In The Politics of Autism, I write about social services, special education, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 7.5 million children 3 to 21 years old received services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in AY 2022-23.
About 980,000 of them were autistic, up from 498,000 in 2012-13.
The Trump administration is halving the staff of the Department of Education.
Lexi Lonas Cochran at The Hill:
The educational research community is looking to pick up the pieces after the Trump administration has canceled dozens of studies and ended hundreds of jobs.
In line with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), hundreds of federal contracts have been canceled with education research groups, accused by the administration of either being useless or simply too “woke.” Longitudinal studies on early childhood education and artificial intelligence literacy are among those that have taken significant hits.
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“We’ve had a number of projects canceled, including some very long-standing research projects, namely the Regional Education Labs that WestEd has been part of for almost its entire history, so 59 years,” said Jannelle Kubinec, CEO of WestEd, adding studies relating to reading, chronic absenteeism and math and numeracy have also been terminated.
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“Across the board, we’re really talking about a complete capacity downsize. It’s people, it’s money, it’s spaces, it’s resources. So, it’s definitely a lot all at once […] Outside of contract cancelations and risk, a lot of the harm is yet to come,” said Jinann Bitar, higher education research and data analytics at EdTrust.
Along with interruptions in longer studies, the turbulence in the field has led to hesitation in researchers wanting to start a career in this area, as there are few safe spaces for the studies left.
“This is going to be gut-stopping for current researchers, but it’s actually going to be almost impossible to overcome for early-career researchers if they don’t have anywhere stable to be in the meantime on their research,” said Bitar.
