The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Special Education

The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Special Education

More than one billion people (15 percent of the global population) live with disabilities. This number is increasing dramatically due to the proliferation of chronic health issues and demographic and epidemiological changes and trends. Discrimination and stigma against people living with disabilities often lead to neglect, lack of recognition, and decreased access to services. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, traditional and non-traditional students living with disability and requiring special attention and education face heightened exposure and complication risks due to pre-existing vulnerabilities and underlying conditions. In providing educational services, a gap also exists between students with disabilities and those without. Part of the reason is that in the United States, no sufficient data exist that can allow a critical analysis of the link between education and disability. Moreover, educators and policymakers in the country have not identified many forms of disability. Thankfully, these policymakers understand that people have different capabilities and learning needs and that educational opportunities must be equally beneficial and inclusive.

For many people living with disabilities in the United States, educational opportunities are beyond reach, more so under COVID-19. Creating a level playing field for all students will require recognizing this deepening inequality while appreciating that not all students with disabilities have special education needs. Similarly, not all students receiving special education and training have a disability. In this regard, disability inclusion is inter-sectorial. It remains closely linked to gender issues, race, ethnicity, religion, and socio-economic background. Not only did the COVID-19 pandemic expose the shortcomings of the US education system, but it also laid bare the system’s inequality, risks, and fragilities. It explains why people living with disabilities, particularly students, are among the demographic groups worst hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. This global pandemic disproportionately affected a group of people already receiving inferior treatment and attention from the community. Thus, the COVID-19 pandemic, being an emergency, compounded the bad situation that students with disabilities lived in.

Another issue affecting students with disabilities under the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States is a lack of disaggregated data. Authorities have not divided the available information into different components based on such characteristics as age, gender, and disability. With the lack of reliable data, it has become increasingly difficult for the United States to determine the exact number of students countrywide who have received inadequate treatment and educational support due to disability and COVID-19. Unless authorities make data collection efforts disability-inclusive, students with disabilities will continue being invisible, which means they will continue experiencing poor services both in school and outside the school setting. The United States and the Departments of Education and Health and Human Services must collaborate and improve their data collection methods to make information more accessible and reliable. New and reliable data is essential in identifying the problems and vulnerabilities that students with disabilities face and explaining why crises impact them disproportionately.

Given the social-distancing mandate that governments instituted to reduce the pace of COVID-19 infection, many schools implemented technology-based solutions to facilitate educational continuity. Unfortunately, this change only widened the educational gap between students with disabilities and those without. As noted, students with disabilities face various challenges in their quest for education and need special, personalized attention to succeed. Thus, the best teaching approach for them is face-to-face training, where the teacher customizes content for the student. The new digital classrooms left many students with disabilities outside. These alternative education delivery modalities only benefitted traditional students; those with disabilities may have underlying difficulties that make it difficult to access or use certain technologies or infrastructures. As other students continued with their studies from home, students with disabilities remained stranded and became disjointed even more from the education system. One way for catching up was creating customized technologies for them or finding a way for teachers to offer direct services while also being protected from the disease.

The cost of assistive technology, which some students with a disability could use, is prohibitory in the COVID-19 pandemic. This cost combines the price of the technology and the associated cost of training and installation where appropriate. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States had made some progress in rolling out assistive technologies for students with disabilities requiring special education. However, the government experienced challenges in implementing the program because the special needs of students with disabilities vary. Therefore, the government needs many different assistive technologies to help all students. Further challenges emerge in intensive training requirements to familiarize the teachers and the students with the new assistive technologies. Since the government had not completely rolled out the program before the pandemic started, it had to pause the process when it began, exposing students with disabilities and requiring special education to reduce educational attainment.

COVID-19 also illustrates the inadequacy of laws that purport to protect the rights of children with disabilities. For example, the pandemic revealed that the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) Act does not address the issue of extended school closure in exceptional situations (such as a pandemic). Thus, it was up to schools to decide the way forward, being keen to always provide free and appropriate public education that is consistent with the need to preserve the health and well-being of students. As such, students with disabilities and requiring special education have been in the dark, waiting for the government to create new laws and regulations that guarantee their health, safety, and educational attainment. It has been difficult for this demographic group to adjust to this reality. The government must speed up processes to ensure those needing special education do not experience further delays.