New federal data about how often public school students are restrained or secluded at school show that, in the majority of cases, these approaches are used to contain kids with disabilities, who make up just a sixth of all students.
Data from the Civil Rights Data Collection, gathered from the 2009-10 school year from about 85 percent of the nation's school districts, for the first time includes information about mechanical or physical restraints and seclusion. Although even the Government Accountability Office has investigated concerns about the use of these methods, there's never been data collected on this scale about the practices. (Read some of Education Week's coverage of other data collected by the U.S. Department of Education's office for civil rights here.)
