A swell of parents, advocates, educators and Democratic politicians are sounding alarms that the dramatic downsizing of the U.S. Department of Education will chip away at civil rights protections for students with disabilities and even negatively impact their classroom supports.
In just the past two months, the Education Department under the Trump administration has laid off half of its 4,133-person workforce, paused federal funding, eliminated diversity, equity and inclusion programs, canceled research and teacher preparation grants, and promoted private school choice.
And last week, President Donald Trump ordered U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon to develop a plan to dissolve the nearly 45-year-old education agency altogether. That move, which has already drawn two lawsuits from unions, school districts and advocates, would need approval from Congress.
In the dismantling, the Trump administration plans to transfer federal special education oversight from the Education Department to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Details of how that transition would work are not yet available.
The changes, proponents say, would reduce federal bureaucracy and give local communities more decision-making authority over spending and services for students.
During the March 20 White House ceremony for the signing of the Education Department executive order to begin to close the agency, Trump said funding for students with disabilities will be "fully preserved."
While some of the actions to date are being paused or temporarily reversed through court action, the weight of the collective change will trickle down to local levels where parents, educators and advocates who oppose the measures say they fear an erosion of supports for students with disabilities.
"Parents are going to have to fight harder than they have fought in 60 years for accountability," said Marcie Lipsitt, a Michigan resident and advocate for students with disabilities.
Protecting students' rights
Lipsitt, a prolific filer of disability discrimination complaints to the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights, said that without robust federal enforcement of students' protections under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, it will be harder for parents to ensure their children's classes have a qualified special education teacher or that students are receiving promised physical, speech or occupational therapies.
Lipsitt is concerned that with recent workforce cuts to OCR, investigations into disability discrimination complaints will be dramatically slowed. Earlier this month, the Education Department closed seven of its 12 regional civil rights enforcement offices.
On March 14, the National Center for Youth Law filed a federal lawsuit against the Trump administration's "abdication of responsibility in processing civil rights investigations." The suit, filed on behalf of the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates and two parents with pending OCR claims, seeks a court order restoring OCR's capacity to process complaints and conduct investigations.
"Parents are going to have to fight harder than they have fought in 60 years for accountability."
Marcie Lipsitt
Advocate for students with disabilities
Parents of children with disabilities can file a civil rights complaint under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act or the Americans with Disabilities Act through the Education Department's OCR complaint process. IDEA gives parents the right to file a due process complaint regarding a dispute about their child's individualized services. Additionally, anyone — including parents, advocates, organizations and others — can submit a written state complaint to report a potential violation of IDEA at the school, district or state level.
Filing an OCR complaint and written state complaint, while time-consuming, is typically free to parents. Filing a due process complaint, on the other hand, can often require upfront costs for retaining a lawyer. Likewise, most school districts need to have attorneys to argue their side.
Nationally, both written state complaints and due process complaints have been increasing in recent years, according to federal data analyzed by the Center for Appropriate Dispute Resolution in Special Education.
Lipsitt predicts that state complaints will increase even more with the expected slowdown in OCR complaint investigations. Parents will have to push harder than they've "had to fight since the 1950s," Lipsitt said. "No accountability — that will be the battle parents will be facing."
But even if the OCR complaint process slows down due to staff limitations, parents can still use the state complaint process, said Jose Martín, an attorney with Richards, Lindsay & Martín in Austin, Texas, which represents school districts. And depending on the state, that process can be an effective approach to resolving parents' grievances, Martín said.
"It's not a blow-off thing. We've had complaints that have resulted in the districts having to take definite corrective action," Martín said.
Holding states and districts accountable
Students with disabilities comprised about 15% of the K-12 student population in the 2022-23 school year. The federal government, under IDEA, provided $15.4 billion for supports to about 8.4 million infants, toddlers, schoolchildren and young adults with disabilities in fiscal year 2024. Yet federal funding for special education only accounts for about 10%, or around $1,810, of the total per-student cost.
The federal government doesn't play a direct role in students' individualized education programs, which are developed by teachers and parents and detail the type and frequency of each student’s specialized supports. But the Education Department does disburse the funding appropriated by Congress for such services.
The department’s Office of Special Education and Rehabilatives Services and Office of Special Education Programs also conduct monitoring, provide technical assistance to states and districts, and hold states and districts accountable for compliance with IDEA.
In the most recent Education Department layoffs, no OSEP employees lost their jobs, according to a March 14 letter to education stakeholders from Hayley Sanon, principal deputy assistant secretary and acting assistant secretary of the department's Office of Elementary and Secondary Education.
The letter also said that OSERS employees who were let go were involved in policy, operations and administrative functions that were "either duplicative or can be reassigned to create a more efficient and accountable organizational structure."
Even if the monitoring of special education services is tempered at the federal level, that doesn't necessarily mean school districts will abandon compliance or that states will water down their own oversight, Martín said. In fact, some states already go above and beyond the required federal special education accountability.
Valerie C. Williams, who led OSEP under President Joe Biden, said the office not only conducts monitoring activities but also helps states and districts to problem solve on challenges such as special educator shortages and increasing the inclusion of special education students in general education classrooms.
If there are fewer federal special education staff, there would be less capacity to support districts and states in overcoming these and other challenges, Williams said. That would trickle down to the district and school levels, which would have fewer resources to support classroom best practices, she added.
"How long it takes is a question mark, but it will absolutely show up," Williams said.
Promising education freedom
Supporters of closing the Education Department say the move would not only create efficiencies but would also empower school systems and families to make decisions based on their students' or children's needs.
One approach for giving parents more school options that is favored by the Trump administration and many conservative lawmakers is private school choice, where taxpayer money is used to support private school tuition or services like tutoring and therapies.
At least 184,450 students with disabilities participate in private school choice programs nationwide, according to a paper published this month by EdChoice, a nonprofit that advocates for expanded school choice options. These students comprise about 15% of private school enrollment, which is about the same percentage of students in public schools who have disabilities.
And even though private schools do not have to comply with IDEA, parents of children with disabilities are increasingly opting for private school choice because of the flexibility and options for educational supports, said Mike McShane, director of national research at EdChoice.
McShane points to the litigious nature of special education in public schools, where families have to file due process complaints to attempt to get services and supports they feel their child is entitled to. That struggle causes some to forfeit the IDEA protections in public school for the private school options they feel best fit their child's needs.
"We hear all of this sort of fear mongering of what could go wrong," McShane said. "But hundreds of thousands of parents are taking that deal. They're saying, 'OK, sure. IDEA may not apply in the same way to private schools as it does to public schools.'"
Public school and disability civil rights defenders, however, warn that private school choice programs threaten to reverse the progress IDEA has made in the past 50 years in ensuring equitable access to public education for students with disabilities. They also point out that private schools can choose not to admit students with disabilities, whereas public schools must educate all learners.
Denise Marshall, CEO of the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, said in a recent webinar with disability civil rights leaders that some families participating in school choice programs understand that their children's IDEA rights don't follow them to private school.
However, she said, there are many other families "who do not understand that they are giving up their federal rights to access funds, or that that choice requires them to basically say, ‘The civil rights of my student don't matter,’" Marshall said.
Advocates, Marshall said, "are not interested in any kind of change to the arrangement which either destroys public education or separates the 8 million students with disabilities … from their federal rights through federal vouchers or block grants.”
