From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Cherokee [GA] Ledger-News,  and Fox 5 Atlanta (with video):

Police have arrested a special education teacher and a teacher’s aide from Woodstock High School in suburban Atlanta for allegedly abusing students with disabilities. The women, charged with false imprisonment and child cruelty, are free on bond.

Police say Laurie Peavy, 44, and Nancy Cheek, 49, duct-taped a boy with autism to a chair as a disciplinary action, and confined a blind girl under a desk for “talking and being chatty.”

Police said it appears the educators restrained the teens on more than one occasion.

Both educators have been removed from their posts and reassigned to non-teaching positions pending an internal investigation.

Related posts here.

(Photos, l-r: Laurie Peavy and Nancy Cheek, from the Atlanta Journal Constitution)

AP/New York Times:

Saying that he was “deeply disturbed” by recent testimony about the abuse of restraints and confinement of children in the nation’s schools, education secretary Arne Duncan called on state school chiefs around the country to develop plans to assure student safety.

”Children’s safety has to be our number one concern before we begin to think about educating them and doing other things,” Duncan told the House Education and Labor Committee.

The committee received a report from federal investigators yesterday about hundreds of cases of alleged abuse of children, particularly those with disabilities, arising from school practices of restraint and seclusion. At least 20 deaths were reported.

Duncan praised the use of positive behavioral intervention and support in his home state of Illinois, and directed legislators to www.pbis.org. Illinois also prohibits the use of seclusion and restraint for punishment, provides teacher training in the use of positive behavior supports, and requires documentation of all uses of seclusion and restraints.

Video of Duncan’s remarks is here.

UPDATE: Report prompts call for rules for restraining students — Washington Post

Links to additional information and video provided by the House Education and Labor Committee from the hearings on the abuse of restraints and seclusion in public and private schools, held May 19, 2009.

Opening statement by committee chairman, Rep. George Miller (D-CA) “Our children are bearing the physical and emotional burden of a system designed to fail them.”

Testimony by Gregory D. Kutz, managing director, forensic audits and special investigations, Government Accountability Office. “Many of the 18 children from our studies, including four preschoolers, were clearly abused and tortured.”

Testimony by Toni Price, mother of Cedric Napoleon. Her son died after being held in a restraining hold for more than 15 minutes. “If I treated Cedric that way at home, I’d be in jail.”

Testimony by Ann Gaydos (above), whose daughter Paige was restrained repeatedly. “We were shocked that we had not known of this use of force, and that such force could be used for something so trivial.” (playing with a loose tooth in time out.)

Press Release – GAO report finds hundreds of allegations of abusive and deadly uses of seclusion and restraint in schools; Federal action needed, says Miller

Full archived webcast

(Photo from House Committee on Education and Labor)

From the Washington Times, Media News:

A Government Accountability Office report reveals that the use of seclusion and physical restraint in schools disproportionately impacts students with disabilities and has resulted in hundreds of possible abuse cases and at least 20 deaths.

House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller, who requested the report and held a committee hearing Tuesday to highlight the findings, said, “This behavior, in some instances, looks like torture. The current situation is unacceptable and cannot continue.”

Some findings of the report:

• More often than not, according to the report, teachers and staff who used seclusion and restraint in abusive ways had not been properly trained. The practices were often used as a routine disciplinary tactic rather than as a response to an emergency, the report said.

(more…)

From the Associated Press and CNN:

A Texas mother testified about the fatal use of restraints on her foster son in a congressional hearing Tuesday, as legislators received a GAO report documenting widespread abuse of techniques to restrain or discipline students with disabilities.

Toni Price of Killeen, Texas, told the House Committee on Education and Labor that her 14-year-old foster son, Cedric, died in March 2002 when his teacher disciplined him by restraining him face-down and sitting on him. She said the teacher, who outweighed her son by more than 100 pounds, ignored Cedric’s pleas that he could not breathe.

“If I treated Cedric that way at home, I’d be in jail,” Price said. Even though the death was ruled a homicide, a grand jury did not indict the teacher, who until this week worked as a special education teacher at a Northern Virginia high school. (See related post.)

Gregory Kutz, the GAO official who presented the findings at the House hearing, said there are no federal regulations on the use of restraints or seclusion in public or private schools. Nineteen states have no laws that restrict either practice, while eight states specifically ban restraint that restricts breathing, he said.

(Photo from video feed of hearings)

From federal documents, the Washington Post, WJLA TV, Washington:

Federal authorities have identified Dawn Marie Hamilton, a special education teacher at Loudoun County’s Park View High School, as the teacher who was implicated in the 2002 death of 14-year-old Cedric Napoleon in Texas.

Legislators at a congressional hearing on the use of restraints in schools were told yesterday that Cedric died after a teacher put him in a face-down restraint hold and sat on him for more than 15 minutes.

Hamilton, who has been teaching in Park View since 2007, was placed on paid leave this week pending an investigation after federal authorities notified the Virginia Department of Education of her involvement in the case. Hamilton was not arrested or indicted in Cedric’s death, which was ruled a homicide, but an administrative judge found the teacher used “excessive and unnecessary force,” according to Texas records. She holds a Virginia teaching license.

Loudoun school district officials said Hamilton passed a background check before being hired, and was considered a “teacher in good standing.”

From the text of the letter from the Government Accountability Office:

One of our cases involves a teacher, Dawn Marie Hamilton, who had a Texas administrative law judge sustain a finding that there was reason to believe she physically abused her student, Cedrick [sic] Napoleon, by restraining him until he died. This teacher was placed in the Texas Central Registry — a listing of individuals found to have abused and neglected children. Before the administrative law judge issued her final decision and order, Dawn Marie Hamilton’s Texas teaching certificate expired. We found no indication that the Texas State Board for Educator Certification took punitive action or implemented further measures that would link this finding to her expired teaching certificate.

Legislators were told there is no federal registry that would allow school districts to share information about people suspected or convicted of abusing children.

Here is the letter from the GAO to the Virginia Department of Education, which names Dawn Marie Hamilton as the teacher who was implicated in the death of Cedric Napoleon.

And here is the letter from the American Association of School Administrators saying that Hamilton has been placed on administrative leave from her job.

See also report from WJLA TV, Washington.

From CNN, National Public Radio, CBS News, and USA Today:

The Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, is releasing a report today which documents the widespread abuse of techniques used to restrain or discipline students with disabilities in both public and private schools across the country.

The GAO report will be considered by the House Education and Labor Committee, which today is holding hearings about restraints and seclusion techniques. The committee is considering new laws to govern what actions teachers can take to discipline students with disabilities. (A live webcast of the hearings can be seen here. Written testimony is being posted on the committee’s webpage here as it is given.)

“I think what we’re going to hear from the GAO is that very often, special-need children are subjected to the policies of seclusion and policies of restraint that have turned out to be lethal in a number of circumstances,” said Rep. George Miller, D-California, the committee’s chairman.

Some cases include the use of face-down restraints; the use of seclusion rooms for hours to discipline children as young as 6 years old; and death or injuries that have occurred after children have been tied, taped, handcuffed or pinned down by adults.

Earlier posts here.