Schools Use Off-Book Suspensions To Push Out Students In Special Ed, Report Finds

[BeckyDem]

by Michelle Diament | January 27, 2022


In a new report, the National Disability Rights Network says that schools are using a wide range of tactics to keep children with disabilities out of classes. (Ting Shen/The Dallas Morning News/TNS)


Hundreds of students with disabilities across the country, if not more, are illegally being kept out of school without access to special education services due to their behaviors, advocates say.

A report out this week from the National Disability Rights Network highlights several kids who have experienced what the group is calling “informal removal.”

The off-the-books suspensions come in many forms, according to the network, an umbrella group for the federally mandated protection and advocacy organizations in each state. Some students are repeatedly sent home from school while others are limited to shorter school days, assigned to homebound placement with minimal education or remote learning, the report says. In other cases, school districts transfer students involuntarily to programs that do not exist, have no openings or ones which the child does not qualify for.

Excerpt: The report tells of a 6-year-old with complex medical needs who was only allowed to go to school one day a week. Another child with autism was placed in homebound services in second grade because of his behaviors and did not have a seat in a classroom for at least three years. And, at one school district, three kids with autism were routinely sent home because there were too few paraprofessionals and the children were deemed “too hard to handle.” One of the students was kept out of school for nearly a year.

https://www.disabilityscoop.com/2022/01/27/schools-use-off-book-suspensions-to-push-out-students-in-special-ed-report-finds/29676/


( This is what we're about now? The Pentagon received $24 billion more than they even asked for, but schools are conniving kids out of services...ugh )

[Phoenix61]

1. A teacher friend had a poster that said

It will be a great day when education gets the funding it needs and the military has to hold a bake sale for a bomber.

[BeckyDem]

2. omg I love that.

It is so damn true.

[Delmette2.0]

4. My sister has that poster framed in her kitchen.

It was first printed in 1979. She bought her's in the early 1980's.

Nice to know it is still circulating.

[kimbutgar]

3. My son with autism was sent home so many days it was so hard on our family.

I went back to school at nights and got my teaching credential. I wanted to teach full time but because of my son I ened up doing part time work so I could be put him on the bus and then meet him in the afternoon. My husband also had to take days off when I went though my days off. I finally got him into a private school that dealt with the kids who washed out of public school because they didn’t have teachers who could deal with autism.

I finally used that teaching credential to become a substitute and I have no problem taking classes of kids with special needs. The aides in those classrooms are surprised I don’t freak out until I tell them I’ve have to deal with my son during his school years.

[BeckyDem]

5. +1.

You are appreciated and all the best to your son as well!

It should not be so difficult for them, we have the money to help them if we changed our priorities.

[Grasswire2]

6. sigh

Very disheartening.