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The Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, which focuses on ensuring equal opportunity and improving outcomes for individuals with disabilities in the public education system, was among those hardest hit by mass layoffs at the Education Department on Oct.\u00a010. And while most of the media focus has been on how the cuts to OSERS impact the K\u201312 sector, advocates for those with disabilities say members of the higher ed community will also be affected.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s fair to say that OSERS was gutted,\u201d said Jacqueline Rodriguez, CEO of the National Center for Learning Disabilities. \u201cWhat we\u2019ve understood is that now only two people remain at the Office of Special Education Programs, and very few people, if any, remain in Rehabilitative Services Administration. So there is no one in place in the federal government that will ensure kids with disabilities receive the education that they\u2019re entitled to.\u201d<\/p>\n
Historically, the graduation gap between students with disabilities and students without has been much higher at colleges and universities than high schools. For example, in 2022 the national high school graduation rate for differently abled students was 74\u00a0percent, compared to 87\u00a0percent over all. Meanwhile, the six-year graduation rate for differently abled students in bachelor\u2019s degree programs was 49.5\u00a0percent, compared to almost 68\u00a0percent for students without disabilities.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The difference may stem largely from the fact that unlike eligible K\u201312 students, who are guaranteed access to an Individualized Education Program under the education-specific Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, college students are only protected by the broader Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 504 of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act. That means they have to advocate for themselves and go through complex bureaucratic processes to obtain accommodations, and the quality of those accommodations can vary broadly from college to college. (A handful of states have passed legislation requiring colleges to consider a student\u2019s high school IEP when deciding what accommodations to provide, but even then, services are not guaranteed as they are under IDEA.) <\/p>\n
Jacqueline Rodriguez<\/p>\n
National Center for Learning Disabilities<\/p>\n
Such challenges will only get harder to tackle without nonpartisan ED staffers to hold colleges accountable to the few regulations that do exist, Rodriguez said. Without the same contact points, students and advocacy groups may no longer have a place to go when questions arise.<\/p>\n
Inside Higher Ed <\/em>asked Rodriguez five questions to get a better understanding of what the future will look like for students with disabilities in higher ed. <\/p>\n Responses have been edited for length and clarity. <\/em><\/p>\n The general public doesn\u2019t realize all the components that OSERS supports. It ranges from the individual student\u2019s education all the way up to the support that states receive, the Parent Technical Assistance Centers and the Regional Education Laboratories that were conducting research, as well as technical assistance for states, universities and K\u201312 schools. It was a very broad, very valuable component. <\/p>\n But even more acute is going to be the impact that individual caregivers, families and the students themselves will feel, because OSERS, as well as the Office for Civil Rights, were responsible for upholding the law for students. What we\u2019ve been hearing across the country is that families of kids with disabilities have elevated their concerns\u2014whether it\u2019s discrimination, bullying, harassment, seclusion or restraint\u2014to the Office for Civil Rights, [but] because of their reduction in force, they are not even being involved in the investigatory process. They\u2019re being told that it\u2019s been resolved. Sometimes parents aren\u2019t even getting a response from OCR due to the lack of capacity. <\/p>\n The impact is not in the abstract. There are recent historical examples of what happens when states are left to their own regard to interpret the law: They are consistently interpreting it inaccurately, and they have required the department, and specifically OSERS, to come in and provide guidance.<\/p>\n Often, going into a postsecondary educational environment, students receive vocational rehabilitative service dollars that would support that transition [and] career planning, as well as in some cases even textbooks and curricular work. Without the department\u2019s oversight, distributing those funds becomes very concerning, and then consideration of how those funds can be appropriately used for what purposes and to whom is in question. <\/p>\n Finally, the way in which we are able to advocate for either increased funds or better guardrails and guidance is by the data that is collected through the department. We don\u2019t have great data at the university level on how many students are identified with disabilities, because [current laws] don\u2019t include that as part of their factor. So we have to essentially extrapolate from K\u201312 data that if 13 to 15\u00a0percent of kids with disabilities are receiving service under IDEA, it\u2019s likely that the same amount should also be receiving similar services on a college campus. Without that data, there\u2019s no mechanism to advocate for additional funding to support those same students.<\/p>\n Part of IDEA\u2019s mandatory functions is Part D, which is to prepare personnel to serve students with disabilities. Congress and the public understood that special educators must and should be required to be specialized in servicing and educating kids who learn and think differently. <\/p>\n But these grants were decimated a couple of months ago, and the administration has removed any capacity for future special educators to actually be experts in the space in which they educate students because they are not professionally providing that same level of funding towards institutions of higher ed prepare them. <\/p>\n I was a recipient of Part D funds, and it would have been impossible for me to attain my Ph.D. at the University of Central Florida without the support of [Office of Special Education Programs] funds, and in turn, I worked at the College of William & Mary on the faculty in the School of Education, not simply preparing teachers who would be special education\u2013focused, but I\u00a0prepared general education teachers, related service providers and law school students who were going to be working in school districts to, again, ensure that families\u2019 rights were upheld. <\/p>\n So without that funding at the master\u2019s and doctorate level, there are fewer educators who are fully prepared to meet the needs of these students in our classrooms. Education degrees cost as much as a business degree but do not have the same return on the investment. And so fewer people can pay out of pocket for these degrees, and fewer people go into the profession when it\u2019s not being supported.<\/p>\n The administration dangled in front of Congress and the public their intention to move OSERS functions, and in particular, the statutory requirements through IDEA, over to another agency, Health and Human Services. What they received was incredible pushback from both the public and from Congress, because serving students with disabilities is, as we have put it, bipartisan. Nobody has politicized kids with disabilities more than this administration. <\/p>\n What you\u2019ve seen recently is that this administration told the public that the RIFs were due to the government shutdown, but because of the litigation, the government has had to show their cards, and that is not at all the case. The RIFS were actually preplanned. They were structured and strategic. <\/p>\n So when the administration then tells the public if we move OSERS\u2019 functions to another agency you shouldn\u2019t worry because those agencies are fully prepared, the public should question the mere premise of that statement. If the administration is willing to outrightly lie about the RIFs being associated with the government shutdown, then the public should question if moving it could actually be successful. <\/p>\n I think the short answer is yes, we will see those consequences. But if you can allow me the liberty, I\u2019ll address your question in a way that someone else asked me recently, which was, how long will it take for us to see the impact of the destruction, and how long will it take for us to rebuild this for kids who have disabilities? <\/p>\n And the group of advocates that I was sitting with at the time all agreed. We\u2019re talking a minimum of one generation if not more, because the impact medium and long range on these students will be about how we create an inclusive workforce climate. How do HR systems consider disability as a part of the genetic variation that every human has? And how do we accommodate people so that they can thrive? <\/p>\n It\u2019s going to be impactful when we see a generation of students who don\u2019t actually get the services that they are legally entitled to and then do not go into the same industries they may have gone into because they were not provided the education they needed in the manner in which they learn. I\u00a0really cannot emphasize enough how kids are going to bear the ultimate burden of these decisions, and their life outcomes will shift in this generation because of the decisions the administration is making.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, which focuses on ensuring equal opportunity and improving outcomes for individuals with disabilities in the public education system, was among those hardest hit by mass layoffs at the Education Department on Oct.\u00a010. 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