Maryland’s latest data show that physical restraint and seclusion have dropped dramatically since the state began reporting in 2018. Although serious concerns persist about the use of physical restraint and seclusion in some districts and nonpublic schools.

73.2% Decrease in the Use of Restraint and Seclusion

In the first year, Maryland reported statewide data (2017–2018), schools reported 18,222 incidents of physical restraint and 7,325 incidents of seclusion, a total of 25,547 restraint and seclusion incidents across public and nonpublic schools. The next year, the numbers increased to 19,713 restraints and 9,532 seclusions, reaching a peak total of 29,245. In the most recent 2024–2025 report, the total dropped to 6,608 incidents, including 2,749 restraints in public agencies, 3,859 restraints in nonpublic schools, 1 seclusion in a public agency, and 1,242 seclusions in nonpublic schools.

In other words, Maryland reduced the combined use of restraint and seclusion from 25,547 incidents in 2018 to 6,608 in 2024–2025, a reduction of 18,939 incidents, or roughly a 74% decrease statewide. While I am always concerned about the significant underreporting of restraint and seclusion, this progress seems meaningful. Maryland is demonstrating that when laws are strengthened, data are taken seriously, and practice begins to shift, the use of restraint and seclusion can be reduced dramatically.

2022 Legislation Leads to Meaningful Change

Maryland’s progress did not happen by accident; it reflects years of sustained advocacy, legislative action, and steady strengthening of policy and practice. In 2003, the General Assembly passed the first law governing restraint and seclusion in Maryland schools, setting an initial framework that advocates and families have been working to improve ever since. In 2017, lawmakers required statewide data collection, created a task force, and added parental consent provisions, changes that led directly to the first statewide restraint and seclusion report in 2018 and gave us the baseline we needed to track real change over time. Over the next several years, the Maryland State Department of Education (MSDE) issued guidance and regulations in 2013, 2018, and 2019 that clarified that restraint and seclusion are emergency-only interventions, permissible only to prevent imminent serious physical harm after other strategies have failed or been deemed inappropriate.

The biggest turning point came with House Bill 1255 in the 2022 legislative session. HB 1255 amended Education Article §7‑1101 and related provisions to ban seclusion in public agencies effective July 1, 2022, while limiting which staff in nonpublic schools can use seclusion, adding training requirements, and expanding reporting to include student-level data beginning in the 2022–23 school year. The impact of that law is unmistakable. In the most recent data, there was only a single reported seclusion incident statewide in a public school, effectively eliminating seclusion as an accepted practice in public agencies, and total restraint incidents in public agencies continued to drop from 3,553 in 2023–2024 to 2,749 in 2024–2025, with fewer unique students being restrained. Maryland did not simply tweak policy around the edges; the state fundamentally changed the landscape by banning seclusion in public schools and tightening standards across the board.

The Latest Data: Progress and Concerns

The 2024–2025 MSDE report highlights both real progress and troubling outliers.

Totals and Trends

There is a lot to celebrate in the recent data. We have seen a significant decrease in the use of physical restraint and seclusion in Maryland schools.

• Public agencies reported 2,749 physical restraint incidents involving 898 students; nonpublic schools reported 3,859 restraint incidents involving 631 students.
• Nonpublic schools reported 1,242 seclusion incidents involving 170 students, while public agencies reported a single seclusion incident.
• Approximately 1,700 students in Maryland were physically restrained or secluded in 2024–2025; children with the disability category of Autism were the most frequently restrained and secluded.
• Restraint and seclusion disproportionately affect Black students compared with their representation in the general student population.

The pattern is clear: seclusion has been almost fully eliminated in public schools, and restraint has been reduced, while nonpublic schools continue to account for a large share of both restraint and seclusion incidents.

Public School Systems with the Highest Restraint Numbers

The MSDE report and the 2024–25 update identify particular public school systems with high levels of restraint.

A few school districts topped the list in the use of physical restraint and seclusion.

• Anne Arundel County Public Schools has the highest number of physical restraint incidents among public agencies.
• Additionally, Baltimore County, Howard County, Harford County, and Montgomery County all appear in the “top five” for total restraint incidents.

All districts should be working proactively to reduce the use of physical restraint, but the data from these districts is particularly concerning. The high usage in these districts leads one to wonder if the staff are only using physical restraint in situations involving the imminent threat of serious physical harm as specified by state law.

Nonpublic Schools with the Highest Restraint and Seclusion Numbers

In the latest data, certain nonpublic schools stand out for their usage of physical restraint and seclusion.

Three of the top users of physical restraint were schools within the Arrow Center. The Trellis School has unusually high instances of seclusion.

• The Arrow Center Schools (Arrow Center Education, Arrow Center for Education Tangram, and Arrow Riverside) have some of the highest numbers of physical restraint incidents in the state’s nonpublic sector.
• Arrow Center Education reported 236 restraint incidents involving 44 students; Arrow Tangram reported 508 restraint incidents involving 35 students; Arrow Riverside reported 297 restraint incidents involving 26 students.
• The Trellis School reported 335 physical restraint incidents involving 10 students and is using seclusion at a significantly higher rate than other nonpublic schools.

Nonpublic restraint incidents overall increased from 3,013 in 2023–2024 to 3,859 in 2024–2025, and nonpublic seclusion incidents increased from 1,103 to 1,242—even as public schools virtually eliminated seclusion. These numbers reflect deeply concerning patterns. When a small number of schools account for a large portion of restraint and seclusion incidents, it signals systemic concerns. We encourage the Maryland State Department of Education to provide oversight and guidance to these schools, which seem to be outliers.

Recommendations for Creating Stronger Legislation

While Maryland has made significant progress in eliminating seclusion and reducing the use of physical restraint, there is still work to be done. Here are some of the things we would like to see in future legislation and regulations.

Close the “Transport” Loophole

Maryland’s current statutory definition of physical restraint is clear: “Physical restraint” means a personal restriction that immobilizes a student or reduces the ability of a student to move their torso, arms, legs, or head freely. However, the law also says that physical restraint does not include “moving a disruptive student who is unwilling to leave the area if other methods such as counseling have been unsuccessful.” This exception, which we will refer to as the “transport” loophole, creates a dangerous gray area. In practice, “transport” often meets the criteria for physical restraint: adults physically controlling a student’s body and movement, using hands-on holds that restrict the movement of torso, arms, or legs. If staff physically move a student in a way that immobilizes or restricts movement, consistent with the statutory definition, it constitutes physical restraint and should be documented and reported as such, regardless of the label used in training materials. Of course, a student should only be restrained to prevent imminent serious physical harm to the student or others, and only after other strategies have failed or been deemed inappropriate.

We would like to see the Maryland General Assembly amend the law to close the transport loophole by removing the exception for moving a disruptive student. Words matter, but in this context, what matters even more is what happens to the child. If it meets the definition for restraint, report it.

Fully Ban Seclusion in Nonpublic Schools

Maryland’s 2022 legislation banned the use of seclusion in public agencies, but nonpublic schools may still use seclusion under certain conditions. COMAR 13A.08.04.02 defines seclusion as “the involuntary confinement of a student alone in a room or area from which the student is physically prevented from leaving,” and HB 1255 maintained a narrow allowance for nonpublic schools to use seclusion in emergencies when less intrusive interventions have failed or are inappropriate. In a nonpublic school, a qualified health care practitioner must be on-site and directly observe the student during the seclusion. The latest MSDE data show that nonpublic schools reported 1,242 seclusion incidents involving 170 students in 2024–2025, an increase in total incidents compared to the previous year. This ongoing use of seclusion in nonpublic settings is out of step with both state progress and evolving federal guidance. We recommend that the Maryland General Assembly prohibit the use of seclusion in nonpublic schools.

Alignment with Federal Definitions

The federal government has increasingly emphasized the harms of seclusion and provided clear definitions. In a January 2025 letter, Secretary of Education Miguel A. Cardona commended states and districts that prohibited the use of seclusion and limited the use of restraint in schools and early childhood programs.

Along with recommendations to end the use of seclusion, the federal guidance has clarified and broadened the definition. The U.S. Department of Justice defines seclusion as “the involuntary confinement of a student alone in any room or area. It includes the use of any room or area in which the student is alone and not free to leave (or believes they are not free to leave).” The 2021–22 Office for Civil Rights (OCR) Civil Rights Data Collection guidance similarly states: “Seclusion refers to the involuntary confinement of a student in a room or area, with or without adult supervision, from which the student is not permitted to leave. Students who believe or are told by a school staff member that they are not able to leave a room or area should be considered secluded.”

These definitions underscore several key points:

• Seclusion is about involuntary confinement and not being free to leave, regardless of whether the door is shut or locked or an adult is present.
• A student’s belief or understanding that they cannot leave is central; if a child is told or reasonably believes they cannot leave, they are effectively being secluded.

Maryland should extend the public school ban on seclusion to all nonpublic schools serving publicly funded students, eliminating seclusion as a behavioral intervention statewide. We also recommend aligning state regulations explicitly with Department of Justice and OCR guidance, making clear that any practice that meets these definitions counts as seclusion—even if a school calls it “time-out,” “calm room,” or another euphemism. Maryland has already proven that banning seclusion in public schools is feasible. There is no justification for allowing children—many of whom are disabled and already vulnerable—to be secluded simply because they attend a nonpublic school.

Transparency and Corrective Action

The 2022 legislation also created an important safeguard: a requirement that schools develop a corrective action plan when a student is restrained or secluded ten times. This was meant to ensure that corrective action is used as a tool to surface and address the systemic issues that drive noncompliance with the law and the excessive use of restraint and seclusion, rather than just to document what has already happened. In theory, these plans should identify what is going wrong, outline what will change, and put concrete protections in place to prevent further harm to the child. Yet even with this safeguard on the books, troubling gaps remain in how corrective action plans are developed, implemented, and shared with families.

Parental Access

Families across Maryland have shared stories of being turned away when they ask to see the corrective action plans that are supposed to be developed after their child has been restrained or secluded ten or more times, even though those plans directly concern their child’s safety and education. That kind of opacity flies in the face of the spirit of the law and erodes the fragile trust that must exist between families and schools if children are going to be safe and supported. State policy should make it unmistakably clear that parents have a right to access any corrective action plan that involves their child or is triggered by the use of restraint or seclusion with their child, and that these plans are part of the student’s educational record and must be shared with parents or guardians on request, consistent with FERPA protections.

Corrective Action Plan Data Should be Included in the Annual Report

The MSDE annual restraint and seclusion report is a critical statewide accountability tool, but it currently provides no public visibility into how often corrective action is triggered or where it occurs. To strengthen transparency and improve practice, MSDE should report, for every local education agency and each nonpublic school, the number of corrective action plans initiated in a given school year because a student was restrained or secluded ten times, and include narrative recommendations from those plans and point to systems-level changes needed across agencies and nonpublic programs. When a child is restrained or secluded ten times, it is a clear signal that something is profoundly wrong in the system surrounding that child, and the public has a right to know where this is happening and what is being done to change it.

Looking ahead: The Keeping All Students Safe Act and Maryland’s national example

Maryland’s progress comes at a moment when federal policy on restraint and seclusion is again under the spotlight. The Keeping All Students Safe Act (KASSA) has now been reintroduced in the 119th Congress by a bipartisan group of House and Senate leaders, including Representatives Don Beyer, Bobby Scott, and Abraham Hamadeh, and Senators Chris Murphy, Bernie Sanders, and Patty Murray. This version of KASSA would make it illegal for any federally funded school or program to use seclusion, mechanical restraint, or chemical restraint, and would ban dangerous restraints that restrict breathing, such as prone and supine holds, while allowing physical restraint only when necessary to protect the safety of students or staff. The bill would also provide grants to train school personnel in evidence‑based, proactive strategies, including trauma‑informed approaches, and de‑escalation, while strengthening monitoring, transparency, and data collection with unduplicated incident counts and disaggregation by disability and 504 status.

Maryland’s experience shows that these protections are both necessary and possible. The state has already demonstrated that seclusion can be eliminated in public schools, moving from thousands of seclusion incidents in 2017-2018 to a single reported seclusion in 2024–2025. Over that same period, Maryland also significantly reduced the use of physical restraint, with combined restraint and seclusion incidents falling from 25,547 in 2018 across public and nonpublic schools to 6,608 in 2024–2025. At the same time, the state has begun to identify and address high‑use outliers and has shifted toward more detailed, student‑level data collection, building the kind of accountability infrastructure that KASSA would require nationwide.

There is still critical work ahead: closing the transport loophole, banning seclusion in nonpublic schools, ensuring full transparency and parent access to corrective action plans, and demanding that high-use LEAs and nonpublic schools re-examine their practices and adopt safer, more humane approaches. Maryland’s story sends a clear message to the rest of the country and to Congress: we do not have to accept restraint and seclusion as inevitable. With strong laws, rigorous data, family advocacy, and a commitment to trauma-informed, neurodiversity-affirming supports, it is possible to eliminate seclusion and dramatically reduce the use of restraint.