Donald Trump just proclaimed the Project 2025 agenda in 10 points about education. As expected, this includes dismantling the U.S. Department of Education (DOE), responsible for many federal laws protecting students.
This post will focus on the loss of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA.
Many believe that states and local school districts can assimilate the laws or another department can take them over after a DOE closure, but this is a gamble. Transferring this legal responsibility to states or a department concentrating on other issues could mean the end of hard-fought, long-time laws that have benefited students.
To tamper with IDEA, a law that involved so much positive and critical change in the lives of students with disabilities, although imperfect, but a law just the same, would be terrible for the lives of these children and their families.
History
There’s genuine concern that shutting DOE down could be sliding educational progress for all students with disabilities backward in time. Americans today may not remember the fight for disability rights for children in their public schools.
Before the DOE law, students had little access to public schooling involving special services
…many children were denied access to education and opportunities to learn. In 1970, U.S. schools educated only one in five children with disabilities, and many states had laws excluding certain students, including children who were deaf, blind, emotionally disturbed, or had an intellectual disability.
IDEA originated in 1975 as the All Handicapped Children Act (EHA or Public Law 94-142). It became ensconced in the Department of Education, which was created during the Carter administration to elevate education at the federal level.
Controversial reauthorizations in 1998 and 2004 changed the law’s name to IDEA and heavily focused on the least restrictive classroom environment (inclusion) for children with disabilities.
Why is the DOE important? Why is turning these laws over to the states shaky business for children? We already see problems with states and local school districts serving students with disabilities.
Lawyers
Usually, parents first have problems with the law’s administration at the state and local levels.
It’s easy to verify that states have problems with the federal IDEA mandate by looking online at lawyers employed to argue on behalf of children with disabilities and their families about school/disability issues.
breaks down the 2020 Determination Letters on State Implementation of IDEA.
The law firm found:
- Only 21 states meet the requirements of IDEA;
- 27 states and Washington D.C. need assistance to meet the requirements; and
- Two states need intervention.
According to the firm, public schools without the requirements of DOE could:
- reject a child with disabilities;
- fail to provide evaluations to determine their instructional needs
- end IEPs,
- remove children from the general education setting,
- ignore parents,
- end IDEA safeguards to protect students’ and parents’ rights.
If states aren’t legally bound to provide these services with a federal mandate, they will likely not continue them without a DOE.
Texas
Remember in 2018, when the DOE found the State of Texas violated the IDEA by setting a lower enrollment target for students with disabilities than the rest of the nation?
Texan lawmakers failed to provide children with disabilities proper evaluations, and they left parents in the lurch without resources to navigate the system! The DOE should have acted quickly to penalize lawmakers who denied students their rightful services.
The state was eventually ordered to devise a plan to help those who missed out to catch up, but it sounds like they’re still failing students!
The DOE should get tougher on Texas lawmakers who fail their state’s kids! But without a DOE, will Texas end its school disability services altogether?
Will other states and local school boards fund special education if they don’t have to? Who will make them?
Louisiana
After Katrina in New Orleans, Republicans, under the direction of economist Milton Friedman, a school privatization proponent in what’s been called disaster capitalism, rapidly shuttered traditional public schools and turned them into charter schools.
Unfortunately, the NOLA charters were under no state rule tough enough to enforce IDEA, and for years, children with disabilities were not provided the services that should have legally been theirs. These are years children will never get back.
Even after parents organized a lawsuit by the Southern Poverty Law Center, children with disabilities did not get the necessary services.
Charters have not done well in NOLA, and once again, the state and city look to be returning to traditional public schools. Will those schools offer special services to students with disabilities without DOE?
Do you think the same states with lawmakers who are today defunding public schools are going to be committed to disability protections for children in their schools?
Donald Trump is not doing parents any favors by eliminating this department, certainly not when it comes to IDEA.
If this plan moves forward and DOE closes, Americans will be doing a terrible disservice to children. They will lose the assistance so many families have grown accustomed to, and they may never get these services back again.
Parents and all Americans should work to improve the DOE but definitely not end it.
The Federal DOE was implemented in 1980…. Yes, this article is describing many recent scenarios which clearly shows how ineffective the DOE is and its lack of oversight. Clearly, this article is attempting to fear monger by stating that without the DOE – children with disabilities will not be able to be protected or obtain any services. This is an unproven and irresponsible supposition which is being stated as fact.
Meanwhile, our education system is failing our children. Scores on basic English and Math skills are abysmal. If actual education of children is a goal of the DOE = they have failed miserably.
In fact – it appears that the DOE will sacrifice the needs of the many in order to maximize the needs of the few. Instead of protecting all children – it concentrates it’s resources on identity politics.
I personally am looking forward to the options which will be presented to dismantle this present monstrosity and replace it with an efficient organization which will address the needs of all the Children.
Options like Texas? Could you let me know if you understood or read the blog post? They aren’t going to replace the department. Trump will give block grants to states, and they will use them as they wish. There will be little commitment to public ed. or children with disabilities.
Parents will pay for private schools and substandard charters with online instruction.
Many Americans have been snookered. Our schools never failed. I recommend The Manufactured Crisis by Berliner and Biddle.
I’m old enough and also once taught children with disabilities in institutional settings. While the original All Handicapped Children Act was a success for children with disabilities, lawmakers haven’t appropriately funded it, nor will they without a DOE.
The DOE is responsible for Headstart and loans so students can attend college and much more.
Yes DOE should be improved but without it public schools will likely end and students will lose out on the support many have taken for granted. I’m wondering if you’ve had any involvement with public education? Did you attend public schools? Do you attend school board meetings where you live to learn how you can support the schools that YOU own?
Federal funding of American public schools has dropped from 12% in 2010 to 7% today. The misguided austerity policies of the Obama Administration brought on by the great recession along with other misbegotten bipartisan efforts have left IDEA to wither on the vine. Much of this resulted in the inclusion movement that reduced self-contained special ed classrooms without increasing the number of special ed teachers needed to make inclusion work. As a principal I witnessed this real time. While I consider it a mistake to close DOE, it has too often served as the tool for the misguided standards movement. Those who have served as Secretary of Education since its inception have not been an inspiring bunch. The slow recognition of the failure of high stakes testing and the department’s participation in “choice” funding has resulted in billions in wasted expenditures with little effort on the part of representatives to rectify the problem. The Federal Government is the only entity that would have the resources to pursue meaningful public school reclamation, yet there seems to be little interest. Too many will be left out when it comes to educational opportunity and the Trump administration doesn’t really care.
Thanks, Paul. I agree with you. I disagree with much of how they do things, but the laws are critical for a variety of programs, and those who want to end the DOE want to end public ed. to. That’s scary.