Students with disabilities in extracurricular athletics Essay

Students with disabilities in extracurricular athletics - Essay Example te in extracurricular activities is denying them the same opportunities as the other students to grow emotionally and to develop social skills such as leadership skills. Additionally, it puts them at a higher risk to be physically and physiologically unhealthy than the other students. This implies that they are likely to have heath issues that arise from not having physical activity such as diabetes, obesity and heart complications. To deal this discrepancy, the GAO recommends that the United States Department of Education Clarify and communicate the roles and responsibilities for enforcing section 504 of the rehabilitation Act of 1973. GAO explains that the Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has the responsibility of enforcing the section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. The Rehabilitation Act of 1973 is a federal law and is geared towards protecting individuals with disabilities in all types of schools, private and public. As a result, the GAO reports the implementation of section 504 is not a choice for the OCR and must be implemented strictly as it has to deal with serious human rights issues. Section 504 first of all requires the schools to provide to the students with disability facilities that are similar or equivalent to the facilities that the students who do not have any disability have. To begin with, it rewires that every school district should have a committee made of experts and professionals who understand various disability issues including mental and emotional disabilities. These members of such a committee should also have a clear understanding of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 especially section 504. They must also have a more understanding of the procedures of classifying various disabilities. This is necessary in order to make sure that the students are not wrongly classified and therefore have them to end up in the wrong groups. In this regard, schools are supposed to be very careful not only in the ways they treat students