Irene: Is it legal for states to mandate the percentage of students with an LRE of 50 and to make school districts pay if they have too high of a percentage in another LRE category. My friend told me her school is getting fined 90,000 because they have too many students with an LRE of 51.
This is an interesting situation. I am assuming that the intent is to increase the number of students with disabilities in general ed classrooms at least 50% of the day. IDEA & the federal Dept. of Ed want this to happen more. States address this goal in different ways. Your state seems to have decided that a monetary penalty approach is the way to do this. States have the some freedom to choose how to do this. So I believe that what they are doing is legal. If schools felt that it was not, they would be suing, or challenging the state.