The 27,000-student Yonkers, N.Y., district has committed to placing more students with disabilities in general education classrooms, after a federal investigation showed that the district was shifting students into restrictive settings with no individualized rationale for doing so.
The U.S. Department of Education’s office for civil rights, in a Nov. 4 resolution letter to the district, said that about 16 percent of students were receiving special education services in 2013-14. Of those, more than 80 percent spent some time outside the general education classroom during the school day.
Their individualized education programs often contained boilerplate text. But not all the students appeared to have that need.
