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Several federal laws require schools to provide services and accommodations to students with disabilities and to protect them from discrimination. The application of these laws may change depending on students' circumstances. At the P-12 level, three main federal laws protect the rights of students with disabilities: the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (Section 504), and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). For students receiving special education under the IDEA or accommodations and services under Section 504 or the ADA, transitioning from the P-12 public education system to an institution of higher education (IHE) may affect how a school assesses their disabilities, their eligibility for accommodations or services, and the services and accommodations available to them. Students may also experience different treatment in the same educational context depending on which laws apply to them. This report examines the impact of these laws on students with disabilities in certain key respects: (1) how the laws define disability; (2) how the laws require schools to determine eligibility for services and protections; (3) how the laws ensure students with disabilities receive the accommodations and services they need; (4) the scope of legal protection guaranteed to students with disabilities; (5) how families enforce their rights; and (6) the available remedies.

As the infrastructure of police surveillance grows in public schools, communities must be prepared to safeguard the rights and freedoms of students and families. This report is designed to help youth justice advocates, youth leaders, educators, caregivers, and policymakers understand and challenge the impact of school surveillance, data criminalization, and police surveillance technologies in schools. This report includes: (1) An analysis of six key facts about the impacts of data criminalization and school surveillance technologies on education equity; (2) A case study of an AI school surveillance technology that can land children in adult misdemeanor court; and (3) Key recommendations for education policymakers and school district leaders for advancing youth data justice.

The describes the nation's progress in (1) providing a free appropriate public education (FAPE) for children with disabilities under IDEA, Part B, and early intervention services to infants and toddlers with disabilities and their families under IDEA, Part C; (2) ensuring that the rights of these children with disabilities and their parents are protected; (3) assisting States and localities in providing IDEA services to all children with disabilities; and (4) assessing the effectiveness of efforts to provide IDEA services to children with disabilities. The report focuses on children with disabilities being served under IDEA, Part B and Part C, nationally and at the State level. Part B of IDEA provides funds to States to assist them in making FAPE available to eligible children with disabilities, ages 3 through 21, who are in need of special education and related services, whereas Part C of IDEA provides funds to States to assist them in developing and implementing statewide, comprehensive, coordinated, multidisciplinary interagency systems to make early intervention services available to all eligible children with disabilities, from birth through age 2, and their families.

While institutions of higher education (IHEs) encourage freedom of expression, critical thinking, and the dynamic exchange of ideas, they have also historically been the setting for social and political demonstrations. It is important for university leaders to collaborate closely with safety, security, and emergency management partners. This fact sheet provides information on the types of protests and demonstrations at IHEs, the importance of protecting student voices and their right to protest while maintaining safety, considerations for campus safety leaders and partners, and emergency management planning and developing a Protest/Civil Unrest Annex.

The EdResearch for "Action Overview Series" summarizes the research on key topics to provide K-12 education decision makers and advocates with an evidence base to ground discussions about how to best serve students. Authors -- leading experts from across the field of education research -- are charged with highlighting key findings from research that provide concrete, strategic insight on persistent challenges sourced from district and state leaders. The central question to this brief is: What evidence-based practices can schools and districts implement to identify and support students experiencing homelessness? Students experiencing homelessness tend to have lower attendance and academic achievement than similar low-income students, and academic outcomes vary widely based on residential context. Training school staff on students' legal and educational rights and signs of homelessness is crucial to identifying and supporting students experiencing homelessness and is required by McKinney-Vento. Regular communication with student-identified trusted adults allows schools to tailor practices to meet individual student needs and improve outcomes. The brief provides evidence-based practices and practices to avoid. [The University of Kentucky, Utah State University, and Simmons School of Education and Human Development are additional collaborators for this report.]

Many recent critical reforms in state school finance systems have been catalyzed by the courthouse, not the statehouse. Advocates for equity-focused school finance reforms often consider legal action as the best path to significant policy changes. This brief discusses state-level lawsuits on adequacy and equity grounds and their outcomes.

"A Dream Derailed? Investigating the Causal Effects of Student Protection Authorization Policies on Student Outcomes after College Closure" is the third and final of three reports from a collaborative research team of State Higher Education Executive Officers Association (SHEEO) and the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, seeking to quantify the impacts of college closures on students' subsequent postsecondary enrollment and completion outcomes and to identify the policy levers states may have to support students who experience a closure. This report incorporates the state authorization policy context to ascertain if policy interventions can ameliorate the negative impacts of closures on students. It uses the treatment and control samples developed for the second report and adds a longitudinal dataset capturing state authorization policies related to student protections. [For the second report, "A Dream Derailed? Investigating the Causal Effects of College Closures on Student Outcomes," see ED629845.]

In May 2023, the Civil Rights Division (the Division) of the U.S. Department of Justice and the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at the U.S. Department of Education jointly released this Resource on Confronting Racial Discrimination in Student Discipline. The Resource demonstrates the departments' ongoing commitment to the vigorous enforcement of laws that protect students from discrimination on the basis of race, color or national origin in student discipline. The Resource provides examples of the departments' investigations over the last 10 years, reflecting the long-standing approach and continuity in the departments' enforcement practices over time and the continuing urgency of assuring nondiscrimination in student discipline in our nation's schools. The Resource describes how the departments resolved investigations of 14 school districts in 10 states nationwide and demonstrates ways school districts can take steps to proactively improve their administration of student discipline.

It is the position of the National Association of School Nurses (NASN) that regularly scheduled recess during the school day should be regarded as a childhood right that is necessary for the optimal health and educational growth of all students, and that recess should not be withheld for any student. The registered professional school nurse (hereinafter referred to as school nurse) bridges health and education and can apply leadership and collaborative skills to advocate for equitable policies that support scheduled recess and reject withholding recess (NASN, 2016, 2020). Safeguarding scheduled recess is important for promoting the physical, emotional, social, and cognitive development of all students. This statement provides the background and rationale for NASN's position. [This Position Statement was initially adopted in January 2019 and revised in January 2024.]

This is the 44th Annual Report to Congress on the Implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, 2022. Section 664(d) of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), as reauthorized in 2004, requires that the Department of Education report annually on the progress made toward the provision of a free appropriate public education to all children with disabilities and the provision of early intervention services to infants and toddlers with disabilities. The 44th Annual Report to Congress on the Implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, 2022 describes our nation's progress in: (1) providing a free appropriate public education (FAPE) for children with disabilities under IDEA, Part B, and early intervention services to infants and toddlers with disabilities and their families under IDEA, Part C; (2) ensuring that the rights of these children with disabilities and their parents are protected; (3) assisting States and localities in providing IDEA services to all children with disabilities; and (4) assessing the effectiveness of efforts to provide IDEA services to children with disabilities. The report focuses on children with disabilities being served under IDEA, Part B and Part C, nationally and at the State level. [For the "43rd Annual Report to Congress on the Implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, 2021," see ED616723.]

Academic freedom is the most important pillar that underpins and enables a democratic and free higher education sector. Given that the academic and political debate on the concept of academic freedom tends to be one-sided and confined to the needs and experiences of academic staff and researchers, as well as in face of the ongoing attacks on the academic community in Europe, the European Students' Union inquired how European students perceive the current situation around academic freedom, institutional autonomy and academic integrity in their national/regional contexts, and how academic freedom is perceived by students and their representative bodies. This report summarises the results of the survey on academic freedom, institutional autonomy and academic integrity conducted by ESU and financially supported by the Open Society Foundation. We hope that this report on student perceptions will enrich current debates as it is a first starting point to explore and address student perspectives on and the need for (student) academic freedom.

Disasters, such as floods, fires, and storms, can devastate communities and the lives of people who live in them. After disasters, displaced families long to return to a sense of normalcy, so reconnecting children to school is especially important during this time. By providing the structure of an education setting, schools can help children and youth overcome the trauma of a disaster and regain their academic and social stability. Once children are safely in school, parents have the peace of mind and freedom to focus on other post-disaster details to help their families recover. This brief: (1) reinforces the importance of ensuring that children and youth displaced by a disaster are attending school as quickly as possible after their displacement; (2) explains key aspects of the McKinney-Vento Act, particularly as it relates to students affected by disasters; and (3) provides strategies for a local educational agency (LEA) to prepare for a disaster that causes widespread homelessness, meet challenges during the disaster, and improve its response for the next occurrence.

Each year, over 1.2 million children and youth identified as homeless in the nation's schools experience educational disruption caused by not having a safe and stable place to live. Many students who have disabilities and are experiencing homelessness face additional challenges for educational progress that require close coordination between homeless and special education staff in State and local education agencies. This brief: (1) reviews the educational rights of children and youth guaranteed in the McKinney-Vento Act, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973; (2) addresses frequently raised issues regarding the needs and rights of students experiencing homelessness who have disabilities; and (3) provides information to improve the educational access and success of students experiencing homelessness who have disabilities.

The U.S. and West Virginia constitutions acknowledge the right to free speech, which must be protected at public colleges, but Senate Bill 657, which became law in 2021, requires that public colleges protect "any lawful verbal and nonverbal speech." Furthermore, many private colleges also promise free speech to their students. However a campus-climate survey published by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) in 2021 found that 5-in-6 college students have self-censored because of how they perceived other students, a professor, or the college administration would respond. Two-thirds of college students agreed that it was acceptable to shout down a campus speaker or to try to prevent them from speaking. FIRE reviewed the restrictions on free speech at 17 public or private colleges and universities in West Virginia and found 92 policies that restrict freedom of speech. This report reviews FIRE's ratings, gives examples of restrictive policies, and recommends ways to improve students' free speech rights. [The report was written in partnership with the Cardinal Institute for West Virginia Policy.]

California's Assembly Bill 705 has affected the way that English learners (ELs) access English and English as a second language (ESL) coursework, requiring that degree- or transfer-seeking students have the right to enroll in English or ESL courses, and community colleges are responsible for implementing initial placement practices and designing curricular structures that maximize gateway English completion. We found that ELs who graduated from a US high school and then enrolled in a community college experienced much higher throughput rates when allowed to enroll directly in transferable, college-level English composition than if they were directed to the ESL Pathway. We provide recommendations for community colleges to (a) improve placement for this subgroup of ELs, (b) integrate English support into academic instruction throughout college-level courses, and (c) better track the academic pathways of ELs from high school to college in administrative data sets.

In 2018, the Network for Public Education and the Schott Foundation issued a report entitled "Grading the States." That report examined America's commitment to democracy by grading each state and the District of Columbia on the number of publicly-funded but privately-governed educational "choice" programs it had and whether those programs had sufficient safeguards to protect students' well-being and civil rights. Since then, the march to privatize one of our country's most precious institutions--our public schools--has continued. Indeed, it has intensified. The first step in stopping the privatization movement is to understand it. This report takes up where the 2018 report left off. Not only does this report grade the states based on their willingness to commit exclusively or primarily to democratically governed public schools open to all, but their willingness to put sufficient guardrails and limits on publicly-funded alternatives to ensure that taxpayers, students, and families are protected from discrimination, corruption and fraud in the programs they have. [For "Grading the States: A Report Card on Our Nation's Commitment to Public Schools," see ED612891.]

Compensatory education, also known as compensatory services, is a judicially created remedy which entitles a student to receive additional special education and related services, accommodations, and modifications when their rights under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) have been violated. This report contains answers to questions regarding compensatory education in response to COVID-19. [For the first edition, see ED615639.]

This is the "43rd Annual Report to Congress on the Implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, 2021." Section 664(d) of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), as reauthorized in 2004, requires that the Department of Education report annually on the progress made toward the provision of a free appropriate public education to all children with disabilities and the provision of early intervention services to infants and toddlers with disabilities. The "43rd Annual Report to Congress on the Implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, 2021" describes our nation's progress in: (1) providing a free appropriate public education (FAPE) for children with disabilities under IDEA, Part B, and early intervention services to infants and toddlers with disabilities and their families under IDEA, Part C; (2) ensuring that the rights of these children with disabilities and their parents are protected; (3) assisting States and localities in providing IDEA services to all children with disabilities; and (4) assessing the effectiveness of efforts to provide IDEA services to children with disabilities. The report focuses on children with disabilities being served under IDEA, Part B and Part C, nationally and at the State level. [For the "42nd Annual Report to Congress on the Implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, 2020," see ED612645.]

This discussion paper has been produced by Australian Children's Education and Care Quality Authority (ACECQA), on behalf of all state and territory governments and the Australian Government, to inform the "2020 Review of the Disability Standards for Education 2005." This paper asks providers of early childhood education and care (ECEC) and school age education and care services across Australia about their awareness and understanding of their obligation sunder the "Disability Discrimination Act 1992" (DDA). This includes questions of access and participation by children with disability to education and care. ACECQA's paper complements the broader discussion paper by the Australian Government about ECEC and the Disability Standards for Education 2005, and is provided in two parts: (1) part 1 is for all ECEC and school age education and care providers; and (2) part 2 asks questions that specifically target National Quality Framework (NQF) approved ECEC and school age education and care providers. [For the broader paper, "Final Report of the 2020 Review of the Disability Standards for Education 2005," see ED617747.]

The purpose of this "Equity by Design" brief is to aid administrators in protecting sexual and gender minority students from discrimination and harassment. Specifically, this Brief presents Title IX's conceptualizations of sex and harassment to identify who is protected, and from what. Further, it discusses how to navigate backlash administrators might encounter. Finally, it considers ways administrators can care for themselves since some, particularly administrators of Color, might be afraid for their wellbeing and employment as they do this work.

The COVID-19 pandemic and resulting shift to virtual learning brought into sharp relief the inequities that English Learners (ELs) experience in New Jersey's public education system. Despite tremendous work on the part of educators, parents, and other caregivers to provide continuity of learning during this time, their efforts were hindered by school districts that fell short of meeting their obligations under New Jersey's Bilingual Education Code - the state regulations governing EL education - before and during the pandemic, and by a lack of sufficient guidance, support, and enforcement from the State, including shortcomings in the Code itself. The aim of this report is to identify EL-specific needs and rights within New Jersey's education system; understand whether schools are meeting these needs and respecting these rights; and, where they are not, make appropriate policy recommendations. [This report was produced with the New Jersey Consortium for Immigrant Children (NJCIC) and NJ Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages/NJ Bilingual Educators (NJTESOL/NJBE).]

Compensatory education, also known as compensatory services, is a judicially created remedy which entitles a student to receive additional special education and related services, accommodations, and modifications when their rights under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) have been violated. This report contains answers to questions regarding compensatory education in response to COVID-19.

On March 15, 2024, the Civil Rights Division (the Division) of the U.S. Department of Justice issued a resource for families and students on confronting discrimination based on religion in public schools. The document recognizes that in schools around the country, students have reported unfair treatment, bullying, and harassment because of their perceived or actual religious beliefs and practices. The document provides examples of the kinds of incidents the Division can investigate and reminds students and parents of specific actions that they can take when schools fail to respond to reports of harassment or other forms of discrimination. It also provides information on how to file a complaint with the Division.

Among the most critical pre-pandemic inequities that have not received sufficient attention is the fact that many districts are not meeting their legal and moral obligation to educate students with disabilities, which must include providing needed mental health services, behavioral supports and educationally sound interventions by well qualified staff. This is the executive summary for the report "Disabling Inequity: The Urgent Need for Race-Conscious Resource Remedies." The report has three parts. Part I demonstrates that there is a large subgroup of students with disabilities who have a right to receive supports and services but whose needs appear to be ignored in many large districts all across the nation. Part II of the report focuses on the school experiences of students with disabilities who are eligible for special education and related supports and services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and who constitute close to 14% of all public-school students in grades K-12. Part III reviews the evidence that the pandemic is exacerbating the pre-existing inequitable conditions and concludes with recommendations for federal policymakers. [For the full report, see ED613535.]

The Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) emphasizes that all children have the right to be full members of society, and be included in all forms of participation inside the home and out in the community. Unfortunately, many children with disabilities are not afforded this opportunity. Instead, they face many barriers that exclude them from society. Compared with other children, children with disabilities are less likely to receive an education, less likely to be employed as adults, more likely to be victims of violence, less likely to start their own families and participate in community events, and more likely to live in poverty. The exclusion of children with disabilities affects not only them, but imposes costs on the whole community. If these children lack the opportunity to be productive, society loses out on what they could have produced. The barriers faced by people with disabilities can also create more responsibilities for their family members, which can limit their opportunities to work or get an education. Moreover, the impact of exclusion extends beyond the economic cost. If people with disabilities are absent from public discourse, the community cannot benefit from their ideas. If they are excluded from political participation, the government cannot truly represent the interests of all citizens. A growing body of research suggests that the costs of exclusion are high. Fortunately, evidence also demonstrates that there are effective ways to ameliorate these costs. A strong case can be made for the social and economic benefits of inclusion. This paper is an effort to begin making that case.

This is the "42nd Annual Report to Congress on the Implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, 2020." Section 664(d) of the "Individuals with Disabilities Education Act" ("IDEA"), as reauthorized in 2004, requires that the Department of Education report annually on the progress made toward the provision of a free appropriate public education to all children with disabilities and the provision of early intervention services to infants and toddlers with disabilities. The "42nd Annual Report to Congress on the Implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, 2020" describes our nation's progress in: (1) providing a free appropriate public education (FAPE) for children with disabilities under IDEA, Part B and early intervention services to infants and toddlers with disabilities and their families under IDEA, Part C; (2) ensuring that the rights of these children with disabilities and their parents are protected; (3) assisting states and localities in providing for the education of all children with disabilities; and (4) assessing the effectiveness of efforts to educate children with disabilities. The report focuses on the children and students with disabilities being served under "IDEA," Parts C or B, nationally and at the state level. [For the "41st Annual Report to Congress on the Implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, 2019," see ED605108.]