GAO Probes Access of Students With Disabilities to Sports

Ensuring that students with disabilities are included in physical education and sports programs is receiving some high-level attention.

Although schools have made great strides educating students with disabilities in mainstreamed academic classrooms, some advocates and physical educators say sports programs and physical education classes are the final frontier for full inclusion in public schools.

In the past few years, advocates for such students have been demanding greater inclusion of students with disabilities in sports. The Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, is conducting a report on the issue, and a state law in Maryland that creates more accountability for schools on how they provide athletic opportunities to those students could become a model for other states, or even federal legislation, advocates say.

Federal law prohibits discrimination against students on the basis of disability, but a lack of guidelines, standards, and regulations on how schools should provide equal physical education and athletic opportunities leaves schools struggling to figure out how to make it happen. That lack of clarity means inconsistency from state to state, district to district, and even school to school within the same district in how students with disabilities are...