The Limits of Vouchers in Texas

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 Department of Education staff, which is proposing to close.  It supports school choice, which is fine when there are schools to choose from.  That is not always the case.

Jessica Ma, Dallas Morning News:

The Texas Education Freedom Accounts promised vouchers would give students with special needs options beyond public schools. Despite being awarded taxpayer-funded accounts, many families struggled to find a suitable school to spend it on. This means private education is still out of reach for Texas’ most vulnerable children, critics of the voucher program say.

“Private does not always mean better,” Ross said. “With more opportunity, comes more work, more heartbreak, more disappointment.”

Proponents believe private schools will proliferate and meet demand. The comptroller’s office, which oversees TEFA, plans to survey families to understand why they opted out, and their responses will inform the improvements made to the program, a spokesperson said. It’s also possible parents were unaware of deadlines, considering public school, or moved out of state, he said.

While 29,400 applicants with disabilities were deemed eligible, at least 7,400 have since returned their voucher. By early September, a total of 27,500 students left the funds on the table, according to data received through a public records request. The Dallas Morning News spoke to six North Texas parents about the challenges they faced in their private school search.

Many were told their child’s needs couldn’t be accommodated. Others realized the prospective school was too far or too expensive. And there were those left waiting for replies that never came. All applied — swayed by the prospect of a private education.

In August, Jessica Ma reported:

The data, which gives a snapshot as of Aug. 5, shows that more than 20,700 students opted out. About 14,100 students, or 68%, were enrolled in a public school during the 2024-25 school year.

Students with disabilities were the first in line to receive a voucher. The state deemed 29,400 applicants in this first tier eligible. About 7,300 — nearly 1 in 4 — opted out, records show.

It’s an uphill battle for these students, said David DeMatthews, a professor of educational leadership and policy at the University of Texas at Austin. A low-income child with intensive needs will especially struggle to find a suitable school, he said.

The more severe the needs, the more expensive the services. But specialized private schools for students with disabilities tend to be concentrated in urban metro areas. Seats are limited and tuition gets high — sometimes reaching over $40,000.

“Those with the most need are going to be the least likely to get help from this program,” DeMatthews said.

 

Special Ed Official Quits

 In The Politics of Autism, I write about social services, special education, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. 

Project 2025 proposed to turn IDEA into a "no strings" block grant, effectively gutting the law and destroying protections that disability families have long relied upon. During the 2024 race, Trump denied any connection to the project, but now he proclaims it, praising OMB director Russ Vought "of Project 2025 fame."

Trump and Vought are now accomplishing their goal of ravaging the law. Instead of turning it into a block grant, they have tried firing most of the staff who enforce it.   More recently, they have shifted  OSERS to HHS and OCR to the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, headed by a political hack who uses the r-word as a slur.

Zachary Schermele at USA TODAY:

The top Trump administration official overseeing special education is resigning ahead of a contentious reshuffling of her office's workforce to the Health and Human Services Department.

Kelly Rogers, the acting assistant secretary in the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, is set to depart her job on Friday, Sept. 11, according to an email obtained by USA TODAY. She was in the job for fewer than four months.

The shift injects yet another element of volatility into the work of the federal division in charge of administering billions of dollars in taxpayer funds to states and schools to help students with disabilities. The office, which experts have described as the "engine room" of special education, has been particularly rocked over the past year and a half by President Donald Trump's crusade to dismantle the Education Department. The downsizing campaign has led to many morale-sinking changes, including major layoffs and a scrutinized plan to give HHS a greater role in the division's operations.

Rogers' abrupt exit comes as more than 100 employees in her division are set to physically move over to HHS this week, according to the Education Department's union, which opposes the move and calls it illegal. Congressional Democrats, and even some Republicans, have expressed doubts about the benefits of the reorganization, which Trump administration officials have said is part of their broader efforts to limit the federal role in education. Rogers struggled during a July 9 meeting to assuage disability advocates' concerns about potential bureaucratic dysfunction caused by the shift, USA TODAY previously reported.

Congressional Pushback Against Special Ed Transfer

 In The Politics of Autism, I write about social services, special education, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. 

Project 2025 proposed to turn IDEA into a "no strings" block grant, effectively gutting the law and destroying protections that disability families have long relied upon. During the 2024 race, Trump denied any connection to the project, but now he proclaims it, praising OMB director Russ Vought "of Project 2025 fame."

Trump and Vought are now accomplishing their goal of ravaging the law. Instead of turning it into a block grant, they have tried firing most of the staff who enforce it.   More recently, they have shifted  OSERS to HHS and OCR to the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, headed by a political hack who uses the r-word as a slur.

A release from Rep. John Mannion (D-NY):

Representatives John W. Mannion (NY-22), a member of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, Robert C. “Bobby” Scott (VA-03), Ranking Member of the Committee, and Brian Fitzpatrick (PA-01) today introduced bipartisan legislation to protect key offices and programs at the U.S. Department of Education from being transferred through interagency agreements to other federal agencies that lack the staff, experience, and expertise needed to administer them.

The legislation is the House companion to S.5046, a bipartisan bill led by Senators Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) that advanced out of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee in July.

Representative John W. Mannion said, “Congress created the Department of Education, and its troubling we must take this step to preserve the constitutional order and stop the executive branch from illegally dismantling the department. I’ll continue to put students’ services and rights first, and I strongly oppose all efforts to move these critical education programs – including those serving students with disabilities - to agencies that lack the staff and expertise.”

Education and Workforce Ranking Member Robert C. “Bobby” Scott said “The Trump Administration’s plan to illegally dismantle the Department of Education is disastrous for students, educators, people with disabilities, and the communities that support them. I will not stand on the sidelines and let this Administration dismantle this agency brick by brick. This legislation is important to keep the bipartisan momentum from the Senate going and defend the programs that so many Americans rely on.”

Representative Brian Fitzpatrick said, “The families I represent should never have to wonder whether a federal reorganization will cost their child a service, a protection, or an opportunity. When concerns were raised about moving OSERS out of the Department of Education, I took those concerns directly to the Administration and demanded answers about how it would protect IDEA, preserve critical resources, and prevent disruption for students. This legislation builds on that effort. As Co-Chair of the Bipartisan Disabilities Caucus, I will continue working side by side with families, educators, and advocates to ensure their voices drive the decisions that shape special education.”

The bipartisan bill safeguards programs serving students with disabilities, K-12 schools, colleges, and Native students. It prohibits the Secretary of Education from transferring programs overseen by four Department of Education offices:

The Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services
The Office of Elementary and Secondary Education
The Office of Postsecondary Education
The Office of Indian Education

...

Joseph P. Joyce, President and CEO of the Autism Society of America, said, “Students with Autism and other disabilities deserve a coordinated federal system that protects their rights and supports them from education through employment. We thank Representatives Scott and Mannion for introducing this legislation to prevent the transfer of critical IDEA functions out of the Department of Education. Congress must preserve the expertise and infrastructure that students with disabilities and their families rely on to access the education and supports they need to thrive.”

Representative Mannion has consistently opposed efforts to abolish the Department of Education, introducing the Protecting Students with Disabilities Act that would prohibit federal funds from being used to eliminate or restructure Department of Education offices that administer programs under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), including the Office of Special Education Programs. Mannion has also repeatedly used his position on the House Committee on Education and Workforce to defend IDEA and the rights of students with disabilities.

Representative Mannion taught science in public schools for nearly 30 years, including in a 15:1 special education classroom. Before serving in Congress, he was the founding chair of the New York State Senate Committee on Disabilities.

Special Ed Complaints in the States

 In The Politics of Autism, I write about social services, special education, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. 

Kara Adundel at K-12 Dive:

State education agencies saw a 46% jump in the number of written state complaints in special education during the 2025-26 school year compared to the year before, according to new survey responses from 31 states.

The self-reported survey data, collected by the Council for Exceptional Children and the National Association of State Directors of Special Education, shows that during the 2024-25 school year there were 7,907 written state complaints. That number rose to 11,523 in the 2025-26 school year.

Written state complaints trigger a state-led investigation into a special education-related concern brought forward by anyone, which can include parents and community members. There is no cost to filing a written state complaint, unlike special education due process complaints, which typically involve assistance from an attorney.

CEC and NASDSE said that while there is no single reason for the increased rate of written state complaints, many families have reported a lack of faith in the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights to resolve their concerns, the organizations said.

During the second Trump administration, OCR has significantly reduced its workforce and closed seven of 12 regional offices that assist with reviewing and investigating K-12 and higher education discrimination complaints filed to the Education Department.

A U.S. Government Accountability Office report in February found that between March and September 2025, OCR received more than 9,000 complaints and resolved 7,072 of those complaints, mainly by dismissing 90% of them.

Inclusion Increases

 In The Politics of Autism, I write about social services, special education, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. 

Government Accountability Office, Special Education: More Students with Disabilities Were Educated in General Education Settings, but State Trends Varied Widely. GAO-26-107814 Published: Jul 02, 2026.

Under federal special education law, students with disabilities are to be educated alongside their peers without disabilities to the maximum extent appropriate. Nationally, the number of students with disabilities in the general education classroom (gen ed) for at least 40 percent of their day increased 25 percent from school year 2012–13 through school year 2023–24 (see figure). The largest increase came from students with disabilities in gen ed for at least 80 percent of their day. The total number of students with disabilities increased 21 percent during this period. GAO also found the share of students with disabilities in gen ed for much of their day increased in 42 of 50 states and the District of Columbia (no data were available for New Mexico for school year 2023–24). However, within states, changes over this period varied widely. For example, the District of Columbia had the largest increase (7.7 percentage points), while in North Dakota the share of students with disabilities in gen ed for at least 40 percent of their day decreased by 3.2 percentage points.

Kaine Proposal to Block the Special Education Shift

 In The Politics of Autism, I write about social services, special education, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. 

Project 2025 proposed to turn IDEA into a "no strings" block grant, effectively gutting the law and destroying protections that disability families have long relied upon. During the 2024 race, Trump denied any connection to the project, but now he proclaims it, praising OMB director Russ Vought "of Project 2025 fame."

Trump and Vought are now accomplishing their goal of ravaging the law. Instead of turning it into a block grant, they have tried firing most of the staff who enforce it.   More recently, they have shifted  OSERS to HHS and OCR to the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, headed by a political hack who uses the r-word as a slur.

Zachary Schermele at  USA TODAY:

As Education Department officials work to quell fears about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s agency having a new role in special education, the Senate is eyeing a bipartisan reproach of the move.

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Virginia, told USA TODAY he's confident that a measure being voted on this month to block the change will pass out of the Senate's education committee with at least some Republican support.

While the exact details of the legislation aren't definitive yet, he said the plan is to advance an amendment that would shield the Education Department's special ed programs from shifting to the Health and Human Services Department. HHS is led by Kennedy, whose controversial past comments have left the disability rights community on edge since the so-called "interagency agreement" was announced in June. He said during a press conference last year, for instance, that autism "destroys families."

Lilla Ross at SmartBrief:

 “These are not just bureaucratic moves,” said Andrew Marcum, academic director of Disability Studies Programs at the CUNY School of Professional Studies, in an interview. “There are reasons why we have special education within a department of education, and it has to do with many decades of organizing and activism.”

...

“The reason that we stopped having the health department oversee education for disabled students is because of the recognition that it’s not a health issue, it’s an educational issue,” Marcum said. “It’s how do we make our classrooms accessible? How do we make our curriculum accessible? How do we make the teaching accessible?”

The concern is not only symbolic. The Education Department’s special education office monitors state compliance with IDEA and helps guide how schools serve students with disabilities. Its civil rights office handles discrimination complaints, including those involving disability access. Moving or splitting that work, advocates say, could make an already difficult system harder for families to navigate.

Marcum said the key questions are practical: who will have the expertise to oversee schools, how states will be held accountable and what happens to families seeking help when services are denied.

Moving Special Ed: Failure of Reassurance

 In The Politics of Autism, I write about social services, special education, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. 

Project 2025 proposed to turn IDEA into a "no strings" block grant, effectively gutting the law and destroying protections that disability families have long relied upon. During the 2024 race, Trump denied any connection to the project, but now he proclaims it, praising OMB director Russ Vought "of Project 2025 fame."

Trump and Vought are now accomplishing their goal of ravaging the law. Instead of turning it into a block grant, they have tried firing most of the staff who enforce it.   More recently, they have shifted  OSERS to HHS and OCR to the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, headed by a political hack who uses the r-word as a slur.

Jonaki Mehta at NPR:

In a call with disability rights advocates Thursday, officials from the U.S. Department of Education tried to ease concerns about plans to move the agency's special education offices to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

"Today's briefing left more questions than answers for parents and educators," says Chad Rummel, who leads the Council for Exceptional Children, and was one of many disability advocates who attended the call. "Today we heard that there is no clear and transparent plan around the move to HHS."

According to a recording of the call obtained by NPR, the acting assistant secretary overseeing special education, Kelly Rogers, said she wanted to reassure advocates that the move would not harm federal protections for students with disabilities. "The U.S. Health and Human Services is not taking over IDEA. Period." Rogers was referring to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, a federal law that guarantees students with disabilities a quality public education alongside their nondisabled peers.

Yet Rogers also said in the same breath that staff at the Office for Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS) — many of the people actually responsible for supporting states and schools in implementing IDEA — would be moving to HHS. She said she would continue to oversee that staff from her perch at the Education Department "with additional support by HHS."

While department officials have been pitching this move as a way to streamline federal bureaucracy in education, advocates think it is doing the opposite. "This proposal appears to add another layer of bureaucracy while creating additional confusion and uncertainty for families, educators, and state agencies," says Denise Marshall, CEO of the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates (COPAA).
...

"The administration acknowledged today what the law has always required: The Department of Education and the secretary of education remain legally responsible for administering and enforcing IDEA. This reorganization neither advances the stated goal of closing the department nor transfers new authority to the states," says Marshall of COPAA. She called on Congress to step in and stop this move — a federal agency can only be completely dissolved by an act of Congress.

But as Marshall and other advocates pointed out, administration officials seem keenly aware of this fact, which may be why the Education Department is keeping some staff, including Rogers, at the Education Department.

Marshall called the strategy "a sham."

Falling Short on IDEA Part B

 In The Politics of Autism, I write about social services, special education and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. 

 Kara Arundel at K-12 Dive:

• More than half of U.S. states and territories did not meet annual targets for implementing federal special education services for students with disabilities ages 3-21, according to a summary of the state determinations issued June 18 by the U.S. Department of Education.
• The latest annual state determinations for implementing the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act also found that only 22 states meet the law’s implementation requirements and improvement efforts for early intervention services to infants and toddlers with disabilities and developmental delays.
• As schools experience both an uptick in the number of students with disabilities qualifying for special education services and a special educator shortage, the IDEA state and district accountability system play an important role in ensuring schools are meeting students’ needs.

From the departmental summary:

MEETS REQUIREMENTS Alabama Massachusetts Rhode Island Connecticut Missouri Republic of Marshall Islands Florida Nebraska South Dakota Illinois New Hampshire Texas Indiana New Jersey Virginia Kansas Ohio Wisconsin Kentucky Pennsylvania Wyoming 

NEEDS ASSISTANCE (one year) Maryland Minnesota North Dakota 

NEEDS ASSISTANCE (two or more consecutive years) Alaska Georgia Oklahoma American Samoa Guam Oregon Arkansas Hawaii Republic of Palau Arizona Idaho Puerto Rico California Iowa South Carolina Colorado Louisiana Tennessee Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands Michigan Utah Mississippi Virgin Islands Delaware Montana Washington Federated States of Micronesia Nevada West Virginia North Carolina

NEEDS INTERVENTION Bureau of Indian Education New Mexico New York District of Columbia Vermont Maine

Opposition to Moving Special Ed Out of the Education Dept

 In The Politics of Autism, I write about social services, special education, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. 

Project 2025 proposed to turn IDEA into a "no strings" block grant, effectively gutting the law and destroying protections that disability families have long relied upon. During the 2024 race, Trump denied any connection to the project, but now he proclaims it, praising OMB director Russ Vought "of Project 2025 fame."

Trump and Vought are now accomplishing their goal of ravaging the law. Instead of turning it into a block grant, they have tried firing most of the staff who enforce it.   More recently, they have shifted  OSERS to HHS and OCR to the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, headed by a political hack who uses the r-word as a slur.

Mackenzie Wilkes at POLITICO:

“I anticipate that it will become increasingly difficult for states to get both the support and the oversight that is needed,” said Stephanie Smith Lee, former director of the Office of Special Education Programs under President George W. Bush.

...

But transferring special education could get a harsh rebuke this month from lawmakers on Capitol Hill who oversee IDEA and both the education and health agencies. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, promised committee member Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) in an unrelated markup after the agreements were struck, that the panel would vote on the issue.

The promise from Cassidy, who lost his bid for reelection in May after Trump endorsed a primary challenger, came after Kaine proposed an amendment to prohibit the transfer of the special education and rehabilitative services office. The Virginia Democrat withdrew the amendment after Cassidy committed to Kaine’s ask for the panel to vote on bipartisan legislation or the amendment.

“I will publicly commit to working with him for the next markup in July at finding something which is an accommodation for everyone’s concerns,” Cassidy, who doesn’t support special education being moved to HHS, said at the June 17 HELP Committee meeting. The Louisiana Republican also said he’d prefer that the Labor Department oversee the program if an agreement is struck.

Lee’s organization, along with hundreds of disability, education and civil rights groups have pressed Congress to block the transfer of special education to HHS and the Education Department’s civil rights enforcement to the Justice Department.

“State education leaders and educators⸺including both general and special educators⸺also rely on ED’s expertise, guidance, monitoring, and technical assistance; responsibilities that Congress unilaterally funds and directs the Department to provide,” the groups wrote in an open letter to lawmakers urging Congress to “reject these transfers and preserve the Department of Education’s longstanding and Congressionally mandated roles.”

HHS, DOJ, and IDEA

 In The Politics of Autism, I write about social services, special education, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. 

Project 2025 proposed to turn IDEA into a "no strings" block grant, effectively gutting the law and destroying protections that disability families have long relied upon. During the 2024 race, Trump denied any connection to the project, but now he proclaims it, praising OMB director Russ Vought "of Project 2025 fame."

Trump and Vought are now accomplishing their goal of ravaging the law. Instead of turning it into a block grant, they have tried firing most of the staff who enforce it.   More recently, they have shifted  OSERS to HHS and OCR to the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, headed by a political hack who uses the r-word as a slur.

Jerell Hill, dean of student services at Los Angeles City College, at Education Week:

On June 16, the U.S. Department of Education announced agreements moving special education oversight to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and shifting civil rights enforcement to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Education Department officials moved quickly to reassure families: The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act still stands. Individualized education programs will continue. The right to a free, appropriate public education remains intact.

I spent years as a regional director of special education. I know what oversight actually does and I know why “nothing will change” is the wrong thing to celebrate.

Oversight is the bridge between a right written on paper and a child’s ordinary Tuesday. The monitoring visits, the annual performance determinations, the technical assistance, the accountability no parent ever sees: That machinery is how a federal guarantee first enshrined in 1975 becomes an education for a real student today. When it works, a family never has to think about it. When it fails, a child loses a year they do not get back.

So, the question is not whether the law survives this reorganization. The question is what happens to the meaning underneath the law when the file moves between federal agencies and the complaint routes through a courtroom.

Here is my worry, and it is not a partisan one. Housing special education inside HHS invites a subtle reframing. It nudges us toward seeing a child as a diagnosis to manage rather than a learner whose potential the system exists to develop. Special education was won as an educational right. We can’t allow it to be redefined as a medical service.

Bianca Quilantan at POLITICO:

“The DOJ Civil Rights Division’s [Educational Opportunities] Section has lost most of its attorneys under this administration because the department made it clear that it was not interested in doing the traditional work the section had done combating discrimination in education,” said Stacey Young, a former DOJ Civil Division senior attorney who leads Justice Connection, a group of former department employees advocating against the Trump administration’s changes to the agency.

...

Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general for civil rights, has said her agency will no longer be just the endpoint for the process.

“We’re taking it all in-house for the Department of Education, and doing that work for them, from soup to nuts,” she told “The Glenn Beck Program.”“Of course, they have the ultimate authority at the end of the day by statute, but 99 percent of the work is going to be done here.”

But advocates have expressed concerns that the DOJ has typically been very selective about what cases it takes up and that many complaints could fall through the cracks.

“OCR receives thousands of complaints of discrimination a year and they have the resources to better handle that volume of incoming complaints,” Young said. “DOJ just doesn’t have the same capacity. They don’t have enough lawyers and investigators, and that’s not what the lawyers and investigators they do have are trained to do.”

 

RFK Jr. Taking Over Special Ed: Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid

 In The Politics of Autism, I write about social services, special education, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. 

Project 2025 proposed to turn IDEA into a "no strings" block grant, effectively gutting the law and destroying protections that disability families have long relied upon. During the 2024 race, Trump denied any connection to the project, but now he proclaims it, praising OMB director Russ Vought "of Project 2025 fame."

Trump and Vought are now accomplishing their goal of ravaging the law. Instead of shifting it to a block grant, they have tried firing most of the staff who enforce it.   More recently, they have shifted OSERS to HHS and OCR to the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, headed by a political hack who uses the r-word as a slur.

Michael C. Bender and Sheryl Gay Stolberg at NYT:

The Trump administration’s decision this week to put Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in charge of special education programs has sparked a sharp backlash from advocates for students with disabilities, who say the move will hurt children and that his views on autism make him unfit for the job.

Mr. Kennedy said earlier this year that children with autism would never hold a job, play baseball or go on a date. He quickly walked back the remarks, saying he was only speaking about the most severe cases — only to insist the next day that special education should be moved into his department. “They’re health-related programs rather than particularly educated programs,” Mr. Kennedy said.

Advocates for students with disabilities said that Mr. Kennedy’s comments show how the change puts disabled students at risk of being viewed as medical conditions to be treated instead of as boys and girls to be educated.

“It shows a fundamental lack of understanding of who kids with disabilities are, how they can be successful in school and how their futures can be very bright,” said Katy Neas, chief executive officer of The Arc, a national support group for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

...

Edward M. Kennedy Jr., a civil rights advocate for people with disabilities and cousin of Secretary Kennedy, said in an email that he shared concerns about shifting special education programs to the Health and Human Services Department.

His biggest worry, he said, was “the policy and philosophical shift away from viewing children with disabilities as having strengths, potential and a right to be integrated into classrooms.

“This shift to HHS reverts toward an antiquated, ‘medical model’ of disability policy that views disabled children as ‘sick’ and in need of health care, not an education,” Mr. Kennedy, a health care regulatory lawyer, said.

...

 Maria Town, the president of the American Association of People With Disabilities, said Mr. Kennedy’s views on autism, ADHD and mental illness, and his embrace of unconventional treatments, worry her. Ms. Town has cerebral palsy and said she benefited from federal protections as a student.

“Are children with autism going to be forced to engage in practices that we know don’t work?” Ms. Town said. “Kids with disabilities already get medical care from their doctors and health care practitioners. They deserve a chance to be students and to engage in the classroom like any other kid.”

Autism Speaks and ASAN Against the Education Offload

 In The Politics of Autism, I write about social services, special education, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. 

Project 2025 proposed to turn IDEA into a "no strings" block grant, effectively gutting the law and destroying protections that disability families have long relied upon. During the 2024 race, Trump denied any connection to the project, but now he proclaims it, praising OMB director Russ Vought "of Project 2025 fame."

Trump and Vought are now accomplishing their goal of ravaging the law. Instead of shifting it to a block grant, they have tried firing most of the staff who enforce it. 

From Autism Speaks:

Autism Speaks opposes the decision to move responsibilities of the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS) to the Department of Health and Human Services and the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) to the Department of Justice. This restructuring reverses decades of bipartisan consensus about where special education oversight belongs.

For families, it’s important to know that students’ rights under IDEA and other federal disability laws have not changed. However, moving the federal offices that help make sure schools follow through on those rights to agencies that have not done this work before could affect how families get support when problems arise. This administrative change risks weakening how special education is safeguarded, coordinated, and enforced across our education system.

It creates uncertainty for states and school districts, as decades of work that defined roles, oversight, and implementation of special education programs are redistributed to departments without experience in meeting the school-based needs of students with disabilities. It weakens accountability, by separating responsibility for special education and civil rights enforcement from the Department of Education, where expertise resides and enforcement is closely coordinated alongside general education policy. And it fragments the administration of the services and protections that students and families rely on by dividing special education oversight among multiple departments, making coordination more difficult and increasing the risk of inconsistent support.

From the Autistic Self Advocacy Network:

Moving OSERS and OCR to different parts of the government makes it harder for schools to get the funding that they need. Disabled students might not get the resources they need. Many students with disabilities will not be included because of this. All of the offices that have moved to other departments should be moved back to the Department of Education.

The Department of Education said that moving these offices will not hurt parents and students. This is not true. Moving these offices will make it much harder for disabled students and parents to get the help that they need. If a disabled student is not allowed their accommodations, it will be harder for them or their family to get help.

ASAN’s Policy Director, Greg Robinson, said, “Students with disabilities deserve protection. Students with disabilities deserve civil rights. Students with disabilities deserve a government that helps them and cares about them.”

The Department of Education made a bad decision. This decision will hurt students with disabilities. ASAN wants the government to keep OCR and OSERS in the Department of Education.

 

FWIW, Dhillon is deputy assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division is in charge of enforcing the Americans with Disabilities Act. And here she is using the word "retarded." https://t.co/qB6R7aX18e

— Eric Michael Garcia (@EricMGarcia) December 30, 2025

Shifting OCR and OSERS

In The Politics of Autism, I write about social services, special education, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. 

Project 2025 proposed to turn IDEA into a "no strings" block grant, effectively gutting the law and destroying protections that disability families have long relied upon. During the 2024 race, Trump denied any connection to the project, but now he proclaims it, praising OMB director Russ Vought "of Project 2025 fame."

Trump and Vought are now accomplishing their goal of ravaging the law. Instead of shifting it to a block grant, they have tried firing most of the staff who enforce it. 

Mark Lieberman at Education Week:

The U.S. Department of Education has begun outsourcing responsibility for overseeing the nation’s sprawling special education system and enforcing civil rights law in schools to other federal agencies, after months of previewing dramatic efforts to restructure both core functions.

Department officials announced the moves—made possible by four new interagency agreements—on Tuesday morning to advocacy group representatives, and on Tuesday afternoon to reporters and the general public.

The Education Department office that oversees special education and employment programs for adults with disabilities will move to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The U.S. Department of Justice will take on the Education Department’s office for civil rights, student privacy enforcement, and a quartet of equity assistance centers that help K-12 schools with desegregation efforts.

Department officials have teased many of these moves for more than a year. The conservative policy agenda Project 2025, which has guided many Trump administration actions, recommended moving both special education and civil rights enforcement to their respective new agencies....

The Education Department’s office for civil rights will move to the Justice Department’s civil rights division, currently led by Trump appointee Harmeet Dhillon, who has upended the agency’s approach to anti-discrimination enforcement.

During a call with reporters on Tuesday afternoon, senior Education Department officials said the agency hasn’t yet determined whether current Department of Justice staffers will work on Education Department civil right cases.
...

During Trump’s second administration, the Education Department has closed more than half of OCR’s regional offices and attempted to lay off more than half its staff, only to be thwarted by courts and forced to keep more than 200 OCR staffers on paid administrative leave for much of last year.
...
The Department of Education’s office of special education programs and its Rehabilitation Services Administration, which funds services to help adults with disabilities transition to the workforce, will move to the Administration on Disabilities, a sub-agency of HHS.

The AOD is currently led by Rebecca Hines, a former associate professor of special education at the University of Central Florida. Hines’ sister, Cheryl Hines, is married to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Hines’ second-in-command at AOD is Principal Deputy Commissioner Diana Diaz-Harrison, who joined in January after serving as Trump’s appointee overseeing special education and RSA in the Education Department. Diaz-Harrison previously founded a system of Arizona charter schools for students with autism; HHS in February named her the Trump administration’s National Autism Coordinator.

Advocates for students with disabilities have been decrying the prospect of the HHS move ever since McMahon floated it during her Senate confirmation hearing in February 2025.
...

“IDEA is fundamentally an education law—not a healthcare law—and should continue to be administered by education policy experts who understand schools, teaching, learning, and accountability,” Phyllis Wolfram, executive director for the Council of Special Education Administrators (CASE), wrote in a statement on Tuesday.

In January, Dan Barry and Sonia A. Rao reported at NYT:

Late last month, a woman posted a photograph on social media of a purple hat she had knitted, while a black-and-white dog lounged on the carpet a few feet away. The cozy scene was accompanied by a single sentence: “This hat is an hour behind schedule thanks to influencer retards.”

The proud knitter, Harmeet K. Dhillon, is also the assistant attorney general overseeing the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. Her purview includes protecting the rights of people with intellectual disabilities by ensuring compliance with the Americans With Disabilities Act.

For decades now, the “R-word” has been regarded as a slur against people with intellectual disabilities — a word to be avoided. Yet it has had a striking resurgence, in part because people in high-profile positions of power and influence have chosen to resurrect it, often with an air of defiance.

“The word ‘retarded’ is back,” the popular podcaster Joe Rogan declared in April, describing its return as “one of the great culture victories.” He did not respond to requests for elaboration, but there is abundant evidence to support his muscular declaration.

Lawsuit Against the Administration

In The Politics of Autism, I write about social services, special education, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. 

Project 2025 proposed to turn IDEA into a "no strings" block grant, effectively gutting the law and destroying protections that disability families have long relied upon. During the 2024 race, Trump denied any connection to the project, but now he proclaims it, praising OMB director Russ Vought "of Project 2025 fame."

Trump and Vought are now accomplishing their goal of ravaging the law. Instead of shifting it to a block grant, they have tried firing most of the staff who enforce it. 

A June 9 release from California Attorney General Ron Bonta:

California Attorney General Rob Bonta today led a multistate lawsuit challenging the U.S. Department of Education’s (Department) discontinuation of awarded grants under the State Personnel Development Grant (SPDG) program. These competitive grants provide critical funding for the professional development of special education staff and support services for children with disabilities. In California, more than 880,000 students are eligible for special education services. Although the California Department of Education (CDE) had been awarded a five-year SPDG grant in 2022, the Department discontinued the grant in September 2025 because of conclusory, baseless concerns about equity-related initiatives. In the lawsuit, Attorney General Bonta and the coalition urge the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California to find the discontinuation of funds unlawful and emphasize the harmful impact of the discontinuation on essential resources for schools, educators, and parents that support students with disabilities.

“It is disgraceful that President Trump has disregarded the needs of students with disabilities, claiming that supporting their needs is not in the best interest of the federal government. The Trump Administration discontinued critical grants designed to improve outcomes for students with disabilities by building the capacity of educators, administrators, and systems to ensure timely appropriate services and navigate early intervention,” said Attorney General Bonta. “This harmful and unlawful action denies vulnerable students the resources they need to learn and succeed. California is fighting to ensure the continuation of the grant that supports these necessary initiatives for special education.”

The SPDG program was established in 2004 through the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) to improve long-term outcomes for vulnerable populations. For decades, the Department administered the SPDG program in a routine and predictable manner by publishing a notice inviting applications and identifying relevant priorities that had been subject to notice and comment. After providing an initial award, the Department determines whether the grant should continue for the following year based on enumerated performance and financial metrics. In 2022, CDE applied for and received a five-year SPDG award to implement critical reforms to California’s personnel development in early intervention, early education, and transitional services to improve results for young children with disabilities or at risk for developmental delays. In total, the grant would have provided CDE with $2.1 million per year, a total of $10.5 million over the five-year term, of which it only received funding for three budget periods. During the funded period, California successfully met all program goals and performance requirements and timely submitted all required performance and financial reports.

Nevertheless, in January 2025, President Trump abruptly departed from this settled practice and called for the review and termination of federal grants that funded equity-related initiatives. In September 2025, the Department sent CDE a notice that stated it was discontinuing the funding in its entirety based on vague claims that the programs were not “in the best interest of the Federal Government.” After the discontinuation, CDE’s Request for Reconsideration was summarily denied.

In the lawsuit, Attorney General Bonta and the coalition argue that the Department’s discontinuation of funding violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) because it was contrary to law, without observance of procedure required by law, and arbitrary and capricious. The discontinuations also violated the Spending Clause of the United States Constitution. More specifically, the Department acted unlawfully because, among other reasons:

• It relied on unpublished new priorities that had not been subject to the notice-and-comment procedures required by the General Education Provisions Act, the Department’s own regulations, and the APA.
• It misapplied the continuation regulation by treating the “best interest” provision as allowing them to have unlimited discretion to discontinue grants based on new priorities.
• It changed its position and misled the states by first requiring their applications to highlight equity initiatives and then penalizing them for the very same initiatives, and by failing to consider extensive reliance interests.
• It failed to provide the kind of “reasoned explanation” required by the APA and instead relied on conclusory language.

In filing the lawsuit, Attorney General Bonta is leading the attorneys general of Rhode Island and Wisconsin.

IDEA Challenges

In The Politics of Autism, I write about social services, special education, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. 

Project 2025 proposed to turn IDEA into a "no strings" block grant, effectively gutting the law and destroying protections that disability families have long relied upon. During the 2024 race, Trump denied any connection to the project, but now he proclaims it, praising OMB director Russ Vought "of Project 2025 fame."

Trump and Vought are now accomplishing their goal of ravaging the law. Instead of shifting it to a block grant, they have tried firing most of the staff who enforce it. 

Ashley White at The Hill:

​​​A clear pathway for addressing these challenges can be seen in the Science of Reading Act, which seeks to align federal literacy funding with evidence-based practices “to ensure state literacy plans reflect these evidence-based approaches.” However, there is no “Science of Special Education” movement generating bipartisan legislation. There is no House committee unanimously passing a bill to strengthen IDEA’s core protections. Instead, there is silence — or worse, erosion.

States, meanwhile, are left holding the bag. Some have stepped up, investing state dollars to fill the federal gap. Others have not. The result is a patchwork of protections that varies wildly depending on where a child with a disability happens to live. This is precisely the inequity IDEA was designed to prevent. The staffing crisis compounds the challenge. Across the country, districts report critical shortages of special education teachers, school psychologists, speech-language pathologists, and related service providers. Caseloads have ballooned. Timelines for evaluations are missed. Individualized Education Programs are written but not implemented with fidelity. And in too many cases, the procedural protections that remain on paper have become aspirational rather than operational.

For families, the lived experience of special education in 2026 often feels like navigating a system designed to say no. Due process remains available in theory, but in practice, it is expensive, adversarial, and inaccessible to the families who need it most. The asymmetry of power between school districts and individual families has only grown as federal oversight has receded.

Gutting the Office for Civil Rights: Update

In The Politics of Autism, I write about social services, special education, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. 

Project 2025 proposed to turn IDEA into a "no strings" block grant, effectively gutting the law and destroying protections that disability families have long relied upon. During the 2024 race, Trump denied any connection to the project, but now he proclaims it, praising OMB director Russ Vought "of Project 2025 fame."

Trump and Vought are now accomplishing their goal of ravaging the law. Instead of shifting it to a block grant, they have tried firing most of the staff who enforce it. 

BIANCA QUILANTAN and HANNAH PSALMA RAMIREZ at POLITICO write about the gutting of the Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Education:

Hundreds of civil rights staffers were let go during the government-wide reduction in force last year. Many did not return even after the department started calling workers back, while other employees have chosen to leave in recent months as Trump has repeatedly vowed to shutter the agency and change what work is prioritized.

The number of employees in the civil rights office has declined to 321 from about 575 in fiscal 2024, according to May data from the Office of Personnel Management. In December, when the agency tried to call workers back, the office had 403 workers, but that number has been continuously declining.


“There's been a steady parade of people leaving,” said Linda Mangel, who was an OCR enforcement director and resigned last year. “Even the people who weren't RIFed were so shaken by what was happening in the agency that they have steadily left. … It's like a sinking ship.”

...

The agency called back 247 workers of the roughly 575 office staffers, with 85 ultimately returning to work, according to a January report by the Government Accountability Office, the federal government’s watchdog.

Staffers have chosen not to come back or are leaving the agency because they retired, got new jobs and are concerned about job stability. But some are uncomfortable with the work.

“After my RIF, I saw some things that were coming out of OCR that I think are not lawful and I would not be comfortable doing,” said Beth Gellman-Beer, former Philadelphia regional OCR office director, who had worked at the agency since the George W. Bush administration. “I figured if I go back, I'll probably be asked to do something that I'm not going to be able to sign, and I'll get eliminated anyway.”

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The strain the staffing cuts have left is evident: the office reached zero resolution agreements involving sexual harassment, sexual violence, seclusion or restraint, racial harassment or discriminatory school discipline in 2025, according to a report from Sen. Bernie Sanders’ staff. And it reached 91 percent fewer resolution agreements in 2025 than in 2017, the first year of the first Trump administration.