How Children With Disabilities Are Getting Left Behind
Adrienne Stuart’s 5-year-old son, Jack, has never told her “hello.” It’s a milestone she was hoping to reach within the next year.
But in mid-March, his school was closed, at least until May. Now, she’s coming to terms with the fact that she’ll likely have to wait longer to hear from her son.
A vast majority of the nation’s schools ― over 120,000 in all ― have closed in an effort to combat the spread of coronavirus. For students with disabilities, the stakes of these school closures are especially high. These students often rely on a litany of services at school, from speech therapy, to physical therapy, to occupational therapy, that parents simply aren’t trained to do on their own. Parents and educators worry that fragile gains made this year could disappear with so much time off. An eventual transition back to school could prove especially difficult.
“I know a lot of people are, but we are especially reliant on the school system,” says Stuart, who lives in Tacoma, Washington.
Schools have struggled to educate the 7 million students who receive special education services in the absence of physical classrooms. In mid-March, the U.S. Department of Education fueled confusion when it suggested that schools that cut off academic services for all students would not be required to serve students with disabilities. Some schools ended academic services amid concerns they would run afoul of federal law if they could not serve disabled students with the same rigor as everyone else. Later in March, the department clarified schools “should not opt to close or decline to provide distance instruction” to address equity concerns.
Still, in recent weeks, parents of students with disabilities report receiving only a fraction of the services to which they’re entitled. Schools have canceled meetings to devise or update individualized education programs ― or IEPs, the legal document that outlines necessary services for each disabled...
