Is the pandemic our chance to reimagine education for students with disabilities?
Special education was imperfect before the coronavirus crisis. As districts contend with the fallout from slapdash online classes for kids with disabilities, will the pandemic prompt a reckoning?
In The News Piece in The Hechinger Report
Dec. 7, 2020
Elena Silva was quoted in The Hechinger Report about reimagining special education during the pandemic by working on parent-teacher cooperation and increasing available resources.
The consequences are evident in the data: Graduation rates for young people with disabilities often fall far below those of other students, and without the right support, children in special education are also much more likely to repeat grades and twice as likely to be suspended.
“These students in particular are getting the short end of the stick, and they have been for some time,” said Elena Silva, director of the pre-K-12 education policy program at the think tank New America and the mother of a child with a physical disability. “The schools, the staff — they know it. You talk to anybody at a school or staff about the need, and whether they have what they need to meet the needs of these kids. And they’ll tell you, they don’t.”
Read the full article here.