The Decline of Special Education

The Trump Administration’s Attack on Special Education

The Trump administration has used the government shutdown as a means to end federal oversight of education services for over 8 million children with disabilities in America. Last month, the Department of Education attempted to fire nearly every staff member at the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP), an action currently under litigation. Additionally, the department canceled millions of dollars in grants aimed at teacher training and parental support for students with disabilities. It is now exploring "additional partnerships" to move special-education services elsewhere within the government. While these changes are framed as efforts to empower states, the result is clear: the government has abandoned its commitment to equitable education for all children.

This attack did not happen overnight. Over the past five decades, Congress has repeatedly weakened the transformative law that governs education for disabled students, leaving it in a vulnerable and dysfunctional state when Donald Trump took office.

A Landmark Law for Disabled Students

President Gerald Ford signed the Education for All Handicapped Children Act into law on November 29, 1975. This landmark legislation mandated that all children with disabilities must be provided a free public education and that they be educated alongside children without disabilities “to the maximum extent appropriate.” This law has improved the lives of generations of children with disabilities. In 1970, only one in five children with disabilities were educated in America’s public schools. Some states had laws explicitly excluding those deemed “uneducable,” while others were homeschooled or received little formal education.

Today, 15 percent of public-school students are served by this law, which was reauthorized and renamed the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act (IDEA) in 1990.

The Legal Framework Behind IDEA

Although a right to education is not explicitly guaranteed in the Constitution, the Fourteenth Amendment ensures that no state can deny any person within its jurisdiction equal protection of the laws. IDEA is an effort to uphold that guarantee. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 called for racial integration of public schools but left disability discrimination unaddressed. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 did not require states to educate students with disabilities but established funding grants for those who did.

The Education of the Handicapped Act of 1970 solidified the core grant program that provides funding to states and school districts, a component still part of IDEA today. What makes IDEA remarkable is that it combines elements from all these precedents. It is not just a declaration of the right to education but also a funding policy—a shared financial partnership among federal, state, and local governments—to provide an appropriate public education to all students with disabilities.

Funding Commitments and Challenges

For states to follow this mandate, the federal government knew it would need to share the costs of well-trained teachers, support staff, and educational equipment. In a version of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act introduced in 1972, New Jersey Senator Harrison Williams explained what Congress was taking on. “It is hard to argue to the States that the federal government is serious about full educational opportunity for all handicapped children when we are not willing to invest money to make this goal a reality,” he wrote. “We will have to put our money where our mouth is.”

The law originally said that the federal government would contribute up to 5 percent of the average per-pupil expenditure by 1978 and would increase its share incrementally to up to 40 percent by 1982. However, Congress’s commitment to funding the law has been inconsistent since the beginning. Access to education for children with disabilities was not a priority for Ford, who signed the bill into law without any formal ceremony. In a message accompanying the new law, he admitted that he had signed it reluctantly. “Even the strongest supporters of this measure,” he wrote, “know as well as I that they are falsely raising the expectations of the groups affected by claiming authorization levels which are excessive and unrealistic.”

Shifting Priorities and Rising Costs

Congress’s backtracking on its initial commitment began almost immediately. The law had established a maximum authorization of 40 percent, which allowed Congress to allocate less than that. Funding has fluctuated, but it has never reached that level. From 2004 to 2006, the federal contribution was its highest, at 18 percent. We are now far from the partnership that Senator Williams envisioned. Last year, federal funding for IDEA was 10.9 percent of the average per-pupil expenditure.

At the same time that Congress has reneged on its commitments, the costs of special education have risen dramatically. As diagnostic practices and screenings have improved, and as the criteria for autism have expanded, the number of students served by IDEA has increased. In the past decade alone, the number of students served by IDEA has grown by 17 percent.

The Consequences of Federal Cuts

As the federal government cancels funding streams and fires employees responsible for overseeing special-education programs nationwide, the result will be an uneven, state-by-state patchwork of special education. Kids with disabilities in some states will receive the support they need to learn alongside their peers and earn a high-school diploma. Others will be kept in segregated classrooms without preparation for a prosperous future after they age out of the public-school system.

To receive federal funding, each state must submit an annual performance report. This year, more states were labeled “needing assistance” in following IDEA for school-age children and young adults than were “meeting requirements.” Even in states like Texas, which meet requirements according to the report, parents face an uphill battle to get their kids what they deserve.

Carol Caron’s daughter, Ellie, has Down syndrome and is in fifth grade in the Aledo Independent School District. The district insists that Ellie belongs in a “functional academics” classroom, learning an alternative curriculum that Carol believes drastically underestimates her capabilities. Carol has filed several complaints with the Texas Education Authority about Ellie’s placement. She wants Ellie to be educated in a classroom with her nondisabled peers, ensuring she is appropriately challenged. But the school district has repeatedly refused.

Texas is one of several states with a track record of violating IDEA regulations. In 2018, the Texas Education Agency submitted a plan to correct a state-imposed limit that discouraged school districts from identifying more than 8.5 percent of students for special-education services. By this summer, the Office of Special Education Programs determined that the TEA had removed these restrictions. However, without federal staff, there will be no way to continue monitoring compliance in Texas or other states.

In response to complaints, the TEA directed the Aledo School District to review its placement and assessment of students with disabilities. But Carol doesn’t believe the district will change course. “What is practiced is different from what the school district puts on paper,” she told me. “There are no sanctions with teeth.” Carol filed a complaint with the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights last spring, but she doubts her concerns will ever be addressed. Ellie’s classroom placement hasn’t changed, and without any federal oversight, she is running out of options.

Like Ellie, my daughter, Louisa, has Down syndrome. But we live in Ohio, not Texas, and Louisa’s educational trajectory looks remarkably different. Now in eighth grade, she has learned beside peers with and without disabilities since preschool. Ohio is far from perfect, but Louisa has benefited from a more inclusive and academically rigorous approach to special education than Ellie. With the Office of Special Education Programs a shell of its former self, this disparity—a child’s education and future determined by where she lives—will only deepen. It demonstrates how ending federal oversight of IDEA isn’t about giving control to the states. It is about denying the civil rights of all students with disabilities. Whether students like Ellie and Louisa have access to education will not be determined by law, but by chance.