The American Dream – a concept idealized the world over – is the idea that anyone can achieve a happy, comfortable life. The United States has always prided itself on giving everyone a fair chance, regardless of their circumstances.
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) makes buildings and public spaces more accessible, criminalizes discrimination in the workplace, and codifies many other important legal distinctions to give disabled individuals that fair chance – including Title II. Title II extended rights to disabled children in school, regardless of their federal funding status.
Similarly, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) was created to make education more accessible. The IDEA is, according to their website, “a law that makes available a free appropriate public education to eligible children with disabilities throughout the nation and ensures special education and related services to those children.” While the ADA started the fight for schoolchildren with disabilities, the IDEA emphasizes that their education must, by law, be equitable, even if it includes additional services.
The IDEA also authorizes two grant programs to support disabled students:
- Formula grants “to states to support special education and related services and early intervention services.”
- Discretionary grants “to state educational agencies, institutions of higher education, and other nonprofit organizations to support research, demonstrations, technical assistance and dissemination, technology development, personnel preparation and development, and parent-training and -information centers.”
Now, during the 50th anniversary year of IDEA’s creation, these accommodations and protections are at risk. What should be a landmark year for progress in equity for disabled individuals is instead an avalanche of regression. It is nothing short of a crisis.
When IDEA became law in1975, Congress vowed to fund up to 40% of the average per-pupil expenditure for the number of children with disabilities receiving special education services. Yet, Congressional appropriations for funding under IDEA are currently at 10-14%—a quarter of the 40% target. This has been the appropriation model for IDEA funds since its inception.
The current administration has been steadily chipping away at the U.S. Department of Education – canceling grant programs, slashing funding, and removing offices altogether. While there is always certainly some fat to trim, this indiscriminate gutting means that fundamental programs for supporting our rural and small schools have been thrown to the wayside.
More dire yet, the personnel and office cuts mean that four key offices for disability access – the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP), the Rehabilitation Services Administration (RSA), the Office for Civil Rights (OCR), and the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education (OESE) – are rendered functionally ineffective. The outlook for a fair chance begins to look grim.
The impact of these changes are felt more deeply in rural and small schools. According to Save the Children, “children in rural areas are nearly 25% more likely to have a disability than their non-rural counterparts.”
The Illinois Report Card states that 16% of all students in our state have IEPs, which is their measure for students with disabilities. This number is, according to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES, another department gutted by the administration), above the national average.
Compared with other states, Illinois also has one of the largest discrepancies between urban and rural rates of children with disabilities (Save the Children). About 3.1% of non-rural children have disabilities, while that number jumps to 4.7% for rural children, making Illinois’s the fourth largest discrepancy.
Right now, IDEA is still a law, but how is it enforceable? How will the grant programs continue to function? How will schools be held accountable – or worse, will they be reprimanded for issues due to losing these funds?
The futures of disabled students – over 8 million children and youth that are served by IDEA – rests entirely in the hands of the powers that be, and they do not seem interested in protecting those futures. It seems that there is no proper course of action for public schools if these offices, grants, and laws are diminished.
One action we can take is speaking up.
Over 700 organizations have now signed a letter condemning these indiscriminate cuts to the Department and their impact on IDEA, OSEP, RSA, OCR, and OESE. The Association of Illinois Rural and Small Schools is proud to sign onto this letter, advocating on behalf of the approximately 15,000 rural Illinois students with disabilities. We believe that proper leadership and facilitation of federal programming is essential to giving ALL rural students – disabled or otherwise – a fair chance.
Read the full letter, as well as the full list of undersigned organizations, here.
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The Association of Illinois Rural and Small Schools is the ONLY statewide education association that is focused on policy and advocacy for Illinois rural and small schools. AIRSS serves its membership in matters concerning policy and legislation at the state and federal level, and ensures the rural context is included in all conversations.