A release from the US Department of Education:
The U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) today unveiled new data from the 2013-2014 school year showing gaps that still remain too wide in key areas affecting educational equity and opportunity for students, including incidents of discipline, restraint and seclusion, access to courses and programs that lead to college and career readiness, teacher equity, rates of retention, and access to early learning.
U.S. Secretary of Education John B. King Jr. said that, despite significant work from districts across the country, the persistent disparities shown in the new Civil Rights Data Collection—which collected data from all public schools and school districts nationwide for the 2013-14 school year—highlight the need for a continued focus on educational equity, especially in the implementation of the new Every Student Succeeds Act.
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Students with disabilities are more than twice as likely as students without disabilities to be suspended in K-12 settings. They also represent two-thirds of students who are secluded from their classmates or restrained to prevent them from moving—even though they are only 12 percent of the overall student population.Other findings from the report:
- Students with disabilities served by IDEA are 12% of students in schools that offer Algebra II and 6% of students enrolled in Algebra II; they are 11% of students in schools that offer calculus and 1% of students enrolled in calculus; and they are 11% of students in schools that offer physics and 6% of students enrolled in physics
- To close the participation gap in physics, more than 104,000 additional students with disabilities served by IDEA would need to participate in physics classes nationwide
- Similarly, students with disabilities served by IDEA are 12% of all students in schools offering GATE programs, but represent fewer than 3% of GATE students nationwide.
- Students with disabilities served by IDEA and English learners are 12% and 5% of high school student enrollment , but 21% and 11% of high school students held back or retained.
- High school students with disabilities served by IDEA are 1.3 times as likely to be chronically absent as high school students without disabilities.
- Elementary school students with disabilities served by IDEA are 1.5 times as likely to be chronically absent as elementary school students without disabilities.
