HR 9195: Alice Cogswell and Anne Sullivan Macy Act

HR 9195 in plain English: This bill expands special education services for children who are deaf, hard of hearing, deafblind, blind, or visually impaired. It requires states to more thoroughly identify and evaluate these students, authorizes grants to train specialized teachers and early intervention specialists, and creates a new center within the Department of Education focused on visual disability education.

Stated purpose

This bill aims to improve and ensure high-quality special education and related services for children and youth who are deaf, hard of hearing, deafdisabled, blind, visually impaired, or deafblind, through instructional methods designed to meet their unique language and learning needs and by strengthening accountability for delivering those services.

Key points

• Requires states to more specifically identify and evaluate children who are deaf, hard of hearing, blind, visually impaired, or deafblind
• States that close specialized schools for blind or deaf students would lose federal special education funding
• Authorizes grants to train teachers and early intervention specialists for deaf, blind, and deafblind students
• Establishes the Anne Sullivan Macy Center on Visual Disability and Educational Excellence within the Department of Education

Arguments supporters make

• Children who are deaf, blind, or deafblind have unique communication and learning needs that general special education rules do not fully address, and this bill fills that gap with targeted requirements and resources.
• Holding states financially accountable for closing specialized schools protects families who depend on those schools when no adequate local alternatives exist.
• Training more qualified teachers and early intervention specialists directly addresses a known shortage and helps ensure affected children get effective instruction early in life.

Arguments opponents make

• Tying federal funding to decisions about school closures could limit states' and localities' flexibility to reorganize or modernize how they deliver services, even when changes might better serve students.
• Creating a new federal center and expanding grant programs adds government spending and bureaucracy, and critics may question whether those resources are better directed to classrooms and families directly.
• Detailed federal mandates on evaluation and programming may be difficult for smaller or under-resourced school districts to implement, potentially straining budgets without guaranteed additional funding to cover the costs.

Tradeoffs

Stronger federal standards and accountability may improve outcomes for a vulnerable group of students, but they also reduce state and local flexibility and could impose compliance costs on school districts with limited resources.

Current status in Congress: In committee.