We should expect all students to learn in the most appropriate environment.
Corporal or physical punishment in public schools used to be commonplace. In 2000, the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights (OCR) estimated 260 students were physically punished. Of those students, 19 were boys and 241 were girls, a huge disparity between the genders.
In 2023 House Bill 23-1191 was passed, explicitly prohibiting corporal punishment in public schools.
In March 2018, GAO reported on the use of discipline, including the prevalence
of restraint and seclusion in K-12 public schools, using CRDC data for school year 2013-14, the most recent available data at the time of the work.
Nationally, these data showed that the use of restraint and seclusion was very rare, but that
some groups of students, in particular students with disabilities and boys, experience these actions disproportionately. For example, approximately 61,000 students were physically restrained in school year 2013-14, representing about 0.1 percent of all K-12 public school students. Mechanical restraint and seclusion were less prevalent, but again is proportionately affected the same groups of students.
https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-19-418t.pdf
Restraint and seclusion disproportionately impact disabled children, African American students, and boys in the United States
HOUSE BILL 22-1376- School district officials, school districts, charter schools, and special education directors strongly opposed the bill’s data reporting requirements as overly burdensome and unrealistic...
https://leg.colorado.gov/sites/default/files/2022a_1376_signed.pdf
Despite being required to report on seclusion and restraint from HB 22-1376, CDE is still failing to report current data https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VM1xtOKcKQo
The National Council on Disability found that many students with disabilities do not receive the services outlined in their IEP, highlighting the importance of legal advocacy (National Council on Disability, 2000).
There are several ways a school can violate an IEP. Some common examples include:
Colorado Children with Disabilities (IDEA)
Special Education School Year 2022-2023
Dispute Resolution https://www.cde.state.co.us/cdesped/sped_data
As a public service, the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) publishes this list of elementary-secondary and post-secondary institutions that are currently under investigation. OCR updates the list weekly.
Between January 2022 and September 2024, there are 108 OCR complaints in Colorado. See what your district looks like.
School discipline has increasingly severe consequences for students on a 504 Plan or IEP. Often, suspensions & expulsions are utilized to manage behaviors.
For school year 2023-24, CDE reports students on a 504 Plan incurred 7, 675 disciplinary actions and students in Special Education faced 31,337 instances of disciplinary action. Of those, 18,389 were out-of-school suspensions.
Colorado HB 22-1376 requires the department of education (department) to collect and compile data and create reports based on information received from school districts and charter schools (schools) related to chronic absenteeism rates, the number of in-school and out-of-school suspensions, the number of expulsions, the number of students handcuffed or restrained, the number of referrals to law enforcement, and the number of school-related arrests. The department shall to annually update and post such data and reports on its website .
https://www.cde.state.co.us/dropoutprevention/learningenvironmentdistrictprofilereports