Top States for Special Ed Litigation

Special education disputes are far more likely to be litigated in some states than others, with a new report finding that just 10 states account for nearly two thirds of all court decisions.Between 1979 and 2013, there were over 5,000 court decisions nationwide related to legal questions under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, according to an analysis published recently in the Journal of Special Education Leadership.Nearly 600 of those decisions came out of New York, while Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C. each accounted for about 500 decisions.

New York School District in Court Over Special Education Placements

EAST RAMAPO, N.Y. — Officials in a New York school district are taking the state Education Department to court — again — to continue their battle against what the state says is repeated noncompliance with a law that requires disabled students to be educated in the most mainstream setting available.
The East Ramapo, N.Y., school board has agreed to pay attorney David Butler and his associates at their regular rate, $650 to $450 per hour, to initiate an appeal of the education officials' recent determination that the district "needs intervention" to satisfy requirements of the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).

Most Children Lack Early Intervention

Just a fraction of the nation’s children with disabilities and developmental delays may be accessing the early intervention services they need, a new advocacy group report suggests.
An analysis released Tuesday by Easter Seals indicates that fewer than 3 percent of kids are participating in the government-funded Individuals with Disabilities Education Act Part C program, which offers early intervention services to children up to age 3.
At the same time, estimates suggest that almost 13 percent of children across the country should qualify.

Feds Cite D.C., Others for Special Ed Woes

For five years running, the District of Columbia has failed to uphold parts of the federal law that governs the education of students with disabilities, according to the federal Department of Education's ratings of the district and other states and territories.
In particular, the district can't seem to get a handle on evaluating and re-evaluating students identified as having disabilities, a problem that is more than a decade old.
(The findings about each state are delayed by a year, so the most recent ratings of whether states are upholding the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act reflect the 2009-10 school year.)