Federal report: Mississippi fails to ensure special ed students get services

Date:2025-08-23 06:49:05 Category:US Views:1 Comment:0

Mississippi isn’t ensuring special education students receive all the services they’re entitled to federally, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

A recent report shows Mississippi failing to comply with federal special education requirements in 10 categories, including supervision of how well districts follow laws and by allowing people with suspect qualifications to conduct dispute resolution hearings.

But nothing in the report was particularly surprising to longtime advocates and parents.

“People working with the system have been concerned Mississippi is not compliant,” said Danita Munday, a former Mississippi Department of Education employee turned advocate. “This is validation for what we have been saying for many years.”

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The 47-page document outlines numerous areas of noncompliance with federal special education regulations in Mississippi. The overarching conclusion was that the state education agency has not been adequately overseeing districts and ensuring special education students are getting the education they’re entitled to by law.

The violations cited include the state agency reporting invalid and unreliable data, poorly supervising how districts spend money on special education and inconsistently tracking disciplinary measures for students. The report said the agency lacks a system to ensure in a timely manner that districts are in compliance with federal standards.

Without that system, Munday said the state education department is taking a Band-Aid approach to special education violations.

“They’re stepping on bugs,” she said. “They’ve been finding out about noncompliance through complaints and writing corrective action plans to fix it for one child.”

The report also notes a number of issues with Mississippi’s dispute resolution process.

When parents feel their child’s rights have been violated, they have the right to complain. A structured process ensues, with timelines and corrective action plans. But the state’s model written complaint and due-process forms require more information than they’re required to ask for, including complainants’ home addresses and phone numbers. The forms also don’t note that people can file complaints against the state, not just their district.

In the case of mediation, the report shows that Mississippi makes parents sign “confidentiality pledges” before any resolution has been reached. A spokesperson for the agency said that pledge has since been removed.

Additionally, there’s little evidence to show that hearing officers, impartial people who help resolve disputes over special education services, are well-trained or qualified for their jobs in Mississippi, the federal investigation found.

A spokesperson for the state education department said the agency “acknowledges advocates’ concerns and remains committed to better serving communities.”

Cassie Tolliver of Disability Rights Mississippi said the report should draw major concern.

“Parents trust schools to do what’s right by their child, but that’s not always the case,” she said. “We need to ensure everyone knows how egregious this is. … They are failing them all around.”

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The numerous violations have Mississippi out of compliance with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, the federal law guaranteeing disabled students the right to a free and appropriate public education.

In order to receive federal education funding, state agencies must hold districts accountable to the law. The violations mean the $145 million Mississippi receives annually for special education is now at risk.

The report, released last month along with reviews of nine other states, calls for the Mississippi Department of Education to make corrective changes — some within a few months, and others within a year. According to the spokesperson, the agency has already begun rectifying the shortcomings identified in the report.

Joy Hogge, executive director of Families as Allies, estimated that 95% of the calls her organization receives are from parents who need help getting their kids’ educational needs met. She said those problems are the very ones highlighted in the report.

“Every one of those calls represents a very real child who has every right to learn,” she said. “It’s incredibly widespread and devastating when it’s not addressed.

“It’s validating to see this all written down, but the real proof is going to be if anything happens — what changes are made and what is the state held accountable for.”

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.