The hidden cost of separating 'emotionally disturbed' students

I'm Ayesha Roscoe, and this is a Sunday story from Up First. Across The US, there are more than 300,000 students categorized as emotionally disturbed. Emotional disturbance is a federally recognized special education category. It's for kids who struggle not with learning or mobility, but with their behavior and emotions. Like all kids with disabilities, students with the emotional disturbance label are guaranteed a free and appropriate public education. It's baked into a law passed more than fifty years ago, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. These kids are also legally entitled to services and specialized help, but there's a big question around whether the support they're getting is doing more harm than good. This week on the Sunday story, a look at one student who was categorized as emotionally disturbed when he was just a young child and what that has meant for the rest of his education. At home, I know how to act, but at school, it was problems. I was a bad kid. Stay with us. This message comes from ADT. Imagine you're enjoying your first free day in months, and the next second, your phone buzzes. A window has been broken at home, and you're miles away. That's why ADT offers professionally installed security systems backed by the most company operated monitoring centers in the industry. With twenty four seven monitoring, they're always keeping watch over your home, so you're always supported during an emergency. When every second counts, count on ADT. Visit adt.com to learn more. This week on sources and methods, the latest on a Pentagon controversy, defense secretary Pete Hegseth takes the highly unusual step of personally intervening to block military promotions, plus the latest escalation in Iran after an American helicopter is shut down. We digest the week's biggest national security headlines on sources and methods from NPR. I'm Ayesha Roscoe, and this is a Sunday story. I'm joined by reporter Laurie Stern. She spent years covering education and joins us now to talk about her long term reporting on the disability category called emotional disturbance. Lori, welcome to the podcast. Ayesha, it's great to be here. So I know you have, like, a specific story to tell. But but before we dive into it, can you just help us understand what emotional disturbance is? At least to me, this isn't something I'm familiar with. Yeah. And that's probably because emotional disturbance is a catch all category. According to the law that created special ed, the criteria include, and this is some of the law's language, a pervasive mood of unhappiness, an inability to maintain healthy relationships, and inappropriate behavior and feelings under normal circumstances. The experts I talked to all said emotional disturbance is subjective. It's not a medical diagnosis. It's a label that's specifically created for special education. And in most cases, it's up to schools to decide who gets that label. So if a school gives a child an emotional disturbance label, what kind of support does that …