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Opinion | Michigan should enforce, not erase protections for students with disabilities
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The Michigan Department of Education (MDE) wants to eliminate a state rule designed to protect students while certain special education complaints are investigated.
But a protection written into law matters only when the government is willing to enforce it. For years, Michigan’s special education rules have authorized MDE to protect a student’s educational program during a state complaint investigation. Now, after acknowledging that it stopped using that authority “many years ago,” MDE is proposing to eliminate the provision altogether. The answer to failing to enforce a protection is not to erase it.
The proposed change appears in a broader package of revisions to the Michigan Administrative Rules for Special Education (MARSE). MDE proposes deleting Rule 340.1853(4), or the “stay put” provision, which allows the department to require a school district to maintain a student’s educational status, placement and services during a state complaint investigation when allowing a change would violate the student’s due-process protections.
Imagine a student whose individualized education program (IEP) provides specialized instruction, behavioral supports, nursing services or placement in a particular educational setting. The school district announces that it will remove or substantially alter those services. The family believes the change violates the student’s rights and files a state complaint.
Without the “stay put” provision, the district can make the change while the complaint is being investigated. By the time MDE issues a decision, the student may have lost critical instruction, experienced behavioral or emotional regression, been excluded from school, or been placed in an environment unable to meet the student’s needs. That kind of educational harm is not always easily repaired after the fact.
MDE argues that the provision should be deleted to align Michigan’s rules with the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Federal law provides an automatic stay-put right during a formal due-process hearing, but it does not provide the same automatic protection when a family files a state complaint.
Michigan’s rule is narrower. It does not automatically freeze every student’s placement whenever someone files a state complaint. It allows MDE to intervene when, in the department’s judgment, allowing a change to proceed would violate the student’s due-process protections.
That distinction matters because state complaints are more accessible to families. A family can file a written complaint asking MDE to investigate whether a district has followed a student’s IEP or complied with special education law.
Due process hearings, by contrast, require complex legal and procedural expertise and a formal hearing. That costly, adversarial process to prevent immediate harm is particularly burdensome for those without attorneys, financial resources, paid leave, or familiarity with special education law.
Federal law establishes essential rights for students with disabilities. It should be treated as a floor, not a ceiling on Michigan’s commitment to educating children.
MDE itself says requests for this protection have been minimal and that the department stopped granting them many years ago. That should prompt questions about why a rule remained in effect stopped being implemented.
State leaders should examine whether families knew it existed and whether requests were evaluated consistently. The department’s decision not to use a safeguard should not become the rationale for erasing it.
This proposal also comes as Michigan faces significant challenges in special education. Students with disabilities graduate at lower rates than their nondisabled peers, experience higher dropout and chronic-absence rates, and face persistent gaps in academic achievement and access to inclusive educational opportunities. Weakening accountability or narrowing families’ avenues for preventing harm will not improve those outcomes.
MDE should withdraw the proposed deletion of the “stay put” provision.
If the current language needs refinement, the department should work transparently with families and other stakeholders to strengthen, not eliminate, the rule by clarifying standards and procedures for applying it, and training staff and families on its availability. MDE should also explain why it stopped implementing a rule that remained in effect and examine whether students were harmed as a result.
Michigan enacted its special education rules before Congress established the federal protections that became IDEA. The state has long recognized that students with disabilities deserve meaningful protections, not simply rights on paper.
A safeguard that is not enforced is already a problem. Erasing it because the state chose not to use it compounds that failure. Michigan should enforce the protections it has promised students with disabilities, not take them away.
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