The Trump administration has delayed for two years the implementation of an Obama-era rule designed to prevent students from certain backgrounds from being wrongly placed in special education, halting the so-called “significant disproportionality” rule.
Under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, states are required to identify school districts with high rates of students from particular racial or ethnic groups who have disabilities, are placed in restrictive settings or are subjected to discipline.
Because states are permitted to use different measures to assess districts, few were ever identified. The “significant disproportionality rule” would have established a uniform national standard. States must still meet their obligations under IDEA to assess whether significant disproportionality exists in school districts. According to the final rule issued in early July, states may still elect to implement the new standard if they wish to.
Disability and special education advocates, however, have worked to discourage the delay in the rule’s implementation and have called the move “bad policy and legally flawed”
