With new data in hand, the Education Department said Tuesday that disparities persist in the nation's public schools, where oftentimes minority students are more likely to be identified as having a disability and face harsher discipline than their white counterparts.
"When we see students in any racial or ethnic group identified with disabilities at vastly higher rates than their peers, we owe it to these students to pause, step back and rethink," Acting Education Secretary John B. King Jr. said in a phone call with reporters."
It is "something we can and must fix," he said.
The department is proposing a new rule with two key parts.
States would be required to adopt a standard approach to compare racial and ethnic groups and determine when disparities are significant. Basically, it calls for a uniform way to measure when there's an overrepresentation of minority students in special education.
Once overrepresentation is identified in a district, school officials would have more flexibility under the proposed rule in how they spend their federal dollars allocated under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA.
Currently, when a district is tagged as having significant disparities, it must set aside 15 percent of its IDEA money to provide early intervening services, beginning in kindergarten. The proposed rule would broaden that and include services to students with and without disabilities, beginning in preschool.