The U.S. Department of Education is proposing to remove a requirement for states to collect and report on racial disparities in special education, according to a notice being published in the Federal Register on Friday.
The data collection is part of the annual state application under Part B of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. The application provides assurances that the state and its districts will comply with IDEA rules as a condition for receiving federal IDEA funding.
The data collection for racial overrepresentation or underrepresentation in special education — known as significant disproportionality — helps identify states and districts that have racial disparities among student special education identifications, placements and discipline. About 5% of school districts nationwide were identified with significant disproportionality in the 2020-21 school year, according to federal data.
The Education Department said it wants to remove the data collection because the agency anticipates it will reduce paperwork burdens for the states. According to several state Part B applications filed earlier this year, the significant disproportionality data collection adds more hours in paperwork duties.
For example, Florida's application said it records an average of 25 additional hours for responses reporting data related to significant disproportionality in any given year, including the time for reviewing instructions, searching existing data sources, gathering and maintaining the data needed, and completing and reviewing the collection of information. Alabama's and Oregon's applications also cite an additional 25 hours each for the collections.
The department has not said it wants to rescind or pause the significant disproportionality regulation, a rule known as Equity in IDEA, which was last updated in 2016.
However, under the first Trump administration, the rule became a hot button issue when then-U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said its implementation would be delayed.
The Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, a nonprofit supportive of education rights for students with disabilities, sued the Education Department and won, and by April 2019, the rule was back in full effect.
Denise Marshall, CEO of COPAA said in a Thursday email to K-12 Dive that the proposal to remove the Equity in IDEA federal data collection was "yet another unlawful attempt by the Administration to shirk its obligations under the law to students of color."
Marshall added that the data collection fulfills a critical role in enforcing the significant disproportionality requirement in IDEA. The collection allows states and districts to examine the data, determine if there is racial disproportionality, and develop measures to address the problem. Marshall points out that IDEA does not declare significant disproportionality unlawful. Rather, the law and regulations provide a method for states and districts to address systemic racial disproportionality in special education.
Robyn Linscott, director of education and family policy at The Arc, an organization that advocates for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, said that even if in the future there is no longer a data collection for significant disproportionality at the federal level, the information would still need to be collected by states and districts as required by IDEA.
But the loss of the central repository of information on significant disproportionality in schools will make it more difficult for advocacy groups and technical assistance centers to support school and district efforts to reduce racial disparities in special education.
In the absence of the data being available at the federal level, it will be "much more difficult" for people not within a state education agency to be able to access the data, Linscott said.
Correction: A previous version of this article erred in spelling out the IDEA acronym. It stands for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. We have updated our story.
