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Belmont Law Review

Abstract

Much like Hansel and Gretel in the widely known fairytale, children around the world have experienced trauma, loss, and profound impact to their physical, social, and emotional well-being due to the pandemic. Also, like Hansel and Gretel, students with unique needs have lacked the guidance, support, and prioritization by the adults who are meant to protect them. For some students, this failure to support by those adults charged with their education has been occurring for decades. For many, they were left alone in the woods in March 2020, the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. Forced to isolate from teachers and peers, often without necessary services and support, students with unique needs experienced some of the most severe learning losses among the overall student population. Unfortunately, the loss is still ongoing, the long-term impact still unknown, and the needed interventions largely inconsistent from state to state. The primary statutory regulation, The Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act (“IDEA”), intended to ensure students’ access to and progress in their education, but has become the primary perpetuator of ongoing, unrecognized need. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act intended to afford an individualized approach to each student who qualifies and the funding to support such individualization. This promise is now too grand to be realized. And Covid-19 continues to be the disguised witch in this story, just as students with special needs continue to struggle with learning in a system that is no longer workable and far from equitable.

This Article is divided into three parts. Part I presents the known impact of school shutdowns in the early months of the pandemic, and subsequent disruption of placement, support, and services after March 2020, as referenced above. Further, this section introduces the main areas of challenge pre-pandemic for needs-based access to appropriate education and assesses the current learning loss for students with disabilities in these areas. Part II further analyzes these challenges as the main failures of the IDEA, analyzing IDEA’s core principles of a free and appropriate education in the least restrictive environment and describing how these principles have not been fully realized for so many students. Finally, Part II argues that IDEA’s intention has never been realized and, with the severe impact of pandemic learning loss, will move farther and farther away from its intention in current form. Part III calls for a legislative overhaul, specifically in determining the appropriate educational program for students with disabilities both within and without times of crisis. While full funding of IDEA would certainly improve outcomes, holistic reform of special education would lead to more inclusive learning environments and hopefully begin to bridge the vast cavern of learning loss among America’s students in need.

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