Giving Compass' Take:

• Beth Hawkins reports that in spite of a federal order to reboot special education in Texas students are still being excluded from essential services. 

• How are schools in your community serving the needs of special education students?

• Learn about racial disparities in special education. 

While the number varies from state to state, on average 13 percent of U.S. children qualify for special education. The rate in Texas was 11.6 percent in 2004, when the state began asking districts and charter schools that identified more than 8.5 percent of their students as eligible to submit plans for reducing the number of children enrolled.

By 2015, the rate had fallen to 8.5 percent. Texas was the only state in the country to see a dramatic drop in children with disabilities served — something the agency would later insist was the result of providing such good services that students would graduate to general ed.

Families like Jaivyn’s vehemently disagree, and so do the feds. The U.S. Education Department has ordered the state to expand access to special ed — quickly and dramatically — an effort that could cost $3 billion. On paper, the cap has been abolished, the number of children being evaluated for eligibility is rising and legislators have appropriated $277 million to pay fines imposed by the department because of a separate finding that the state illegally slashed special education funding.

But the state’s elected officials who have the power to order a wholesale overhaul of the system have balked at removing hurdles that stymie parents. Law firms representing school districts in disputes like the Mauldins’ have lobbied against stronger protections for families — and their campaign contributions to lawmakers who have tabled talk of comprehensive reforms in the statehouse give them leverage unimagined by parents who have help from only a handful of advocates.

Families that do get assistance in asserting their children’s rights have half as much time to ask for due process as IDEA suggests. After hearing from lobbyists that it would “double districts’ exposure,” the state House of Representatives Public Education Committee earlier this year shut down an effort to expand the timeline from 12 to 24 months.

Even when a family navigates the gantlet and emerges with a legal finding that a school district violated their child’s rights, there’s little guarantee the student will actually get special ed services. Many, like the Mauldins, end up leaving Texas and move to other states that readily agree to provide the services their children need.

Read the full article about special education in Texas by Beth Hawkins at The 74.