Editorial Staff

Public Statement on MA DESE Blocking Federal Funding to Religiously Affiliated Special Needs Students

/in , , /by Editorial Staff
Share on Facebook
Share on Twitter
Share on
LinkedIn
+

“[P]ublic school districts across Massachusetts and state education officials have violated federal law by denying services and government aid to students with disabilities who attend Catholic, Jewish, and other private schools.” That is the finding of the United States Department of Education, as reported in the October 15, 2019 edition of The Boston Globe.

More than a year before the Globe article, Pioneer released a study anticipating this finding. The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s (DESE) legal office has played a key role in denying students at religious schools services funded by the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) for more than a decade. The DESE’s legal office: (1) regulated in a flawed and arbitrary manner; (2) prevented between $96 million and $290 million from flowing to federally designated students; and (3) encouraged local school districts to underserve these religiously affiliated special education students.

However shocking the legal office’s role is in blocking federal IDEA funding from reaching special needs students, it is not unusual. Special education policy is one of the most unaccountable areas of K-12 education in Massachusetts. The DESE’s legal office has wide authority over special education law. Parents, district officials, lawmakers, advocates, reformers, and researchers alike have long been frustrated by the inability to obtain even basic information from DESE on special education services and policymaking.

Rhoda Schneider, the long-serving general counsel and senior associate commissioner, and her team have previously undermined the independence of the state’s school district accountability office. Her office has enabled DESE to avoid implementing key provisions of the landmark 1993 Massachusetts Education Reform Act, including the law’s requirement that students pass a U.S. history MCAS test to graduate from a Massachusetts public high school.

The DESE’s legal office also played a central role in politicizing the Commonwealth’s once-independent charter school authorization process. In 2009, the department’s scandalous mishandling of the Gloucester Community Arts Charter School approval process was investigated by the state Inspector General because of bureaucratic irregularities and legal obstruction, involving, once again, Ms. Schneider’s legal team.

As far back as the early 1990s, the department’s revolt-of-the-clerks culture, of which Ms. Schneider’s team was a key enabler, became so egregious that the Weld administration, with the full support of Massachusetts’ legislative leadership, went to the extraordinary length of restructuring and streamlining the state Board of Education to compel the department and its staff to fully implement and comply with key aspects of the 1993 law.

The DESE legal office has long perpetuated an unaccountable and legally questionable culture within the department. But the office’s actions regarding the IDEA and students with disabilities go well beyond bureaucratic maneuvering or maladministration. The DESE’s blocking of hundreds of millions of dollars in special education funding from reaching students in religiously affiliated schools exceeds mere scandal – it is a disgraceful violation of federal civil rights law.

Pioneer Institute requests that:

  1. The Governor, the Secretary of Education, and the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education conduct an independent review with the goal of ensuring that all other federal funds, including Title I monies, have been appropriately allocated; and
  2. The Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education end Ms. Schneider’s decades of opposition to students and parents in nonpublic schools by removing her and, in so doing, conduct a thorough, independent examination of the department’s legal office.

Pioneer Institute is an independent, non-partisan, privately funded research organization that seeks to improve the quality of life in Massachusetts through civic discourse and intellectually rigorous, data-driven public policy solutions based on free market principles, individual liberty and responsibility, and the ideal of effective, limited and accountable government.

Get Updates on Our Education Research

Related Posts

Virtual Learning Grows During COVID

Virtual learning in K-12 education continues to grow due to the health threat caused by coronavirus variants and the assistance this learning model can provide to at-risk students, according to two papers released today by Pioneer Institute.

Pioneer Institute Files Amicus Curiae Brief in U.S. Supreme Court School Choice Case

Pioneer Institute has filed an amicus curiae brief in Carson v. Makin urging the Supreme Court of the United States to strike down a provision of Maine law. The Court will hear oral arguments in Carson this morning (December 8) at 10 am. The Maine law being challenged allows districts that don’t have their own schools to contract with a school or pay for students that choose to attend public or private schools, but explicitly excludes religious schools.

Study: After Years of Steady Increases, Homeschooling Enrollment Rose Dramatically During COVID

After steadily increasing for years, the number of parents choosing to homeschool their children skyrocketed during the pandemic, and policy makers should do more to acknowledge homeschooling as a viable option, according to a new study published by Pioneer Institute.

Poll Finds Mixed Views About Schools’ Pandemic Performance

A year into the COVID-19 pandemic, Massachusetts residents have mixed opinions about how K-12 education has functioned, but they tend to view the performance of individual teachers more favorably than that of institutions like school districts and teachers’ unions, according to a poll of 1,500 residents commissioned by Pioneer Institute.

Study: Systemic Failure in IDEA Implementation for Private School Students with Disabilities in Additional States

On the heels of a $3.8 million settlement for private school students with disabilities in Massachusetts for the state’s failure to comply with provisions of the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) that require provision of equitable, publicly funded special education services to students in private schools, a Pioneer Institute study finds that two states and three school districts around the country for which data are available also appear to be out of compliance.

Key Madison Park Program Lags Other State Voc-Techs, but Shows Signs of Improvement

The co-operative education program at Boston’s Madison Park Technical Vocational High School, which places students in paid positions with local employers, lags far behind other Massachusetts vocational-technical schools in terms of both placements and number of employer contacts.  But with the school as a whole beginning to improve after years of turmoil, the co-op is also showing promising signs, according to a new study published by Pioneer Institute.

New Book Offers Roadmap to Sustainability for Massachusetts Catholic Schools

Catholic schools in Massachusetts must focus on the characteristics that make them academically successful and distinguish them from traditional public schools, but must also seek new models and governance structures that will help them achieve financial sustainability, according to a new book published by Pioneer Institute. The book, "A Vision of Hope: Catholic Schooling in Massachusetts," will be the topic of a webinar co-sponsored by Pioneer and the Catholic Schools Foundation to be held on Wednesday, January 27 at 2:00 pm. 

New Study Provides Toolkit for Crafting Education Tax-Credit Scholarship Programs

In the wake of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that struck down a key impediment to private school choice, Pioneer Institute has published a toolkit for designing tax-credit scholarship programs. Now available in 18 states, nearly 300,000 students nationwide use tax-credit scholarships to attend the school of their family’s choice. TCS policies create an incentive for taxpayers to contribute to nonprofit scholarship organizations that aid families with tuition and, in some states, other K–12 educational expenses. This paper explores the central design features of TCS policies—such as eligibility, the tax credit value, credit caps, and academic accountability provisions—and outlines the different approaches taken by the TCS policies in each state.

Study: Signs of Progress at Madison Park, but Still a Long Way to Go

Four years after it began to implement a turnaround plan, Boston’s Madison Park Technical Vocational High School is showing clear signs of progress, but its performance continues to lag behind that of other vocational-technical schools in Massachusetts, according to a new study published by Pioneer Institute.