Suspension And IEA Essay

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Suspension and IDEA
IDEA, the Individuals with Disabilities Act is a law that dictates a free and accessible education shall be made available to all children with disabilities. It also ensures that services related to their specific disability will be provided within the education system. One of the provisions of the IDEA, prohibits any school system from treating a child with disabilities any different than a child without disabilities. This is further broken down to guidance on the process needed to suspend a child with disabilities.
Removal for up to 10 days
Whenever a child, considered to have a disability, is found to be guilty of a disciplinary infraction, the IDEA allows the student to be placed on suspension. This suspension can be in school, or out of school. However, IDEA stipulates that …show more content…

Once a disabled student is faced with a suspension that results in over 10 cumulative days of suspension. Certain questions need to addressed about the disables student’s behavior. The IEP team, student’s parents, and administrators need to decide if the abhorrent behavior is a result of the student’s disability. This process is called manifest determination.
The process of manifest determination process answers the following questions:
1. Was the behavior caused by, or have any direct causal relationship to the student’s disability (Iowa Department of Education, n.d.)?
2. Was the behavior a result of the school’s failure to implement and/or follow an IEP (Iowa Department of Education, n.d.)?
If the answer is yes to either question, then the behavior that was cause for suspension is considered a manifestation of the student’s disability. This being the case, the school cannot suspend the student and must keep the student in the original placement. The school must then create an FBA and/or modify their existing BIP ("Summary of the Discipline & Manifestation Determination Provisions of IDEA 2004 & NJ State Special Education Code,"

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