Southern Special Education: An Introduction to the Situation

The world feels quite ablaze. We have, as it were, a situation. For context, I am sitting down to write this piece as my phone buzzes with a push-alert from NPR that reads, “Trump prepares order dismantling the Education Department.”

This headline simply highlights a growing reality: The nation is split right in two, with one half ready to roast marshmallows over the flames of a burning system and the other running around like their heads were on fire and their hind-ends were catchin’ as they try to figure out how to tame the blaze. So far, their best pitch has been to hold up little paddles with words during the State of the Union. Well, except Al Green. He stood up and brought some noise, only for the nation to witness a 77-year old man kicked out of the room by what appeared to be the 1985 Chicago Bears defensive line.

As my children and yours say, “We’re cooked.”

You’re tired. I’m tired. The horrors persist, but so do we.

Of the many horrors to discuss, perhaps for just a few minutes, we could get ourselves together around an important topic: The future of Special Education in a world without a Department of Education. I’d like us to talk together as “the South,” if we could.

You see, it is the South, and our fellow and co-mingling friends on up Appalachia way that may be the most threatened by a potential timeline that includes an assault on disability law and structures. Consider this a call for the uniting of brains, for the coming together of people.

Before you go much further, you should know I spend just about every moment of my waken hours, and even part of my slumber, thinking deeply about a concept that is somehow controversial in 2025: Inclusion. I am a special educator. Worse to some, I am a special education professor. Worse still, my Rate My Professors reviews called me “woke” back before folks used that word as the ultimate insult. I like to think “woke” just meant I worked very hard to look at systems in totality, identify patterns, and adjusted accordingly.   

With introductions out of the way, I’d like to introduce the field of Special Education to those of you who may not be quite as familiar with the inner workings of the education profession. First and foremost, Special Education is a service, and not a place. It’s also a service that is written as a legal right for students with disabilities in the United States, but that hasn’t always been true. For most of our country’s history, people with disabilities have been largely excluded from an education. If students with disabilities received any public education at all, it was likely minimal at best, possibly preparing them for a life of labor and forced poverty. However, certain cracks in this approach began to form in the mid-1900s, not as a function of altruism, however. To the contrary, public education for people with disabilities was earned by the sacrifice of those with disabilities, their families, and their allies. The 1954 Brown v Board decision receives attention for what it did in terms of racial desegregation, but this legislation also opened the door for people with disabilities to have a legal ground for demanding public education as a guaranteed right. In 1973, after people with disabilities protested and advocated for years, the Rehabilitation Act included a now famous section, Section 504, which prohibited the discrimination of individuals with disabilities in places and spaces that received federal funding, including public schools.

It isn’t until 1975, however, that “Special Education” as we know it today begins to exist. The 1975 passage of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, now known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, established a right to a public education for all children with disabilities. In this legislation, and as it has evolved over time, a few key constructs are established. First, children in this country are entitled to a Free, Appropriate, Public Education (FAPE) in the Least Restrictive Environment (LRE). This process is guaranteed through a fair assessment process which leads to the formation of an Individualized Education Program (IEP) which is reviewed annually. The IEP contains annual goals, access to services, accommodations and possibly modifications necessary to access the curriculum, and several other important features. In essence, it is plan for how educators will understand the needs of an individual and work to make sure their right to an education is received. It’s a contract.

IDEA was a start of a promise that we, as a nation, have continued to try to fulfill. Pick up any book on the history of disability and you’ll find a history of eugenics, exclusion, and othering that, if you have a heart, will turn your stomach. IDEA, which is approaching its 50th anniversary, was a promise for a new dawn in the way in which we treat people with disabilities within our schooling structures. To be sure, as most things go, this dream was not immediately realized. Reality never makes for the cleanest of stories. For most of us reading this, you can think back to your own schooling experiences and understand what I mean. Even under IDEA, students with disabilities remained segregated in classrooms at the end of hallways, often othered by the mainstream. Still, today we see progress. That progress is yet again the function of people with disabilities and their allies making things happen. In Special Education today we talk about the concept of an “inclusive education.” Admittedly, the field is still working out what that looks like and how to best conduct schooling in a way that supports everyone with equity and dignity. Still, even those debating the inclusion movement recognize the importance of a humanizing education experience; one that recognizes the intellectual and cultural capital lost when we tell any group of people they’re lesser than. Classrooms today see students with and without disabilities working together in common classroom spaces, working out the promises of IDEA.

So, what does this have to do with “the South?” Why should Southerners care?

 The South is complex. To be sure, our history shows a place that has been inhospitable at times for folks who aren’t white, able-bodied, Christian, heterosexual, and economically privileged. A look at the migratory patterns of people tells that story quite well. But as a region, we do express, at least in words, the values of hospitality. I think that if you asked most Southerners whether they care about the education of people with disabilities, they’re going to say of course they do.

But, here are the facts:

 17 states are currently suing to overturn Section 504. They’re all red states in the South, Appalachia, and the Midwest (plus Alaska). Take a look:

In addition, the Department of Education, it sure seems, will soon be dismantled.  

The Department of Education enforces IDEA, Section 504, and the American with Disabilities Act as pertaining to public schools. It provides federal funding for the implementation of Special Education services and monitors how states use those funds. It provides an avenue for due process when families feel their rights have been violated. It oversees transition services, ensuring that individuals with disabilities have the opportunity for sustained engagement throughout their lives.

Now, take a look at this map. What do you notice?

Source: U.S. Census Bureau. (2023, June). Disability rates higher in rural areas than urban areas. U.S. Department of Commerce. https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2023/06/disability-rates-higher-in-rural-areas-than-urban-areas.html

The South has the nation’s highest rate of disability. Period.

What happens when we consider the distribution of children with disabilities? Surely this changes the conversation as it controls for folks who became disabled as adults.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau. (2021). Percentage of children with a disability by state: 2019 [Infographic]. U.S. Department of Commerce. https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/demo/visualizations/2021/fig7.pdf

So, what’s my point? Disrupting disability education is a Southern problem. The Southern and Appalachian regions have the highest proportional density of people with disabilities and some of the lowest spending per capita on education. This is not surprising. You see, disability prevalence is often higher in areas that have been subject to oppression in both the social and economic sense. When people are denied access to healthy foods, to adequate wages, to healthcare, and especially prenatal care, they are more likely to experience disability.

 To undercut access to education through a dismantling of the Department of Education or, Lord forbid, an overturning of Section 504 would be detrimental to a region still struggling to overcome the legacy of segregation and the withholding of educational access as a weapon of Jim Crow. This isn’t even considering how a dismantling of the Department of Education would impact it’s second major oversight role: Title 1. Title 1 provides financial assistance to schools with high percentages of low-income students, which are quite often in rural spaces… like the South and Appalachia.

We must work to be logical folks who give a dadgum about our neighbors. We can’t be alarmists. Let’s be clear: No one has said Special Education or even Title 1 is going away, and no family of a child with a disability needs us screaming about possibilities that are no less than horrific. However, no one has said what happens to those critical components of the Department of Education once it goes away either. That’s fact.

As the caretakers of our children’s education, we don’t have the luxury of believing the snake oil of school choice or of “savings” as the cover for the dismantling the Department of Education. Those salespeople peddling that ain’t nothing but a bunch of silk-socked carpetbaggers. School choice has not produced the outcomes its salespeople profess. Dismantling the Department of Education does nothing to support the students in your community schools. Resist the temptation to give one solitary fat rat about the notion that somehow taking money away from already underfunded public schools and giving it to rich folks is going to help you and your family.

My plea here is simple: As Southerners, we must demand a plan that is supported by the data. 2025 is not the time to let a New York billionaire crumble our educational infrastructures and deprive our students of an education. Debate difference and nuance, sure. But don’t be foolish.

If you’re one of the folks who has a lot to say about public schools and public-school teachers and their “performance,” but you haven’t set foot in one since you were a teenager, volunteer. Go shadow a teacher. Heck, just go supervise a lunch shift so that teacher can pee in peace. You’re going to learn that teachers aren’t out here indoctrinating your children to some radical woke agenda. They’re busting their hind-ends with a classroom of 25+ children all talking at the same time and needing different things. They’re out here caring for your community. If you think I’m just talking, get off the internet, put on your shoes, drive down to the schoolhouse, and go see. Report back. If you’re bothered by the nation’s reading and math scores, stop failing schools. Help. Some of y’all act like teachers alone can save a nation. I hate to tell you, but you’re going to have to help too. We’re all paddling this boat.

Now, consider this an invitation to conversation and action, whether your hat is as red as Bill Elliott’s 1994 Thunderbird or you’re still gripping tight to your little sign that reads “False” like it was the last Tickle Me Elmo on a 1996 Toys ‘R’ Us shelf on Christmas Eve.

 At the end of the day, we’ve all got to be a part of a better South. Don’t let other folks take that power away.

Folks with disabilities deserve an equal education.

That’s not partisan. That’s being a good somebody.

That’s Southern as all get out.