The Ohio Department of Education must make sure the state's school districts comply with federal special education requirements, according to a partial settlement reached this week in an 18-year-old class-action lawsuit, the Columbus Dispatch reports.
On Tuesday, a federal judge approved the deal designed to end the disparities in services for the 280,000 special education students across the state. The issue left unresolved is whether the state is correctly funding special education, the article said.
I just want to point out that the suit has taken 18 years to get this far. That's longer than the entire school career of any of the students originally involved. Few realize how truly slowly the wheels of justice can turn.
The shame of this settlement, though, is that they're expecting ODE to suddenly be able to police itself. The settlement would have been a lot stronger had it called for some type of outside intervention or oversight.