Federal probe of state special ed will continue
Investigators to return to Texas next month for documents, interviews
The U.S. Department of Education remains concerned that Texas children are being denied special education and will continue its investigation during Donald Trump’s administration into a Texas Education Agency policy that has significantly reduced services over the past 12 years, the department said Thursday.
In a letter on the eve of Trump’s inauguration, federal officials told the TEA that they would be requesting extensive data and documents from school districts and the agency and “will need to schedule time with TEA staff to conduct interviews.”
Federal officials plan to return to Texas to continue the investigation during the week of Feb. 27, according to the letter.
The investigation was launched in response to a Houston Chronicle series that showed thousands of disabled children had been denied tutoring, counseling and therapy after the TEA established an 8.5 percent “benchmark” for special education enrollments. State officials aggressively enforced the benchmark by requiring many districts
with higher enrollments to file “corrective action plans.” Parents, advocates and numerous educators say the benchmark served as a cap on enrollments.
In the years after Texas set the benchmark in 2004, the state’s special education rate fell from near the national average of 13 percent to exactly 8.5 percent, which is by far the lowest in the nation.
The letter signals that the federal government’s concerns were not assuaged by the state’s claims that the benchmark had not kept children from receiving special education services. It also makes clear that a series of “listening sessions” held by federal education officials across the state last month had only heightened their concerns.
Ruth Ryder, the government’s acting special education director, noted in the letter that there was “an extremely high level of interest in the listening sessions and a high number of people who chose to make statements.”
More than 500 people attended the sessions in Houston, Dallas, Austin, Edinburg and El Paso, and more than 400 people submitted comments on a blog set up for people who could not attend.
“A majority of the comments we received, both during the listening sessions and through the blog, raised serious concerns about the State’s compliance” with special education laws, including a requirement that all public schools in the U.S. locate, evaluate and serve all children with disabilities, Ryder wrote.
TEA vows cooperation
A TEA spokesman said the agency would work with federal officials to coordinate the logistics of the next visit.
“The Texas Education Agency continues to work with the U.S. Department of Education to ensure federal officials receive factual information regarding this important issue,” said the spokesman, Gene Acuna. “Commissioner (Mike) Morath remains confident that Texas school districts are aware of their obligations to identify and provide special education services to students.”
Ryder serves at the pleasure of the president and could be replaced in the Trump administration, which could also choose to discontinue the investigation.
Advocates for kids with disabilities said they were hopeful that the investigation would continue. Several said the letter sent Thursday laid out a clear rationale and plan for the investigation.
“We are thrilled that the Department of Education will visit Texas again,” said Dustin Rynders, a spokesman for Disability Rights Texas. “We completely agree that it is essential for the department to review individual district, campus and student data to understand this problem.”
Rynders called the Department of Education’s decision to engage in this level of review a “milestone” in the group’s struggle to assure that all disabled children who need special education services receive them, as federal law mandates.
He credited parents with sharing their stories of service denials during the federal listening sessions, on the web and in news reports. “I am confident that the Department of Education’s review will confirm what the Chronicle investigation found, and what parents already know — students with disabilities throughout Texas are being arbitrarily denied special education evaluation and services because of TEA’s arbitrary cap,” he said.
Review seen as necessary
The ongoing engagement by federal officials is necessary, Rynders said, “as the Texas Education Agency still fails to acknowledge the harm their misguided special education cap has caused.”
“In the past week TEA representatives have continued to defend their misguided special education cap at the largest gathering of school special education administrators,” he said. “The Department of Education, Texas Legislature and families must continue to press until TEA finally acknowledges what has happened and choose to reverse course.”
If the investigation continues under the Trump administration, it could loom over this year’s legislative session, which began last week.
The TEA has already suspended the use of the 8.5 percent enrollment benchmark and said it will soon eliminate the policy entirely. But four lawmakers have filed legislation prohibiting the state from ever setting a special education enrollment target, and more bills are being drafted.
Schools are pushing the state to give them more funding so they will be able to serve the students who will get special education due to the removal of the benchmark.
Some lawmakers and advocates also want the state to track down the tens of thousands of students who were kept out of special education due to the benchmark and spend money to try to give them the services they were denied.
About 200 current and former Texas school employees have told the Chronicle that they interpreted the state’s 8.5 percent benchmark as a hard cap or saw disabled kids shut out of special education because of it. The state has insisted that no students have been deprived of needed services.