Prev Next
Featured Quizzes
Politix Daily Headlines
Featured Debates
Issues

See all 19 issues

FAIR PLAY

School Sports Programs Must Include Students With Disabilities

The U.S. Department of Education says it's a civil right

Next>

by Lisa Fine

Staff Writer t +

Image: AP

Schools must give students with disabilities access to sports programs or provide equal alternative options, the U.S. Department of Education has ordered.

Advocates say this requirement could do for students with disabilities what Title IX did to grant equal opportunities for women to compete in sports.

Schools will have to make "reasonable modifications" to allow for students with disabilities to participate in sports or create parallel athletic programs that have equal standing. It does not guarantee students with disabilities a spot on competitive teams, but says schools cannot exclude students based on their disabilities, the Associated Press said.

"Sports can provide invaluable lessons in discipline, selflessness, passion and courage, and this guidance will help schools ensure that students with disabilities have an equal opportunity to benefit from the life lessons they can learn on the playing field or on the court," Education Secretary Arne Duncan said in a statement.

The new directive from the education department's civil rights division explicitly tells schools and colleges that access to interscholastic, intramural and intercollegiate athletics is a right.

Via The Associated Press
Like this article? B Vote Up
?

Are sports a civil right for people with disabilities?

View results

93 Comments (view in Forum)

  • RobertJHarsh
    !
    Question: How would a student with no legs or in a wheelchair jump over hurdles? Or do a long jump? AND they are doing this while competing against other students with two perfectly good legs? I only ask this to understand how to provide this equality that has been demanded.
  • Real4WheelDrv
    !
    Presumably, those who CAN walk and run will do so, like the South African in the Olympics. Basketball and volleyball to a lesser extent would also be accessible. Those who can't walk but still have full use of their bodies like me, could wrestle.
  • woodtick57
    !
    @Real4WheelDrv

    I've worked with Courage Center since i was young, as my uncle had polio and uses a leg brace. I was the assistant ski coach in Duluth for a few years, and loved to watch the Twin ports Flyers play chair B-ball...

    amazing what anyone can do physically when they want to, and the new generations of prosthetics are truly game changing...
  • RobertJHarsh
    !
    @Real4WheelDrv ...and that proves my point. How am I supposed to deploy "equality"? It is almost case by case basis and if I screw up trying to accommodate, then I get sued as would a school district. Disabilities do not affect everyone in the same way and there is no way to develop guidelines. Now I am not saying that you or anyone else should not be allowed to participate but how am I supposed to accommodate (assuming I was an educator or a PE coach or something)?
  • Real4WheelDrv
    !
    @RobertJHarsh Exactly, it would be a case by case basis. And I'm seeing it already from some posters here. People with disabilities playing FOOTBALL with normal kids, no. There are things that we can't reasonably do. The biggest issue I have is, how is anyone gonna PROVE any discrimination in court. Hell my high school cheated me out of my driver's training because I raised hell over the prom not being handicap accessible, but I'll never be able to PROVE it.

  • Load more replies >

  • Comment removed for Engagement Etiquette violation. Replies may also be deleted.
  • PNWest
    !
    @bsking It fit in with my twisted sense of humor though. I do hope that you are well and having a good day. We've got another crisp sunny day out in central Oregon with snow on the way this afternoon according to the forecast.

  • Load more replies >

  • methinks
    !
    This would be another added cost to the already expensive public school system we already have. Our district switched to pay to play a few years ago to offset the costs of extracurricular sports. While it's a noble idea, who is going to pay for it?
  • jessejaymes
    !
    While in theory this is the right thing to do, in reality what will happen is schools will cut back on non revenue producing sports so they don't have to offer the same thing in a parallel disability sport and the nation of kids will get more and more obese. I read about this when it was first announced and the thought crosses my mind that in the sport of football there is no way a team can accommodate a wheelchair bound kid. So they have to now create an alternative football game. And if they don't play "under the lights" some will go to court to force them to do so and probably win. Now you turn on the lights and spend thousands of dollars for the parents of 22 kids to watch their kids play football. This is just not going to turn out well.
  • Buzzfriendly
    !
    Nice in theory but not practical in application. How do schools will very low or no students with disabilities implement these programs? Who would they compete against? Do we change the rules for accommodation? How does one hold a football game with blind kids?
  • Jack-Black
    !
    This is just another smoke screen so people wont talk about the national dethat has has almost doubled in the past 4 years, that our "leaders" are lying to us about Benghazi, and many other examples of the current administrations incompetence.
  • Jack-Black
    !
    @woodtick57 Look, I know they were not sitting in a smokey room brainstorming ideas on how they can cover up their incompetence, but I do think they release statements like this at oppurtunistic times to take peoples attention away from other things that are going on. Another example is Patraeus doing away the restriction on women in frontline combat during the same week Hilary testifying before congress.
  • woodtick57
    !
    @Jack-Black

    Patraeus? if you still think there is something to cover up in Benghazi, i would suggest the heavy duty brand of tinfoil...
  • Jack-Black
    !
    @woodtick57 If you dont believe that this administration dropped the ball in Benghazi and that they still trying to cover it up then you might want to consult a proctologist to have your head removed.

  • Load more replies >

  • Real4WheelDrv
    !
    Meh, I'm generally all for anything that can level the "playing field" if you'll pardon the expression, for people like me, but even I acknowledge this is much ado about nothing. My initial 12 years of schooling, I encountered only four other full time disabled students, and I was the only one in my graduating class. I know full well how hard it is to make in a school and with a school administration full of "normals" who have no idea how a disability can impact even miniscule parts of daily life. All that this SPECIFIC call for inclusion will do is isolate us even more by making us stand out. Energy would be better spent on making other essential activities easier.
  • russ
    !
    Your post has already answered some of the concerns I have. There are several disabled children in my school district--but disabled seems to cover a broad spectrum of conditions and, as you inferred, perhaps every student with special needs has no interest. Furthermore, it would seem harder to estimate the number from year to year. We are constantly bombarded with "fundraisers" now because our schools say they don't have sufficient funds. The proposal would seem likely to add potentially expensive programs for a few. Perhaps there may have to come a time when our leaders recognize ALL people can't expect equality in ALL circumstances..
  • Real4WheelDrv
    !
    @russ Exactly, I fully support the I can do anything I set my mind to attitude. But it has to be tempered with common sense. Cerebral Palsy, which is my main problem is a blanket condition that can cover any number of physical and mental issues of varying severity. Heck, just look at all the different shades of autism...unless people want disabled only sports, which would only really work in large communities AND defeat the idea of "inclusion"...we have to better pick our battles.
  • Russell797
    !
    Schools do not exclude people with disabilities from playing sports, their disability does. If a person with a noticeable disability is on the football field, I shouldn't have to hold back on a block or tackle. I would seek to annihilate them just as I would anyone else.
  • Ashstop
    !
    As a former little league coach I had to let all players have equal playing time, parents still expected us to win with my best players sitting in the dugout, this nobody loses, nobody fails, mentality is so screwed up! It's life!!! When the get out of school they are going to expect the NFL to put them on the field, Apple to hire them at high level jobs because its fair!
  • stepped_in_it
    !
    As long as the rules don't change for the sport to accommodate the disabled.....but creation of a different "league" to accommodate them is just silly (and wasteful). How can a wheel chair bound football player play....in mud, snow...etc? Is it traveling if they stop their dribble and continue rolling? Is it fair to place wheels against legs in the 3000 meter?
    I dunno!
  • WMCOL
    !
    School Sports Programs for Students With Disabilities is a self-limiting process.

    Participation has to be based on having enough disabled to form a particular team. Just like for normal students. If a school can't field enough players for a football team they don't have one. Probably few schools will have enough disabled to make up a basketball, football, baseball team. For safety reasons, and rules of the game, they would not be able to play with the regular teams.
  • DrFunkenstein
    !
    If it's a right for the disabled then why aren't every student given that right? If it's a right then every kid that wants to play should be on the team regardless of their skill set. Students learn basic things in school and the reason our newer generations are failing is because they were never taught the concept of winning or earning something. They play in scoreless games where everyone wins for participation so they don't get a chance at competition until they play in high school sports. The kids bad at sports never play the competition sports so they end up feeling entitled and full of unearned confidence. We need graduates to understand there is a penalty for failing at something and a benefit for winning. We are no longer Number One in the world in anything but stupid people using their rights to free speech(Teabaggers) and confidence. You have to earn confidence and when you've dropped in 20 years from Number one in the world in science and math to 42nd in the world, you've got nothing to be so confident about.
  • commonsense51
    !
    Lets see our states and communities and schools are going bankrupt and control freak Liberals want to add more burden to the tax payers. I went to school and never once joined a sport and guess what? I did just fine!!!! Since when is sports some kind of right and since when should it be forced onto the tax payers to fund everyone's else hobbies? You want to join a sport, pay for it yourself.
  • stepped_in_it
    !
    Now there's some common sense! Sports are NOT part of the required education and therefore should be funded entirely by the sport itself/parents and it's participants and non-school related fund raisers! HMMM.... ultimately the NFL (and the rest) profits from HS sports and have been granted non-profit tax exemption. Maybe the pro sport franchises might be "charged" money to fund their "research" for new talent.....;-)
  • harold_lloyd
    !
    There shouldn't have to be a discussion about this, but since the teabagger conservatives have taken over so many state legislatures, it has become necessary.

    'Doing the right thing' is not in their vocabulary or thought processes.

    If nobody intervened, it wouldn't be long before handicapped persons would be warehoused in poorly run and underfunded institutional facilities.
  • Raptor
    !
    You mean concentration camps like the NAZI's under Hitler, if it were up to the right wing republicans an the teabagers thats what we would have now.
  • harold_lloyd
    !
    @Raptor
    I can't deny that there are probably a few of the far far right who would feel comfortable in a National Socialist regime, at least for a little while.
    But I was thinking more of the sort of treatment given to the handicapped in the early part of the last century.
  • NTBFW
    !
    We were told that sports are a privilege that if we maintained our grades etc we would be allowed to try out for the team. Doesn't seem like any of us have a RIGHT to play sports.
  • Chromalord
    !
    So let me get this straight. Music and arts- bad, because they cost too much and what good are they anyway? One student cant walk, but lets spend $ for a special program, and special access and gear, that gives rudolph the right to partake in reindeer games?
  • texas_cutie75
    !
    I come from a small country community, there was boy in my class that had Down Syndrome, sweetest thing on the face of the earth. He desperately wanted to play football (this is Texas), he trained and trained and trained with a couple of other boys, and finally made the cut. It was the proudest day of his life to that point. It wasn't modified, he tried his damnest, the other teams played against him, held nothing back, and he broke his arm, he sat on the sidelines the rest of the season. No suits were filed, nothing was "given" to him. In my experience, those with disabilities just want to be like the rest of us. If it is fiscally possible, allow the children to play.
  • R Load more comments...