Testimony: Performance Oversight, OSSE (FY18)
Children’s Law Center attorney Renee Murphy focuses on the work to be done to improve education quality and equity, one of OSSE’s overarching strategic goals. It is not equitable that children with disabilities continue to suffer dismal achievement and life outcomes. It is not equitable nor high-quality that too many parents still have difficulty getting schools to evaluate their children, or that youth with severe mental health concerns or learning problems go without identification of their disabilities. It is not equitable that children with disabilities are suspended and expelled at much higher rates than non-disabled peers. It does not make an equitable or high-quality program for children with disabilities to wait until a student has been excluded from school for over two weeks to have a discussion about whether that child’s disability is the root cause of the suspensions. We urge more progress for students with disabilities and full funding for the special education reform legislation from 2014.