Project 2025’s position Regarding the Department of Education, it was clear that “federal education policy should be limited and ultimately the federal Department of Education should be abolished.”
Donald Trump’s impending election as president has raised concerns among disability advocates, children, their parents and others about the federal government’s role in ensuring students with disabilities receive an equitable education. It’s unclear how the Trump DOE would be broken up or whether enough Republicans in Congress would agree to stake their seats on such a proposal.
“There is growing concern within the education sector,” says Fred Buglione of All In for Inclusive Education, which helps local schools and provides individual counseling on how to support students with disabilities. The field, and ultimately what it means for the children.
Equitable education for people with disabilities is essentially part of the current diversity, equity and inclusion efforts that Trump and his allies, such as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who is disabled, appear to oppose. (Last October, Texas cut $600 million in Medicaid funding for disability education services.) The federal Department of Education regularly provides important guidance to state departments of education, says Michael Gilberg, an autism attorney who specializes in special education law.
“States have different laws and things are enforced differently,” Gilberg said. “The federal government needs to oversee and make sure all states are doing the same thing.” That means funding and oversight must ensure that children with disabilities in Massachusetts and Oklahoma have access to the same education.
“If you take away federal funding, you take away qualified teachers…it will be a domino effect.”
The Department of Education currently funds, supports, or regulates numerous aspects of the education of children with disabilities in public schools, particularly those who receive accommodations under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. These bills protect every student’s right to disability accommodations, known as 504 plans and individualized education plans, respectively (rights 8.4 million students count on) and, in the case of the IDEA Act, cover up to 40% of the costs.
“When you take away federal funding, you take away qualified teachers,” said Kyla Bishop, an attorney with Disability Rights Arkansas. “It will be a domino effect.”
Meeting the needs of students with disabilities is already challenging in rural areas of the state, Bishop said. Some areas can already afford classes only four days a week and are short on staff such as occupational therapists and mental health providers.
During the previous regime Trump and then-Education Secretary Betsy DeVos promoted school vouchers that would shift funds from public schools to private schools. Voucher programs, which have no formal federal oversight, are perhaps a prime example of the costs and risks of leaving disability education to the states. Although it may seem promising to parents, parents who use vouchers to attend private schools lose their children’s rights to IEPs, which also protects the student’s right to be educated in the least restrictive environment. Autistic children can be isolated in classrooms alone, as private schools wish. Private schools don’t have to provide speech therapy if they don’t want to, and they may prevent children from participating in physical education classes because they don’t want the school to modify accessible activities. The list goes on.
“Parents have no recourse if vouchers are used for schools that do not provide sufficient services,” a 2018 report from the National Council on Disability states. “If a private school cannot meet a student’s needs, the student is not eligible for compensatory services.”
Cheryl Theis of the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund said many families who choose school vouchers for their children with disabilities believe it will help them succeed. “It backfired on many families who thought they were promised something better and different, only to realize that their children were essentially being abandoned to a cottage industry.”
Bishop, of Disability Rights Arkansas, is critical of his state’s school voucher law. It said the law takes money away from public schools that are required by law to meet the needs of students with disabilities.
“You can’t keep taking money away and expect better results,” Bishop said. “That doesn’t make sense.”
For Elena Hung, executive director of Little Lobbyists, which advocates for children with complex medical needs, her 10-year-old daughter Xiomara’s individualized education plan is the only way she can attend school. He will have a tracheostomy and will need a feeding tube to be with the nurse on the school bus and in the classroom.
“Not only my daughter, but many children with medical needs cannot go to school without a dedicated nurse trained in their care,” Hung said. Because the schools are not safe,” Hung said. Hung worries that disastrous school districts could result in more children with complex medical needs being institutionalized because many working parents cannot afford 24-hour care.
“Getting rid of the federal Department of Education would actually stifle IDEA and 504 enforcement, ultimately leading to more litigation and ultimately clogging the courts,” says Gilberg, a special education attorney.
Increasing reliance on litigation may lead to increased inequality. Many parents may not be able to afford an attorney or may not know where to go to file a lawsuit. Nationwide, about 100 parent training and information centers are also funded through the Department of Education to help parents understand the rights their children with disabilities have in public schools. If the DOE is disbanded, many of them will no longer exist if their funding stops.
Project 2025 does not directly attack federal funding for students with disabilities, as it does abortion rights. Instead, it suggests that IDEA funds “should be converted into unconditional formula block grants targeting students with disabilities and distributed directly to local educational agencies.”
To Tammy Kolbe, a principal investigator at the American Institutes for Research, the claim is incredibly vague. “It remains unclear what can be done regarding the level of appropriation for IDEA and the formula that can be used to distribute those funds to states and localities,” Kolbe said.
IDEA funding is already unequal. In one report, Kolbe highlighted differences in funding for students who receive disability education services through grants. Wyoming received about $2,826 in IDEA funding per student, while Nevada received $1,384 per student (less than half), according to the formula used to calculate the 2020 funding.
Department of Education It is also a decisive source. Data about education and disability, including how students of color with disabilities are treated. For example, data used to order school districts to take action when black youth with disabilities are suspended from school much more often than white youth.
If those numbers are “significantly imbalanced for more than three years, (the district) should allocate 15 percent of its funds to a corrective action type program to address that issue and investigate why the issue is occurring,” Theis said.
“We need to prepare our state elected officials for the fight ahead.”
A lack of federal data would make that kind of corrective action impossible even if funds remained. Even as data collection continues, Project 2025 calls for opposition to “critical race theory” in civil rights enforcement, including in education, which it says may result in Trump’s Department of Education failing to take action against discrimination faced by students of color, especially those with disabilities. indicates. .
Dom Kelly, CEO of New Disabled South, who has cerebral palsy, says the Department for Education’s data can lead to more innovations that help disabled children succeed.
“I am concerned that the lack of data collection will impact federal grants that fund research that directly impacts some students with disabilities,” Kelly said, including research on “assistive technology in the classroom.”
While there is a possibility The disappearance of the Ministry of Education is worrisome. It won’t happen overnight, and there’s no guarantee that it will collapse.
“Everything that happens in the federal government takes time, planning and strategy,” said Jill Jacobs, executive director of the National Association of Boards on Developmental Disabilities. Before coming to NACDD, Jacobs was Commissioner of the Department of Health and Human Services.
Kelly also said organizers should work collaboratively with state officials if the Trump Department of Education leaves major issues up to the states, as many expect.
“We need to prepare our state elected (officials) for the fight ahead with (Georgia) Governor Brian Kemp or Greg Abbott or whoever, to make sure there is oversight and there is funding. “Kelly said.
Little Lobbyists’ Hung encourages parents to form a united front with teachers and other school staff who are already helping to protect children’s access to education.
“I would advise families to work closely with their schools. There are partnerships that need to be leveraged,” Hung said. “Schools need to be as concerned about this as families.”
