In the United States, children with disabilities receive special education services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which provides free appropriate public education (FAPE) in the least restrictive environment (LRE). Evidence shows that parents of children who receive special education (SPED) experience conflict within…

This research considers Pell grant restoration for incarcerated people for the field of higher education in prison. Using the original data, we outline the limits of Pell funding in the prison context by surfacing persistent funding challenges that the Pell grant alone cannot address and may exacerbate. By providing the necessary investments to…

Routine practices in federal and state penal facilities deny undocumented individuals access to various programming, including sentence-mandated and education programs. Many prison higher education programs also exclude individuals who are not US citizens and because undocumented people cannot access Pell Grant funds, it is unlikely they will…

College students with disabilities often encounter systems and processes that do not serve them well. Financial aid, structured in ways that can be particularly burdensome to students with disabilities, is one such system. This study used web-based content analysis of the largest public four-year institution in each state to explore how…

More than 427,000 undocumented students are enrolled in U.S. higher education institutions. That's an impressive number, considering the many hurdles they must overcome on the road to college and a degree, including restrictions on their ability to enroll in higher education institutions; limits on access to in-state tuition, state financial aid,…

Objective/Research Question: This article examines the racial equity of transfer incentive policies by responding to the research question: How do students of differing races and ethnicities vary in their opportunity to benefit from transfer incentive policies? Methods: We utilized a mixed-methods approach, grounded in Critical Race Theory (CRT).…

The Vocational Rehabilitation (VR) program is the largest workforce program in the United States, providing employment services to people with disabilities to help them retain or enter competitive integrated employment commensurate with their abilities and capabilities. During the pandemic, state VR services were significantly affected and in some…

Family involvement is an essential component of the special education process for youth with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). In addition to the legal requirement that parents should be equal partners in the decision-making of the student's individualized education program (IEP) program (IDEA, 2004), a bulk of empirical research…

In 2011, Ohio passed state-wide legislation prohibiting undocumented students from receiving in-state resident tuition (ISRT). In 2013, a student-led advocacy campaign resulted in the Ohio Board of Regents extending ISRT consideration to recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), a subsection of the larger population of…

Underrepresented minority (URM) college students have been steadily earning degrees in relatively less-lucrative fields of study since the mid-1990s. A decomposition reveals that this widening gap is principally explained by rising stratification at public research universities, many of which increasingly enforce GPA restriction policies that…

Early intervention services are funded through a complex blend of federal, state, and local sources, and are part of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). States have to make difficult decisions about how to fund critical IDEA services, including early intervention services, because Congress vastly underfunds IDEA. This often…

Every child from birth to age 3 in the U.S. is entitled under IDEA (IDEA Part C) to support in reaching developmental milestones if they have a developmental delay -- that is, if they are meeting milestones more slowly than expected, or if they have a diagnosed condition that has a high probability of resulting in a delay. Strong support as soon…

Immigrant students, including Dreamers, face significant barriers in accessing a postsecondary education and have faced increased hardship as a result of the pandemic with little access to additional supports. As part of the ongoing negotiations of the Build Back Better Act, the America's College Promise program, which would have guaranteed two…

The Tennessee Department of Education (TDOE) discovered that infants and toddlers who were referred for Part C services and initially found ineligible for a full evaluation through screening were being re-referred and later found eligible for services at a high rate. This report presents the systematic evaluation process that TDOE's Tennessee…

The New Hampshire Department of Education's (NH DOE) Bureau of Career Development (BCD) realized that students experienced inequitable access to career and technical education (CTE), with evidence suggesting that geographic location of high schools and CTE centers played a key role in driving inequitable access. To better understand the specific…