Special Education Regulations On the Slow Track

At first there was much hype and expectation the new special education regulations were on the fast track. It now appears according to one group that the U.S. Department of  Education may take until next Fall or later to promulgate the new regulations. 

Comments

[Daunna Minnich]

Here's what I don't understand: It seems like the new law without regs sets up a free-for-all period of interpretation by schools and hearing officers, whose decisions may subsequently not conform to the tardy regs. What happens to those decisions? Would hearings be reconvened? With newly issued regs in hand, might parents suddenly feel they had ammunition to go after schools for not providing FAPE (even if the school had made a good faith effort to conform to the reg-less law)?

[Charles Fox]

Daunna: we actually are not in a reg-less state. The old federal and state regs are controlling while we wait and wait for the new regs. So even though there is incongruence between law and regs that is how it is handled. The more problematic case is for cases that are pending when the new regs are issued. Which set applies the one in existence when the IEP was written, the one which existed when it was implemented, or the one at the time of the hearing. There will be litigation over those issues for sure even though this situation has arisen before.

[Sherry Hollis]

It doesn't matter about old regs, new regs, whatever. Those people can sit on the hill and make up any laws they want, but they won't ever do any good if they won't appoint anyone to 'enforce' the special education laws. This whole country's public sped system is rampant with illegalities, being 'encouraged' by the state education departments.