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COLUMBUS, Ohio — When Selina Likely became director of the Edwards Creative Learning Center six years ago, she knew there was one longstanding practice that she wanted to change. For as long as she had taught at the thriving child care center, it had turned away many children with disabilities such as autism and Down syndrome. The practice was even encoded in the center’s handbook as policy.
Likely, the parent of a child with a disability, wanted to stop telling families no, but she knew that to do that she and her staff would need more support. “I said, ‘Let’s start getting training and see what we can do.’”
Not too long after, her effort received a big boost from a state-funded initiative in Ohio to strengthen child care teachers’ knowledge and confidence in working with young kids with disabilities and developmental delays. That program, Ohio PROMISE, offers free online training for child care workers in everything from the benefits of kids of all abilities learning and playing together to the kinds of classroom materials most helpful to have on hand. It also offers as-needed mentorship and support from trained coaches across the state.
Related: Young children have unique needs, and providing the right care can be a challenge. Our free early childhood education newsletter tracks the issues.
Child care providers across the country — including large, established centers and tiny home-based programs — struggle to meet the needs of children with disabilities, according to a 2024 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. More than a quarter of parents of children with disabilities said they had a lot of difficulty finding appropriate care for their kids. And even those who do find a spot regularly encounter challenges, like having their children excluded from extracurricular activities such as field trips and even academic instruction.
“It’s really hard to find child care for this population, we heard that loud and clear,” said Elizabeth Curda, a director on the GAO’s Education, Workforce and Income Security team and a coauthor of the report. Even the most well-resourced centers report that they struggle to meet the needs of children with disabilities, according to Curda.
There’s a lot of desire at the grassroots level to change that. Ohio PROMISE and a few other recent initiatives provide models for how to expand the capacity — and the will — of child care centers to serve the more than 2 million U.S. children age 5 or below who have a disability or developmental delay.
Cards on the walls at Edwards Creative Learning Center display the signs for different letters so students — whether nonverbal or not — can all learn sign language. Credit: Sarah Carr/The Hechinger Report
In Vermont, for instance, officials hope to soon unveil a free, on-demand training program aimed at helping child care teachers have more inclusive classrooms. And officials in Ohio’s Summit County, home to Akron, report growing interest from other counties in creating programs based on Summit’s more than decade-old model that provides in-person training for child care operators in inclusion of children with disabilities.
“We’re helping to create child care centers that feel they can handle whatever comes their way, especially when it comes to significant behavior concerns,” said Yolanda Mahoney, the early childhood center support supervisor for Summit County’s disabilities board.
The federal government until recently encouraged the creation of such models. In 2023, the federal Department of Education and Department of Health and Human Services issued a joint statement urging states to take steps to support inclusion in early childhood settings, including strengthening training and accountability.
Under the current president, federal momentum on the issue has largely stalled. While the administration of President Donald Trump hasn’t directly attacked inclusion in the context of special education, the president has criticized the term more broadly — especially when it comes to diversity, equity and inclusion. That can create uncertainty and a chilling effect on advocates of inclusion efforts of all kinds.
Funding for some inclusion efforts is also in jeopardy. States rely on Medicaid, which faces nearly $1 trillion in cuts over the next decade, to pay for early intervention programs for children birth to age 3 with developmental delays and disabilities. Trump has also proposed eliminating Preschool Development Grants, which states such as Vermont and Illinois have used to expand support of young children with disabilities.
That means over the next few years, progress on inclusion in child care settings could hinge largely on state and local investment. It helps that there’s a “real desire” among providers to enroll more children with disabilities, said Kristen Jones, an assistant director on the GAO’s education, workforce and income security team, who also worked on the report. “But there’s also a concern that currently they can’t do that in a safe way” because of a lack of training and resources.
In Ohio, the idea for Ohio PROMISE came after an appeal in 2022 from Republican Gov. Mike DeWine. He reported that families were coming to him saying they couldn’t find child care for their kids with disabilities.
“He said, ‘Come to me with ideas to solve that problem,’” recalled Wendy Grove, a senior adviser in the Ohio Department of Children and Youth who spearheaded development of the program.
Grove and her colleagues had already been working on a related effort. In 2020, Ohio won a federal grant that included help exploring how well — or not — children with disabilities were being included in child care and early education settings. DeWine liked the idea Grove’s team presented of morphing that work into a state-led effort to strengthen training and support for child care teachers. They also proposed more direct support to families, including the extension of child care vouchers to families with incomes above the poverty level, with a higher reimbursement rate for children with disabilities.
The training, which debuted about two years ago, is provided in three levels. Jada Cutchall, a preschool teacher at Imaginative Beginnings, an early learning center just outside of Toledo, recently completed the third tier, which for her included customized coaching. Cutchall’s coach helped her create communication tools for a largely nonverbal student, she said, including a board with pictures children can point to if, for example, they want to go to the bathroom or try a different playground activity.
As a result, Cutchall said, she has watched kids with disabilities, including those with speech impairments and autism, engage much more directly with their classmates. “They have the courage to ask their peers to play with them — or at least not distance themselves as much as they usually would,” she said. All of the children in the classroom have benefited, she added, noting that kids without disabilities have taken an interest in learning sign language, strengthening their own communication skills and fostering empathy.
Child care programs where one teacher and one administrator have completed some of the training earn a special designation from the state, which may eventually be tied to the opportunity to get extra funding to serve children with disabilities. In Ohio PROMISE’s first year, 1,001 child care centers — about 10 percent of the total number in Ohio — earned that designation, according to Grove.
For the last six years, Selina Likely has overseen the Edwards Creative Learning Center, where she’s steadily tried to enroll more children with disabilities and developmental delays. Credit: Sarah Carr/The Hechinger Report
The effort costs a little over $1 million in state dollars each year, with most of that paying for several regional support personnel who work directly with centers as mentors and advisers. Over the last two years, Ohio has seen a 38 percent increase in the number of children in publicly funded centers who qualify for the higher voucher reimbursement rate for children with disabilities, which can be double the size of the standard voucher.
Grove hopes that ultimately the effort plays a role in narrowing a critical and stubborn gap in the state: about 27 percent of children without disabilities show readiness on state standards for kindergarten; only 14 percent of children with disabilities do. Since so few disabilities exhibited at that age are related to intellectual or cognitive functioning, “we shouldn’t see that gap,” said Grove. “There’s no real reason.”
One goal of the new efforts is to reduce the number of young children with disabilities who are expelled from or pushed out of care. Those children are frequently asked to leave for behaviors related to their disability, the GAO report found.
Several years ago, a child care center in Columbus expelled Meagan Severance’s 18-month-old son for biting a staff member. The boy has several special needs, including some related to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Severance brought him to Edwards Creative Learning Center, where not too long after Selina Likely shifted into the role of director. The boy also bit a staff member there — not uncommon behavior for toddlers, especially those with sensory sensitivities and communication challenges.
Likely was determined to work with the child, not expel him. “They put in time and effort,” said Severance. “The response wasn’t, ‘He bit someone, he’s gone.’”
Likely empathized. Decades earlier, her own daughter had been expelled from a child care center in her hometown of Mansfield, Ohio, for biting.
“I was so angry and mad at the time — how are you going to kick out a 1-year-old?” she said. The center director didn’t think at all about how to help her child, Likely recalled, instead asking Likely what might be happening at home to make the child want to bite. She said she got no notice or grace period to find a new placement. “That left me in a disheartened place,” she said. “I was like, ‘I still have to go to work.”
Seventeen years old at the time, she was inspired by the injustice of the situation to quit her job in a factory and apply to be an assistant in a child care program. She’s been in the industry ever since, gradually trying to make more space for children like her daughter, who was later diagnosed with autism.
Meagan Severance, a parent and teacher at the Edwards center, has worked in recent years to make her classroom more inclusive for children with all different abilities. Credit: Sarah Carr/The Hechinger Report
As director, Likely displays the nameplate “chaos coordinator” on her desk. And she’s taken the stance that the center should at least try to work with every kid. She and some of her teachers have completed the first two tiers of the Ohio PROMISE training, as well as some related sessions available from the state. Likely estimates that about 10 percent of the children in her center have a diagnosed disability or developmental delay.
Liasun Meadows, whose son has Down syndrome, chose Edwards several years ago for her then 1-year-old over another program better known for its work with children with disabilities. She has not been disappointed.
Parents of kids with disabilities watch their children like a hawk, she said. “There are certain things you notice that you don’t expect others to notice, but they do at Edwards. They’ve been growing and learning alongside him.”
Severance, whose son is now 8, works at the center these days, leading the 3-year-old room, which includes two children who are largely nonverbal. She’s made the classroom more inclusive, adding fidget toys for children with sensory issues, rearranging the classroom to create calming areas, providing communication books to nonverbal children so they can more easily express needs and wants, and teaching everyone some sign language.
“For a while there was segregation in the classroom” between the kids with disabilities and those without, Severance said. But that’s lessened with the changes. “Inclusion has been good for the kids who are verbal — and nonverbal,” she said.
As in Ohio, state officials in Vermont turned to online training to help ensure young children with disabilities aren’t denied quality care. The state should soon debut the first parts of a new training program, focusing on outreach to child care administrators and support for neurodivergent children. The state wanted to focus on center leaders first because “directors that are comfortable with inclusion lead programs that are comfortable with inclusion,” said Dawn Rouse, the director of statewide systems in Vermont’s Child Development Division.
One tool for supporting and calming children with sensory issues is keeping a healthy supply of fidget toys and Pop-Its on hand. Credit: Sarah Carr/The Hechinger Report
Vermont also pumped millions of dollars into a separate program, known as the Special Accommodations Grant, that supports young children with disabilities. Since 2009 the state has set aside $300,000 a year that child care centers can tap to provide services for individual children with disabilities. It might help buy specialized equipment for a child with cerebral palsy, for instance, or be used to hire a full- or part-time aide.
The $300,000 has been maxed out every year, Rouse said. And after the pandemic, the need — and the number of applications — surged.
As a result, the state allocated some federal American Rescue Plan and Preschool Development Grant dollars to increase spending on the program by about sevenfold — to between $2 million and $2.5 million annually — an amount Rouse still describes as a “Band-Aid.” Without access to the grants, “we see a lot of children being asked to leave programs,” Rouse said. “That’s not good for any child, but for children with specialized developmental needs it’s particularly bad.”
Over time, Likely hopes, her Ohio center can play a small role in reducing that instability, although the center hasn’t yet been able to work with all such children it wants to. Likely recalls one toddler with a severe disability who climbed up anything he could. There wasn’t enough money to pay for what the child really needed: a full-time aide. “It’s hard when you know you’ve tried but still have to say no,” she said. “That breaks my heart more than anything.”
On one June morning, the center’s teachers acknowledged and celebrated several milestones in its work on inclusion, big and small. One child in the 3-year-old classroom with fine and gross motor challenges was drinking independently from a bottle. The preschool classroom held its first graduation ceremony, translated partly into sign language. All of the kids, no matter their challenges, were set to go on field trips to Dairy Queen and the zoo.
Likely dreams of someday running a center where about half of the children have a disability or delay. It may be years off, she said, but as with the milestones she sees scores of children at the center reach every day, “There’s a way — if there’s a will.”
Sarah Carr is a fellow at New America, focused on reporting on early childhood issues.
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
Scores of speech therapists across the country erupted last month when their leading professional association said it was considering dropping language calling for diversity, equity and inclusion and “cultural competence” in their certification standards. Those values could be replaced in some standards with a much more amorphous emphasis on “person-centered care.”
“The decision to propose these modifications was not made lightly,” wrote officials of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) in a June letter to members. They noted that due to recent executive orders related to DEI, even terminology that “is lawfully applied and considered essential for clinical practice … could put ASHA’s certification programs at risk.”
Yet in the eyes of experts and some speech pathologists, the change would further imperil getting quality help to a group that’s long been grossly underserved: young children with speech delays who live in households where English is not the primary language spoken.
“This is going to have long-term impacts on communities who already struggle to get services for their needs,” said Joshuaa Allison-Burbank, a speech language pathologist and Navajo member who works on the Navajo Nation in New Mexico where the tribal language is dominant in many homes.
In a written statement after this story published, a spokesperson for the association stressed that the proposed changes have not been finalized, and said that member feedback is currently under review.
“ASHA remains steadfast in our belief that all health care services should be non-discriminatory and address the needs of every individual,” the spokesperson added. She characterized the proposed changes as “an evolution, not a retreat,” and noted that person-centered care aims to ensure “clinicians are equipped to deliver services tailored to each person’s context, including their lived experience, language background, cultural identity, and home environment.”
A shift away from DEI and cultural competence — which involves understanding and trying to respond to differences in children’s language, culture and home environment — could have a devastating effect at a time when more of both are needed to reach and help multilingual learners, several experts and speech pathologists said.
They told me about a few promising strategies for strengthening speech services for multilingual infants, toddlers and preschool-age children with speech delays — each of which involves a heavy reliance on DEI and cultural competence.
Embrace creative staffing. The Navajo Nation faces severe shortages of trained personnel to evaluate and work with young children with developmental delays, including speech. So in 2022, Allison-Burbank and his research team began providing training in speech evaluation and therapy to Native family coaches who are already working with families through a tribal home visiting program. The family coaches provide speech support until a more permanent solution can be found, said Allison-Burbank.
Home visiting programs are “an untapped resource for people like me who are trying to have a wider reach to identify these kids and get interim services going,” he said. (The existence of both the home visiting program and speech therapy are under serious threat because of federal cuts, including to Medicaid.)
Use language tests that have been designed for multilingual populations. Decades ago, few if any of the exams used to diagnose speech delays had been “normed” — or pretested to establish expectations and benchmarks — on non-English-speaking populations.
For example, early childhood intervention programs in Texas were required several years ago to use a single tool that relied on English norms to diagnose Spanish-speaking children, said Ellen Kester, the founder and president of Bilinguistics Speech and Language Services in Austin, which provides both direct services to families and training to school districts. “We saw a rise in diagnosis of very young (Spanish-speaking) kids,” she said. That isn’t because all of the kids had speech delays, but due to fundamental differences between the two languages that were not reflected in the test’s design and scoring. (In Spanish, for instance, the ‘z’ sound is pronounced like an English ‘s.’)
There are now more options than ever before of screeners and tools normed on multilingual, diverse populations; states, agencies and school districts should be selective, and informed, in seeking them out, and pushing for continued refinement.
Expand training — formal and self-initiated — for speech therapists in the best ways to work with diverse populations. In the long-term, the best way to help more bilingual children is to hire more bilingual speech therapists through robust DEI efforts. But in the short term, speech therapists can’t rely solely on interpreters — if one is even available — to connect with multilingual children.
That means using resources that break down the major differences in structure, pronunciation and usage between English and the language spoken by the family, said Kester. “As therapists, we need to know the patterns of the languages and what’s to be expected and what’s not to be expected,” Kester said.
It’s also crucial that therapists understand how cultural norms may vary, especially as they coach parents and caregivers in how best to support their kids, said Katharine Zuckerman, professor and associate division head of general pediatrics at Oregon Health & Science University.
“This idea that parents sit on the floor and play with the kid and teach them how to talk is a very American cultural idea,” she said. “In many communities, it doesn’t work quite that way.”
In other words, to help the child, therapists have to embrace an idea that’s suddenly under siege: cultural competence,
Quick take: Relevant research
In recent years, several studies have homed in on how state early intervention systems, which serve children with developmental delays ages birth through 3, shortchange multilingual children with speech challenges. One study based out of Oregon, and co-authored by Zuckerman, found that speech diagnoses for Spanish-speaking children were often less specific than for English speakers. Instead of pinpointing a particular challenge, the Spanish speakers tended to get the general “language delay” designation. That made it harder to connect families to the most tailored and beneficial therapies.
A second study found that speech pathologists routinely miss critical steps when evaluating multilingual children for early intervention. That can lead to overdiagnosis, underdiagnosis and inappropriate help. “These findings point to the critical need for increased preparation at preprofessional levels and strong advocacy … to ensure evidence-based EI assessments and family-centered, culturally responsive intervention for children from all backgrounds,” the authors concluded.
Carr is a fellow at New America, focused on reporting on early childhood issues.
Contact the editor of this story, Christina Samuels, at 212-678-3635, via Signal at cas.37 or [email protected].
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
New Jersey students with disabilities are the least likely in the nation to spend their days surrounded by peers without disabilities.
One underlying reason: a sprawling network of separate schools that allows districts to outsource educating them.
New Jersey has more than a hundred private schools, plus eight county-run districts specifically for students with disabilities.
Districts spend hundreds of millions of dollars placing students in private schools rather than investing in their own staffing and programs — placements that cost New Jersey taxpayers $784 million in 2024, not including transportation. That’s up from about $725 million the year before. This can create a self-perpetuating cycle that increases reliance on separate schools and, experts say, may violate students’ federal right to spend as much time as possible learning alongside students without disabilities.
In many cases, parents say school administrators are too quick to send children out of district and pressure families to agree to those settings. Other times, parents choose to send their child to a separate school, sometimes feeling that they have no choice after repeatedly failing to get their kids the help they need in their local school.
“Whatever it is that their kids need within the district, they’re not getting,” said special education parent and advocate Amanda Villamar, who works with families throughout New Jersey. “The question becomes: Why are these services in private schools and not necessarily integrated into our public school system?”
In all, about 30,000 students with disabilities in New Jersey — or 13 percent— attend separate private or public schools, according to The Hechinger Report’s analysis of federal data. That’s the highest percentage in the country. Nationwide, 4 percent attend separate schools.
New Jersey’s history of failing to include children with disabilities in public school classrooms dates back to the 1910s. That’s when the state began promoting separate schools for students with disabilities as a more humane alternative to barring them from schools altogether.
Nationwide, only 1 in 5 students with disabilities were enrolled in the public school system in the 1970s, when Congress passed the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act or IDEA. The law enshrines integration by saying students with disabilities have a right to learn alongside students without disabilities to the “maximum extent” possible and that they should be placed in the “least restrictive environment.”
Across the nation, parents and children fought state laws excluding students with disabilities from public schools — with fights in Washington D.C. and Pennsylvania fueling the passage of IDEA. It wasn’t until 1992 that New Jersey repealed its statutes allowing public schools to exclude “untrainable” children with disabilities. By then, separate schools were an integral part of the state’s highly decentralized education system, which today comprises roughly 600 districts.
New Jersey Department of Education officials said the state is committed to ensuring students with disabilities are in the most appropriate school setting based on individual needs, and that includes out-of-district programs.
“New Jersey is uniquely positioned in this regard, with a longstanding infrastructure of out-of-district options and many small local public school districts,” department spokesman Michael Yaple said in an email. “These and other factors have contributed to the state’s historical reliance on a wide array of specialized programs designed to offer diverse, individualized educational options for students with disabilities.”
The rate at which New Jersey school districts place students in separate schools has declined over the past two decades. In the same period, however, more parents chose to send their children to private schools, sometimes because they felt they had no other viable options.
Some parents say there are significant trade-offs when their child leaves their district school.
Ellen Woodcock’s son, a fifth grader, attends a county-run school for students with disabilities where she says teachers understand his autism much better than they did in her home district.* Despite her son’s fascination with geography, however, teachers spend little time on science or social studies. The school has no library, and the day ends an hour earlier than his district elementary school. School staff focus on teaching social skills, but he’s lost the chance to model the behavior of peers without disabilities.
Left out
New Jersey has the nation’s lowest inclusion rates for students with disabilities. The Hechinger Report investigated why — and visited places that show how it doesn’t need to be that way.
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“I feel like he’s not being challenged, like he’s kind of pigeonholed,” Woodcock said. “We just felt like we didn’t have a choice.”
Her son spent kindergarten through second grade learning in general education classrooms at his local neighborhood school in Haddonfield, New Jersey, and she was happy with the social and academic progress he was making. In third grade, however, things changed. The school shifted him into a separate classroom for significant parts of the day. Woodcock said school staff seemed unable, or unwilling, to address how his autism affected his learning and provide the right support to account for it. She felt he was unwanted.
In the middle of fourth grade, she said she reluctantly transferred him to a specialized school where he spent his day with other students with autism.
“It was almost out of desperation,” Woodcock said. “It was like, let’s get him out of the school district, because we feel like they can’t support him. It was a fight all the time to get him what he needed.”
Haddonfield district officials said privacy laws prevent them from commenting on individual students but noted that the percentage of students with disabilities who spend almost all of their time in general education classrooms is significantly higher than the state’s average. About 69 percent of Haddonfield students with disabilities spend at least 80 percent of the school day in general education classrooms, compared with 45 percent statewide, according to state Education Department data.
“We are proud of our inclusive practices and the strong sense of belonging we strive to create for all students,” district officials said in a statement. “The least restrictive environment can look different for each student.”
In Haddonfield, 19 percent of parents with students with disabilities choose to enroll their children in private schools, compared with 7 percent statewide.
Woodcock decided to move her son back to the district next year, where he’ll start sixth grade at the local middle school. She understands that her son may need to be pulled out of class to learn a subject like math in a special education resource room — but she believes he can, and should, learn in general education classrooms as well.
Under IDEA, students with disabilities should be placed in separate schools or classes only if their disability makes it too difficult for them to learn in a regular classroom, even with extra help and support. A team made up of a child’s parents, teachers, school district officials and, when appropriate, the child, decide on a placement together and must review it each year.
The federal Department of Education says those teams have to make this decision based on an individual child’s needs — not solely because of the kind of disability, how significant the child’s needs are or whether the school has the money or the staff. In New Jersey, however, some parents say schools too often determine placement on a child’s diagnosis alone.
Observers, including special education advocates and attorneys, say school districts and leaders of separate schools tend to argue it would be too difficult for all of New Jersey’s hundreds of public school districts to provide services for all types of disabilities. That’s fueled a reliance on private and county-run separate schools, many of which have classrooms or programs focused on a specific disability, such as autism or dyslexia, with specially trained teachers.
Districts sometimes launch specific special education programs — applied behavioral analysis classrooms for students with autism, for example — only to abandon them after challenges paying for them or finding qualified staff, said Paul Barger, a special education lawyer in Irvington, New Jersey.
“Instead of continuing to develop their own programs in the districts, they went ahead and just said they’re placing out into state-approved private school programs,” Barger said.
Returning some students with disabilities to in-district schools would require more money. Lawmakers in New Jersey are debating the governor’s proposal to boost funding for special education services in public schools by $400 million for the next school year. Advocates say that’s an opportunity to build stronger special education systems in public schools. The governor also proposed flat funding of $420 million for private school tuition payments for students with disabilities.
Some parents, unhappy with the services they see in public districts, prefer private schools: A growing number pay for their children to attend. That’s despite the fact that those parents who choose private schools lose federal protections, including the rights to raise formal complaints.
ASAH, the group representing New Jersey private schools for students with disabilities, which enroll more than 10,000 students, points out the lack of special education services in public districts. It tells parents that poorly trained paraprofessionals in public schools can be stigmatizing, and placing students in self-contained classrooms doesn’t make students feel valued or included. The group, formerly known as the Association of Schools and Agencies for the Handicapped, argues private schools may not be more costly to the state than public schools once pensions are factored in.
Students with disabilities have the right to options like private schools, the association’s executive director John Mulholland said in an interview.
“It really is an individualized determination, and merely just being a part of your home district isn’t always a least restrictive environment,” he said.
Unlike for public schools, the federal government doesn’t collect data from private schools about how often their students interact with peers without disabilities. According to the association’s recent study of 5,300 students served by ASAH schools, 262 students planned to leave their private schools in the 2022-23 school year to return to their home district. That report suggests such a move was less likely for children with autism and multiple disabilities.
Mulholland said private schools may offer some interaction with students without disabilities through community service or sporting events. His association’s analyses have found that students who start at a private school earlier are more likely to return to their public school district.
“If students come to us younger, they can get the intensive support they need or return to their school districts — many of our members pride themselves on that turnaround,” Mulholland said.
Nicole Lannutti, of Washington Township in Gloucester County, said her daughter Sophia, who is non-verbal and has multiple disabilities, attended a private preschool for one year at a cost to the district of roughly $90,000. (New Jersey requires school districts to provide preschool for students with disabilities.)
Lannutti pushed to get Sophia into the public school system for a second year of preschool and then elementary school, where she said her daughter thrived in a school that prioritized inclusion. But that changed in middle school, where her mom says she’s had to push to have her daughter included even in lunch, recess and extracurricular activities. Washington Township school district did not respond to requests for comment.
Lannutti said her local public school is still the most appropriate setting for her child, who will enter seventh grade in the fall and has made friends by participating in the school play. The school agrees, and said as much in her education plan. Lannutti said private schools play an important role, but public schools should work harder to serve more students and fulfill their civil right to an education. “When it comes to my kid, it’s not that she should go because this district can’t handle it,” Lannutti said. “They should learn how to do it.”
*Correction:This story has been updated to correct Ellen Woodcock’s son’s current grade level.
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
CINNAMINSON, N.J. — Terri Joyce believed that her son belonged in a kindergarten classroom that included students with and without disabilities.
The year before, as a 4-year-old, he happily spent afternoons in a child care program filled with typically developing children, without any extra support. Like other kids his age, her son, who has Down syndrome, was learning about shapes and loved sitting on the rug listening to the teacher read books aloud. His speech delay didn’t prevent him from making friends and playing with children of differing abilities and, during the summer, he attended the same program for full days and would greet her with big smiles at pick up time.
But when Joyce met with school district administrators ahead of her son’s kindergarten year, they told her that he would need to spend all day in a classroom that was only for students with significant disabilities.
“They absolutely refused to even consider it,” Joyce said. “They told us, ‘We move so fast in kindergarten, he needs specialized instruction, he’ll get frustrated.’”
It was the separate classroom that left him frustrated.
Terri Joyce said her son, who has Down syndrome, has thrived after she fought for him to be included in a general education classroom. Credit: Yunuen Bonaparte for The Hechinger Report
Under federal law, students with disabilities — who once faced widespread outright exclusion from public schools — have a right to learn alongside peers without disabilities “to the maximum extent” possible. That includes the right to get accommodations and help, like aides, to allow them to stay in the general education classroom. Schools must report crucial benchmarks, including how many students with disabilities are learning in the general education classroom over 80 percent of the time.
More than anywhere else in the country, New Jersey students with disabilities fail to reach this threshold, according to federal data. Instead, they spend significant portions of the school day in separate classrooms where parents say they have little to no access to the general curriculum — a practice that can violate their civil rights under federal law.
Just 49 percent of 6- and 7-year-olds with disabilities in the state spend the vast majority of their day in a general education classroom, compared with nearly three-quarters nationally. In some New Jersey districts, it was as low as 10 percent for young learners. Only 45 percent of students with disabilities of all ages are predominantly in a general education classroom, compared to 68 percent nationwide.
For over three decades, the state has faced lawsuits and federal monitoring for its continued pattern of unnecessarily segregating students with disabilities and regularly fails to meet the targets it sets for improving inclusion.
Surrounded mostly by children who had trouble communicating, Terri Joyce’s son’s speech development stalled. He wasn’t exposed to what his peers in the general education classroom were learning — like science and social studies.
For Terri Joyce, getting her son included in a general education classroom “was a part-time job” and meant staying on top of, and documenting, his academic and social progress. Credit: Yunuen Bonaparte for The Hechinger Report
Joyce tried mediation with the Cinnaminson district but they refused to budge. In the end, she hired a lawyer, filed a due process claim with the state and succeeded in having her son placed in a classroom that included students with and without disabilities the next year, repeating kindergarten to see if he could regain the skills he had lost. The process cost her family thousands of dollars.
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The Hechinger Report spoke with more than 80 parents, researchers, lawyers, advocates and school officials across the state who described a widespread failure to devote resources to integrating students with disabilities — and a decentralized system that gives enormous power to district leaders, who have long been able to refuse to prioritize inclusion without facing consequences from the state or federal government.
New Jersey is known nationally as a leader in public education, but the state’s governance system has led to inclusion rates that vary dramatically between districts. As a result, a child who is placed in a separate classroom for the entire day in one district could be included all day in a general education classroom in a neighboring one.
“Mindset is the biggest barrier,” said Michele Gardner, executive director of All In for Inclusive Education and previously an administrator for 15 years in the Berkeley Heights district. “There are educators, parents, administrators and physicians who truly believe that separate is better for children with and without disabilities. With more than 600 districts, local control makes change harder.”
Experts say integrating students with disabilities in general education should be easiest, and can be the most beneficial, in the early years. Researchers have found students with and without disabilities — particularly the youngest learners — can benefit when inclusion is done with enough staffing and commitment. Young children also learn from watching each other, and parents worry denying students with disabilities this chance can have lasting damage on them academically and emotionally. Worldwide, inclusion is considered a human right helping all children develop empathy and prepare for society after graduation.
Too often, New Jersey parents say, young learners are placed right away in separate classrooms based on a diagnosis — as Joyce’s son was — rather than an assessment of what support they actually need.
Just over a decade ago, New Jersey settled a class-action lawsuit filed by parents and advocacy groups over student placement, which required years of state monitoring, a new stakeholder committee, and training and technical assistance for districts with the lowest rates of inclusion.
But since then, the proportion of young students in the general education classroom the vast majority of the day actually decreased by about 5 percentage points, from 54 percent in the 2013-14 school year. Nationwide, there was no such drop.
“We are certainly seeing a trend that, even at younger ages, students are being shuttled into segregated schooling and never really starting in inclusive experiences,” Syracuse University inclusive special education professor Christine Ashby said of New Jersey and other states.
Ashby, who also runs the university’s Center on Disability and Inclusion, said students then tend to stay in separate — commonly called self-contained — classrooms, where they may receive individualized instruction alongside peers with disabilities but may be less prepared for life after high school.
For Terri Joyce, the opportunity she fought for her son to have proved worth it. It took him time to adjust, but with the help of an aide, he settled in and, now in first grade, is thriving alongside his general education peers once again.
“It was like night and day,” said Joyce. “His speech improved. He loves school. He has friends. He gets invited to birthday parties.”
Terri Joyce is happy with how her son’s writing skills have developed in first grade while learning in a general education classroom. Credit: Yunuen Bonaparte for The Hechinger Report
New Jersey Department of Education officials declined a request for an interview, but said in a statement that the agency is working with schools statewide to improve how often students with disabilities are placed in general education classrooms through training, technical assistance and programs promoting inclusion. A new website provides a detailed look at each district’s data, broken down by grade and type of disability.
“All placement decisions must be made on an individual basis and there is no one-size-fits all standard or outcome that should be applied to every district, school or student,” Laura Fredrick, the department’s communication director, said in the emailed statement.
Fredrick said districts that fail to meet state goals for increasing inclusion may face more intensive monitoring, but there are no direct financial penalties or automatic consequences for failing to improve. She also noted that the state pays for voluntary trainingto increase inclusion in K-12 schools.
That program has helped in some districts, but a limited number of schools have participated so far and space is limited — some that have applied for the training have been turned away.
In Cinnaminson, district officials said they could not comment on specific students but that school officials and parents work together on placement decisions.
“To the fullest extent possible, we strive to place students in general education classrooms for the most inclusive educational experience,” Superintendent Stephen Cappello said in a statement.
Some experts said the data suggests that, unlike other states, New Jersey districts do a good job providing individualized services that students need. Autism New Jersey clinical director Joe Novak said in contrast, “There are certain districts, or states, where the default may simply be to place the child in general education and say, ‘Well, best of luck.’”
Indeed a frequent complaint from some parents is the lack of specialized services in general education classrooms, especially because of staffing shortages or lack of expertise. In those cases a student may be counted as included in a general education classroom but without the support they need, which advocates on both sides of the debate say can be harmful.
“New Jersey is probably doing a lot of things right, because it means we’re probably really customizing what makes sense for the individual,” Novak said
Yet others say the state can improve inclusion rates that are sharply lower than the nation’s.
The federal government doesn’t say how many students should be included or for how much of the school day. States set targets for inclusion rates but typically don’t fine or sanction districts for not meeting them. States can also take other steps like requiring training or administrative changes for districts. Advocates say New Jersey districts have little to lose for repeatedly falling below the state’s own targets for including children with disabilities.
Left out
New Jersey has the nation’s lowest inclusion rates for students with disabilities. The Hechinger Report investigated why — and visited places that show how it doesn’t need to be that way.
Do you have experiences with special education you’d like to share with our journalists?
Oversight from the federal government could also diminish going forward. Although the Trump administration pledges to continue funding special education, advocates warn the planned dismantling of the Department of Education, including its civil rights enforcement arm, will harm students with disabilities.
“It’s sort of petrifying, from my end, for these families,” said Jessica Weinberg, a former New Jersey school district attorney who now runs a special education law firm.
“It could be completely disbanded,” she said of the Education Department. “The uncertainty is really unsettling.”
Federal law says students should be placed in separate classrooms “only if” they can’t learn in the general education classroom with services detailed in IEPs, or individualized education programs — the document that outlines a student’s needs, the services they should receive and where they’ll receive them. Teachers, school officials and parents sit on their child’s IEP team, which is supposed to review placement decisions each year.
And parents across New Jersey say it takes time and money to fight for access to general education classrooms — which means whether a child is included can reflect existing racial disparities and whether families can afford lawyers and advocates. Parents say when a school argues their child must be taught separately, their best way of fighting that decision is lawyers and experts — if they can afford it.
Districts with less poverty and a larger share of white students tend to have higher inclusion rates and test scores, according to The Hechinger Report’s analysis of state data. Overall, just 37 percent of Black students in kindergarten, first or second grade in New Jersey are included in the general education classroom for the vast majority of the school day, compared to half of white students.
It’s challenging to get special education services in urban and lower-income districts in the first place, said Nicole Whitfield, a mother of a child with a disability who founded an advocacy group in Trenton for families fighting for special education services.
Urban “districts are so overloaded with so many kids, they don’t do a good job in managing it,” she said.
In all districts, arguments against including more students often hinge on money. Administrators may say they can’t afford all the services every child needs, like an aide assigned to work with one child, and some parents worry providing comprehensive services could strain budgets or cut services for students without disabilities. As special education costs rise, the federal government has long failed to provide as much special education funding as it pledged.
The way New Jersey funds schools doesn’t consider how many students have disabilities. The governor’s proposed budget for the upcoming school year would take that into account and increase overall special education spending by about $400 million — though some districts will lose money. Lawmakers are debating the governor’s proposal, which has some support from the chair of the state Senate Education Committee, Sen. Vin Gopal.
Yet districts spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year to pay tuition at private schools ($784 million last year statewide) and fight legal battles — money advocates say could boost public special education.
It cost Washington Township school district about $90,000 to send Nicole Lannutti’s daughter, who is non-verbal and has a developmental delay, to a private preschool for a year rather than educate her in one of its schools.
“If you can come up with the money for lawsuits, why can’t you put it into the district right now?” Lannutti said. “That makes no sense.”
Washington Township school district did not respond requests for comment.
Whittier Elementary School in Teaneck, New Jersey, rearranged its classrooms to improve how many students with disabilities are included in classes with their peers. Credit: Meredith Kolodner/The Hechinger Report
In some districts, officials say inclusion doesn’t cost more in the long run, even if there are upfront costs. Administrators in Sparta Township, for example, said improving inclusion rates didn’t require more spending. Its schools got help from the New Jersey Inclusion Project — the state-funded training program that helps districts provide students with the least restrictive learning environment appropriate for them.
“[It] has really changed the way we educate our students,” said Adrienne Castorina, Sparta’s director of special services. Teachers found that they were able to provide specialized instruction in reading inside a general education classroom, for example, instead of pulling children out and teaching them in separate rooms.
In 2024, a special education parent advisory committee in Bernards Township School District asked administrators to apply to the New Jersey Inclusion Project. Parents thought the program would be a no-cost, collaborative path forward.
District officials refused.
Many parents in the wealthy district say Bernards’ classroom staff are committed and skilled, but they also say there’s an unwritten policy of separating children based on their diagnosis — close to three-quarters of children with autism, for example, spend the vast majority of their day without contact with their general education peers.
For years, Trish Sumida pleaded with staff at her daughter’s elementary school in Bernards to allow her to have contact with her non-disabled peers. But every day, starting in kindergarten, she learned only alongside other children with autism. Most years, she was the only girl in the room, and she longed for someone to play with who shared her interests.
“Those early years are so important,” said Sumida, whose daughter is now in fifth grade and still spends most of her time in a separate classroom. “I feel like we’ve missed our window.”
Many Bernards parents are particularly frustrated by the refusal to set up co-taught classrooms, a nationally used approach where a general education and special education teacher work together to educate students with and without disabilities.
Jean O’Connell, Bernards’ director of special services, rejected the idea of co-taught classes in elementary school, saying they made it harder to support individual students, particularly in reading. “We had this model in place for many years and found it ineffective,” she said in an email.
Research suggests even students with significant disabilities can learn alongside general education peers with help from co-teachers or paraprofessionals. And a large body of evidence suggests inclusion doesn’t harm learners with or without disabilities.
Some scholars say inclusion research is flawed because students who appear to benefit may need less support and have fewer academic struggles. Such experts point out that a separate classroom may be the appropriate setting for some children, who could languish without intensive support in a general education classroom. And schools with high inclusion rates on paper may place students with disabilities in general education without needed aides and accommodations — which federal data does not capture.
Even a prominent researcher who has questioned the benefits of inclusion, however, said most children don’t need to be taught separately all day.
“Most students with disabilities do not need very intensive forms of instruction,” said Vanderbilt University special education professor Douglas Fuchs.
O’Connell did not respond to questions about why Bernards refused to participate in the New Jersey Inclusion Project and said only that the district has participated in inclusion workshops. She added that the district has no “blanket district-wide policy on inclusion” and involves parents in all placement decisions.
Yet several Bernards parents said they met intense resistance from administrators. One mom said her child who has autism that requires limited support was in an inclusion classroom for pre-K without any problems, but Bernards administrators insisted he be placed in a self-contained classroom for kindergarten.
“He would cry to me every morning and say he didn’t want to go to school,” said the mom, who asked not to be named, afraid her child could experience discrimination because of his disability if identified. “I just felt heartbroken every day.”
She tried repeatedly to have him moved, eventually turning to mediation and filing a complaint with the state. Ultimately, she felt her child couldn’t wait for a resolution. She moved to another district last fall, where he learns alongside his general education peers all day. She said her child is now happy and doing well academically and socially.
Other districts that have struggled with low levels of inclusion have embraced outside help — including from the Inclusion Project. The program helped Whittier Elementary School in Teaneck create its first co-taught classrooms two years ago. Teachers there said the shift requires a lot of planning and they wish they had more staff to provide support, but they’ve seen their students develop academically and socially.
“When you think about the conversations that kids have — turn to your partner, talk to your table, those opportunities aren’t there in self-contained,” said Janine Lawler, who has been a special education teacher for 18 years, mostly in self-contained classrooms, and is now co-teaching in a first-grade class.
Janine Lawler teaches math to a group of first graders in Teaneck, New Jersey. Her classroom includes students with and without disabilities. Credit: Meredith Kolodner/The Hechinger Report
Educators say they can provide intensive instruction without having to separate children for large portions of the day.
“Do we have to isolate young people to give them a service, or can we include them and provide the same service or greater service?” said André Spencer, superintendent of Teaneck Public Schools. “We believe we can include them.”
For decades, New Jersey education officials have failed to support or pressure districts to improve their inclusion rates. A 2004 report found a lack of consequences — such as financial penalties — for New Jersey districts who repeatedly failed to increase inclusion of students with disabilities despite years of promises to improve.
“There’s a culture in New Jersey, which is that you teach kids with impairments in segregated classes,” said Carol Fleres, a long-time special education administrator in New Jersey who is now a special education professor and department co-chair at New Jersey City University.
A 2018 report by the National Council on Disability, an independent federal agency, found “serious contradictions” in New Jersey’s regulations that lay out how schools have to provide special education services. For example: The state categorizes students as having mild, moderate or severe disabilities and says that students with similar behavioral or academic needs should be grouped together.
Those issues make it easy for New Jersey schools to lump students with disabilities together in violation of federal requirements, according to the report.
A spokesman for New Jersey’s education department defended the regulations as doing the opposite. “This arrangement helps ensure that students who require more individualized instruction, especially those whose needs cannot be met in a general education setting, even with supplementary aids and services, are educated in smaller, more supportive environments,” Michael Yaple said in an email.
Despite settlements and scrutiny, advocates want more accountability: New Jersey’s State Special Education Advisory Council, which advises the state Education Department on special education issues, recommended required training for districts with low inclusion rates.
Special education parent and advocate Amanda Villamar, who works with families throughout New Jersey, said education officials try to educate the state’s over 600 school districts — but those efforts only go so far.
“We have a lot of districts that just say: ‘Well, it’s guidance. We don’t have to do it,’” Villamar said. “They literally just don’t even give it the time of day. Then you have other districts that put a lot of work and thought and effort into it.”
Lawyers representing families said young children with behavioral challenges or intellectual disabilities often wind up in separate classrooms for years, even if behaviors improve. Promises of inclusion in gym class or at lunch don’t always happen, they said.
Many parents said they felt forced to agree to separate classrooms, with the promise of inclusion, eventually. That day never came.
“Once you start restricting them, how are you going to get them back and get them increasingly more time within the classroom?” said Elizabeth Alves, a member of the State Special Education Advisory Council.
For Terri Joyce’s son, learning in the co-taught classroom meant accessing the general education curriculum, including social studies. The lessons on civil rights inspired him.
“He became obsessed with Martin Luther King,” she said. “He still will sit for hours and watch YouTube videos of his speeches.”
Like other students with disabilities, her son’s IEP is subject to an annual review, which means that inclusion in the general education classroom isn’t guaranteed in the years to come. Joyce says that means constant vigilance in a process that feels like a part-time job.
But her efforts to have her son included are about more than academics. He’s on the flag football team. He rides the school bus. Other kids recognize him and say hello in the grocery store.
“It’s much bigger than just his education and being included in the classroom,” she said. “Being included in school means he’s more included in life, and he’s more included in our community, and he’s more valued.”
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
The founder and executive director of a network of Arizona charter schools serving autistic children has been named the U.S. Education Department’s deputy assistant secretary for special education and rehabilitative services. Education Secretary Linda McMahon made the announcement while touring the Arizona Autism Charter Schools’ Phoenix location.
Diana Diaz-Harrison, whose son is autistic, said that in her new job she hopes to continue her efforts to help others launch autism charter schools throughout the country. Her schools, she said in remarks captured on video by AZ Central, are a testament to what happens “when parents like me are empowered to create solutions.”
“My vision is to expand school choice for special needs families — whether through charter schools, private options, voucher programs, or other parent-empowered models,” she said in a statement to The 74. .
The five-school network uses a controversial intervention that attempts to train children to appear and behave like their neurotypical peers. Created by the researcher behind LGBTQ conversion therapy, applied behavior analysis, or ABA, is widely depicted as the gold standard despite scant independent evidence of its effectiveness and mounting research documenting its harms.
Diaz-Harrison opened the network’s first school in 2014 as a free, public alternative to private schools for autistic children, which are popular in Arizona but typically charge tens of thousands of dollars a year in tuition. Her Arizona charter schools are a 501(c)3 nonprofit financed by state and federal per-pupil funds. ABA is specifically endorsed by Arizona education officials as a strategy to use with autistic students.
In the time since those charters opened, ABA has grown to be a national, multi-billion-dollar industry, with for-profit companies tapping public and private insurance to pay for as much as 40 hours a week of one-on-one therapy. The intervention uses repeated, rapid-fire commands that bring rewards and punishments to change a child’s behavior and communication style.
A 74 investigation last year showed that most data supporting ABA’s effectiveness is drawn from research conducted by industry practitioners. Independent analyses, including a years-long U.S. Department of Defense review, found little evidence the intervention works. Former patients who underwent the therapy as children reported severe, lasting mental health effects, including PTSD.
Diaz-Harrison told The 74 the therapy is both valuable and sought-after. “For the autism community, specifically, many families seek schools that integrate positive behavioral strategies,” she says. “The evidence supporting behavioral therapy is extensive and well-established. It has been endorsed by the U.S. surgeon general and the American Academy of Pediatrics as an effective, research-backed approach for individuals with autism.”
During her visit, McMahon told students and staff she was eager to tell President Donald Trump about the schools. “He doesn’t believe any child, whether they have neuro-difficulties or any other problems, should be trapped in a school and not have the facilities that they need,” she said.
Since Trump’s second inauguration, he has issued numerous orders that have alarmed disability advocates and the autistic community. Though both edicts contradict longstanding federal laws, in March he ordered the closure of the Education Department and said responsibility for special education will be transferred to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
About half of the Education Department’s staff has been fired, including most of the people responsible for investigating what had been a backlog of some 6,000 disability discrimination complaints. Though it’s unclear whether Trump and McMahon may legally disregard special education funding laws and allow states to spend federal dollars as they see fit, both have said they favor giving local officials as much decision-making power as possible.
Meanwhile, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has stoked fear in the autistic community by announcing a new effort to tie autism to vaccines or other “environmental toxins” — a hypothesis discredited by dozens of studies. The man he appointed to head the study has been cited for practicing medicine without a license and prescribing dangerous drugs to autistic children.
Last week, the new head of the National Institutes of Health announced that an unprecedented compilation of medical, pharmaceutical and insurance records would be used to create an autism “disease registry” — a kind of list historically used to sterilize, institutionalize and even “euthanize” autistic people. HHS later walked back the statement, saying the database under construction would have privacy guardrails.
Among other responsibilities, the offices Diaz-Harrison will head identify strategies for improving instruction for children with disabilities and ensure that as they grow up, they are able to be as independent as possible. The disability community has raised concerns that the administration is retreating from these goals.
Advocates have said they fear the changes pave the way for a return to the practice of separating students with disabilities in dedicated special ed classrooms rather than having them attend class with typically developing peers. The Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act guarantees special education students the right to instruction in the “least restrictive environment” possible.
Families’ preferences vary widely, with some parents of autistic children refusing any form of behavior therapy, while others want their kids in settings with children who share their needs. Many insist on grade-level instruction in general education classrooms
Diaz-Harrison has a master’s degree in education and worked as a bilingual teacher in California early in her career. From the late 1990s until she began supporting her son full time, she worked as a public relations strategist and a reporter and anchor for the Spanish-language broadcast network Univision.
In 2014, frustrated with her son’s school options, she organized a group of parents and ABA providers who applied for permission to open what was then a single K-5 school serving 90 children. The network now has about 1,000 students in all grades and features an online program.
At the end of the 2023-24 academic year, 9% of the network’s students scored proficient or highly proficient on Arizona’s annual reading exam, while 4% passed the math assessments.
In December 2022, the network won a $1 million Yass Prize, an award created by Jeff and Janine Yass. The billionaire investors have a long track record of donating to Republican political candidates and organizations that support school choice.
One of the award’s creators, Jeanne Allen, is CEO of the Center for Education Reform. The center nominated Diaz-Harrison for the federal role.
Yass award winners were featured at the 2023 meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, a conservative forum where state lawmakers are given model bills on education and other policies to introduce in their respective statehouses.
Diaz-Harrison has partnered with a Florida autism school to create a national charter school accelerator program to help people start schools like hers throughout the country. She told The 74 the effort has so far supported teams of hopeful school founders from Louisiana, Texas, Florida, Alabama and Nevada.
Parents of young autistic children and autistic adults often disagree about ABA. Told by their pediatrician or the person who diagnosed their child as autistic that they have a narrow window in which to intervene, families fight to get the therapy. Adults who have experienced it, however, report lasting trauma and have lobbied for research — much of it now at risk of being defunded by Kennedy — into more effective and humane alternatives.
President Donald Trump said Friday that the U.S. Small Business Administration would handle the student loan portfolio for the slated-for-elimination Education Department, and that the Department of Health and Human Services would handle special education services and nutrition programs.
The announcement — which raises myriad questions over the logistics to carry out these transfers of authority — came a day after Trump signed a sweeping executive order that directs Education Secretary Linda McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure” of the department to the extent she is permitted to by law.
“I do want to say that I’ve decided that the SBA, the Small Business Administration, headed by Kelly Loeffler — terrific person — will handle all of the student loan portfolio,” Trump said Friday morning.
The White House did not provide advance notice of the announcement, which Trump made at the opening of an Oval Office appearance with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
The Education Department manages student loans for millions of Americans, with a portfolio of more than $1.6 trillion, according to the White House.
In his executive order, Trump said the federal student aid program is “roughly the size of one of the Nation’s largest banks, Wells Fargo,” adding that “although Wells Fargo has more than 200,000 employees, the Department of Education has fewer than 1,500 in its Office of Federal Student Aid.”
‘Everything else’ to HHS
Meanwhile, Trump also said that the Department of Health and Human Services “will be handling special needs and all of the nutrition programs and everything else.”
It is unclear what nutrition programs Trump was referencing, as the U.S. Department of Agriculture manages school meal and other major nutrition programs.
One of the Education Department’s core functions includes supporting students with special needs. The department is also tasked with carrying out the federal guarantee of a free public education for children with disabilities Congress approved in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA.
Trump added that the transfers will “work out very well.”
“Those two elements will be taken out of the Department of Education,” he said Friday. “And then all we have to do is get the students to get guidance from the people that love them and cherish them, including their parents, by the way, who will be totally involved in their education, along with the boards and the governors and the states.”
Trump’s Thursday order also directs McMahon to “return authority over education to the States and local communities while ensuring the effective and uninterrupted delivery of services, programs, and benefits on which Americans rely.”
SBA, HHS heads welcome extra programs
Asked for clarification on the announcement, a White House spokesperson on Friday referred States Newsroom to comments from White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt and heads of the Small Business Administration and Health and Human Services Department.
Leavitt noted the move was consistent with Trump’s promise to return education policy decisions to states.
“President Trump is doing everything within his executive authority to dismantle the Department of Education and return education back to the states while safeguarding critical functions for students and families such as student loans, special needs programs, and nutrition programs,” Leavitt said. “The President has always said Congress has a role to play in this effort, and we expect them to help the President deliver.”
Loeffler and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said their agencies were prepared to take on the Education Department programs.
“As the government’s largest guarantor of business loans, the SBA stands ready to deploy its resources and expertise on behalf of America’s taxpayers and students,” Loeffler said.
Kennedy, on the social media platform X, said his department was “fully prepared to take on the responsibility of supporting individuals with special needs and overseeing nutrition programs that were run by @usedgov.”
The Education Department directed States Newsroom to McMahon’s remarks on Fox News on Friday, where she said the department was discussing with other federal agencies where its programs may end up, noting she had a “good conversation” with Loeffler and that the two are “going to work on the strategic plan together.”
Maine Morning Star is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Maine Morning Star maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Lauren McCauley for questions: [email protected].
Professional growth is often at the top of New Year’s Resolution lists. As educators and education leaders plan for the year ahead, we asked some of the nation’s top female school district leaders to give fellow women educators the do’s and don’ts of climbing the professional ladder. Here’s what they said.
Do:Believe in yourself.
Though women make up 76 percent of teachers in K-12 school settings, just a small percentage of women hold the most senior role in a district. But the climb to leadership isn’t an easy one; women in educational leadership report a range of biases–from interpersonal slights to structural inequities–that make it difficult to attain and persist in top positions.
Professional groups like Women Leading Ed are working to change that by highlighting long standing gender gaps and calling for policies and practices to improve conditions at all levels. Female education leaders are also working to rewrite the narrative around what’s possible for women educators and encouraging their peers.
Among those education leaders is Shanie Keelean, deputy superintendent of Rush-Henrietta Central School District in New York. When asked to share advice to her peers, she said, “You just have to continually push yourself forward and believe in yourself. So very often women, if they don’t check all the boxes, they decide not to go for something. And you don’t have to check all the boxes. Nobody knows everything in every job. You learn things as you go. Passion and energy go a long way in being really committed.”
Nerlande Anselme, superintendent of Rome City School District in New York, agreed: “We have directors in this field, we have coordinators in this field, we have psychologists who are doing amazing work, but they will dim themselves and figure that they cannot get to the top. Don’t dim your light.”
Don’t: Keep your career goals a secret.
When you decide to pursue a leadership position, don’t keep it a secret. While it may feel “taboo” to announce your intentions or desires, it’s actually an important first step to achieving a leadership role, said Kathleen Skeals, superintendent of North Colonie Central School District in New York.
“Once people know you’re interested, then people start to mentor you and help you grow into the next step in your career,” Skeals said.
Kyla Johnson-Trammell, superintendent of Oakland Unified School District in California, echoed: “Make your curiosity and your ambition known. You’ll be pleasantly surprised how that will be received by many of the folks that you work for.”
Do: Find a strong mentor.
A strong mentor can make all the difference in the climb to the top, leaders agreed.
“Seek out a leader you respect and ask for a time where you could have a conversation about exploring some possibilities and what the future might bring to you,” said Mary-Anne Sheppard, executive director of leadership development for Norwalk Public Schools in Connecticut.
It’s especially helpful to connect with someone in a position that you want to be in, said Melanie Kay-Wyatt, superintendent of Alexandria City Public Schools in Virginia. “Find someone who’s in the role you want to be in, who has a similar work ethic and a life that you have, so they can help you,” she said.
Don’t: Be afraid to ask questions.
“Start asking a lot of questions,” said Keelean. She suggested shadowing a mentor for a day or asking for their help in creating a career map or plan.
And don’t be afraid to take risks, added Johnson-Trammell. “Could you get me 15 minutes with the superintendent or the chief academic officer?”
Do: Build your skill set and network.
“Increase your impact by developing relational skills and leadership skills,” said Rachel Alex, executive director of leadership development of Aldine Independent School District in Texas.
And cultivate a network, said Heather Sanchez, chief of schools for Bellevue School District in Washington. “We can’t do it alone. Find that network, cultivate that network.”
Don’t: Give up.
“People are always going to tell you no, but that does not stop you,” said Kimberley James. “Continue to live beyond the noise and the distractions and stay focused on what it is that you want to accomplish for our students.”
“I would say to any woman aspiring to any level of leadership that first of all, never sell yourself short,” said Sanchez. “You have it in you.”
Interviews were conducted as part of the Visionary Voices video series. Responses have been edited for clarity and brevity.
Megan Scavuzzo, Presence
Megan Scavuzzo is the Vice President of Communications, Policy and Advocacy for Presence, a leading provider of PreK–12 remote special education-related and mental health evaluation and teletherapy services. With a diverse background in strategic communication and advocacy, Megan specializes in crafting compelling narratives that amplify voices across industries. By harnessing the power of storytelling, she aims to inspire action, provoke thought, and spark meaningful dialogue that leads to tangible change and impact.
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SUPAI, Ariz. — Kambria Siyuja always felt like the smartest kid in Supai.
Raised by educators in this tribal village at the base of the Grand Canyon, she started kindergarten a little ahead of her peers. Her teachers at Havasupai Elementary School often asked Siyuja to tutor younger students and sometimes even let her run their classrooms. She graduated valedictorian of her class.
But once she left the K-8 school at the top of her grade, Siyuja stopped feeling so smart.
“I didn’t know math or basic formulas,” she said. “Typing and tech? Nonexistent.”
Siyuja, now 22, wiped tears from her face as she sat alongside her mother and grandmother — the educators of the family — one afternoon last year in the Havasupai Tribal Council chambers. The trio wept as they recalled Siyuja’s move as a teenager to a private boarding school 150 miles away in Sedona, Arizona, which she’d chosen to attend because the federal agency that runs Havasupai Elementary, the only school in her village, provides no options for high school.
Kambria Siyuja, right, plans to teach in Supai, like her mother, Jackie Siyuja, middle, who teaches at the tribe’s preschool program. Grandmother and Havasupai Tribal Council chair Bernadine Jones, left, previously taught at the elementary school. Their tribe’s seal is reflected from a window onto a wall in the council chambers. Credit: Matt Stensland for The Hechinger Report
Once there, however, Siyuja discovered how little she’d learned at the Supai school. She had only superficial familiarity with state and U.S. history, and knew none of the literature her peers had read years earlier. She was the only freshman who’d never taken pre-algebra.
Last year, eight years after Siyuja graduated, the K-8 school still did not offer pre-algebra, a course that most U.S. public school students take in seventh or eighth grade, if not earlier. It had no textbooks for math, science or social studies. The school’s remoteness — on a 518-acre reservation the government forcibly relocated the Havasupai people to more than 150 years ago — makes it a challenge to staff, and chronic turnover required the few educators who remained to teach multiple grades at once. Only 3 percent of students test proficiently in either English language arts or math.
“I know they struggle a lot because of how few resources we have down here,” said Siyuja of Supai, which visitors must reach either by an 8-mile hike or helicopter. “But what are they teaching here?”
In 2017, six Havasupai families sued the federal government, alleging that the Bureau of Indian Education, which operates Havasupai Elementary and is housed within the Interior Department, deprived their children of their federal right to an education. The tribe, in a brief supporting the lawsuit, argued that the bureau had allowed Havasupai Elementary to become “the worst school in a deplorable BIE system” and that court intervention was required to protect students from the agency.
The families eventually secured two historic settlements that fueled hopes across Indian Country that true reform might finally improve outcomes both in Supai and perhaps also at BIE schools throughout the U.S.
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So far, the settlements have brought new staff to Supai, and the BIE had to reconstitute the school board. Teachers now must use lesson plans, and they finally have a curriculum to use in English, science and math classes. A new principal pledged to stay longer than a school year.
“We now have some teachers and some repairs to the building that are being done,” said Dinolene Kaska, a mother to three former students and a new school board member. “It has been a long time just to get to this point.”
Valencia Stinson leads a kindergarten class through a lesson matching lowercase letters with their corresponding uppercase letters. Credit: Matt Stensland for The Hechinger Report
The legal wins followed an effort to reform the BIE as a whole. In 2014, federal officials unveiled a sweeping plan to overhaul the beleaguered bureau, which had long struggled to deliver better student outcomes with anemic funding. If the BIE were a state, the schools it operates would rank at or very near the bottom of any list for academic achievement.
But in the past decade, and after a nearly doubling of its budget, the BIE has finally started to make some progress. Graduation rates have improved, staff vacancies are down and the bureau built its own data system to track and support student achievement across its 183 campuses in 23 different states. Now, those milestones could be at risk.
President Donald Trump, in his seismic restructuring of the federal government, laid off thousands of workers that will trigger deep cuts to the BIE, among other agencies that work directly on Indian Country. The White House in January also issued an executive order to turn the BIE into a school choice program, draining the bureau of funding and, according to some advocates in Washington, D.C., threatening the government’s long-established trust responsibility to tribal nations. It also remains unclear how the policy would benefit families in isolated communities like Supai where other schooling options are scant or nonexistent.
“Tribes in rural areas don’t have a lot of school choice,” said Quinton Roman Nose, executive director of the Tribal Education Departments National Assembly, a nonprofit that works with tribal education agencies. “For Native students, that’s not a good model. I don’t think it’s going to work for so many.”
Brian Schatz, a Hawaii Democrat and vice chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, said the Trump administration’s actions are devastating. “What Trump is doing to the federal government isn’t just reckless — it’s arson,” he said in a statement to The Hechinger Report. “We will do everything we can to ensure that this manufactured chaos does not have lasting impacts on our trust and treaty responsibilities to Native communities.”
Last fall, as conservative critics called for dismantling the BIE and converting its funding into vouchers, longtime director Tony Dearman defended the bureau. He also pitched a new, five-year strategic direction that will emphasize tribal sovereignty and cultural education — both promises the bureau made in its reform agenda more than a decade ago.
“We have really built the capacity of the BIE,” Dearman said. “It’s just taken a while. Anything in the government does.”
Still, he insisted that the BIE could fulfill the government’s obligation to deliver a quality education to tribal nations. “I truly believe that we can handle the trust responsibility with the support from Congress through appropriations,” Dearman said.
For decades, the Department of the Interior, which manages natural resources and wildlife, placed control of schools on tribal reservations within its Bureau of Indian Affairs. The agency oversees law and justice across Indian Country, as well as agriculture, infrastructure, economic development and tribal governance. The agency’s poor management of schools, meanwhile, had been well documented, and in 2006, an internal shakeup resulted in the creation of the BIE.
Almost from the start, the new bureau faced criticism.
In 2008, the Government Accountability Office dinged the BIE for stumbling in its early implementation of the No Child Left Behind education law. A year later, the Nation’s Report Card found Native students in traditional public schools performed much better than those in BIE schools. (About 92 percent of Native students attend traditional public schools and 8 percent attend BIE schools.) Senators scolded the bureau after only 1 in 4 of its schools could meet the new federal education standards. A 2011 report, “Broken Promises, Broken Schools,” cataloged the deterioration of BIE schools, estimating it would cost $1.3 billion to bring every educational facility to an “acceptable” condition.
In 2013, then-Interior Secretary Sally Jewell assembled a study group to diagnose the root causes of academic failures in BIE schools. A year later, the group released the Blueprint for Reform. At its unveiling, Arne Duncan, then the federal education secretary, had damning words for why the BIE needed to change, calling it “the epitome of broken” and “utterly bankrupt.”
The blueprint, issued through a formal secretarial order, called for dramatically restructuring the BIE over two years, starting with its management of tribally controlled schools. In 1988, as part of a renewed focus on tribal sovereignty, Congress had created a grant program to help tribes take control of their respective BIE schools, and as of 2014, a full two-thirds of campuses had already converted.
The 70-page blueprint proposed transforming the agency from a top-down operator of schools into more of an educational services and support center. It would create a division within the BIE to focus on assisting principals with the day-to-day operation of schools. New regional directors and offices would oversee tribally controlled schools, BIE-operated campuses and schools on the sprawling Navajo Nation.
The plan also pitched the addition of “school support solutions teams” at each regional office that would assist with teacher and principal recruitment, school facilities, financial management and technology. A new Office of Sovereignty and Indian Education would help tribes convert their schools to local control and encourage them to shape culture and language classes. Other proposed changes included allowing tribes to tie staff pay to student performance and creating incentives to replicate successful tribally controlled schools.
The study group, however, did not address whether the bureau needed additional funding to pull off the reforms. And without additional funding, the BIE faced deep cuts as budget negotiations pressured then-President Barack Obama to require all federal agencies to reduce their spending by 20 percent.
That essentially tasked the BIE with achieving a turnaround of its failing schools with a fifth less funding. By the time of the blueprint, those cuts were already phasing in: Between 2011 and 2014, for example, the number of full-time administrators located on or near Indian reservations to oversee school spending fell from 22 to 13, leaving the remaining staff to still split 64 reservations among them.
“It was a terrible set up,” said one former top agency official who worked at the BIE during the blueprint’s release. The official, like many of the more than 75 interviewed by The Hechinger Report for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the DOI’s large role in tribal communities and worries that criticizing the agency could cost them jobs or contracts.
Famous for its turquoise waterfalls — Havasupai means “people of the blue-green water” — Supai village greets visitors at the banks of Havasu Creek.
The creek and waterfalls feed a hidden canyon oasis here. Trees bursting with blooms of apricot and pomegranate offer much-welcome shade for backpacking tourists and the mules carrying their gear. Tribal elders wind their way through Supai’s unmarked dusty roads as children on the preschool playground shield their eyes from sand swirling around the adjacent helipad. Benches, some made from milk crates, ring the town square at the front gate of Havasupai Elementary.
Eight years ago, lawyer Alexis DeLaCruz sat on one of those benches in Supai town square. She had recently started working at the Native American Disability Law Center, a firm based in Farmington, New Mexico, that represents Native Americans with disabilities. The firm had recently hosted a training on special education law for parents, and several from Supai, incensed about their kids’ education, traveled out of the canyon to attend. They convinced DeLaCruz and two colleagues to book a helicopter ride into the village to hear directly from parents about their experiences with the BIE.
Parents described how their children couldn’t tell the difference between North and South America and, despite BIE regulations requiring Native culture in all curriculum areas, the students never had a class in Havasupai culture, history or language. Because of a teacher shortage, children learned in classes that combined students from three or even four grades. The school had 10 principals in as many years. The BIE closed Havasupai Elementary for nearly a month in 2015 because of insufficient staffing.
About 100 students each year enroll in Havasupai Elementary School, one of 183 schools that the Bureau of Indian Education manages on 64 tribal reservations across the U.S. Credit: Matt Stensland for The Hechinger Report
Siyuja, who graduated from the school in 2016, remembered cooks and janitors stepping in as teachers — and then having to leave class midday to check on school lunch or plumbing problems.
Until Siyuja reached the fourth grade, Havasupai Elementary, which serves about 80 students, had two tribal members on staff. They led culture and language classes, and Siyuja still owns a copy of the Havasupai dictionary they gifted her as a child. But then they left, and most of the other teachers soon followed, during the 2011-12 school year, she recalled.
That’s when Obama tasked federal agencies with cutting a fifth of their administrative budgets, hollowing out the BIE’s ability to support its schools. In Supai, the already revolving door of educators suddenly started spinning much faster, Siyuja said.
“We were just in this constant loop of relearning the same thing over and over,” she said.
It wasn’t until college, at Fort Lewis College in Colorado, where Siyuja chose to study education, that she learned it was not normal for a school to lump so many grades together in one classroom. “That’s one of the major big no-nos,” she said. (In an email, a BIE spokesperson said, “Many schools implement implement multi-grade instruction as an intentional and effective educational model,” particularly in rural and remote locations, “to enhance individualized learning, maximize resources and promote peer collaboration.”)
In January 2017, nine students from six families sued the BIE and the Interior Department, naming as defendants Dearman, Jewell — who did not respond to interview requests — her deputy assistant secretary and the Havasupai Elementary School principal. The lawsuit listed all plaintiffs under pseudonyms to protect their identity, and the two families involved in the lawsuit who spoke with The Hechinger Report for this story asked to remain anonymous even after the settlements were signed. Some of the students still attend BIE schools, and parents remain worried about exposing any of their children’s privacy, even as adults.
The families hinged their case on a well-established federal right to education for Native American children.
There is no federal right to education in the Constitution, according to a landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision. But for Native Americans, congressional statutes, executive orders, treaties and other Supreme Court opinions dating back virtually to this nation’s founding have cemented education as a major component of the government’s trust responsibility — a set of legal and moral obligations to protect tribal sovereignty and generally look out for the welfare of tribal members. In 1972, lawmakers made it even more clear with the Indian Education Act, which says that the “federal government has the sole responsibility for the operation and financial support” of tribal schools. They also required the BIA — the BIE had not yet been established — to work with tribes to create a system of schools of “the highest quality.” To this day, the BIE pitches itself as a provider of a “world class education.”
DeLaCruz, not long after filing the Havasupai case, started imagining what impact it could have beyond that tiny community.
“Most cases in our legal system end in money,” she said. “This isn’t the same calculus. We’re weighing what we think we can get in place that won’t just make a difference for students now but frankly for generations to come.”
The lead plaintiff in the case was a sixth grader described in the lawsuit as Stephen C. Diagnosed with ADHD, he had never received counseling as mandated in his Individualized Education Program, or IEP, a legal document detailing the interventions and supports that a student with a disability will get from their school. None of the fifth grade teachers the school hired stayed more than two weeks, the lawsuit said, and Stephen C. was taught in a combined sixth, seventh and eighth grade class.
His teacher’s attention split among kids across three grades, Stephen C. started to act out. The school sent him home three to four times a week for behavior issues related to his disability, the lawsuit alleged. Even as an eighth grader, he could barely read or write.
In its friend-of-the-court brief, the Havasupai Tribe said its “people have been isolated at the bottom of one of the world’s most rugged canyons and for more than a century have been forced to depend on the federal government to educate their children.
“Although the days of forced removal and assimilation are over,” the brief continued, “the BIE is still failing its students.”
The federal government didn’t entirely dispute the claims of Stephen C. and his co-plaintiffs.
The BIE and DOI, in June 2017, formally petitioned the U.S. District Court of Arizona to dismiss the case, arguing that the students couldn’t prove the BIE failed or refused to comply with its regulations for what counts as a “basic” education. Also, by that point Stephen C. and four other plaintiffs all had graduated or transferred from Havasupai Elementary, making them ineligible to pursue compensatory educational services, according to the government.
But Lisa Olson, an attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice, also acknowledged the BIE’s shortcomings.
“We are not saying there’s no accountability here. We are just saying that it’s for Congress and the executive to resolve these problems,” Olson said during a November 2019 hearing before U.S. District Judge Steven Logan. “The agency doesn’t dispute that its efforts have been unsatisfactory and they have fallen short.”
Olson asked Logan to consider the many challenges of providing instruction in Supai: There was no funding for an agency helicopter to transport teachers in and out, for example, and new hires often failed their background checks or took other positions before the FBI checks were completed.
“There’s nothing we can do to change that,” she said.
Passengers load into a helicopter at a landing zone next to the preschool’s playground in a central part of Supai village. Credit: Matt Stensland for The Hechinger Report
Logan seemed unmoved. “So what you are basically saying, counsel, is it is the problem of the parents, and they need to make better decisions about where they have children so they can be properly educated?” he said. Olson responded, saying, “It is not the parents’ fault, but we need the cooperation of the parents and the community.” She continued, “I’m saying that BIE is doing its best and tries to enlist the support of parents and the tribe.”
The families also presented a secondary argument — that the complex trauma of Native American children qualifies them for services and protections of the sort that are guaranteed for students with disabilities. They argued that exposure to adversity — specifically, the long-lasting trauma from this nation’s official policy to separate Native children from their families in order to eradicate their cultures and seize tribal land — limited their ability to access the benefits of a public education. To this day, Havasupai families must ship their children away to attend high school, often in other states, and the BIE has no plans to open one in the canyon.
The government warned Logan against following that line of logic, cautioning that it would set a dangerous precedent linking childhood adversity to a student’s ability to learn. The families filed their lawsuit under the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which prevents discrimination against people with disabilities in federal programs. It does not include adversity or trauma on its list of qualifying conditions, and its applicable regulations expressly note that social disadvantage, such as homelessness or family violence, do not count as impairments, the government noted.
Expanding that definition would threaten to impose “unwieldy” obligations on high-poverty schools across the U.S., the government’s attorneys argued.
“The alleged ‘forced relocation, loss of homes, families and culture,’ and poverty within the Havasupai community … do not constitute a physical or mental impairment,” the motion to dismiss reads.
In August 2020, the federal court issued a mixed decision. Logan allowed the case to continue for students with disabilities. The families also persuaded the court that complex trauma — including interaction with juvenile justice systems, extreme poverty and a denial of access to education — qualifies as a protected disability in the rehabilitation law. But he dismissed the general education claims, deciding that the older students, including Stephen C., had aged out of the school and no potential remedy would be precise enough for a court to enforce.
The Havasupai families cheered Logan’s ruling, but only in part. As they continued to pursue the special education claims, the Havasupai families challenged his decision to dismiss the rest of the case. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which includes Arizona, heard their arguments in February 2022.
“The agency is attempting to comply,” Laura Myron, a Justice Department attorney, told the judges. There are, she added, “numerous, practical obstacles to operating a school at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.”
Kathryn Eidmann, president and CEO of Public Counsel, a pro bono public interest law firm, represented the Havasupai families and argued that their ancestors never chose to permanently live in such an isolated location. The government restricted the tribe to the reservation to make way for Grand Canyon National Park.
Hoai-My Winder, new principal at Havasupai Elementary Schools, holds a student’s hand while walking with him during recess. Credit: Matt Stensland for The Hechinger Report
“The obstacles that the government is pointing to that make compliance hard are entirely problems of the government’s own making,” Eidmann said.
In a short five-page decision, the 9th Circuit panel allowed the older students to continue their lawsuit against the BIE. They clarified that judges — namely, Logan — could indeed compel an agency to comply with its own regulations.
The three judges also ruled that the students could seek monetary compensation for the educational services they never received.
Tara Ford, also a pro bono attorney on the Stephen C. case, said at the time that the ruling would reverberate across Indian Country: “Students who have been harmed by the Bureau of Indian Education’s broken promises now have a path to hold the federal government accountable for its failures.”
By then, the students and government had settled the special education claims. Their deal provided each student with $20,000 for compensatory services and required the BIE to follow anti-discrimination provisions of the Rehabilitation Act while creating its first-ever complaint process for parents to challenge suspected discrimination. After the 9th Circuit ruling, however, negotiations to settle the rest of the Stephen C. case stretched beyond a year.
The eventual deal, signed in May 2023, established an $850,000 compensatory education fund for any student who attended Havasupai Elementary since 2011. The BIE estimates about 215 kids could qualify to use that money, meaning each child would receive roughly $4,000, less than some families had hoped for. It also agreed to pay stipends to help recruit and retain teachers in Supai, build additional housing for staff and hire a cultural instructor from the community. The BIE also had to form a new school board.
A year after the case closed, Breanna Bollig, a fellow at the California Tribal Families Coalition, wrote in a legal publication that it could change Native education far beyond Supai.
“The BIE could be held accountable at every other BIE school through similar lawsuits,” Bollig wrote. “Perhaps the federal right to education for Indian children can even be used to improve inadequate and inequitable state public schools that Indian children attend.”
Billy Vides stopped counting at 19.
That’s how many principals he worked with in his first three years as a teacher at Havasupai Elementary. He stayed two more years, submitting his resignation in June.
A longtime educator in Phoenix public schools, Vides first heard of Supai from a pair of grandmothers at an early learning conference. He had considered retiring, but knew he would miss working with kids. Vides searched online for Havasupai, bookmarked an article calling it “America’s Worst Tribal School” and sent in his application.
“I wanted to make a difference,” he said.
The BIE hired Vides in 2019 as a kindergarten and first grade teacher. On his first day, the interim principal assigned him to a combined kindergarten, first, third and fourth grade class. The ages didn’t mix well, he said, and the older kids bullied and sometimes assaulted the younger children.
Joy Van Est, a special education teacher who quit in June, said many of her students’ IEPs had not been updated for several years. It took her four months, the entirety of her tenure there, to update every child’s support plan.
As part of the settlement, an independent monitor every six months must visit Supai and inspect whether the BIE has complied with its own regulations at the school. The monitor must review 104 specific requirements covering student-to-teacher ratios, curriculum taught in each subject, textbooks, grading rules and more. In its first report following a January 2024 visit, the monitor found the bureau in violation of 72 of those requirements.
The school had a curriculum for just one subject — English language arts — and no textbooks for math, science and social studies, the compliance report reads. Teachers used no lesson plans, in any subject, and the school had no librarian. Only one tribal member taught at the school, leading culture and language classes once a week for 45 minutes.
The compliance officer granted the BIE some credit for hiring a school counselor and physical education teacher. However, once-a-week P.E. classes only happened if the part-time teacher could catch a helicopter flight. The counselor started in November 2023, but staff shortages required her to cover teachers’ classrooms too often for her to do any counseling work, the compliance officer found.
The compliance report seemed to have some impact: In the spring, the BIE went on a hiring spree to replenish the beleaguered staff in Supai. A second counselor and special education teacher — Van Est — plus a few additional teachers meant Havasupai Elementary was fully staffed for the first time in years.
A more recent work plan for the school, updated in December, documented further changes: The bureau hired enough staff to meet class size caps. Teachers now submit weekly lesson plans, and the school selected a curriculum and purchased computers for all grades.
The recent recruits include Hoai-My Winder, the school’s new principal. Winder had been working for the Department of Defense, as an administrator at an elementary school in Japan. She previously taught and worked as an assistant principal in Las Vegas, where her family settled after fleeing Vietnam during the fall of Saigon.
Havasupai Elementary School enrolls students from kindergarten through eighth grade. The Bureau of Indian Education directly operates the campus in Supai village, which visitors must reach via an 8-mile hike or helicopter ride. Credit: Matt Stensland for The Hechinger Report
“Day Six!” Winder hollered one afternoon this past May as she entered the spiked gates that separate Havasupai Elementary from the rest of the village. It was her tally of the number of days she’d been principal — both at Havasupai Elementary and ever.
While her husband unpacked boxes in their new home, Winder took inventory at her new school. She discovered 40-year-old math textbooks on classroom shelves. Havasupai teachers at some point had created a Supai dictionary and draft curriculum for language instruction; Winder found it collecting dust in a box.
As she met with parents and tribal members during her first week, ahead of the eighth grade graduation ceremony that afternoon, Winder repeated a pledge to stay at Havasupai Elementary for at least five years, maybe 10.
Felicia Siyuja, the longtime school secretary, stood next to Winder as families packed into the cafeteria for the ceremony. As the aroma of frybread wafted from the kitchen, Siyuja tapped the mic before addressing the 13 students sitting in the front row.
“I also want to apologize,” she told the soon-to-be freshmen. “All the teachers and principals rotating for all these years. It was hard for me as a grown-up. I can’t imagine how it was for you.”
Eighth graders wearing turquoise-and-gold colored gowns prepare for their graduation ceremony at Havasupai Elementary School. The tribal village, at the base of the Grand Canyon, is famous for its turquoise waterfalls. Credit: Matt Stensland for The Hechinger Report
Aside from Winder and her supervisor, the BIE would not allow The Hechinger Report to interview school staff on the record. But six current or former Havasupai teachers, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity, placed blame on the bureau for Havasupai Elementary’s dysfunction.
“The BIE is the problem,” said one teacher. “The BIE lacks humility.”
The educator, who now works at another BIE school, said he never received cultural training to prepare him for working with Native children and families. Several colleagues resigned before winter break his first year in Supai, making him the most veteran teacher on staff.
“I had no curriculum. No student names, no mentor, no oversight or guidance,” he said. “You don’t want to be yet another teacher who comes and goes. After three years, it gets old. It’s just exhausting.”
In a February 10 email, a BIE spokesperson wrote that cultural training, including language preservation, had been scheduled for later that month.
Van Est, who joined the bureau specifically to support its mission of uplifting tribal communities, said last summer that she no longer believed it was capable of doing that job. “The entity that has most recently oppressed the Havasupai people is making absolutely no effort to use education as a tool for repair, as a gold mine for building their future,” she said.
The BIE blames Havasupai Elementary School’s isolation and lack of housing for its troubles.
Even before the Stephen C. lawsuit, the BIE offered lucrative stipends to lure educators to Supai. It also guarantees housing, in theory, but in a pinch has forced teachers to room together. And a recent hiring spree, to satisfy the settlement, has made housing even tighter.
Dearman said a recent housing needs analysis determined the BIE now needs 30 beds in Supai, but has only 12. One teacher simply didn’t return to their position this fall when the bureau couldn’t secure housing for more than a few weeks.
“That puts a major strain on us being able to keep staff there,” Dearman said about the housing shortage. “We have housing needs at other locations as well. However, Havasupai is so isolated that if you’re not able to stay in our quarters there, there’s no other options.”
He said that it’s hard for some educators to uproot their lives to live in Supai. “It’s a difficult place to come in and out of. It really is,” Dearman said.
Poverty surrounds many BIE schools on tribal reservations, largely as a result of former government policies to eradicate Native peoples. In Supai, nearly 40 percent of the tribe lives in poverty, almost four times the national average. Tourism provides an economic bedrock for the Havasupai economy, though many families rely on government assistance.
Vides, the teacher, struggled with his decision to quit. His wife had remained 300 miles away in Phoenix, raising their 3-year-old daughter without him. He missed a lot of her firsts, and felt torn between her and the Havasupai children.
“It was difficult. I was grieving for the future of these students,” Vides said.
“Either the system is continually broken,” he added, “or the system is working successfully to slowly eradicate this tribe.”
Long before Trump’s executive order in January, some conservatives had pushed school choice as a solution to the BIE’s troubles. In 2016, the right-wing Heritage Foundation proposed turning the BIE into an education savings account, or ESA, which would grant families a portion of their child’s per-pupil funding to spend on private school tuition, home-school supplies and other educational expenses. That same year, the late Arizona Sen. John McCain introduced legislation offering ESAs equal to 90 percent of what the BIE spends on each student.
The bill didn’t advance, but Heritage resurrected the idea last year in its Project 2025 transition plan for the next president. Notably, the conservative think tank — despite citing the BIE’s poor track record as justification for converting much of its funding into vouchers — also proposed granting it even more authority over the education of all Native American students, in all U.S. public schools.
In his January order, Trump required the BIE to identify “any available mechanisms” for families to tap federal funding for private and faith-based schools, as well as to report on the performance of its schools and identify alternatives for families to consider. The agency has until April to submit its plan, for implementation this fall. The White House did not respond to several requests for comment.
In certain tribal communities across Arizona, some parents have started to consider opting out of the BIE system. The state passed a universal school voucher program in 2022, giving any family who wants roughly $7,400 to spend on private or parochial schools or other options. Christian academies on the Gila River Indian Community, a reservation near Phoenix, have already used the program to recruit students.
The walls of Havasu Canyon surround the village of Supai, where water from Havasu Creek later connects to the Colorado River at the Grand Canyon. Credit: Matt Stensland for The Hechinger Report
But in Supai, some residents worry the ESA option is meaningless. The closest private schools, in Kingman, are more than two hours away. Internet access in the village is virtually nonexistent, a hurdle for any parents trying to teach their kids at home.
The National Indian Education Association, an advocacy group, has yet to issue a position on Trump’s order but said in a statement that it’s “closely monitoring” potential impact on cultural preservation and access to education for Native students. In the past, the group has said BIE is the best option to fulfill the federal government’s responsibility to educate Native students. It blames its poor results on Congress — the branch of government holding the purse strings.
“The BIE in general, they just have a difficult time,” said Roman Nose, with the national group for tribal education departments. He noted that Department of Defense schools — the only other K-12 system run by the federal government — receive more funding. And Roman Nose worried how the recent federal layoffs and school choice proposal could further erode BIE’s ability to fulfill the trust responsibility.
The BIE lost dozens of employees in the recent layoffs, sources told ICT. Among those laid off were approximately 30 from non-school positions in the BIE agency offices, excluding kindergarten through 12th grade schools.
“There won’t be any progress made during this administration,” Roman Nose said. “It’s a difficult job, but these are treaty obligations.”
Dearman, the bureau’s longtime director, insisted that the BIE could fulfill the government’s obligation to deliver a quality education to tribal nations.
Under his leadership, the BIE has secured some financial wins for its schools. Lawmakers now funnel about $235 million into the bureau for school construction – it has asked for more than $400 million – and $150 million for replacing older campuses, according to the agency. Counselors and teachers now make the same amount as their counterparts in Department of Defense schools. And Dearman, a longtime champion of early childhood education, has expanded the bureau’s popular preschool program into more schools.
Traditional beadwork decorates an eighth grader’s graduation cap at a Havasupai Elementary School ceremony. The school’s mascot is the eagle. Credit: Matt Stensland for The Hechinger Report
Graduation rates have also climbed. Last year, according to the bureau, 75 percent of its high schoolers earned a diploma on time — a 31 percentage point jump since 2014 and slightly above the national average for Native American students. As of 2021, the last time the BIE reported achievement data, 17 percent of students tested on grade level in English language arts, and 11 percent in math. For three states where the BIE runs two-thirds of its schools, students have posted 8 percentage point increases on English exams and 13-point increases on math exams since 2016, according to the bureau.
The U.S. Government Accountability Office, which has tracked the BIE’s “systemic management weaknesses” since 2013, recently reported that it had achieved substantial progress on school construction and safety. The bureau’s oversight of special education, distance learning and school spending remain open problems, the GAO found, while also noting in its report — released just days before Trump’s recent layoffs — that meager staffing “has been a challenge for BIE for over a decade.”
DeLaCruz left the Native American Disability Law Center in October to work on education litigation for the Tulalip Tribe in northern Washington state. A little more than a year after closing the Havasupai case, she hesitated to call either settlement a win.
Still, she noted in an email that the creation of a school board at Havasupai Elementary had been a big step forward: “The fact there is a community-led School Board to ask questions and voice concerns to the BIE is vital to improving education at Havasupai Elementary School.”
Kambria Siyuja works during her summer break at Supai’s preschool program. Siyuja graduated from Havasupai Elementary School down the road and plans to teach there after graduating from Fort Lewis College next year. Credit: Matt Stensland for The Hechinger Report
The morning after the eighth grade graduation ceremony, Kambria Siyuja walked past her old elementary school as the sun crawled over the rust-red walls of Supai Canyon.
She greeted parents dropping off their sleepy toddlers at the federal Head Start preschool. Siyuja has worked there every summer break in college, hoping to decide whether to pursue a job in early learning or teaching down the road, at Havasupai Elementary.
Her grandmother, Bernadine Jones, attended Havasupai Day School in the 1960s, when it only offered K-2 classes, before attending and graduating from a Phoenix high school. She eventually returned to Supai and taught at her old school and the village preschool for 20 years. Siyuja’s mother teaches at the tribal Head Start program.
Academically, Siyuja finally feels prepared to be a teacher.
“It’s really weird taking a class in college and learning stuff they should have taught me at that elementary school,” she said. “Now I’m really able to understand math, and also teach math.”
This winter, Siyuja returned home for break with big news. Not only had she finally finished remedial math and qualified for a math class this past semester that would earn her full college credit, she’d passed it, receiving a B.
Siyuja also recently learned she qualified for about $3,500 from the Stephen C. settlement. She said she had planned to use the money to pay for her spring semester of college, but as of February, had not heard back from a BIE representative about the payment.
She graduates from Fort Lewis College, the former site of a notorious Indian boarding school, in 2026.
Despite her misgivings about the BIE, she said she views becoming an educator at the school as the best way possible to help her community. “I just want the younger kids to have a much better education than we got.”
Contact staff writer Neal Morton at 212-678-8247 or [email protected].
This story about the Bureau of Indian Education was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education, in collaboration with ICT (formerly Indian Country Today). Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter. Sign up for the ICT newsletter.
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
Before starting at his Harlem high school, Jeurry always assumed he was progressing appropriately in school, despite having significant learning challenges.
However, in his freshman year, he began to notice himself struggling to read longer words and more complex sentences.
As he grew increasingly overwhelmed, it became clear that the small classes exclusively for students with disabilities that he had been in since kindergarten had not adequately prepared him for high school.
Still, Jeurry managed to pass nearly all his classes. His final meeting with his Committee on Special Education — which consisted of Jeurry’s mom and several faculty members — took place in December 2016. By then, the senior had earned 45 credits — 44 were required to graduate — and a C+ average, records show.
But Jeurry was devastated to learn that he would not earn a diploma.
The reason was based on a decision the committee made when Jeurry was in sixth grade and, according to records, never revisited while he was in high school. At that time, the educators concluded that Jeurry could not learn grade-level curriculum. They decided he would be “alternately assessed,” or evaluated based on lower achievement standards. New York State students who take alternate assessments through high school cannot earn a diploma, a prerequisite for military service, many jobs, and most degree- or certificate-granting college and trade school programs.
Heartbroken, he begged the faculty to find a solution during the 2016 meeting. “They didn’t even care,” Jeurry said. “They just wanted me to ‘graduate’ and get out.”
Jeurry, who is now 26 and was diagnosed with a mild intellectual disability after graduating high school, requested that his last name be withheld over concerns about the stigma surrounding intellectual disabilities.
Special education advocates say the systemic failures that led to Jeurry’s situation eight years ago continue to jeopardize the futures of similar students. Last school year, 6,116 New York City students took the New York State Alternate Assessment, according to state data. Federal law requires that states offer such assessments for students with disabilities who are incapable of taking state tests. Importantly, it also states that only “students with the most significant cognitive disabilities” can take the alternate assessment, and that schools must fully inform parents of the potential ramifications. (State education departments are responsible for ensuring compliance with these mandates.)
Too often, however, those standards are neither maintained nor enforced, special education advocates, teachers, and families told Chalkbeat. Instead, factors like under-resourcing, nebulous procedures, and a failure to equip parents to make fully informed decisions have led schools to place some students without significant cognitive disabilities on a non-grade-level, non-diploma track. Students who take alternate assessments are typically placed in non-inclusive, low-rigor settings, which can deprive them of academic and socialization opportunities.
At the December 2016 meeting, the members of Jeurry’s special education committee said their hands were tied. According to documentation from the meeting, Jeurry’s mother said “she was not made aware of the long-term effects of alternate assessment when it was first initiated or during any supplemental [meetings].”
“They would always tell my mom, ‘His diploma is going to be real,’” Jeurry said. “She kept believing them.”
Throughout his time as a K-12 student in Harlem, Jeurry received inadequate academic support and struggled to advance past a first- or second-grade reading level.
In response to requests to interview state special education leadership, a New York State Education Department spokesperson said in an email: “NYSED is committed to working with schools and parents to determine the appropriate participation of students with disabilities in [the alternate assessment] and to fully understand the impact it has on these students.”
Since New York’s alternate assessment is used to meet federal special education law requirements, the spokesperson said, “there are very strict criteria for its development, administration, and applicability to students.”
Christina Foti, the city Education Department’s deputy chancellor for inclusive and accessible learning, acknowledged that there is room for more robust safeguards, and she said the Education Department recently recommended that the state consider several alternate assessment-related policy changes. They include clarifying definitions and participation criteria, requiring the use of a decision-making flowchart and checklist, and mandating that special education committees “conduct a complete and up-to-date battery of psychoeducational assessments” before making assessment decisions.
The Education Department is also pursuing local-level reforms, but officials are still in the early stages of developing a “definitive language and shift in practice [and] policy,” Foti said.
Inequitable outcomes for students on non-diploma track
In New York, special education committees determine annually how students will be assessed, usually starting around third grade. Although the state has established participation criteria for the alternate assessment, deciding whether students meet those criteria can be a relatively subjective process.
Data obtained through a public records request show that students placed on the non-diploma track are disproportionately Black or English language learners. Last school year, 29% of New York City students who took the alternate assessment were Black, while Black children represented only 20% of all students and 26% of those with disabilities. More than 29% of students who were alternatively assessed were English learners, while such students accounted for just 19% of the school system’s overall population and 14% of students with disabilities.
There have been some signs of progress toward ensuring that only students with the most significant cognitive disabilities are placed on the non-diploma track. Participation is declining in New York City and statewide, and racial disproportionalities among alternatively assessed students decreased between the 2022-23 and 2023-24 school years, according to the data.
The New York City Education Department has worked to minimize subjectivity in assessment decisions “over the past five or six years,” said Arwina Vallejo, the department’s executive director of school-based evaluations and family engagement.
To more holistically determine students’ aptitude for grade-level learning and test participation, schools now administer “specialized assessments in reading, in writing, in math, in executive functions, in neurological abilities,” Vallejo said.
The Education Department also trains school psychologists in “culturally responsive, non-discriminatory assessment practices” to mitigate the impact of bias, she said.
But special education advocates and families say more must be done. School officials sometimes change the graduation track of children with mild intellectual disabilities or disruptive behaviors when they don’t have the will or means to try other options, said Juliet Eisenstein, a special education attorney and former assistant director of the Postsecondary Readiness Project at Advocates for Children of New York.
“It’s just a box that’s checked and not really talked about, because it’s an easier solution than figuring out a program that fits this more complex student profile,” she said.
Resources that could help such students — like one-on-one tutors or specialized placements — are often limited or nonexistent. This is especially true in New York City, where around 300,000 students qualify for special education services, and government audits have found that the Education Department regularly fails to meet its obligations to them. An estimated 2,300 special-education staff vacancies exist citywide.
Trevlon, 18, has been both alternatively and regularly assessed. He has a history of behavioral problems, an attention deficit hyperactivity disorder diagnosis, and an intellectual disability classification from the Education Department. Trevlon struggled to keep up academically in elementary school and attended a middle school in District 75, a citywide district that caters to students with significant disabilities. There, he received intensive academic and behavioral support and made major strides, but he was not on a diploma track.
Trevlon, who requested that his last name be withheld because a complaint he filed against the Education Department has yet to be resolved, said he was unhappy in the highly restrictive environment. He committed himself to proving that he could be successful at a community high school. By the time Trevlon graduated middle school as valedictorian of his eighth grade class, his special education committee had agreed that he could transition back to the diploma track and into a community school.
However, Trevlon was placed in a school that did not offer the learning environment the Education Department had determined most appropriate for him: a self-contained special education classroom for 15 students. Instead, he attended large classes that integrated students with disabilities and their general education peers. He said he struggled to focus and keep up. As he fell behind academically, he became increasingly frustrated and started acting out.
After his tumultuous freshman year, Trevlon was moved back onto a non-diploma track in a District 75 school, where he felt out of place and insufficiently challenged. He begged for a different placement that might offer a path back to community school — or a diploma, at least — but nothing changed, he said.
Knowing he would never have a “real” high school experience, Trevlon grew disillusioned, started attending school infrequently, and finally dropped out last year.
“It’s not just, ‘Oh, I stopped going to school because I don’t like school,’” Trevlon said. “I feel like the system gave up on me to a certain extent, as a Black male. … All I ever really wanted to do was to work and sit down and be like everybody else.”
Parents often unaware of children’s placement on non-diploma track
Schools are legally mandated to inform a student’s parents abou
When Jeurry was in middle school, the faculty members of his Committee on Special Education pointed to his lack of academic progress and recommended that he be “alternately assessed.” Although his mother agreed to the change, she did not realize that the decision would take away her son’s opportunity to earn a high school diploma. (Sarah Komar for Chalkbeat)
t the long-term ramifications of the alternate track. However, special education advocates said they regularly work with parents who had no idea their children were on a non-diploma path — often until it was too late.
“Many parents do not even know to ask questions about alternate assessment, because they’re never informed,” said Young Seh Bae, executive director of the Queens-based Community Inclusion and Development Alliance and a parent of a student with disabilities. It’s only when graduation approaches that many parents say, “‘Oh, I didn’t realize my child wouldn’t receive a high school diploma … The school didn’t explain my child never will be able to go to college or get a license for certain things.’”
In New York, diploma-track students must pass a certain number of Regents exams, making it one of eight states that require high school seniors to pass standardized tests to earn a diploma. (New York State is planning to phase out Regents as a graduation requirement in fall 2027.)
Because Jeurry was on a non-diploma track and never took his Regents, he could only earn a Skills and Achievement Commencement Credential, which cannot be used to apply for college, trade school, the military, or many jobs.
Jeurry was reading and doing math on a first-grade level by the start of middle school and on second- to third-grade levels by the end of high school, records show. Over the years, the Education Department classified him with several different kinds of disabilities, including a learning disability at one point and an intellectual disability at another. While he was a student, he was not evaluated by an outside provider, which some families pay for if they think their children have been improperly classified by district professionals. Faculty members repeatedly told Jeurry’s mother he was incapable of progressing academically, his academic records show, and they eventually used his lack of progress to justify placing him on the non-diploma track.
From kindergarten through eighth grade, he remained in self-contained classes, receiving only speech language therapy as a supplementary service. In high school, Jeurry moved from a self-contained setting into integrated classrooms, which benefited him socially but only further highlighted how far his academics lagged behind his peers.
At no point did Jeurry’s special education committee suggest additional services or more intensive support, records show. Federal law mandates more intensive intervention if a special education student is not making progress toward his goals.
Kim Swanson, the principal of Jeurry’s high school who overlapped with him during his last year there, declined to comment on Jeurry’s situation. She said her school “always follows state guidance.”
The school’s special education committees have always informed parents of the ramifications of alternate assessment, but the school has implemented additional safeguards during Swanson’s 11-year tenure as principal, she said. These include sending home a form letter that was developed by the state with input from the city Education Department (a requirement of all New York schools since 2019), and ensuring that faculty members discuss students’ progress toward their goals before special education committee meetings.
Vallejo, who oversees school-based evaluations, said the Education Department worked with the state to develop the form letter because “there was a point where little information was available to students and families regarding alternate assessment and the impact of that designation.” Education Department faculty are committed to fully involving students’ parents in assessment decisions and revisiting them annually, Vallejo said.
Special education advocates have lobbied the state for specific alternate assessment reforms for years, with little success — including a 2022 push for policy changes that could have helped demystify the assessment decision-making process.
In August 2024, for the first time in at least five years, the state proposed policy tweaks of its own, including seeking feedback from special education advocates and families on how to clarify the existing eligibility criteria for alternate assessment and update existing decision-making tools and training materials.
In the future, Jeurry hopes to earn a four-year degree and go into marketing before someday opening his own restaurant.
After legal battle, NYC pays for more than 1,300 hours of services
Knowing that he wouldn’t receive a diploma, Jeurry skipped his June 2017 graduation.
He then languished in a city-funded GED program for more than a year. In fall 2018, on the recommendation of a teacher, Jeurry contacted Advocates for Children. Within months, a pro-bono legal team arranged by the organization filed an action against the city school system, accusing it of denying Jeurry a free, appropriate public education as required by law.
While the legal process unfolded, Jeurry’s advocates helped him apply for his diploma through a “superintendent determination,” a safety net for students with disabilities who are unable to earn the Regents scores needed for graduation but meet all other requirements. In June 2019, he received his high school diploma.
As part of the 10-month legal process, a neuropsychologist evaluated Jeurry and diagnosed him with a mild intellectual disability, concluding that he could have benefited from more rigorous support, such as one-on-one literacy tutoring.
The city ultimately agreed to compensate Jeurry for what he missed during his 14 years of school by paying for 1,308 hours of academic tutoring, life skills training, and transition services. For more than a year, he attended all-day tutoring sessions that started with phonics and built upward.
“At first, I was like, ‘It’s not helping,’” Jeurry said. But then, little by little, I started noticing my reading level going up … and I was like, ‘Oh, it is working!’”
Although it has required him to work through significant education-related trauma, Jeurry now attends community college online while working full time. He’s considering transferring to a four-year institution after he earns his associate degree in business administration.
“I didn’t want to go back, but I had to do it, you know?” Jeurry said. “I needed to get a better education.”
Sarah Komar is a New York City-based journalist. She reported this story while at the Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.
Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.
Individualized Education Plans (IEP) have been the foundation of special education for decades, and the process in which these documents are written has evolved over the years.
As technology has evolved, writing documents has also evolved. Before programs existed to streamline the IEP writing process, creating IEPs was once a daunting task of paper and pencil. Not only has the process of writing the IEP evolved, but IEPs are becoming technology-driven.
Enhancing IEP goal progress with data-driven insights using technology: There are a variety of learning platforms that can monitor a student’s performance in real-time, tailoring to their individual needs and intervening areas for improvement. Data from these programs can be used to create students’ annual IEP goals. This study mentions that the ReadWorks program, used for progress monitoring IEP goals, has 1.2 million teachers and 17 million students using its resources, which provide content, curricular support, and digital tools. ReadWorks is free and provides all its resources free of charge and has both printed and digital versions of the material available to teachers and students (Education Technology Nonprofit, 2021).
Student engagement and involvement with technology-driven IEPs: Technology-driven IEPs can also empower students to take an active role in their education plan. According to this study, research shows that special education students benefit from educational technology, especially in concept teaching and in practice-feedback type instructional activities (Carter & Center, 2005; Hall, Hughes & Filbert, 2000; Hasselbring & Glaser, 2000). It is vital for students to take ownership in their learning. When students on an IEP reach a certain age, it is important for them to be the active lead in their plan. Digital tools that are used for technology-driven IEPs can provide students with visual representations of their progress, such as dashboards or graphs. When students are given a visual representation of their progress, their engagement and motivation increases.
Technology-driven IEPs make learning fun:This study discusses technology-enhanced and game based learning for children with special needs. Gamified programs, virtual reality (VR), and augmented reality (AR) change the learning experience from traditional to transformative. Gamified programs are intended to motivate students with rewards, personalized feedback, and competition with leaderboards and challenges to make learning feel like play. Virtual reality gives students an immersive experience that they would otherwise only be able to experience outside of the classroom. It allows for deep engagement and experiential learning via virtual field trips and simulations, without the risk of visiting dangerous places or costly field trip fees that not all districts or students can afford. Augmented reality allows students to visualize abstract concepts such as anatomy or 3D shapes in context. All these technologies align with technology-driven IEPs by providing personalized, accessible, and measurable learning experiences that address diverse needs. These technologies can adapt to a student’s individual skill level, pace, and goals, supporting their IEP.
Challenges with technology-driven IEPs: Although there are many benefits to technology-driven IEPs, it is important to address the potential challenges to ensure equity across school districts. Access to technology in underfunded school districts can be challenging without proper investment in infrastructures, devices, and network connection. Student privacy and data must also be properly addressed. With the use of technologies for technology-driven IEPs, school districts must take into consideration laws such as the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).
The integration of technology into the IEP process to create technology-driven IEPs represents a shift from a traditional process to a transformative process. Technology-driven IEPs create more student-centered learning experiences by implementing digital tools, enhancing collaboration, and personalized learning experiences. These learning experiences will enhance student engagement and motivation and allow students to take control of their own learning, making them leaders in their IEP process. However, as technology continues to evolve, it is important to address the equity gap that may arise in underfunded school districts.
Shannon Keenan, Special Education Teacher
Shannon Keenan is a special education teacher in Columbia Heights, MN. She is also a graduate student at Concordia University in St. Paul, MN studying Educational Technology.
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