Giving Compass' Take:

· Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has put a halt on Obama's special education rule, reports Chalkbeat. The rule, previously issued in 2016, was designed to stop the over-identification of students of color with disabilities.

· Does this news limit or affect the way schools identify special needs students?

· Special education students and teachers often face unique challenges in schools. Here is a model for successful and inclusive special education today. 

The U.S. Department of Education has halted an Obama-era rule designed to stop students of color from being over-identified as having a disability — and waded into a complicated research dispute in the process.

The move, made recently by Secretary Betsy DeVos, was widely expected and months in the making, but still drew the ire of advocates for students with disabilities. It puts a two-year pause on the rule, which was issued in late 2016 and was set to go into effect this coming school year.

“The secretary is concerned that the regulations will create an environment where children in need of special education and related services do not receive those services because of the color of their skin,” the department said in the notice of the rule change.

Chalkbeat has previously reported on research suggesting that DeVos may have a point. Paul Morgan, a professor at Penn State, has conducted a number of studies on the topic along with colleagues and argues that his findings show that there should be less concern about over-identifying students of color and more concern about under-identifying them.

Morgan says that some have confused the raw rates of students who quality for special education — in which black students outnumber white students — as evidence of bias. In fact, his research has shown that controlling for factors that might affect a student’s likelihood of actually having a disability, like poverty and prior test scores, students of color are less likely than similar white students to receive special education services.

Read the full article about the pause on Obama's special education rule by Matt Barnum at Chalkbeat.