Federal protections help students with disabilities succeed. They may be under threat
When Adrienne Haynes’ oldest son, Nathan, was in elementary school, he struggled academically. In the morning, he’d be a bundle of energy. But at a certain point in the day, he’d hit a wall, and he’d have a hard time staying focused, or even just staying awake.
Eventually, Nathan was diagnosed with ADHD, and Haynes had him put on medication to help manage the symptoms. The drugs helped, she said, but school was still a challenge. It wasn’t that he wasn’t capable, she said. He just wasn’t keeping up.
“The teachers would always say, ‘He can do the work, he can do the work,’” she said. “But at the end of the day, he wasn’t performing.”
The struggle continued until Nathan reached fourth grade. One day, his teacher pulled Haynes aside and suggested she look into having him placed on a 504 Plan, which would give him accommodations and other support that might help him do better in school.
Today, Nathan is a graduating senior at South Hills High School in the Fort Worth Independent School District. Haynes doubts he would have gotten this far without the extra support his 504 Plan guarantees — accommodations like extra time to work on assignments and tests, the ability to move to another room while he’s working and the ability to have a teacher read assignment instructions and test questions to him verbally.
But disability rights advocates say those protections are under threat from a multi-state lawsuit, led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, that seeks to overturn the federal law that guarantees them.
Section 504 under threat from Texas lawsuit
Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 prohibits employers and organizations that receive federal funding from discriminating against people with disabilities. It requires school districts to ensure that students with disabilities have access to a “free and appropriate public education” — that is, instruction that’s designed to prepare them for employment, further education and living independently. About 1.6 million students nationwide, including about 400,000 in Texas and 4,356 in Fort Worth ISD, get services under Section 504.
Paxton, joined by attorneys general for 16 other states, sued the Biden administration last year, asking courts to declare Section 504 unconstitutional. Last month, the plaintiffs released a status report saying that the 17 states weren’t seeking to have Section 504 thrown out in its entirety. But the plaintiffs also wrote that they weren’t amending or dropping the suit.
Advocates say the status report doesn’t mean anything substantial, and that the lawsuit still represents an attack on the rights of disabled Americans. The lawsuit is paused for now. The parties have been ordered to file another joint status report by April 21.
504 Plan helped Fort Worth student succeed
Haynes said it took some time to work out the details of Nathan’s 504 Plan. But by the time he started fifth grade, he had a plan in place. The plan gave Nathan extra time to work on tests and in-class assignments and allowed him to get up and move to another room in the school to do his work. It also allowed him to ask for teachers to read assignments to him, and reword the instructions if necessary.
Those accommodations made a big difference, Haynes said. Nathan started to show more interest in school, and it wasn’t as much of a challenge to get him to do his work.
Haynes also noticed a difference in how Nathan’s teachers talked about him. Before he had a 504 Plan, parent-teacher conferences were mostly about where he was falling short, she said. After the plan was in place, she started hearing more hopeful stories about how he was doing in class, and those conversations focused more on goals for Nathan and emphasized what he was capable of.
Haynes’ experience with Nathan’s 504 Plan was critical later on, when her daughter, Delaney, struggled in school for different reasons. Delaney, now a fourth grader at River Trails Elementary School in the Hurst-Euless-Bedford Independent School District, suffers from chronic migraines, which sometimes causes nausea and vomiting.
For years, anytime Delaney would throw up at school, Haynes would get a call asking her to come and pick her daughter up. This happened often enough that Delaney was missing too much school, Haynes said. So Haynes worked with school leaders to get Delaney put on a plan that would allow her to rest in the school nurse’s office with the lights turned down after she gets sick. If she feels better, she can go back to her class. The plan still allows Haynes to come pick Delaney up if she thinks it’s better than letting her stay at school, but it means Delaney doesn’t automatically have to go home if she throws up.
Accommodations can help disabled students thrive
Section 504 is separate from the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, which provides protections for a narrower subset of students. Students who qualify for services under IDEA generally have individualized education programs, or IEPs, which are legal documents outlining how school districts are expected to handle any accommodations or modifications the student needs. Students who get services under Section 504 instead get a 504 Plan, which outlines any accommodations they need at school but is generally less detailed than an IEP.
The law also protects students who are perceived to have a disability. For example, if a student has been disfigured, it wouldn’t necessarily affect their ability to participate at school, but it might affect the way teachers and school leaders treat them. In a case like that, the law would still provide protection even though the student doesn’t have a disability.
Kimber Wilkerson, a professor of special education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said 504 Plans tend to be less formal than an IEP. They usually represent a collaboration between parents and school leaders to figure out what the student needs to be successful at school. For a student with ADHD, that might be extra time to take tests. For a student with Type 1 diabetes, it could be access to snacks during the day.
In reality, Wilkerson said, many teachers would be willing to extend those kinds of accommodations to students who needed them, even without documentation. But the advantage of a 504 Plan is that families don’t have to re-explain their situation to a new teacher every time the student advances to a new grade, she said. That’s especially important when students reach middle and high school, where they have several teachers throughout the day instead of just one.
The kind of access to education that Section 504 guarantees can play a critical role in determining a student’s life trajectory, Wilkerson said. For many students, it can either put them on track for attending college or keep them out of it, she said. But students also learn other non-academic skills at school that they’ll need later in life, she said — skills like how to work with others and advocate for themselves. Those social skills can be learned in other settings, as well, Wilkerson said, but they generally come most easily at school.
“I believe that as much as kids can be successful or thrive in school, it’s going to help their long-term life outcomes,” she said.
End of Department of Education could threaten protections
The lawsuit doesn’t represent the only threat to Section 504 protections. Last week, President Donald Trump signed an executive order beginning the process of dismantling the U.S. Department of Education. Although closing the department entirely would require an act of Congress — something administration officials have acknowledged they don’t have the votes to pass — Trump said in a signing ceremony Thursday that he plans to transfer many of the department’s major functions to other departments and agencies.
Alejandra Vázquez Baur, a fellow at the Century Foundation, a public policy think tank based in New York, said the federal Education Department “stands as a bulwark against violations of student civil rights,” including students with disabilities.
During a press conference last week organized by the Houston-based nonprofit Children at Risk, Vázquez Baur said the department’s demise would mean less vigorous enforcement of those protections. By transferring the Education Department’s enforcement duties to other departments, Trump is handing those responsibilities off to agencies that don’t have a deep understanding of the applicable laws or the enforcement power behind them, she said.
That lack of enforcement could lead to a situation where states violate longstanding regulations for how they treat students with disabilities, Vázquez Baur said. Students with disabilities could be shut out of mainstream classrooms, she said, and families could lose support they’ve relied on for years.
Disabled kids can thrive with extra support
Haynes, the Fort Worth mom, said she thinks doing away with Section 504 would be a disservice to students and their families. Schools are rigid environments, and students with certain needs don’t always fit into that structure, she said. Without Section 504, or something else to replicate the protections it provides, she worries about how those children will fare.
When she reflects on her own children’s education, she doubts that either Nathan or Delaney could have been successful in school without a 504 Plan and the accommodations it provides. She knows there are countless other students like them, who can do well if they get the right kind of support.
“Every kid has a different type of need. And without these specialized plans in place, there’s no way for teachers to meet each child at the given level that that child needs,” she said. “...I don’t see children thriving without these plans in place.”
Staff writer Lina Ruiz contributed to this report.
