malachi, faced a monthlong suspension for fighting another student in January, striking two teachers who tried to break them up. She was confident the school would conclude the 13-year-old’s ADHD and oppositional defiance disorder contributed to the incident. The school found such a link in a previous suspension this school year.

In the aftermath of the fight, Malachi was removed from class at I.S. 181 in the Bronx. Ferguson, who runs a day care, was forced to drive him to a suspension center more than an hour away. “I’m stressed out and frustrated,” Ferguson said at the time. “His grades have dropped. … I’m missing work.”

A little over a week after Malachi was removed from class, his school held a suspension review meeting to assess if his disability played a role in the fight. Ferguson and Michaela Shuchman, her legal advocate, pointed to Malachi’s history of aggression and impulsivity, which are well documented in his special education records.

But school staff countered that Malachi’s behavior was premeditated. They said they could not let the incident slide without significant punishment, according to Shuchman, a lawyer at Bronx Legal Services.

“Everybody was just on the attack,” said Ferguson. “There was no one trying to listen.”

The school ruled Malachi’s disability wasn’t a major factor, allowing his suspension to continue. With Shuchman’s help, Ferguson appealed the case. A hearing officer found several procedural flaws with the school’s suspension review process.

Ferguson wanted Malachi’s counselor and one-on-one paraprofessional to attend the meeting, two people who could have helped interpret his behavior that day. But the school dismissed the request, arguing it came too late to ensure the staff could be there and wasn’t worth postponing the meeting, according to the hearing officer’s ruling.

Hearing officer Tanya White blasted the school for that decision, noting that Ferguson “had a right to designate attendees.” She added: “The two people that [Ferguson] requested would have provided a unique insight into the ultimate determination.”

It was also unclear whether the school was following Malachi’s special education learning plan, an issue that was not sufficiently discussed during the suspension review process, according to White’s ruling.

Malachi is supposed to have a full-time behavioral support aide, who had helped keep his behavior in check in the past, the hearing officer wrote. School staff claimed there was a different aide with Malachi at the time of the incident, though the hearing officer noted the aide’s presence was not included in the official incident report, nor did that person offer a witness statement or attend the suspension review meeting.

“The only two people who placed the covering paraprofessional at the scene are DOE staff members with a vested interest in the answer as to whether the Student’s [learning plan] was being implemented,” White wrote.

White was also troubled that the school had removed references to physical outbursts in Malachi’s behavior plan. Altering the behavior plan “undermines the DOE’s assertion that it arrived at the correct conclusion,” she wrote.

The principal of I.S. 181 did not respond to a request for comment. An Education Department spokesperson declined to comment on specific student cases and did not answer a question about whether the school’s staff have received training on the suspension process.

White ruled in Malachi’s favor, ordering the Education Department to pay for about 126 hours of one-on-one tutoring to make up for the disruption to his education. Malachi still served the monthlong suspension, which would have been nearly three weeks shorter if the school had found the fight was related to his disability at the initial review meeting.

Shuchman said overturning a suspension on appeal after the student has already served it is common, as that process often takes around 40 days to play out and .

“It’s really justice delayed,” she said.

City officials resist calls for reform

Over the past year, advocates have pushed the Education Department to reform the discipline process but have struggled to gain traction.

A group of attorneys lobbied the Education Department to directly connect families to advocates before the suspension review meetings, as parents often don’t know their rights or how the process works. A handful of public interest legal groups offered to supply pro-bono advocates.

“Just having somebody in the room, just having your back … is really important to families,” said Gerst, one of the lawyers who supported the effort. “When we do advocate, we often find so many other special education issues.”

Some advocates and parents also suggested that school staff don’t review their own school’s suspension decision. The idea has some precedent: At charter schools, the suspension reviews are typically overseen by Education Department staff who don’t work for the school.

So far, the city has rejected the proposal to provide legal representation for families during the process, a decision Education Department officials declined to explain.

But they expressed some openness to taking the process out of the hands of the school that disciplined the student.

“It’s something that we are talking about,” said Jemilo, the Education Department official, “and exploring what an alternative could be.”

If the city made that change “that could be big,” Shuchman said, because the current process creates “a real conflict of interest.”

It is unclear how seriously city officials are considering it, however. An Education Department spokesperson declined to answer questions about who would conduct the reviews or a timeline for making that change.

In the meantime, advocates said the process is still stacked against families.

For Clayton, Tristan’s mother, the process was so overwhelming that she pulled him out of the city’s school system.

Even though Tristan won hundreds of hours of one-on-one tutoring, Clayton struggled to coax him to attend. The teen’s experience at school had reached a breaking point, and Tristan wound up getting suspended again, she said.

That was the final straw. “I was like, ‘I’m going to spend half the time at a suspension hearing,’” Clayton said.

So last September, Tristan moved in with his aunt upstate. His mother said he’s doing better in school, landed a job at a local bakery, and plans to go to trade school for plumbing.

The guidance counselor from Tristan’s old school recently called to ask after the teen.

Clayton was thrilled to offer an update.

“He’s really thriving,” she said. “I’m in disbelief.”

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was originally reported by Barbara Rodriguez and Nadra Nittle of .

Jolene Baxter’s daughter, Marlee, has overcome immense challenges in her first eight years of life.

Marlee, who was born with a heart defect, has undergone four open-heart surgeries — suffering a stroke after the third. The stroke affected Marlee’s cognitive abilities —��she’s in the second grade, but she cannot read yet. A mainstream class with neurotypical students felt overwhelming, so Marlee mostly attends classes with kids who also have disabilities. Her care includes physical, occupational and speech therapies.

For years, Baxter has relied on Medicaid to cover Marlee’s medical expenses while advocating for her daughter’s right to an equal education. Medicaid — which covers therapies, surgeries and medication for Marlee — and disability protections under the Department of Education have been a critical safety net for Baxter, a single mom in Oklahoma City. Now Baxter fears that proposed cuts to Medicaid and those already underway at the Department of Education, which , will have a disastrous impact on her daughter.

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As the Trump administration overhauls federal agencies with , and inexperienced leadership, parents of children with complex medical needs and disabilities told The 19th they are navigating uncertainty over how the federal government plans to maintain key pillars of their kids’ lives.

Baxter, who fostered and, later, adopted Marlee, fought to give her life-saving medical treatment when the child was an infant. Since Marlee was both an abandoned child and is Kiowa, the officials overseeing her welfare weren’t invested in getting her the care she needed to survive, Baxter believes. Cuts to Medicaid would be yet another obstacle for the Baxters to overcome.�� Just getting Marlee enrolled in local public schools that tried to turn her away was a battle, Baxter said. Now, the mom is gravely concerned that her daughter will be left behind due to the restructuring of the Department of Education.

“I’ll do everything I can at home, but she’ll just fall through all the cracks, and she won’t get the education that she deserves,” Baxter said.

In March, Trump to close the Department of Education. The Republican-controlled Congress is also considering massive funding cuts to Medicaid, and is a key safety net for Americans with disabilities.

“It is 50 plus years of work to get these protections for people with disabilities that we could potentially see — maybe not fully diminished — but very deeply eroded, in a very short period of time,” said Robyn Linscott, director of education and family policy at , an organization that advocates for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

The Department of Education’s primary duty has been to ensure that all students have equal access to education, and it is equipped with an Office for Civil Rights to investigate schools accused of discrimination. In March, the , with workers who enforce students’ civil rights hit particularly hard. Advocates worry how this could potentially impact students with disabilities, and began to paint a picture: Newly closed regional offices, frozen investigations and new alleged politically-based cases.

The Trump administration claims that the nation’s most vulnerable will be spared from his plans for federal downsizing.

The White House has tentative plans to . Conservative groups are calling for the Trump administration to , an agency that has had since Trump returned to office and changed its mission.

Nicole Jorwic, chief program officer at , a national caregiver advocacy organization, said the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights . She worries about the impact of staffing cuts on handling these complaints on the families of children with disabilities.

“Some of those staff were the ones who were looking into those complaints,” she said.

It’s not just OCR complaints, she added. When she was a practicing special education attorney, Jorwic turned to reports and guidance issued by the agency. That helped local school districts, superintendents and special educators know how to implement different laws or changes.

“The lack of that federal agency to provide that clarity is also important, as well as something that we’re really worried about,” she said.

Parents and advocates are doubtful that students with disabilities won’t be impacted. Before the Department of Education was created in 1979, schools often denied these children a right to education with impunity. Dissolving it, families fear, could see a return to the period when states and schools failed to prioritize special education.

Baxter’s daughter, Marlee, is guaranteed the right to free and appropriate schooling by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) of 1975, which is enforced by the Department of Education. This federal law mandates that children like Marlee attend classes suited to their cognitive and physical abilities and that they get the services needed, such as speech, physical and occupational therapy, to attend school . , a higher share than the who do — and that’s largely because of the services federal policy requires public schools to provide.��

Kim Crawley, a mother to a teenager with medically complex needs, has a 25-year career as a special education teacher. As part of her training, she learned about the history of education, including how five decades ago, schools were not obligated to accommodate students’ special needs. The agency never took power away from the states, she said, but stepped in to ensure that they educated all students equitably.

“We learn about this for a reason because we don’t want to repeat it,” Crawley said. “We don’t want to have to start over again. To think of losing everything we have gained through the Department of Education over these years is scaring not only parents but teachers. Teachers are scared because we don’t know where this is going to end up for those kids. And that’s why we go to work every day.”

Critics of closing the department and redirecting disabled children’s needs to other agencies say that it will create a bureaucratic nightmare for parents. Instead of one federal agency overseeing research on students with disabilities, state funding for special education or discrimination claims, multiple departments would be involved. Families might not know which agency to reach out to with questions and concerns.

As it is, families are sometimes unaware of the services legally available to them — a reality that has cost them time and energy in the past and could be even more complicated in the future.

Baxter, for one, pulled Marlee out of class for two years to homeschool her after the child’s kindergarten teacher retired and subsequent teachers did not know how to educate her properly, she said. It was not Baxter’s first choice to homeschool Marlee, an option unavailable to most working parents, but one she made after multiple public schools said they could not accommodate her child.

“Our special needs are full,” Baxter said they told her. “We don’t have room for her.”

When an acquaintance told her that public schools could not lawfully refuse to enroll Marlee, Baxter finally got a local public school to admit her. But after her ordeal last year, she has no faith that the federal government will hold schools that discriminate against children with disabilities accountable if the education department is disbanded.

“We have enough stuff to worry about [with] making sure that she gets taken care of as far as medical care,” Baxter said of parents like herself. “We don’t need to worry about what we’re going to do as far as their education.”

For some families, the potential Medicaid cuts could both unravel a child’s well-being and their family’s finances.

In Philadelphia, Meghann Luczkowski has three kids with varying levels of specialized health care needs, including a 10-year-old son who spent his first year of life in a hospital intensive care unit.

“His ability to grow and thrive and be part of our family and part of this community is dependent upon significant health care support at home,” said the former special education teacher, who now works in public health.

Luczkowski said her husband has robust health insurance for the family, but it does not cover a lot of her son’s home-based medical needs — . Private insurance never paid for his ventilator to breathe, or home health nurses that allow family caregivers to sleep at night.

“It doesn’t pay for the nurse to go to school with him, to make sure that he can be at school, accessing his education with his peers,” she said. “That’s all been provided through Medicaid.”

In the first months of his second term, Trump when asked about his budgetary plans for other popular programs like Social Security and Medicare. But the president has also said he supports cutting fraud and waste — a description that health policy experts warn could be used to defend more expansive cuts. Congress is considering , a dollar figure that goes .

Among the considerations are work requirements and a cap on Medicaid enrollee spending. Such restrictions could have ripple effects on state education budgets and subsequent reductions in services for students with disabilities. Medicaid is one of the . It is the responsibility of school districts and states to find funding if Medicaid reimbursements are insufficient. Trump has not addressed general concerns about how such spending cuts could impact disabled children and adults.

“We know that before 1975 and the passage of IDEA, 50 percent of kids with disabilities were not educated at all. So we know that this is a crucial piece of legislation, and that mandate to find funding for these is really important,” said Linscott, who previously worked as a special education teacher in New York City. “But we also recognize that school districts and state budgets are so limited, which is why we want Medicaid to be able to provide as robust funding and reimbursement as they possibly can for students and for these services.”

Jorwic said federal funding for special education services is crucial, and local governments cannot make up for the lost funds. The federal government currently , and Medicaid funding accounts for .

Jorwic said Medicaid cuts could also translate into higher taxes on a local or state level. This week, in large part because of the ramifications on services.

“There’s no state, even the wealthiest states, that could afford cuts to those programs, either when it comes to education or when it comes to providing home and community-based services,” Jorwic said.

Rachael Brown is the mom of a medically complex second grader in Washington, D.C., who receives special education services and multiple therapies at his public school.

Brown’s son, who has autism and cerebral palsy, has a rare vascular anomaly in his brain that has required multiple surgeries. He receives extensive support from Medicaid and IDEA, which are crucial for his care and education. Brown is concerned about how cuts to Medicaid would impact her son’s care and her family’s personal finances. She noted that pediatric hospitals are heavily reliant on Medicaid. If the rate of that reimbursement is cut, those hospitals’ operational costs would be on the line — impacting everything from how many doctors and other health care providers are hired to what therapies are covered for her son.

“There’s just a ripple effect for our whole community,” she said, adding: “We are relatively privileged. There’s a lot of families who aren’t. It would be much worse for families for whom Medicaid is their only insurance.”

Brown said she lives in fear and worry about what happens next, and it’s exhausting. While she and other advocates have some experience fighting for health care rights given previous political battles, “this time, everything feels a little more cruel.”

On Wednesday, Luczkowski planned to travel to D.C. — taking a day off from work and rearranging child care needs — to advocate for Medicaid . She said parents of kids with medically complex needs and disabilities often aren’t able to get out and advocate as much as they would like to, in part because of the needs of their families.

“Despite the fact that it’s an incredible hardship on my family for me to be in D.C. talking to legislators and being at rallies on the Capitol steps, that’s what me and a great number of families are doing — because our kids’ lives depend on it,” she said. “We’re hopeful that our voices will be valued, and our children will be valued.”

He would cry and run off during fire drills. Teachers put his desk in the corner, so he wouldn’t disturb his classmates. They would call her during the day so she could talk him into sitting still. Jones was shocked then that when Kelsey reached first grade, the school said he no longer needed extra support, like a teacher’s aide and a plan to help him control his behavior.

“I’m like, ‘’If there’s not a problem, why were you calling me all these days?’ ” she said. Kelsey, who has autism, went a year without any special education services, and Jones was preparing to sue the District of Columbia’s public school district. The toughest part, she said, was that her experience wasn’t unusual. “If you have 30-plus parents … and they have very similar stories, there is something systemic. They put it on the parents, like this is a one off.”

Ordeals like hers are why the U.S. Department of Education last month launched into the school district. A from an independent civil rights committee showed the district has failed to identify and adequately serve thousands of students with disabilities and has one of the highest rates of special education complaints in the nation. This marks the first investigation the Office for Civil Rights launched that didn’t focus on President Donald Trump’s priorities, such as on university campuses and transgender students competing on . 

The district says it will “fully cooperate” with OCR. But the agency’s review is kicking off in the midst of disruption to the federal government’s enforcement of protecting students with disabilities. Education Secretary Linda McMahon gutted OCR’s staff, and Trump is attempting to move oversight of special education programs to the Department of Health and Human Services. If the investigation results in a plan for improvement, it’s unclear who would hold the district accountable.

“HHS lacks the expertise needed to administer the [Individuals with Disabilities Act],” said Maria Blaeuer, director of programs and outreach with Advocates for Justice and Education, Inc., a District of Columbia advocacy group. Her testimony informed many of the recommendations in the December report. Moving IDEA to HHS, she said “does nothing to improve services for students with disabilities and it deprives state and local education authorities of the expert advice and support they need.” 

Craig Leen, a civil rights attorney who served in the Department of Labor during Trump’s first term, may have played a role in turning the department’s attention to students with disabilities. He is vice chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights’ D.C. advisory committee, which issued the report, and he navigated the district’s special education system for his own children.

The report found that the district under-identifies children with disabilities when they are young, which creates delays in students getting the extra help they need. When disagreements arise, the report said, the school district takes a “sue and settle” approach, which favors parents who can afford litigation in order to get services or accommodations for their children.

“That’s not a best practice, obviously,” said Leen, who became involved in disability rights when he was the city attorney for Coral Gables, Florida. “You shouldn’t have to sue to get what you’re entitled to.”

Leen’s daughter Alex, who has autism and an intellectual disability, attended Hardy Middle School in the district, but he didn’t feel she was getting the support she needed to be engaged in class. When he inquired about getting Alex into St. Coletta, a charter school that specializes in serving children with disabilities, an administrator suggested the family file a due process complaint, like a lawsuit.

Transportation — a key focus of the advisory committee’s report — was also a frequent problem.

“Sometimes [the bus] would not arrive at all. Sometimes it would arrive an hour late,” he said. Alex would only wait so long before she got frustrated and wanted to go back to her room. “My daughter needs a very routine schedule. Waiting for an hour for the bus would disrupt the whole day.”

But Leen’s struggles are not uncommon —  as indicated by a class action lawsuit from families over transportation problems last year and a 30 years ago. 

One factor contributing to the transportation headaches is that the district doesn’t actually have its own buses and drivers. The Office of the State Superintendent of Education, which oversees both the traditional public school district and more than 120 charter schools, provides no transportation for most of the city’s students. It is responsible only for getting children with disabilities to and from school consistently. Many attend schools far outside their neighborhood, or even in the Virginia and Maryland suburbs, where their needs can be met.

The superintendent’s office told the committee that it has the fleet necessary to cover all the bus routes and has offered incentives to recruit drivers. But parents say the system is still unreliable. 

They want GPS tracking for buses, nurses and aides, more vehicles that are wheelchair accessible and better communication — like an app. The committee’s report also pointed to teachers who ultimately quit because they were sometimes stuck at school until 7 p.m. waiting for buses to pick up students. 

Santanya Prince-Abdoul, whose 7-year-old son attends school in D.C., started keeping track. She recorded in a notebook over 20 times since fall of 2024 that the bus was late or didn’t arrive.

“I was promised that I would be contacted by a supervisor on various occasions, and no one has ever called me,” she said. “I stopped using the system and started to transport my son to school, which defeated the whole purpose.”  

She also clashed with educators over updating his individualized education program with a goal of counting up to 100. The plan still said her son, who has medical issues and seizures, should practice counting to 20.

“Those are the kinds of things that we are having to sit in meetings to negotiate,” she said. “Even with the attorney involved they’re still resisting, they’re still opposing.”

The committee concluded that “chronic underfunding” contributes to the district’s inability to adequately serve students — an issue not unique to D.C. Congress intended for the federal government to cover 40% of states’ special education costs; instead it’s about 14%. 

In other ways, D.C. schools are atypical. The district has to depend on Congress to approve its budget every year — an often . In most places, a parent dissatisfied with how their district is handling their child’s case can file a state complaint. But D.C.’s state superintendent’s office often refers parents directly to OCR, said Blaeuer, with Advocates for Justice and Education.

“Very often by the time they’re filing with OCR, they’ve given up on solving it for their student this school year,” she said. “They’re hoping to make it better for the following school year and for the other students who come after their child.”

In its statement, the district said it has made “significant investments to strengthen our special education programs, expand inclusive learning opportunities and engage families as partners in their children’s success.”

At a in February, Chancellor Lewis D. Ferebee elaborated. 

“We have reduced our number of complaints over the last couple of years.” Last year, he said, parents filed 205 due process complaints, but the number has dropped over 60% over the past decade, he told Council Chairman Phil Mendelson. Ferebee added that the district is trying to “enhance” communication with families as a way to resolve problems before educators and parents reach an impasse. “This is something that we will continue to work on.”

But some families are unwilling to wait. At the end of 2023-24 school year, Jones pulled her son out of Miner and enrolled him in Two Rivers Public Charter School, also in D.C.  She cried at her last parent-teacher conference when she realized how far Kelsey, now in third grade, has come.

“My son can now write a story out of his imagination. At Miner, he was regressing, wasn’t even verbal,” she said. “He’s learning how to advocate for himself, like ‘Hey I need a break. My battery is low.’ He’s going to stay there until eighth grade.” 

The City of Chicago has extended a deadline for low-income families to apply for at least $500 if they have children with disabilities — a cash grant effort meant to provide some relief for students and parents with additional needs who faced challenges during the pandemic.

The original deadline for the effort — — was Oct. 30. The Mayor’s Office for People With Disabilities has extended the deadline to this Friday, Nov. 15.

The new deadline comes after less than half of the desired number of grantees had been approved for or received the grants as of early October. Those interested can apply online at or can text “AdaMOPD” to (877) 478-1359.

When the city announced the program, it said it would provide grants to as many as 8,000 families using federal COVID relief money from the Biden administration. But as of mid-September, roughly six weeks before the original deadline, the city had awarded just 2,000 grants, according to data obtained by Chalkbeat through a Freedom of Information Act request. At that time, a total of 8,722 applications had been submitted, according to the Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities.

By Oct. 1, 9,263 applications had been received or started, according to a breakdown provided by then-City Hall spokesperson Ronnie Reese.At that time, a total 3,717 families had been approved for the grants, which included families who hadn’t received the money yet, Reese said. Roughly 4,400 people had started applications but had not completed them and “have not provided all the required documentation or information,” Reese said at the time, adding that a community outreach team was trying to help these families to finish their applications.

The city had asked another 779 applicants to provide more information as of Oct. 1. The city rejected 264 applications because they weren‘t eligible; 57 applications hadn’t yet been reviewed. A City Hall spokesperson did not immediately share updated figures on Monday.

Students with disabilities faced mounting challenges during the pandemic. These students are legally entitled to services at school that are outlined in an Individualized Education Program, or IEP, which can include extra help or therapies at school. School closures during the pandemic, however, separated many students from those supports.

Like other districts, Chicago Public Schools fell far behind during the early part of the pandemic in evaluating students with disabilities for the support they needed,

The city had budgeted $5 million for the program through American Rescue Plan dollars, which the federal government distributed to cities and states during the pandemic. About $1 million of that went to Ada S. McKinley Community Center, which the city partnered with to distribute the grant, in order to cover administrative costs.

Chicago received almost $2 billion in American Rescue Plan funds. Similar to that went to school districts, these funds are temporary and must be earmarked by next month, .

Grantees for the program must be parents or guardians of students with disabilities and can apply for up to two grants per household. Applicants must be Chicago residents and must earn no more than 300% of the federal poverty level, or $93,600 at most for a family of four, according to the

Families must have documentation that proves their child receives services at school, such as an Individualized Education Program or 504 plan, or proof from a doctor that their child has a disability.

In a prepared statement, Jamal Malone, CEO of Ada S. McKinley Community Services, which contracted with the city to help sign people up for the grant, said that with school in “full swing,” families may learn about the grant during school visits, such as during parent-teacher conferences.

His organization is also hosting events at local libraries to inform families about the grants.

Sherry Henry, whose son is in middle school and is on the autism spectrum, attended the mayor’s announcement in April and said she received her grant money over the summer. She said she largely used the grant to pay her bills, but she also let her son choose something he wanted. He picked out some sketchbooks.

She credits the extra money for sparking a love of art in her son, who chose to buy the sketchbooks.

“He never said he was going to be an artist before, but he said he’s gonna be an artist now, so yeah, so I can smile about that,” Henry said.

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Ryan Manriquez opened the door of his second-floor apartment to a blaring fire alarm. It was September 2023, a few weeks into the school year at UC Berkeley, where he’s a graduate student studying public policy.

Residents descended the staircase, following lighted exit signs. The alarm was getting louder, urging Manriquez to leave. But he couldn’t. Sitting in his power wheelchair, he looked at the only way out of the building for him — an elevator down the hallway, its doors now shut and inoperable. There was no way out for him. 

“When I stepped into the hallway, I just broke down in tears because I knew finally that I wasn’t going to have a place to safely evacuate,” he said.

As a safety measure, elevators shut down to contain a potential fire. Even though the alarm turned out to be false, Manriquez waited four hours before the elevator worked again, causing him to miss his favorite class that afternoon — public policy. 

While California’s public university systems have robust emergency policies and procedures, not all students who are physically disabled have reliable access to equipment to help them evacuate in an emergency. 

Last summer, when Manriquez toured a unit of The Intersection, an off-campus apartment complex the university operates for graduate students, he noticed there were no disability evacuation chairs in the building.  

Evacuation chairs allow people who have a mobility disability to  in emergencies. Some chairs require assistance from two people and are typically folded and stored with other emergency supplies or mounted on the wall. Other evacuation chairs can be battery-powered, allowing physically disabled residents to independently transport themselves up or down stairs.

According to UC Berkeley’s housing policy, evacuation chairs must be  in all campus buildings. Before he moved in, Manriquez requested a chair from the Berkeley Housing office in July. The evacuation chair was not installed when the school year started the following month. And it still wasn’t installed when the fire alarm went off in September. 

The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 requires at least one  on every floor, whether it is achieved with an elevator, ramp or lift. The law doesn’t require buildings to have evacuation chairs in multi-storied buildings.  

People with disabilities are disproportionately impacted by disasters and emergencies. Data cited by the Partnership for Inclusive Disaster Strategies shows that disabled people are two to four times as likely  in emergencies compared to their non-disabled counterparts.

“It is hard to think that they just weren’t ready for someone like me to enter into one of the top graduate programs in the country,” Manriquez said. 

The ripple effect 

A few weeks after he was trapped in his apartment building, still without an evacuation chair on his floor, Manriquez shared his experience during public comment at the University of California Board of Regents meeting. After his speech, UC President Michael Drake offered a “personal apology.” Drake also asked campus chancellors to prepare an update on the status of emergency exit accessibility on their campuses at a future meeting.  

“The chancellors are here and I know by the time we come back to the November meeting all the chancellors will be able to ensure nothing like this can happen on any of the campuses in the future,” Drake said. 

Shortly after Manriquez spoke to the regents, in October 2023, two folding manual disability evacuation chairs were installed in his building, one of them on his floor. 

But some students have had to wait longer.

Some students still unequipped

Less than 24 hours after Manriquez’s experience, UC Berkeley student Trisha Nguyen couldn’t leave her second-floor, on-campus apartment during a fire drill.

Like Manriquez, Nguyen was met with shut elevator doors, blocking people from using it. After the drill was over, Nguyen’s apartment mates returned to open the elevator doors, so she could leave in her power wheelchair. 

“All undergraduate students and staff evacuated safely except for my personal care attendant (my mom) and me,” Nguyen wrote to CalMatters. 

Before the incident, Nguyen said UC Berkeley’s University Housing Department failed to give her an evacuation plan that would meet her needs. It wasn’t until after Manriquez shared his experience that the university housing department sent out information on , Nguyen said. 

“UC Berkeley does not do an excellent job of informing disabled students about emergency protocols for persons with disabilities,” Nguyen said. 

The UC Berkeley Office of Disability and Compliance sent out a self-identification questionnaire after her experience asking whether students with disabilities want a consultation to prepare for emergencies. The responses were then shared with building managers and first responders, said UC Berkeley Chief Accessibility Officer Eva Callow. 

Nguyen explained that with folding evacuation chairs, individuals with disabilities are “expected to simply wait” for first responders to assist, “hoping they arrive in time before the fire reaches us.” 

Nguyen wants to see the campus install electric evacuation chairs that allow disabled students like her to evacuate safely without relying on first responders or others. She added that as someone who doesn’t live on the first floor, she understands there might not be a safe route with an electric wheelchair. 

“The current protocol involves us relying on other people to get us out of the building safely,” Nguyen said. “But, I also want to have the resources necessary to take the initiative to evacuate myself.”

In March 2024, nearly six months after the September fire drill, Nguyen said university housing installed a manual evacuation chair on her floor.

Attempts to build accessible emergency plans

Across UC Berkeley’s campus, there are at least  to find an evacuation chair, according to the campus. As of publication, a webpage with in each building was still under construction.

The UC system does not record how many buildings have evacuation chairs across its 10 campuses, though developing system wide policies on disability accommodations such as emergency exits will be the responsibility of the UC’s new Office of Civil Rights.  

“My office is monitoring the progress of this work on our campuses and we’ll keep the board informed,” Drake said at the November UC Regents meeting. 

Within the office, which officially launched in February, there will be a disability rights office dedicated to improving accessibility at UC campuses. 

In January 2024 the UC’s Systemwide Advisory Workgroup on Students with Disabilities provided updated recommendations to better serve disabled students and staff. Developing a systemwide disability-inclusive emergency evacuation plan was the group’s main recommendation. 

“Students with disabilities experience an  for emergency evacuation — and often, downright danger,” the report read.

Currently, all campuses have emergency protocols for students with disabilities, some more extensive than others. While most campuses have evacuation chairs available, the onus falls on students to think proactively and request them, according to UC Communication Strategist Stett Holbrook. 

At UC Irvine, for example, students can use the  to request a customized evacuation plan by selecting “ADA” under the “Report” section. The university is updating its individualized emergency evacuation plan process, so this method will likely change soon, said ADA coordinator Andrew Berk.

“There are a lot of people with hidden disabilities who choose not to disclose,” he said. “We do not in any way want to put pressure on someone to disclose their disability.”

No student has requested an emergency evacuation plan this year, according to Berk. UC Irvine’s Emergency Management Director Randall Styner said his office is working to better communicate emergency evacuation options and resources available to students with campus posters and programming at orientation. 

Berk and Styner collaborate to create customized plans for students when requested. Both stressed the importance of including people with disabilities in the planning process. 

“You cannot have accessibility if you do not involve people with disabilities,” Berk said, adding he is as a person with a disability. 

UC Irvine has installed evacuation chairs in  according to a 2021-2022 emergency management report. Additionally, newer student housing offers two options: a button with two-way communication alerting first responders of the person’s location or a one-way system for guidance during emergencies. 

“This goes beyond people with disabilities because what we do for that population also helps people who are injured and people who might be a little older,” Berk said. 

At UC Davis, representatives from housing, emergency management and the campus fire department are currently revising some emergency protocols, according to UC Davis Crisis Communications Manager Bill Kisliuk.

“The draft calls for relevant campus units, for example, Student Housing and Dining Services, to train staff in identifying those in their communities who have access needs or functional needs and supporting them in an evacuation or other emergency,” Kisliuk wrote to CalMatters.  

Other higher education emergency plans

The 23-campus California State University system requires campuses to have emergency management programs, but not a protocol for accessibility. The Cal State Chancellor’s Office does not track which buildings at each campus have an evacuation chair. Each campus decides how to maintain evacuation chairs in the buildings, depending on how frequently the building is used or who is using the building, said Cal State spokesperson Amy Bentley-Smith.  

Like UC students, Cal State students with disabilities have had to navigate campuses not built for them. Cal Poly Humboldt alum Christine diBella  her campus and the CSU over a  in October 2021. Her complaint outlined a general lack of accessibility on campus, including the lack of an emergency evacuation plan. Despite living on the third floor of her dorm building at the time, like other disabled students she could not get out in her power wheelchair. The case was settled in October 2023.

The California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office instructs campuses to follow the state-recommended , “emphasizing that districts comply” with the recommendations. Those include communicating plans on social media or having a local disaster registry — a list of individuals who might need additional support during emergencies, said system spokesperson Melissa Villarin.  

“We feel it’s important that college officials, who have deep and specific knowledge of their campuses, partner with local emergency response officials,” said Villarin, who explained each community college district has individualized emergency plans. “Their knowledge, combined, can be used to develop plans and policies that protect students, staff and the public.” If there is a need for further emergency training, campuses are directed to consult the California Office of Emergency Services.

What is happening now at UC?

The UC Office for Civil Rights  Feb. 20 and includes a Title IX office, an office for anti-discrimination and one for disability rights. Catherine Spear will start as  of the civil rights office on May 6, reporting directly to Drake. The office will streamline all discrimination and harassment allegations and aims to provide consistency in the reporting process, according to the office’s website.  

In an email sent March 19, Drake required each campus to designate a representative to update on campus evacuation plan changes and to complete a checklist by June 30. Campuses must designate a campus representative, develop individualized emergency evacuation plans and provide evacuation chairs.  

These new requirements are aimed at ensuring students don’t experience the anguish Manriquez felt in his hallway in September. He says he’s optimistic about the new protocols and office, something that may not have happened had the UC Regents not heard him from that meeting. 

“I think it is extremely important to have leaders among higher education that are representatives of the students they serve,” Manriquez said. “I rarely, if ever have, seen a physically disabled person in a position of university leadership at the highest level.” 

For the record: This story has been updated to clarify the process for students to request an individualized evacuation plan at UC Irvine.

This story was originally published on .

Estefania Garcia is a confident young woman who has worked through her disabilities to achieve what she wants. One of her dreams was to attend college and the naysayers at El Dorado High School, she said, only made her more determined to make her dream a reality.

Today Garcia, who has a visual impairment and a learning disability, works as a receptionist for the Children’s Disabilities Information Coalition on El Paso’s Eastside where she also makes presentations for high school audiences.

She credits Project HIGHER, a collaborative program between El Paso Community College and Texas Workforce Solutions, for helping her earn a certificate in business management/administrative office assistant in 2020. That and her previous job experience helped her earn her current job.

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Project HIGHER, a competitive program launched in 2015, gives people with developmental and intellectual disabilities an opportunity for a post-secondary education and a better chance at employment. Each of the 25 students in the program gets a personal education coach who helps the participant in and out of the classroom to build the necessary social and academic skills to succeed in the workforce or to continue their academic journeys.

“Now I get to help people with disabilities and teach them about self-advocacy skills,” Garcia said. “I tell them to never give up. They’ve got to keep trying to do their best to achieve their goals.”

According to a 2022 report from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, 19.1% of people with disabilities found jobs in 2021, which was better than the 17.9% the prior year. These individuals often work in the service, production, transportation and material moving industries, as well as sales and office jobs.

Project HIGHER, part of EPCC’s Center for Students with Disabilities, is open to El Paso County residents ages 18 to 25. It offers certificates in welding, graphic design, child development, business management, hospitality operations, as well as machining, automotive and electrical technologies. Participants attend classes alongside mainstream students so there are no modifications to the courses.

People who want to be part of Project HIGHER must register with TWS-Vocational Rehabilitation Services, apply and participate in an interview for any openings among the 25 student slots. TWS is part of the Texas Workforce Commission. TWS representatives were not available for comment.

The program, which expects about 12 openings this fall, receives more than 75 applications annually. TWS will pay tuition and fees of those selected beyond what is not covered by financial aid based on the family’s income, and assist the graduates to find jobs in their chosen field.

Alejandra Mendoza, Project HIGHER program manager since 2019, said 36 students have earned level-one certificates since the program started, and she expects another eight to graduate this spring. A level-one certificate means that there are no college core courses in English or mathematics.

Mendoza said the key to the program is the coaches, who have post-secondary degrees or the equivalent. They provide students with structure, and help them learn how to study and plan their schedules. They also ensure that the students participate in class and complete assignments. Additionally, the coaches encourage the students to participate in college events so they can socialize with people outside their program and academic cohorts.

The program manager said coaches, some who assist more than one student, work about 20 hours per week per student. The students generally take two courses per semester. The goal is to trim the number of hours as the student becomes more independent.

Among the coaches is Erica Collier, a veteran educator who is in her second semester with PH. She said that each student has specific needs. She has helped her students to be better communicators, less anxious, and more attentive. For example, to improve communication, Collier said that she would role play conversations with her students to prepare them to speak with a professor, or they would practice breathing techniques to relieve stress.

“We encourage them to go beyond their comfort zones to become well rounded students and people,” Collier said.

The program’s concept was promoted by Rick Razo, a retired Region 19 director of special education and a longtime advocate for people with disabilities. He served as the program’s first project manager for three years and even worked as an education coach before he separated from Project HIGHER, which is based on a successful program started in the Rio Grande Valley.

Project HIGHER goes beyond what most colleges offer students with disabilities such as tutors, readers, note takers, and sign language interpreters, or a change of venue to make in-person classes more accessible. The coaches build the skills that the students did not master in high school to include reading comprehension and how to study to take a test.

Razo is proud of the program’s more than 90% of students completing their certificates, but it is unknown how many program graduates find work. He said that even mainstream students do not get jobs automatically after they earn their degrees. The former program manager said he would like the PH program to add a vocational job training component during the summers because it would give the students field familiarity and help employers understand the capabilities of people with disabilities.

“The certificates just give (program graduates) better chances to get a job,” Razo said. “The weak link is employment. They need work experience to become stronger candidates.”

He said some of the benefits of hiring people with disabilities is that they are loyal, punctual and enthusiastic. They have good attitudes and make a positive impact on customers and other employees.

Dennis Martinez, owner of Zenitram, an auto repair shop in Northeast El Paso, hired program graduate Pablo Maul several months ago and called him a work in progress. He said that Maul, who earned a certificate in automotive technology, helps around the shop and eventually will be transitioned into more mechanical duties.

“We’re taking baby steps,” Martinez said. “(Maul) requires attention, but we knew what we were getting into. He’s doing OK.”

About 8% of the program graduates return to pursue their associate degree. One of them is Jurgen Linder, who earned his certificate in graphic design in 2022. Linder, who is on the autism spectrum, is pursuing his associate of applied science degree in advertising graphics & design. He hopes to complete his degree in two years.

Linder, 21, said he needed his Project HIGHER coach, especially with assignment reminders, note taking and test preparation, but now he is more confident in his abilities. He said his certificate has given him a sense of freedom and confidence.

“I improved my skills,” said Linder, who previously worked as a stocker at Walgreens. “I’m testing myself to get better. So far, so good.”

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However, there is a downside that is not understood: exclude or neglect many struggling readers, even though most of them suffer from similar learning difficulties and require similar evidence-based instruction.

This is particularly inequitable because a are low-income, or of color, or register as having low IQs. These children already suffer delays in getting extra help because many educators their early reading difficulties on poor family backgrounds rather than on poor instruction — a prime example of the soft bigotry of low expectations.

The National Center for Improving Literacy considers dyslexia in that it is “disproportionately underdiagnosed in children of color and children in poverty.” I described these students as “” in a report in 2003. 

Of course, advocates for children with dyslexia vehemently oppose any such injustices. But some laws and practices exert hidden influences that have just such an effect. How does this happen? And how can reading reformers accelerate a change from reforms centered on dyslexia to more inclusive policies that will help virtually all struggling readers? 

To start with, there must be recognition of the widespread but largely false association among dyslexia, high IQs and creativity. Dyslexia is constantly brought to public mind by media portrayals of a who overcame their reading difficulties and became high achievers. Yet, eminent reading scientist decades ago that studies have “led to the discovery that the early word reading difficulties of children with relatively low general intelligence and verbal ability are associated with the same factors (weaknesses in phonological processing) that interfere with early reading growth in children who have general intelligence in the normal range.”

More recently, cognitive neuroscientist and reading expert Mark Seidenberg : “Within [the] broad range of IQs, poor readers struggle in the same ways, need help in the same areas and respond similarly to interventions.”

Nonetheless, these scientific facts are absent or short-changed in many, if not most, state laws. While , not just dyslexia, very few encompass essential requirements for all struggling readers — instruction based on the science of reading, multi-tiered interventions and teacher training — and, as of last year, only eight addressed all three components. 

The most insidious confusion and inequity are found in special education law. Dyslexia is classified under the Individual with Disabilities Act  as a “” — but eligibility is typically determined based on “a severe discrepancy between achievement and intellectual ability,” a criterion that embodies the false association between IQ/creativity and reading difficulties and disproportionately harms low-income and minority struggling readers. 

Though the discrepancy gap test has been , and Congress has encouraged identification of specific learning disabilities through , it is and endures in practice.

A consequence is the pernicious “” — the higher the IQ, the earlier the discrepancy is detected — so students with lower IQs have to wait longer for interventions, and most .  

This injustice is inexcusable, because it is well known . It takes following the science of reading, which generally prescribes the same foundational instruction for all students, within the tiered framework of Response to Intervention. 

But this doesn’t happen.  

One big reason is that the science of reading remains a raging battlefield. For another, while Response to Intervention — systematic early assessment and evidence-based interventions, notably high-dosage tutoring — seems an incontrovertible approach, there are .  Seidenberg’s is that it “has only one flaw: It has to be implemented in real-world environments” that are often inhospitable because of lack of funds and because implementation is “undercut by the disagreements about how reading works.” 

Dyslexia advocates see that their efforts alone are . Many state chapters of , parent groups that are the most powerful grass-roots forces for reading reform, are increasingly pushing to enact or strengthen broad in the wake of the pandemic. These laws embrace all struggling readers, not just those identified as dyslexic. An exemplar chapter is , which is spurring a coalition to strengthen Maryland’s right-to-read law.

Still, the notion that dyslexia is a fairly exclusive province of an IQ elite persists. Louisiana Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy and others are pushing that would make dyslexia a separate specific learning disability under IDEA while ignoring the need to improve the law for other students with similar difficulties.

Any path to literacy for all students faces a steep incline. That’s why it’s so necessary to expose the inequities in some approaches and cheer on dyslexia advocates who are stepping up in the struggle. 

Students who attend charter schools in Newark, including English learners and those with learning disabilities, are less likely to transfer out within two years than their peers at the district’s public schools, according to a new study. Children were also significantly more likely to shed their special-needs classification while enrolled at a Newark charter, the authors note.

The study, released as this week and Education Next, offers more perspective on the long-running debate over admissions and retention in the charter sector. Critics of the publicly funded but privately operated schools that they push out kids with learning, language or behavioral challenges like suspension or expulsion.

Co-author Marcus Winters, a professor of educational leadership and policy studies at Boston University, said in an interview that he believed individual schools of all kinds “inappropriately” encouraged some students to leave. But the Newark study, along with looking at schools in Tennessee and North Carolina, has disproven the notion that charters routinely engage in the practice, he argued.

“I do think it’s fair to say that our paper … has now sufficiently debunked the myth that charter schools — at least in these areas that have been studied — are systematically pushing these students out,” Winters said.

Winters and co-author Allison Gilmour, a professor at Temple University, set out to compare enrollment trends in Newark, a city with one of the largest charter school sectors in the country. To do so, they used data from the Newark Enrolls assignment system, which allows families to select among their choice of traditional schools and approximately 70 percent of the city’s charters. (Not all local charters participate in Newark Enrolls, but those that do account for about five-sixths of charter students.)

Several variables in the Newark Enrolls formula determine which students are assigned to certain schools, including each child’s rank-ordered school preferences; individual factors prioritized by various schools (such as sibling preference); and randomized lottery numbers that are used in case a given school is overenrolled. By gathering administrative data between the 2014-15 and 2017-18 school years, Winters and Gilmour were able to compare patterns of school entrance and exit for nearly 14,000 students.

In all, children attending Newark charter schools were 22 percentage points less likely to leave that school within two years than substantially similar students who were instead assigned to traditional public schools. English learners were 16 percentage points less likely to transfer out of a charter, and students with a disability nearly 11 percentage points less likely. The difference for Hispanic students was not statistically significant.

The smaller chances of transfers may be attributable to the system’s format of ranked school preferences. In a model that controlled for families’ ranking of schools, charter students were still less likely to leave within two years, but only by about 10 percentage points; that suggests that a sizable portion of the charter school effect is simply a reflection of students attending the school they wanted to go to in the first place, Winters said.

“You might just be more willing to stick it out with a school that you originally had as a higher preference,” he said. “If you’re attending a school that you went to on purpose, you’re just less likely to leave it. And if you’re going to a charter school in a place like Newark, where several of the charter schools are among the most popular choices … you’re probably going to one of your most highly preferred schools.”

By tracking the same students over time, the study also observes gradual movement within individual subgroups. Specifically, children with a special-needs classification at charter schools are much less likely to still have an Individualized Education Program a few years later — a phenomenon that may help explain why the percentage of students receiving services is lower in charters. The effect is particularly notable for children entering charter schools between kindergarten and third grade (31 percentage points more likely to lose a special-needs classification within three years) and between grades four and six (20 points). Those findings dovetail with research pointing to similar trends in special-needs assignment at Boston charter schools.

Comprehensive examinations, including from the federal Government Accountability Office, have shown that charters generally teach smaller numbers of kids with disabilities than district schools. More recent evidence indicates that those gaps may be shrinking, though it’s unknown how the huge upheaval triggered by COVID-19 may have shuffled enrollment trends.

If the study raises doubts about the claim that charter schools consistently work to remove struggling or hard-to-teach students from their classrooms, it offers little clarity about how they approach recruitment. At least that charters in multiple states were less likely than district schools to respond to application inquiries from parents of children with severe disabilities.

Winters concluded that the population differences between sectors could arise from only one of three sources: recruitment of students, mobility of students once enrolled and (in the case of English learners and disabled students) changes in status classification such as those detected in the Newark study. More investigation was needed into how different schools attract families, he said.

“It’s clear to me, at least, that the major driver in these enrollment gaps is who’s enrolling in the first place. We need more information about the enrollment side.”