For years, Beth Hawkins has covered the push and pull over the rights of students with disabilities. Shifting priorities and reluctance by schools and districts to comply with state and federal special education laws are nothing new. But with the Trump administration’s proposed gutting of the U.S. Department of Education, its weakening of enforcement mechanisms and the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of health and human services, fears that children with disabilities would lose decades worth of federal protections became all too real.
With painstaking reporting and a deep-seated knowledge of the issues, Beth revealed how the Trump administration in the past year has sought to weaken the two laws underpinning special education as we know it: the Americans With Disabilities Act and the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act. The ADA requires schools and other public facilities to be physically accessible to everyone and protects people with disabilities from discrimination. IDEA mandates that children with disabilities shall receive a “free and appropriate public education.”
Her reporting over the last year has documented lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of these protections and seeking Supreme Court approval for a narrowed definition of discrimination; firings at the U.S. Department of Education that have dismantled longstanding avenues of redress for families whose schools refuse to follow the law in providing accommodations for their children; and new disdain for people with autism and other disabilities at the highest levels of government.
Putting a human face on the potential consequences, Beth spoke with parents whose children have thrived under laws that acknowledge their capacity to learn and allow them to attend school with non-disabled peers. With The 74’s Lauren Wagner, she traced the tortuous processes for appealing denials of special education services at the state and local levels and illustrated how, in the absence of federal enforcement, those will be all that’s left for desperate families. And, marking the 50th anniversary of IDEA, she re-created a not-so-distant past when children with disabilities were declared ineducable and locked away in asylums. Using oral histories, archived federal documents, and old photos and videos, she brought to life the struggle for disabled children’s rights and revealed why advocates fear that progress may be slipping away.
