The Trump administration is laying out plans to stop collecting certain information from states about students with disabilities.
The U.S. Department of Education wants to end data collection on what’s known as “significant disproportionality,” the agency said in a recent notice.
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 subject to discipline. The law also outlines steps that states must take to address problems associated with this.
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Traditionally, the Education Department has collected significant disproportionality data from states each year and posted it to the agency’s website, but now the Trump administration wants to end that practice.
“The department believes that removal of the data collection related to significant disproportionality will reduce the burden on respondents when completing the Annual State Application under Part B of IDEA,” the Education Department notice indicates.
The proposed change would not alter the mandate for states to track significant disproportionality, advocates say, but it would make it much harder to assess the picture nationally.
“We know students of color are disproportionately identified for special education, more likely to be labeled with intellectual disability or emotional disturbance and more likely to be placed in segregated settings or face exclusionary discipline. That’s exactly what this data is meant to uncover,” said Robyn Linscott, director of education and family policy at The Arc. “Districts can’t fix what they can’t see. If (the Education Department) steps back, states will be left to monitor themselves and advocates will be left in the dark. That’s a major step backward for equity and accountability.”
The move comes six years after the first Trump administration dropped a long-running effort to delay rules intended to standardize how states measure significant disproportionality.
“The overall message is that disproportionately is not important to this administration,” said Denise S. Marshall, CEO of the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, or COPAA, a nonprofit that advocates for the rights of students with disabilities and their families. “It’s another measure of compliance that is intended to spur action and measure results. So if feds aren’t doing that, who will?”
The Education Department proposal is up for public comment through Oct. 21.
