Dive Brief:
- New data from the federal Education Department has prompted the Obama administration to announce that students of color are disproportionately placed into K-12 special ed programs, and is calling on states to address the problem.
- Students of color are not only more likely to be identified as having a disability, they also face harsher discipline than white peers, helping create and maintain a school-to-prison pipeline.
- The Education Department has proposed a new nationwide rule that would standardize the identification of disabled students and set aside 15% of IDEA funding in districts where students of color are disproportionately identified, aimed at providing greater access to early childhood intervention.
Dive Insight:
One example held up by the Education Department is that of Pennsylvania. There, since 2012, 13 districts identified Hispanic students with speech or language impairments twice as often, if not more, than others. That occurred, ABC News reports, for three consecutive years.
Acting Secretary of Education Dr. John B. King, Jr., is now following up on points raised by his predecessor, Arne Duncan, who frequently highlighted dismantling the school-to-prison pipeline. Thus far, states have adopted different approaches, which remains serious and starts early. One 2005 report showed black 3- and 4-year-olds were expelled from pre-K twice as often as white and Latino children.
California has led the way, reducing the number of suspensions for black students from 709,580 in the 2011-2012 school year to 503,101 in 2013-2014. Minneapolis and Seattle have addressed the problem by ending suspensions for elementary school students. In Illinois, Gov. Bruce Rauner signed a bill curtailing suspensions and expulsions. And in Ohio, the entire staff of one middle school were ordered to receive special training in recognizing behavioral disabilities after a sixth-grader was suspended for 70 days over the course of a single school year.