The Reality of School Closures for Students with Disabilities

With school closures around the world, administrators, teachers, and students have been thrust into a situation for which they were not prepared. While home learning has begun to settle into more of a routine, although imperfect, for many students, that is not necessarily the case for students with disabilities.

What we have learned is that special education is often considered a system somewhat separate from the general curriculum classroom. In the second month of school closures, there are still students with special needs who have not received even the bare minimum of support from their academic communities, putting parents in a seemingly helpless situation. There have been comments made that parents of SPED students should stop complaining and start learning how to teach their children. Such comments underscore the pervasive disdain for special education and the belief that students with disabilities are a burden rather than children entitled to an education. Parenting a child with a disability is very much so different than teaching a child with a disability. Special education teachers are more likely to have an approach grounded in theory and experience, while parents do not have that

As we return to our classrooms at some point, conversations need to be facilitated regarding the support of special education programs; the impact of this virus has made that abundantly clear. While general education teachers are planning comeback strategies that will catch their students up once the school year begins anew, special education teachers are grappling with the painful reality that their students, who were already significantly behind, may never regain their learning losses or regain them at such a pace that achievement gaps become even wider.