3/26/25 - Breaking Up The Education Department
I was sick the last two days, which is why there were no newsletters on Monday or Tuesday. Actually I don't feel too bad about missing a weekday issue once in a while. But disability articles that should be shared tend to pile up quickly these days. Hopefully I can catch up pretty quickly and keep things more or less up to date.
But first, some focus on the Trump administration's plan to dismantle and maybe eliminate the U.S. Department of Education.
Trump’s gutting of the Education Department, explained
Anna North, Vox.com - March 20, 2025
"As soon as Trump was inaugurated, the department’s processing of disability rights complaints ground to a halt, families told the Associated Press. That left students — including a 12-year-old boy with autism and epilepsy who’s been unwillingly assigned to remote schooling — without recourse and, in some cases, losing precious weeks of learning. The agency resumed processing disability cases in mid-February, but cases involving race and gender discrimination remain on hold, according to USA Today."
Trump says Education Department will no longer oversee student loans, 'special needs'
Cory Turner, National Public Radio - March 21, 2025
"After announcing these potential changes to the federal student loan portfolio, Trump then said, "Bobby Kennedy, the Health and Human Services [secretary], will be handling special needs," referring to cabinet member Robert F. Kennedy ... This appears to be a reference to the federal law known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which the Education Department administers. The law guarantees students with disabilities the right to a free, appropriate education and, in 2024, sent roughly $15 billion to schools to help pay for special education services. The law also makes clear that it is the secretary of education's responsibility to administer these funds."
Executive Order to Shut Down the Department of Education Will Have Devastating Impact on Students with Disabilities
David Card, National Disability Rights Network - March 20, 2025
"The Department of Education plays a critical role ensuring that schools meet their legal obligations to provide a free and appropriate public education (FAPE) for students with disabilities. With its elimination, families may be forced to navigate a patchwork of state policies, many of which lack the funding and infrastructure to support students with disabilities effectively. Further, the Department of Education directly funds local school districts and teachers as well as critical research that supports students with disabilities to be productive members of their communities. Local communities will suffer devastating impacts as a result of delaying, reducing or ending these funds."
Here is my number one worry right now about what's happening with the Department of Education ...
The Education Department has never been very popular with disabled children, youth, and their families. Maybe a certain level of dissatisfaction and distrust is inevitable with a department that oversees, but does not actually control, such essential services for people with fairly sympathetic needs, (students with disabilities), most of whom have built-in nearly fanatical advocates, (their parents). There has always been room for improvement in how equal education laws and regulations are implemented for disabled kids. Parents almost always have good reason to complain. And most disabled adults have at best mixed feelings about how well Special Education and in-school accommodations worked for them when they were disabled kids. There may be inherent limits on how appreciated any agency could be with such a mission. Dissent and disgruntlement is almost guaranteed, no matter what.
So, it would be disappointing but not surprising if pushback from parents of disabled children against dismantling the Department of Education is kind of muted. One of the most difficult things to reconcile in disability activism is that we frequently, (usually?), have to fight to protect agencies and institutions we don't really like very much, because as frustrating as they tend to be, we really do need them.
I hope I'm wrong. I hope parents of kids with disabilities, and the full community of disability activism, demand the department be preserved – and failing that, insist on accountability and complete support from whatever and whoever is put in charge of the education of their disabled students. After all, what's being proposed will probably make it harder, and more complicated for parents to get their children's needs met, not easier.
We should expect a lot more about this going forward.
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