Category: News

How IDEA Led to Innovations for All Students (November 25, 2025)

On Nov. 29, the landmark Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) turns 50. President Gerald Ford signed the legislation, originally known as the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EAHCA), guaranteeing students with disabilities the right to a free and appropriate public education.

Before then, no federal requirement existed that schools must educate students with disabilities. In addition to opening public schools to a whole population of children, the law became the catalyst for legions of innovative practices and tools cultivated from both public and private sources. The transformations, special education experts say, were spurred by an ongoing need to individualize student supports while helping children with disabilities progress in general education classrooms.

For more from K-12 Dive, click here.

CDC Posts Debunked ‘Link’ Between Childhood Vaccines and Autism on its Website (November 21, 2025)

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has made a dramatic change in its position on the relationship between vaccines and autism. The CDC’s website now says a link between vaccines and autism cannot be ruled out, which is contrary to the CDC’s longstanding stance that there is no link. The change comes even though a connection between vaccines and autism has long been debunked by a large body of high-quality research. U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has long promoted the discredited claim, and that appears to be the impetus for the revised CDC statement.

The CDC’s change has rung alarm bells among public health experts who are already worried about a drop in childhood vaccination, which has led to a resurgence of dangerous childhood diseases such as  measles and whooping cough.

“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website has been changed to promote false information suggesting vaccines cause autism,” said Dr. Susan J. Kressly, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, in a statement. “Since 1998, independent researchers across seven countries have conducted more than 40 high-quality studies involving over 5.6 million people. The conclusion is clear and unambiguous: There’s no link between vaccines and autism. Anyone repeating this harmful myth is misinformed or intentionally trying to mislead parents. We call on the CDC to stop wasting government resources to amplify false claims that sow doubt in one of the best tools we have to keep children healthy and thriving: routine immunizations.”

In a statement to NPR, Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) spokesperson Andrew Nixon repeated one of the changes to the website: “The claim ‘vaccines do not cause autism’ is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism.” Nixon also said HHS “has launched a comprehensive assessment of the causes of autism, including investigations on plausible biologic mechanisms and potential causal links.”

“The new statement shows a lack of understanding of the term ‘evidence,'” the Autism Science Foundation said in a statement the organization provided to NPR, adding, “No environmental factor has been better studied as a potential cause of autism than vaccines.”

It’s a statement that’s confusing by design, said Dr. Paul Offitt, a pediatrician and director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). “These are the usual anti-vaccine tropes, misrepresentation of studies, false equivalence,” he says. “They might as well say chicken nuggets might cause autism because you can’t prove that either.”

The changes on the website “blindsided” career scientists at CDC, says Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, a former top CDC official who resigned from the agency in August. “The scientists did not participate in its creation,” he says. “And the data are unvetted.”

Two current CDC staffers, who contacted NPR on November 20th, say the updates are a glaring red flag that indicate the vaccine information on the agency website is no longer credible, and is instead “anti-science.” They requested anonymity out of concern they could lose their jobs for speaking to the press.

Vaccine proponents say the moves are recklessly undermining public confidence in vaccines and fueling vaccine hesitancy, putting the nation’s children at risk. The U.S. appears to be poised to lose its status as having eliminated measles.

The CDC acknowledges in a footnote on its main webpage on autism and vaccines that it still carries a header reading “Vaccines do not cause autism*” and says it hasn’t “been removed due to an agreement with the chair of the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee that it would remain on the CDC website.”

In a November 20, 2025 statement, the Chair of the Senate HELP Committee Bill Cassidy (R-LA) said, “I’m a doctor who has seen people die from vaccine-preventable diseases. What parents need to hear right now is vaccines for measles, polio, hepatitis B and other childhood diseases are safe and effective and will not cause autism. Any statement to the contrary is wrong, irresponsible, and actively makes Americans sicker.”

For more from NPR, click here.

NAPSA Signs on to Shared Principles & Commitment to the Education of Children and Youth with Disabilities (November 21, 2025)

On November 20, 2025, NAPSA joined more than 850 local, state and national organizations in releasing a joint commitment to support federal special education law and to protest any move that separates services for students with disabilities from the U.S. Department of Education (USDE). That document lists shared principles and a commitment to the education of children and youth with disabilities.

Coalition members, who also include individual advocates, support keeping the USDE as an independent agency that is fully staffed and funded to oversee federal laws including the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and Section 504. 

The statement comes just days after the USDE announced it was transferring the management of six core programs to other federal agencies. Special education programming was not part of that announcement, but the Trump administration said it was still exploring that option.

In July, former federal special education leaders from both Republican and Democratic administrations over the past five decades wrote to leaders in Congress, urging them to keep special education programming and accountability within the USDE. Likewise, the more than 850 groups in a joint commitment said the UISDE “should remain an independent agency that is fully staffed and funded to oversee federal laws including IDEA and Section 504.” The coalition also emphasized that states should retain substantial responsibility for special education with the federal government playing a “crucial role” through funding, policy and ensuring equitable educational opportunities.

Special education advocates, parents and professionals have all along been resisting the dismantling of the agency, particularly for special education programming and oversight for the 8.4 million infants, toddlers, children and young adults with disabilities who qualified for IDEA services in 2023, the last year for which federal data is available.

The seven principles are:

I.       Public education is the cornerstone of a healthy democracy
II.     Free, quality public education must be available to every child and youth regardless of a family’s situation.
III.    All participants (parents and school personnel) should be full and meaningful partners in the education of children and youth with disabilities.
IV.    The federal government plays a crucial role in supplementing state funding and in shaping special education policy that ensures equitable access to quality education for students with disabilities. Under federal law, states retain substantial responsibility for the education of children and youth with disabilities.
V.     The rights of children and youth with disabilities to a Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE) in the Least Restrictive Environment (LRE) is essential to their accessing a meaningful and equitable education and must be maintained and protected through the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.
VI.    Federal funding under IDEA should be provided at the 40% per pupil expenditure level originally promised by the U.S. Congress to assure states have the capacity to provide needed services and specially designed instruction to students with disabilities. 
VII.  The U.S. Department of Education should remain an independent agency that is fully staffed and funded to oversee federal laws including IDEA and Section 504.

View the actual document by clicking here.

For an article from K-12 Dive, click here.

PDE Implementing New Policies from Budget-Related Legislation (November 21, 2025)

As a result of the passage of the 2025-26 state budget the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) is moving to implement new policies included in budget-related legislation.

Act 47 of 2025 updated the Public School Code to streamline the certification process for new and existing teachers, giving them more flexibility to teach multiple grades with the same certification. The legislation also reduces educator certification fees, provides new pathways for CTE educators to demonstrate their qualifications, and expands early literacy initiatives. It also reforms Pennsylvania’s cyber charter school law to save public schools an estimated $178 million this school year and improve student safety by holding cyber charter schools accountable when they fail to comply with the requirement to visibly see and communicate with all students at least once per week.

 Updates to the Public School Code in Act 47 of 2025 include:

  • STREAMLINING TEACHER CERTIFICATIONS: Offering certifications that allow educators to teach grades PreK-6 and 7-12 rather than only grades PreK-4, 4-8, or 7-12. This change will enable administrators to more easily place educators in crucial educator workforce shortage areas, and expands the grade levels that educators are able to teach.
  • REDUCING CERTIFICATION FEES: Reducing educator certification fees, making it more cost effective for individuals to obtain certification.
  • EXPANDING THE EDUCATOR WORKFORCE: Creating pathways for individuals with inactive teaching certificates to return to the classroom and for superintendents to become certified CTE directors.
  • CREATING NEW PATHWAYS TO CERTIFICATION: Allowing prospective CTE teachers to demonstrate their occupational skills and knowledge based on a review of their credentials and work experience rather than by taking an expensive test.
  • EXPANDING EARLY LITERACY INITIATIVES: Expanding early literacy in schools across the Commonwealth by requiring all public schools to adopt evidence-based reading curriculum and identify and provide targeted assistance to students with reading deficiencies.
  • REFORMING CYBER CHARTER LAW: Saving $175 million for school districts across Pennsylvania by redefining the cyber charter school funding formula, thereby reducing the tuition payments school districts pay to cyber charter schools.
  • IMPROVING STUDENT SAFETY: Improving the health and safety of cyber charter school students by holding cyber charter schools accountable when they fail to comply with the requirement to visibly see and communicate with all students at least once per week.    

The 2025–26 budget delivers more than $900 million in additional funding for pre-K–12 public education. The investments in this year’s budget include:

  • $565 million in new adequacy funding to expand support to all school districts across the Commonwealth and a $105 million increase for Basic Education Funding. The adequacy funding formula was expanded to drive out more money to schools.
  • $40 million increase for Special Education Funding.
  • $125 million for school infrastructure improvements to create safe, healthy learning environments — including $25 million for the Solar for Schools program to lower energy costs and promote sustainability.
  • $100 million in annual mental health and school safety funding for K–12 schools, ensuring every student has access to the resources and support they need to thrive.
  • Expanded access to school meals, providing universal free breakfast for more than 1.7 million students and free lunch for 22,000 eligible students, with nearly 93 million breakfasts served during the 2024–25 school year — a 13.8 percent increase over two years — including over 70 million meals for students at risk of hunger or from low-income families.

To view the press release, click here.

PaTTAN Identifies the Top 3 Mistakes Schools Make When Using Interpreters in IEP Meetings (November 19, 2025)

Effective communication is the foundation of equity in education, especially for multilingual families navigating the Individualized Education Program (IEP) process. Yet, schools often make critical mistakes when working with spoken-language interpreters. Here are three common pitfalls and how to avoid them.

Mistake #1: Treating the IEP as a single meeting.
An IEP is a process, not an event. Interpreters need to be involved before, during, and after the meeting. Pre-meeting preparation ensures they understand terminology and cultural context. Post-meeting support helps clarify next steps for families. Solution: Build interpreter protocols into your MTSS framework, not just the meeting itself.

Mistake #2: Ignoring the link between language and culture.
Interpreting isn’t word-for-word translation, it’s cultural navigation. Families may have different views on disability or authority, and interpreters bridge those gaps. Solution: Treat interpreters as members of the professional team and partners who convey meaning, not just words.

Mistake #3: Failing to train staff.
Even skilled interpreters struggle when meetings move too fast or include jargon. Educators need training on pacing, eye contact, and collaboration. Solution: Offer specialized special education training and quality PD for  interpreters and staff around spoken language interpreting standards and ethics for IEPs.

Resources:

  • Download the Interpreter IEP Checklist and Cultural Liaison vs. Interpreter Venn Diagram at PaTTAN.
  • Explore our PaTTAN Training Calendar https://www.pattan.net/events/ for upcoming sessions on IEP interpretation for Interpreters and Educators.

For more information, contact: Maria Ronneburger, Educational Consultant & State Lead, English Learner Initiative
Email: mronneburger@PaTTAN.net