Below is an excerpt from The Washington Post article written by Valerie Strauss and Catherine Kramarczuk Voulgarides originally published March 20, 2018.
WHY DEVOS’S PLAN TO DELAY OBAMA-ERA RULE ON MINORITY SPECIAL-EDUCATION STUDENTS IS A MISTAKE
President Trump’s Education Department is on its way to delaying by two years the implementation of an Obama-era rule that is intended to address the disparities in the treatment of students of color with disabilities.
The rule amended regulations that are part of the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). John King, the U.S. education secretary in December 2016, said then:
“Children with disabilities are often disproportionately and unfairly suspended and expelled from school and educated in classrooms separate from their peers. Children of color with disabilities are overrepresented within the special education population, and the contrast in how frequently they are disciplined is even starker.”
Current Education Secretary Betsy Devos is not a fan of the rule, and last month, the Education Department published a notice in the Federal Register seeking public comment on a proposal to delay the rule’s implementation, which was supposed to start in the 2018-2019 school year. The notice says the department wants to make this move to ensure the rule’s “effectiveness” can be ensured.
The “Equity in IDEA” rule is just one of a number of Obama-era regulations aimed at protecting the rights of students that the Trump administration has either rolled back or expressed interest in doing so.
In this post, a special education expert explains why delaying the rule — is such a bad idea. It was written by Catherine Kramarczuk Voulgarides, an assistant professor of special education at Touro College in New York City. She has a book coming out in April of 2018 entitled: “Does Compliance Matter in Special Education? IDEA and the Hidden Inequities of Practice.”