Special Education
Laws & News
Across the States
CA: Special education students left out of Cal State East Bay’s commencement
msn.com
On Friday, Cal State East Bay held its first of several commencements for the weekend. Kristin Vogel-Campbell is on the board of directors for the university’s Center for Disability Justice Research. “Everyone should feel like they belong, that they are included,” Vogel-Campbell said. In 2023, a new program was created called Think By the Bay, that gave students with intellectual and developmental disabilities access to campus and courses. This year, the first cohort of three students is finishing the program. They are not graduating with degrees, which the university says makes them ineligible for commencement. Vogel-Campbell asked if they could participate anyway.
ID: How Trump’s DOE cuts could harm students with disabilities in Idaho
ProPublica
Time and again, the U.S. Department of Education has been the last resort for parents who say the state of Idaho has failed to educate their children. In 2023, the federal agency ordered Idaho to stop blocking some students with learning disabilities, like dyslexia, from special education. That same year, it flagged that the state’s own reviews of districts and charters obscured the fact that just 20% were fully complying with the federal disability law. Last year, it told the state it must end long delays in services for infants and toddlers with disabilities, which could include speech or physical therapy. Now, President Donald Trump has pledged to dismantle the department. Idaho’s superintendent of public instruction, Debbie Critchfield, has celebrated the proposal. She insisted that the move would not change the requirement that states provide special education to students who need it. That would take an act of Congress. But parents and advocates for students with disabilities say they are worried that no one will effectively ensure schools follow special education law.
MI: Advocates urge DPSCD to ensure students with disabilities get services
Chalkbeat
Sharon Kelso tries to do everything she can to help Detroit families navigate the often confusing and complicated world of special education. The advocate is frequently on the phone, listening to parents complain that their child has yet to receive an individualized education program, or IEP, a plan that spells out what services and accommodations students with disabilities should receive, as required by federal law. Sometimes, families want her guidance for talking to teachers and school administrators. She also gets calls from parents whose child has an IEP, but they need help. “A lot of times I call the schools, have the parent come in, give their complaints, sit and look at the IEPs and work through them and try to help them as much as I can,” she said. “But I’m only one person.” Kelso’s work highlights an issue that education advocates, school employees, and board members say has persisted for years in the Detroit Public Schools Community District and across the state: delays in conducting or complying with evaluations for special education services.
MI: Michigan expands path to special education classrooms, removing barriers for future teachers
The Michigan Chronicle
The classroom has always been a battlefield for equity. Ask any Black parent who’s fought to get their child an Individualized Education Program. Ask any educator in Detroit who’s watched students fall through bureaucratic cracks because the system didn’t bend for their needs. For decades, special education in Michigan has come with barriers that kept good teachers out and left vulnerable students waiting. That wait may finally shift. Beginning next year, aspiring educators in Michigan will be able to pursue a standalone special education endorsement without first obtaining certification in a specific subject area. This change—approved this week by the State Board—removes a requirement that many educators and administrators say has contributed to a shortage of qualified special education teachers. The previous model demanded that special education teachers also hold content-specific credentials, often creating more red tape than results.
TX: School vouchers could cause another headache for Texas
Newsweek
Texas’s $1 billion school voucher program promises to prioritize students with disabilities. The program, signed into law by Governor Greg Abbott earlier this month, will allow Texas families to receive $10,000 per year to help pay for students’ private school tuition. But children with disabilities can qualify for as much as $30,000 a year. In Texas, educators and advocates are raising the alarm about how the state’s program could further strain public school districts tasked with conducting the evaluations to determine whether students qualify for these services. Public school districts have to conduct those evaluations even for those students who do not plan to enroll in public schools. Demand for evaluations is expected to rise since students with disabilities are first in line for the voucher program and can receive higher amounts based on their needs. Senate Bill 2 requires those evaluations to be completed within 45 days. It’s difficult to predict how much more demand there could be because families “could just request an evaluation just to see if the spaghetti sticks,” Andrea Chevalier, the director of governmental relations for the Texas Council of Administrators of Special Education, told Newsweek.
CA: How federal cuts are already affecting disabled students in California
EdSource
Jake, a 17-year-old junior, is beginning to think about life after he graduates from Mt. Carmel High School in San Diego County. This is a daunting task for any teen, but his mother, Angela, says it’s been especially thorny for Jake, who is on the autism spectrum, has attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and struggles with anxiety. The prospect of getting a job one day soon has made him “suicidal,” said Angela, who asked not to share her family’s last name to protect her son’s privacy about his diagnoses. She said her son has told her, “I’m going to be homeless; I won’t get a job.” So Angela was thrilled when Jake was accepted into a new program at his school, Charting My Path for Future Success, which helps students with disabilities navigate into adulthood. In late January, Jake began to meet with a caseworker who seemed to understand his needs. At the time, Angela thought, “My prayers have been answered,” she said. That changed on Feb. 12, when Jake’s school district, Poway Unified, received a notice that the Trump administration had cut funding for the grant behind Charting My Path for Future Success.
The education bills that passed and failed in the 2025 Colorado legislative session
Chalkbeat
Before Colorado state lawmakers finished their yearly business this week, they took steps to ensure public schools would be better funded in the future. Colorado public schools will be required to screen students in kindergarten through third grade for dyslexia starting in the 2027-28 school year, per Senate Bill 200. The start date is a year later than advocates for children with dyslexia wanted, but represents a big win after a years-long battle for statewide screening. House Bill 1248 moves the existing laws about restraint and seclusion in public schools from the section of Colorado law that deals with youth detention facilities to the section that deals with education. It also shores up data reporting about the use of such practices in public schools and closes a loophole that has created a dearth of information about seclusion. A bill to ban seclusion was rejected by lawmakers for the second year in a row, however.
LA: New bill overhauls how La. schools treat special ed students
nola.com
Louisiana schools would have to install cameras in special-education classrooms and stop putting students who have outbursts in separate “seclusion” rooms under a proposed law that advocates say provides some of the strongest protections for students with disabilities in the country. The legislation comes a year after a state audit found that Louisiana schools seclude and restrain students without any oversight, despite warnings that the practices can potentially harm students and violate their rights. During a tearful testimony, the bill’s author, Rep. Shane Mack, R-Livingston, told the House Education Committee Wednesday that his proposal would “improve the educational experience in Louisiana” for children with disabilities. The committee voted unanimously in favor of the bill, which several disability rights advocates and education leaders also spoke in favor of.
Note: While the original bill proposed would have banned the use of seclusion, a substitute bill presented to the committee restored the use of seclusion. The substitute version was the version voted on by the committee. Roe’s comments to the Committee cited by the author were made in reference to the original version of the bill and not the substitute version. Also, the reporter incorrectly states that Chris Roe, COPAA director of state policy, is an attorney.
MN: Minnesota disabilities advocates push back on plan to restore school seclusion rooms
MPR News
Disability rights activists applauded Minnesota’s move two years ago to ban the use of school seclusion rooms to discipline children in kindergarten through third grade. On Thursday, they returned to the Capitol to fight a legislative effort to lift that ban. Seclusions are forced isolations, and in Minnesota, 100 percent of the children put into school seclusion rooms are students with disabilities, according to the Minnesota Department of Education. About 74 percent of all seclusions in Minnesota in 2023 involved children younger than 10. A measure in the state Senate would give districts the option of using seclusion in kindergarten through third grade with parental permission as a last resort disciplinary method. Disability rights and supporters of maintaining the ban argue that seclusions don’t help anyone. “We have to ask ourselves, do we really support people with disabilities and students with disabilities if we will not stand up for the basic human right to not be locked in a box … at 6,” Rep. Kim Hicks, DFL-Rochester, told reporters.
OK: Oklahoma bans corporal punishment for disabled students
The Journal Record
A new Oklahoma law will prohibit schools from inflicting physical pain as punishment for students with disabilities. Although the practice is already banned in the state’s regulations for schools, attempts by the Oklahoma Legislature to add the rule to state law failed in previous years. State law had barred schools from using corporal punishment on students only with “the most significant cognitive disabilities.” Senate Bill 364 extends the corporal punishment prohibition to students with any type of disability defined in a federal law known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Gov. Kevin Stitt on Thursday permitted SB 364 to take effect without his signature. The bill had passed the state Senate in a 31-16 vote and the House 63-25 after lengthy debates in both chambers. It outlaws the “deliberate infliction of physical pain by hitting, paddling, spanking, slapping or any other physical force” as a method of discipline for students with disabilities.