S.M.A.R.T. University Op-Ed: The Failings of the Texas Special Education System

Josie Coot

S.M.A.R.T. University, Co-director

(123) 456-7890

The Failings of the Texas Special Education System

          With special needs being our main focus for our non-profit, we wanted to look at and research the ways schools are failing special needs kids. The main issue in not that a school lacks a special needs program, but rather is breaking laws by not following guidelines that are required. In the Texas Tribune, it states that “A U.S. Department of Education investigation concluded that Texas violated federal law by failing to ensure students with disabilities were properly evaluated and provided with adequate public education.” What they are saying is that students had not been evaluated as they should and then been given a proper education. 

          By failing to do these very things, they broke the law by now allowing students to receive support under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. That act was made to ensure that students with such disabilities are provided with the proper education that is made to fit their individual needs. By failing to evaluate and determine what needs students met, they failed to provide an education to those that needed something just a little bit more than just basic education. 

          In another Daily News article, Texas has been found guilty of doing interventions with special needs children as opposed to providing them with services when said children were thought to have a disability. According to the article, “the department found some school districts “took actions specifically designed to decrease the identification of children for special education” and the Texas Education Agency ‘failed to fulfill its general supervisory and monitoring responsibilities.’” In other words, the school system failed the students that needed them the most. 

          An appalling article we found from the Houston Chronicle stated that when “The Texas Education Agency has determined that they had too many students in special needs education, the administrators announced, and they had come up with a plan: Remove as many kids as possible.” How is this possible? How is the first response to such an issue is to kick out the children these programs were created for? According to the article “the Laredo Independent School District purged its rolls, discharging nearly a third of its special education students...more than 700 children were forced out of special education and moved back into regular education.” These children were in the special education for a reason because they needed that extra help and by pushing them back into regular education hurts not only them but also their future. They won’t get the extra help they need and they won’t be able to do as well as compared if they had been able to stay in special education and it’s going to have a direct result on their future.

          At S.M.A.R.T. University, we will be able to give them the very thing that these Texas schools and educations department have been failing to do, which is give them the proper education and needs that are tailored to fit their specific disability. We will be able help them in ways they could not be helped before. There has always been serious lack of faith in the overall education system in Texas, but this non-profit that we have created could really benefit these children and help them be successful in life and in their future.