Several federal laws require schools to provide services and accommodations to students with disabilities and to protect them from discrimination. The application of these laws may change depending on students' circumstances. At the P-12 level, three main federal laws protect the rights of students with disabilities: the Individuals with…

This article summarizes Allen and Roberts's (2024) study on school psychologists' practices and perceptions regarding manifestation determination reviews (MDRs). It emphasizes the critical role of MDRs in protecting the rights of students with disabilities and highlights the challenges faced by school psychologists in this high-stakes process.

The United States Supreme Court in Kennedy v. Bremerton Sch. Dist. held that a local school district violated the First Amendment freedom of religious expression rights when it directed an assistant football coach to stop praying on the fifty-yard line of a high school football field after each game. In finding for the high-school football coach,…

Disproportionality persists with regard to the labeling of students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD). A blending of critical race theory and disability studies, or DisCrit, provides a framework to examine disproportionality. In this article, a DisCrit mindset is applied to examine how racism and ableism intersect to disproportionately…

Using a sociocultural approach with Indigenous epistemology, we examine language policies related to Lau. We researched how Lau impacted Native language policies through the "Sinajini v. Board of Education of San Juan School District." Native education rights are embedded in treaty rights. As such, Native students have unique statuses…

When education initiatives set out to help those who have been "historically disadvantaged or historically marginalized," they perfectly describe students with disabilities. Yet too often, these students have been excluded from conversations about equity in education. Congress opened public school doors for millions of children with…

The adoption of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) in 2006 and, in particular, Article 24 was a landmark in the struggle of people with disability for recognition of their fundamental human rights, including their right to education. As a legally binding treaty under international law, imposing…

Background: Over the past decade, courts increasingly have considered cases that involve clashes between public, secular private, and religious institutions in education. Such clashes appear to have intensified as recently as the 2019-2020 Supreme Court term, and the confirmation of Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett to the Court in 2020 suggests…

In U.S. deaf education, disablement results from a normative interpretation of disability in the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act. However, Vygotsky's "Fundamentals of Defectology" (1993) allows educators to view current deaf education pedagogical practices through a sociocultural-constructivist lens and reject the current…

This is not a legal brief. This is an article written by a special education expert who has witnessed the very best and the very worst education has to offer. This article is meant to serve as a springboard for examining what is meant by education for all, high expectations, schools as laboratories for innovation, high caliber academic and social…

Purpose: A significant and growing body of LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer) research examines the experiences of students, employees, and the substance of leadership training. This project aims to complement this work by taking a macro-level look at the broader legal and policy issues that may constrain or enhance a school…

The Council for Accreditation of Counseling & Related Educational Programs (CACREP) standards call for doctoral preparation programs to graduate students who are competent in gatekeeping functions. Despite these standards, little is understood regarding the development and training of doctoral students in their roles as gatekeepers. We propose…

"Castañeda v. Pickard" (648 F.2d 989, [5th Cir. 1981]) was a significant legal case in the history of educational policy for non-native English-speaking students in the United States. The case established a three prong 'test' for programs for those students, including the right for students to have an educational program based on sound…

All children in Aotearoa New Zealand have the right to enrol in and receive a quality, inclusive education. Despite this, a recent report by the Education Review Office (ERO, 2022), the government's external education evaluation agency, identified numerous ways in which disabled akonga are excluded from and within the education system. This…

In 1974, Congress passed legislation known as the "Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act" or FERPA, in response to "the growing evidence of the abuse of student records across the nation." The law was written to protect the confidentiality of information held in a student's records. With the introduction of technology in…