Texas is last in the nation in providing special education to children with disabilities.
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FORGOTTEN CHILDREN
FACT:
The US Department of Education is investigating the Texas Education Agency (TEA) for failure to uphold the federal right of children with disabilities to special education services.
FACT:
Texas is dead last in the nation in special education enrollment, the result of politically pressured purge of children from special education services that resulted in a 32% drop.
FACT:
TEA’s system has punished schools for providing special education to “too many students” and forced them to create corrective action plans to purge students from special ed.
WHAT’S HAPPENING?
In 2004, under financial pressure, top level bureaucrats at TEA quietly instituted an arbitrary 8.5% cap — the only state in the nation to have such a target. The result pressured schools to purge and deny children from special education services, forcing many local school districts to pick up the slack. If Texas provided services at the same rate as the rest of the U.S., 250,000 more kids would be getting critical services such as therapy, counseling and one-on-one tutoring.