Students with disabilities in Fairfax County Public Schools perform substantially lower than their peers on standardized tests and face significantly higher rates of extended suspensions and expulsions, according to a new report on the school division’s special education program. 

The report, which was commissioned by the school board in 2019 and conducted by independent research organization American Institutes for Research, also found FCPS lags behind state goals and local peer school divisions in inclusion of students with individualized education plans (IEPs) in general education classrooms, has difficulty supporting educators in addressing the needs of students in special education programs, and struggles with timely communication with parents. 

About 15% of students in FCPS have an IEP. The AIR researchers analyzed student test scores, disciplinary data, parent and staff survey responses, and conducted focus groups and classroom visits to arrive at the report’s conclusions. 

The report is receiving differing reviews from some local special education advocates.  

“My overall reaction is mixed,” said Diane Cooper-Gould, a special education advocate and parent. “I feel like there are certain trends that it pointed out that I think were right on the money.” 

Cooper-Gould praised the report for highlighting the problems Fairfax parents face in getting their kids into special education programs alongside gifted education programs, and for noting the school division’s difficulties in integrating special education students into general education settings. But she also was frustrated that the research provided extensive documentation of racial disparities of special education but offered few recommendations for how to close them. 

Most data included in the report is from before the pandemic, and researchers did not examine the problems of pandemic special education because they “do not reflect special education programming in a typical school year,” and could result in “recommendations that are not directly applicable or useful as schools return to normal operations,” the researchers wrote. 

But Cooper-Gould points out that schools aren’t returning to a pre-pandemic baseline — particularly when it comes to students in special education, who were especially impacted by the closure of schools and a loss of in-school support structures.

“COVID did happen. So all that loss, all the disproportionate hits on students with disabilities — we can’t pretend it didn’t happen because it did,” she said. “We’re not just magically jumping back in time. It doesn’t work that way.”

The report included some bright spots. The review found FCPS — which employs more than 6,000 special education staff — had strong centralized structures in place to help deliver services and decent compliance with state and federal special education laws.

But the report also suggests that district-wide administration is doing a “minimal and inconsistent” job at monitoring the quality of the implementation of special education programs across the school division. Cooper-Gould, who works with parents to help them navigate the special education system, says her experience suggests FCPS is fairly siloed, with individual school “fiefdoms” able to take suggestions from division experts on special education — or not. 

Surveys of parents showed that 87% were pleased with the quality of staff at their child’s school, and 85% thought school staff did a good job delivering the services and accommodations required by their child. Significant majorities also said they were included and able to participate in their students’ IEP process. The response rate for the parent survey was 55%, though it was not immediately clear how many or which parents received the survey in the first place. 

Cooper-Gould said she felt the report missed some key nuances in parent sentiment. 

“In the work I do every day, I hear from families that are really struggling,” she says. “I think that [the report] didn’t highlight quite enough how complicated and difficult it is for the average family to understand the system and their rights and the need to navigate the system and their rights.” 

Cooper-Gould offered her own experience as an example. 

“I have one kid who I’m very satisfied with where she is now with her services, but several years ago I had a terrible time getting her evaluated and given the services she needed,” she says. “So when I answered the question, am I looking out right this minute or was I looking over her educational career?” 

A recent lawsuit paints a less-rosy picture of the interplay between the school system and parents. The class action complaint against Fairfax County Public Schools and the Virginia Department of Education alleges that due-process hearings between school divisions and parents unsatisfied by the services and accommodations provided under their student’s IEP are biased. 83% of hearing officers in Northern Virginia in the past decade had never ruled in the parent’s favor, the lawsuit found. 

Fairfax students with disabilities generally outperformed state averages on standardized tests, but their test scores lag behind their non-special education peers by about 30% on average. 

That gap gets worse when broken down by race or ethnicity and geographic region of the county. Black students with IEPs scored 43% to 49% behind Black students without IEPs for 2016 – 2019 data. Across demographic groups, Black students with disabilities had the lowest pass rates on state-administered Standards of Learning tests, with only about a third passing math, writing, and science exams. 

Certain geographic regions also fared consistently worse in testing performance. Students in Region 3, which includes schools in Springfield, Huntington, Mount Vernon and Fort Belvoir areas of the county,  had a pass rate 10 percentage points lower than the average for students with disabilities across the whole system. Region 9 — which is not geographic, but includes all the county’s alternative learning centers, private schools, contract schools, and early childhood centers that provide special education supports —  had the largest gaps compared to the overall average, at 41% lower for math and 35% lower for social studies. 

There are similarly deep disparities in school discipline for students with disabilities. FCPS has long struggled with disciplinary processes and procedures for students with special needs. The school division was the subject of a major civil rights lawsuit over its practice of secluding or physically restraining students in 2019. It settled last year, and promised to phase out seclusion and severely restrict restraining students. 

Data from 2016 – 2019 show that Fairfax students with individualized education plans (IEPs) were 3.1 times more likely than peers without them to be suspended in-school. Those disparities were worse for students of color in special education: Asian students with IEPs were 4.5 times more likely to receive a suspension, and Native Hawaiian / Pacific Islander students with IEPs were 6.3 times more likely. Biracial special education students were 4.4 times more likely to be suspended. Black students with IEPs came in at just over the general special education average, at 3.2 times more likely than non-IEP peers to be suspended. 

Cooper-Gould applauded the report for outlining how race and ethnicity play in the experiences of students with disabilities, but said she was disappointed that the researchers didn’t offer more specific solutions targeted at closing racial gaps. 

“We’ve done equity studies, we’ve done all sorts of things in Fairfax, and this has consistently been happening year after year to year,” she said. “This is not a new problem, but it’s also not appearing to get any better. So what are we going to do about it?”

Teachers in FCPS need more help in supporting the needs of students with disabilities, according to the report. Educators working with students with disabilities said they needed more time to plan for class, do paperwork and prepare for IEP meetings with parents. The report documented “overwhelming stress and burnout” among staff. 

One staff member recalled sharing about her struggles with the workload with a lead teacher. 

“I said, ‘I’m having trouble.’ She looks at me and just says, ‘Well, you need to learn to prioritize,’” the staff member told the researchers. “I felt like saying, ‘What? Do I prioritize the kids? Or the paperwork? Something’s going to give. Do I give on the timelines? Or do I give on the support?’” 

The report includes a series of recommendations to improve FCPS’s special education offerings. They include improving the IEP process with better data collection, documentation, and parent collaboration; clarifying and standardizing the evaluation process for determining if a student needs additional support; doing better at providing consistent instruction to students with disabilities in general education settings; and reducing the workload of special education teachers and aides and providing better professional development to them. 

The school board will hear a presentation on the report on Oct. 4. 

Cooper-Gould wants to see FCPS focus less on process and more on how students in special education programs are actually learning in the classroom. And she doesn’t believe the issues detailed in the report can be separated from overall funding for public schools or public support for the teaching profession. 

“We need to value our public education system more. We need to invest a lot more money into it, a lot more time into it, a lot more creative thinking into it,” she said.