Delay sought in rule on racial bias in special ed

Proposal part of regulations review by education chief.

WASHINGTON — The Department of Education is proposing to delay for two years an Obama-era rule that requires states to aggressively address racial biases that may be channeling disproportionate numbers of minority children into special education.

The department published a notice in the federal register, soliciting public comment on its plan to postpone enforcement of the so-called “significant disproportionality rule,” due to take effect July 1, 2018.

The rule, which was issued in the last weeks of the Obama administration, required states to look at districts that had disproportionately high numbers of minority students identified for special education services, segregated in restrictive classroom settings or disciplined at higher rates than their peers. If it is not scrapped, the rule would take effect in 2020.

The Education Department estimated that nearly half of the school districts in the country would be identified as having significant disproportions of minorities in their special education populations, and that it would cost districts between $50 million and $91 million to implement the rule.

It is one of several that Betsy DeVos, the secretary of education, is re-examining as her office continues a regulatory review ordered by President Donald Trump across all federal agencies.

“Through the regulatory review process, we’ve heard from states, school districts, superintendents and other stakeholders on a wide range of issues, including the significant disproportionality rule,” said Liz Hill, a spokeswoman for the Education Department. “Because of the concerns raised, the department is looking closely at this rule and has determined that while this review takes place, it is prudent to delay implementation for two years.”

The rule was designed to address concerns about the overrepresentation of minority students in special education. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act required states to address “significant disproportionality,” and in a 2004 reauthorization of the act, Congress began requiring states to allocate up to 15 percent of their federal special education money to address the disparities.

In 2016, the Obama administration issued rules to strengthen compliance with the law by developing a standardized methodology — a complicated formula called a “risk ratio” — for all states to identify districts with high levels of disparities.

The rule required districts to do a deep analysis of the root causes, but explicitly prohibited the use of quotas. Still it was controversial.

Some educators argued that the more pressing issue was that too few minority students could access special education services. Some said the research on which the Obama administration based its decision was too limited to draw broad conclusions.

But the Obama administration said that the disparities were wide enough to warrant action. For example, in 2012, the Education Department found that American Indian and Alaska Native students were 60 percent more likely to be labeled with an intellectual disability, while black children were more than twice as likely as other groups to be so identified.

Similarly, American Indian or Alaska Native students were 90 percent more likely, black students were 50 percent more likely, and Hispanic students were 40 percent more likely to be identified as learning disabled.

The rule took effect Jan. 18, and states would have begun calculating their disparities next school year.

TOM BRENNER / THE NEW YORK TIMES Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and the Department of Education want to delay a rule that requires states to address racial biases in special education.