Mississippi Sued Over IDEA Violations in Jackson

See this story from EdWeek's valuable On Special Education blog.  The piece begins:

Some 18 months after the Mississippi Department of Education found that Jackson public schools were violating federal special education law, the department has failed to enforce its own decision, according to a lawsuit filed today in federal district court. 

The Southern Poverty Law Center, Disability Rights Mississippi, and the Southern Disability Law Center sued the Mississippi Department of Education for failing to ensure that students with disabilities in the 30,000-student Jackson public school system get the education and services federal law requires. In a Nov. 2010 letter, the department listed a number of violations by the district, which enrolls about 3,000 students with disabilities. The district had to start working on the violations right away, and had a year to address everything. 

So far, the advocacy groups say, nothing has changed in Jackson.