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President Donald Trump made a brief announcement Friday morning of a policy that could upend how the nation serves its 7.5 million students with disabilities.
Offering virtually no details, Trump said he’d decided that the Department of Health and Human Services would handle students’ “special needs” instead of the Education Department.
“Rather complex,” Trump said in the Oval Office. “I think that will work out very well.”
But many legal experts and advocates for children with disabilities say the president does not have the authority to move funding or oversight of special education to another agency. That would require an act of Congress, they say.
Many educators, parents, and disability rights advocates worry that the president will try to move forward anyway, and that this plan could end up stripping children with disabilities of legally required educational support and services — and sideline them in an agency that doesn’t have the expertise, staff, or training to properly serve them.
“There was a recognition that the education of students with disabilities should occur alongside non-disabled students,” when the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, was signed into law in 1975, said Robyn Linscott, the director of education and family policy at The Arc, which advocates for children with disabilities.
“To be able to say that students with disabilities are this monolith and we can just pluck them out of the general population of students and plop them into a different agency,” Linscott said, “is just bonkers.”
What the law says about Education Department’s role
IDEA predates the creation of the federal Education Department by four years, and was enacted when education fell under what was then known as the Health, Education, and Welfare Department.
IDEA would remain on the books even if the Education Department ceased to exist. But advocates said enforcement of the law is bound up in the infrastructure of the Education Department, as the two evolved together. Students with disabilities are part of nearly every other education law on the books, from school accountability to higher education access.
In the hours since Trump’s announcement, neither the Education Department nor the Health and Human Services Department has offered any concrete details, including exactly what responsibilities would move to HHS and when.
In response to a list of questions, an Education Department spokesperson referred Chalkbeat to a short video clip of a Friday afternoon interview with Education Secretary Linda McMahon, in which she said that “some” of the programs that fall under IDEA would be given to Health and Human Services. She did not specify which ones, and the Education Department did not respond to follow-up questions.
Emily Hilliard, the deputy press secretary at HHS, responded to a list of questions by pointing Chalkbeat to a social media post by Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in which he said his agency “is fully prepared to take on the responsibility of supporting individuals with special needs” and that his agency would “make the care of our most vulnerable citizens our highest national priority.”
Multiple laws say the Education Department is responsible for overseeing and funding the education of children with disabilities.
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act established the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services within the Education Department and said that it must include an Office of Special Education Programs, “which shall be the principal agency in the Department for administering and carrying out” IDEA, along with “other programs and activities concerning the education of children with disabilities.”
The law that created the Department of Education said the department must include an Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services.
IDEA also says the education secretary is responsible for administering IDEA grants. The most recent budget laws give control of IDEA funds to the Department of Education and say those funds can’t just be transferred to another agency.
“If they’re trying to just completely eliminate ED’s responsibility to oversee IDEA and the things that are required in statute, they can’t do that,” said Blair Wriston, the senior manager of government affairs for EdTrust, a nonprofit that advocates for students’ civil rights. “That’s illegal. It would require an act of Congress.”
McMahon has said she would work with Congress to shrink the Education Department.
It’s unclear what part of HHS would oversee special education. Some disability rights advocates say it could be the Administration for Community Living, which supports adults with disabilities, or the Administration for Children and Families, which includes the federal preschool program Head Start and child welfare.
Would special education become an afterthought at HHS?
Many advocates for students with disabilities, some of whom spoke to Chalkbeat before Trump’s comments Friday, have significant concerns about moving special education to HHS.
The department is a massive agency whose responsibilities include approving new drugs, responding to emerging diseases, and administering Medicare and Medicaid. Advocates fear that special education would be an afterthought at the agency and that employees there lack the necessary expertise to interact with state education agencies and school districts about the services kids are legally entitled to receive.
Several education advocates expressed concern that Kennedy would oversee services for children with disabilities. Senators were not able to press Kennedy during his confirmation hearing about his knowledge and approach to educating children with disabilities, as they were McMahon.
“RFK Jr. has repeatedly cast doubt on the legitimacy of autism as a real diagnosis,” Keri Rodrigues, the president of the National Parents Union, said in a statement. “Putting someone with this perspective in charge of children’s services — especially for children with disabilities — is a betrayal of families who have fought for decades to secure educational rights and protections for their kids.”
Denise Marshall, the CEO of the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, said that her members oppose moving special education to Health and Human Services.
“That department does not have the expertise or the knowledge, not only about what the law requires but about best practices, about what works, and about ensuring that students with disabilities learn to read and write and do math and graduate at higher percentages,” she said.
Education Department staffers understand how IDEA money is supposed to be spent and have experience providing guidance and support to states on how to use their funds legally and effectively, said Lindsay Kubatzky, the director of policy and advocacy for the nonprofit National Center for Learning Disabilities.
A large share of cases filed with the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights — more than half in many years — involve students with disabilities.
Nicole Fuller, a policy manager who works with Kubatzky, said the special education and civil rights offices work closely together to make sure schools have the resources and knowledge to appropriately serve students with disabilities. She doesn’t trust that states would do the same.
Fuller lives in Texas, where for years the state maintained an unofficial cap on identifying students with disabilities. The result was that many students missed out on services they were legally entitled to and struggled in school.
State education officials denied there was ever a cap, but the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights under the first Trump administration found widespread violations and ordered the state to rectify the situation.
“It did really take that oversight and insistence for Texas to do the right thing,” Fuller said.
Advocates also fear it represents a return to viewing disabilities as medical problems that need to be fixed.
“It feels like moving your public school district from the leadership of a superintendent to the leadership of your local hospital CEO,” said Jennifer Coco, senior director of strategy and impact at the Center for Learner Equity, a nonprofit that advocates for students with disabilities. “It fundamentally misunderstands disability.”
Public schools have not always lived up to the “bold, significant” promise in IDEA that every child should get a free and appropriate education, Coco and other advocates acknowledge.
“I don’t think that’s grounds to throw out the promise or to throw out the systems that make sure that promise is fulfilled,” Coco said.
Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.
Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.
