Looking Ahead: Potential Consequences of Dismantling the U.S. Department of Education

VOICEOVER: This is a webinar for “Looking Ahead: Potential Consequences of Dismantling the U.S. Department of Education.”

JINNY KIM: Welcome to the webinar. My name is Jinny Kim. I’m the managing attorney at Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund. Also known as DREDF. We believe that disability rights are civil rights. We are a national law and policy center dedicated to protecting and advancing disability civil and human rights. Today, we will be going through four topics. First, an overview of the Department of Education. Second, examples of Office of Special Education programs, also known as OSEP, oversight and enforcement. Third, the reductions in force, government shutdown, and the dismantling. And fourth, what parents, students and professionals should know and what you can do. We do have an ambitious plan of getting through our slides and your questions in the next hour, which means that we may have to shortcut some questions because of time. If we don’t get to your questions, do know that our contact information is at the back of the slides. With that I’m going to turn it over to Denise. We’ll do introductions of ourselves and start with an overview of the Department of Education.

DENISE MARSHALL: Thank you so much, Jinny. I’m really pleased to be here today on behalf of COPAA and to partner with DREDF, one of our long-time allies in this work on this presentation. So if you’re not familiar with COPAA, and I know many of you are, I saw on the report that some of you are current COPAA members, so welcome. But if you’re not, just so you know, we’d like to say that COPAA is where the movement for education equity finds its strength. We are unique and somewhat unparalleled in the sense that we have members all across the country. We have over 3600 who really work to unite, or who unite to protect and enforce the legal and civil rights of students with disabilities and their families. We do all kinds of work throughout the year through our committees. We have a very active and work board, and 69% of our members are family members of students with disabilities or have lived experience themselves as a recipient of services. So there’s a lot of passion in our work, and we typically work to do one of three things: to help connect people through our membership discussion listservs, our conference, our training and also advocate through the courts in the form of amicus briefs and systemic legal cases, which I’ll talk a little bit about today. And then learning through, again, our conference and many of our online opportunities, but also member-to-member. So if you’re not familiar with COPAA, please do check us out. Next slide.

So as somehow I think our slides got switched there, Jinny, so Jinny went over this already, the four areas that we’re going to cover today, so we’ll move to the next slide.

So in case you’re not familiar with the tasks that the U.S. Department of Education is obligated to do, we thought we’d spend a little time just giving a little overview of the types of things that they do there, much of which is obligated for them to do under statute. And that’s a little different than some of the other administrative agencies. But Congress, in its wisdom, gave the Department of Education several jobs when it was formed, and it was formed back in the 1970s, shortly after the creation and the passage of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act when we know that states were not able to serve or just plainly were not serving students with disabilities. So next slide, please.

So because Congress created… well, first of all, Congress… the Department was created by a congressional act in 1979. Because of that, it can only be closed, or its functions transferred, by an act of Congress, not by an Executive Order or other actions that in effect amount to the same result. And we say that last part because it appears that this interagency agreement structure that they’re trying at the moment to use to parcel off different agencies, or different parts of the agencies to other administrative agencies, is an attempt at an end around the requirement for Congress to be the one that makes the decision to close the Department of Education. So they’re responsible for special education oversight and administration. And again, that is coded in the IDEA. They administer all the Title I funding to low-income schools, and they also administer student federal loans. Not on that list, but equally important, is that they administer other types of grants that competitive processes under Part D, which provide for our parent information and training centers, and also research and other types of activities, all aimed at bettering the education of students with disabilities and helping to close the gap between students with disabilities and their same-age peers without disabilities. Next slide, please.

So under Part B, the secretary of education has the obligation to not only provide funding for the FAPE provisions, but to assure that the states and districts are providing FAPE. Which the states and districts also have an obligation to do. The congressional funding and appropriations are outlined in the statute. There’s a current attempt at the moment for block grants, which would run counter to the explicit purposes that are included in the law at the moment. And there’s a very complex formula for how states receive their funding. At this point, I believe the current level of funding is 12%, which is far below that which congress promised of 40%. So, and the Department of Education is also responsible for Section 619, which is preschool funding and implementation of preschool special education. Next slide.

So again, the Department enforces the idea. They enforce Section 504 of the Rehab Act and they provide those federal funding. They also have an arm which is the office for Civil Rights, which investigates complaints of civil right violations. Now those violations, OCR is obligated to do Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and also Section 504 of the Rehab Act. They do not have explicit jurisdiction over IDEA, but they do sometimes, when the complaint, when the facts of the complaint overlap with the obligations under IDEA, they do often, in their settlement agreement, you will see sometimes the requirement for FAPE under IDEA also mentioned, or also addressed. There’s also the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, OESE, which administers most notably, the Every Student Succeed Act, which is the most recent iteration of that law, which provides the structure for how states are to and the funding for how states are to provide services to all students. And, of course, we know that students with disabilities are general education students as well and that any services and supports they receive under IDEA or 504 are designed to help them meet the same standards that other students who do not have disabilities meet under the law. And then, of course, there’s OSERS, which include the rehabilitative services arm, RSA, as well as OSEP. At current, some of those offices as I mentioned before, have been moved out of the Department of Education, through the interagency agreement. At present, the OSERS and OSEP have not been moved. They are and OCR. They all still reside under the Department of Education as their administrative agency. Next slide.

So OESE is one of the agencies that was moved to Labor. The Department, in part, and they, again, as I said, do the pre-K through 12 programs under Elementary and Secondary Education Act, currently known as the Every Student Succeeds Act. They do Title I, rural education programs, the programs that support mental health services, programs that support migrant and unhoused students, and all students with disabilities, again, who qualify are general education students. Now, you know, moving this out of education to our way of thinking segregates the responsibility for students with disabilities away from that of students in the general population, and we do not see that Labor has the expertise to do what they need to do, which is different than the interagency agreement, at least in COPAA’s view, is different than the interagency agreement under WIOA, or The Workforce Innovation Opportunity Act, where Labor and Ed. Both played a role and had the responsibility and expertise to add to the to what was happening. We don’t see that here, and, of course, there is very little information about how that will actually work for us to know. Next slide.

And OSERS, which also includes the Rehabilitation Services Administration, or RSA, which focuses a lot on transitioning students, and the Office of Special Education Programs, or OSEP, which monitors the IDEA and serves, you know, the 7.5 million students with disabilities, as well as another couple million of students under Section 504. And again, RSA is the agency that ensures students with disabilities have access to services, transition services to prepare for that independence and employment, that is a goal of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Next slide.

So again, OSEP in particular oversees the implementation of IDEA, and while we know there certainly could be an improvement in that, and we have worked along with DREDF and many of our allies to try to improve the monitoring that occurs, and I think if you look at some of the most recent monitoring reports in the states, I think that they’re much more detailed and outline some of the issues. But whether or not they have teeth to make a difference is still something we need to work on and move forward. But the key here is that we need the opportunity to move forward, to continue to make it better. And that should not be at the it’s not an either/or thing who, you know, whether or not it’s the federal government or whether or not it’s the states. It’s both. Both have the obligation under the law and should be moving things forward for students with disabilities. So OSEP also provides technical assistance not only to those states but to the general public. Anyone who uses the letters to, you know, anonymous and letters to MOMA and the letters to Marshall, and whoever else has letters out there, uses the technical assistance provided by OSEP. And they also often are behind the scenes e-mailing and answering questions that way as well. So there’s quite a lot that happens typically through OSEP that has not been happening for several months now due to the see-sawing, you know, letting people go, firing people, bringing them back, et cetera. But right now, we know that it’s a greatly diminished, if not decimated department, even though it still does exist. Next slide.

Again, OCR is under the Department of Education. It’s a very important arm. We know that there are a couple of states that have looked at making their own OCR kind of entities, and while that’s fine, in our mind it does not replace the obligations of the investigation of civil rights complaints and public education institutions, and those who receive federal funding. There needs to be oversight with that and in 2024, there was 23,000 complaints, with a majority falling under disability or sex based discrimination. So we already covered that they don’t have explicit authority under IDEA, but they have provided some very important and helpful investigations and resolution agreements. If you could move to the next slide, I’ll give you just a couple of examples.

One is that they handle the civil rights data collection, or the CDRC, which comes out every year, and which we can plainly see the overrepresentation of students with disabilities and students of color, not only in segregation of placements, but also in the overuse of exclusionary discipline. And they also oversee Title VI, discrimination based on race, color and national origin, Title IX, and Section 504 in the ADA, as I mentioned before directly related to discrimination based on disability. Some examples of the OCR impact in federal… I mean, in Frederick, Maryland, they did come out with a resolution agreement around the overuse of restraint seclusion, and indicated that students who were subjected to this were denied FAPE because, as we know, if they’re sitting in a seclusion room or down the hall with four people on top them using a restraint, then they’re not learning. They’re not in their seat. They’re not in their classroom. And that came out shortly after a lawsuit that COPAA had with the shoot another county in Maryland whose name is escaping me at this moment, but we were successful in getting an agreement with that county, and shortly thereafter, Maryland as a whole banned the use of seclusion rooms in its public schools and formed a task force to assure that restraint was dropping. So it can have a really important effect, and should not be underestimated. There were also another example is that they resolved, in 2024, an investigation of allegations that the Apache Junction School District in Colorado was discriminating against students with emotional disabilities by requiring them to earn points to be able to go to any of their non   academic services, including art, music, library and physical education. Well, one of the points of making sure discrimination doesn’t occur is to make sure that there’s equal treatment and equal benefit for students. So that was in violation there, and they were able to come to agreement with the district and end that. So, you know, yes, there has been a decimation of OCR recently, although we just heard yesterday that they’re calling back 250 or so people, and the see   sawing of their, you know, ability to implement and take care of the obligations that they have under law should in no way deter us from continuing to file OCR complaints when we know that there is an alleged instance or pattern of discrimination going on in a state. We need to continue to file. We need to continue to push them to meet their obligations, and from our way of thinking, the fact that they brought people back means that they’ve acknowledged that there was maybe some ill thought in the firing of all of those folks, when there is such a backlog and so many complaints to investigate as well. So with that, I will now turn it over to Karma, and she’ll take you through the next section.

KARMA QUICK-PANWALA: Thank you, Denise. My name is Karma Quick-Panwala, and I’m the Director of Children And Family Services Advocacy Services here at DREDF. I want you to take you through some examples of where OSEP’s oversight is so vitally important because there have been so many examples of the need for these agencies within the Department of Education. So if we could move to the next slide, please.

As Denise mentioned, OSEP, the Office of Special Education Programs in the United States Department of Education provides technical assistance to the states and to parents and families. It provides data collection so we understand the full impact of the IDEA and how it is being used. We understand that there are state monitoring visits to ensure compliance and oversight within the state departments and implementing the IDEA at the state and local levels. Next slide.

So here are some examples. And there’s quite a few. So please bear with me. But we want to convey how important it is that we have federal oversight within the Department of Education. In Pennsylvania, prior to 2020, there was a statewide failure in public school districts and charter schools to accommodate and educate students with complex medical needs and complex disabilities. In Texas, for 13 years, the State Department of Education capped the rate of students made eligible for special education at 8.5% statewide. They also threatened to withhold state funding from any local school districts or local education agencies that made any eligibility rate over 8.5% eligible for special education services. We believe that that cap on special education eligibility runs contrary to a state and local school district’s obligations and child find under the IDEA. Next slide.

In Virginia, roughly half of all the IEPs in the state lacked annual goals. And the goals are the accountability measure within the IEP. That’s how we know our students are making progress and reaching the general education and age   appropriate goals and abilities and lessons, curriculum, that their non disabled peers are. In the City of New York, there was a widespread failure across the school district to meet the time lines for eligibility and evaluations, reevaluations, and the 30-day time line for IEP meetings. Next slide.

Continued examples of OSEP oversight involved Illinois in 2022 when there were extremely high rates of restraint and seclusion of disabled students. There was no notice or information provided to the parents and families of these students of the restraints and seclusions that were taking place, and almost no data collection was taken as well. And in Alaska, students were segregated and taken out of the their classrooms for any behaviors, including behaviors that were non-threatening and not violent. Next slide.

In Connecticut, school districts in the state reported 46,000 incidents of restrained and seclusion. 18 students required medical attention as a result of inappropriate restraints and seclusion at their school. And in the State of California, ongoing, despite AB2657, which was passed by our state legislature in 2018 regarding the limits on restraint and seclusion, and the implementation of proper behavior supports and services, plus training and appropriate response to behaviors has been inconsistent statewide. California Department of Education’s oversight has been inconsistent between special education local plan areas and school districts alike. OSEP’s involvement has been critical in ensuring we have consistent statewide implementation against restraint and seclusion. Next slide.

So here are the things to consider. If OSEP is dismantled or taken away or moved to another agency, it will still require another act of Congress to move OSEP to another department or agency or dismantle it all together. As Denise mentioned earlier, we’ll be looking at block grants to state departments of education rather than specific allocations, which means there’s no control or transparency on where IDEA funding will go or how that IDEA funding will be used by the states. There is likely to be an unequal enforcement of IDEA across the states, especially on systematic issues, given the examples we just reviewed together, you can see how there could be a wide discrepancy, even on the number of students that are made eligible for special education under federal law. The IDEA will remain in effect. It would take an act of Congress to eliminate the IDEA, but it remains in effect no matter what happens to the United States Department of Education. There will simply be no federal oversight and it will be up to individual parents and families and students to enforce the IDEA. So documentation is key. Obtaining education records for students, making sure that important communications are written or sent by email, and recording IEP meetings if it is possible in your state. Next slide. I’ll pass this over to Jinny.

JINNY KIM: Thank you, Karma. I’m now going to describe what’s been happening with the government since this Administration has taken over. Next slide, please.

Prior to this administration, there were 4,133 employees in the Department of Education. In March 2025, there was a layoff of 1,400 employees, nearly half of the Department of Education. Which meant that about 2200 employees remained. At that time, the education department also announced that seven of the 12 offices of civil rights offices will be closed. In response to those actions by the Department, several lawsuits were filed by our friends. The first lawsuit is Carter v. U.S. Department of Education. And that lawsuit challenged the ab difficult indication of the Department abdication of the department’s responsibilities to process civil rights complaints. That case was filed in the district court, in the District of Columbia by our friends, the National Center for Youth Law, as well as the Southern Poverty Law Center, and COPAA, Denise’s organization, as counsel. COPAA also was an organizational plaintiff in this case, along with seven families. In that case, they filed what’s called a preliminary injunction, which means to immediately stop the decision to abandon thousands of OCR investigations. The case was stayed in July of this year, pending other cases I’m going to describe next. The second case that was filed is Somerville v. Trump. That case was filed on behalf of educators, school districts and teachers’ unions. The case was filed in the Massachusetts District Court, and it challenged the mass layoffs and the ability of the department to restructure or eliminate the department without congressional approval. Another case that was filed was New York v. McMahon. That case was also filed in the Massachusetts District Court. And that case was filed on behalf of states, school districts and teachers’ union. Both Somerville and New York were consolidated and now that case is New York v. McMahon, which is still pending in the Massachusetts District Court. In that case, in May, they filed what’s called a preliminary injunction, which means they asked the court to immediately stop the layoffs that were happening. The District Court granted that injunction, and that decision was upheld by the appellate court, the First Circuit. In July, the Administration appealed that decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the U.S. Supreme Court lifted the two lower court decisions, and that decision was made while the underlying case is still going on. The decision was made by the Supreme Court without a hearing or an opinion. And that cleared the path to where we are now. Next slide, please.

The longest government shutdown of 43 days ended on November 12, 2025. During the shutdown, nearly all staff and OCERs, the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services received a RIF notice, a layoff notice. OCR staff also received RIF notices. In response to that, a lawsuit was filed in San Francisco by staff unions, and a federal judge in San Francisco blocked the mass layoff during the shutdown. As part of the deal to end the shutdown, the thousands of layoffs of federal employees were reversed and further layoffs are on pause, and there can be no further federal layoffs until January 30th, 2026. The federal government is funded through January 30th, 2026. Next slide, please.

On November 18th, the Department of Education entered in to what’s called an interagency agreement to move parts of the Department to other agencies. As part of that agreement, Labor will now move administer the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, OESE, as you heard Denise describe, and the Office of Postsecondary Education, so Title I and Title II funding. Labor is also going to be known as post post-secondary partnership. That’s what they’re calling themselves. The Department of the Interior is also managing the Indian Education Division. The Department of State is managing the Indian Education Division, and HHS, or the Health and Human Services, is a foreign medical accreditation partnership, and child care access means parents in school partnership. Next slide, please.

I’m going to turn it over to Karma who’s going to talk about what parents, students and professionals should know and what you can do.

KARMA QUICK-PANWALA: Thank you, Jinny. Just so you know, what we’re going to talk about now are things are steps that almost everybody can take, and we strongly encourage parents to know and understand their rights and the process under federal and state special education laws. So let’s move forward and look at the different options that all of us can use as a community moving forward. Next slide, please.

Families: Understand that the right to file a state complaint is very much a valid right under federal law. As I mentioned earlier, the IDEA is still in effect, and it will not be taken away. So continue to file state complaints if there are violations of or failure to implement the IEP or any other procedural or even other violations of the IDEA or your state education code. There’s still a right to file for due process hearings at the state level and administrative courts. And ED   OCR complaints can still be filed when discrimination occurs. As we’ve mentioned already, the OCR does not have authority to investigate violations of the IDEA but it absolutely investigates and determines if disability discrimination or other discrimination under Title VI, Title IX and other civil rights laws has occurred. State court suits where appropriate under the education code, or any other state civil rights laws are still possible, and the Pennsylvania Senate has proposed legislation for a state-level Office of Civil Rights in the Pennsylvania Department of Education. Continue policy advocacy within your own state legislature, and look for your state’s Advisory Commission on Special Education, which is mandated by the IDEA. Find COPAA members in each state and territory, especially as COPAA is active and policy advocacy at the federal and state levels both, and COPAA also has a government relations committee. Look to your protection and advocacy organizations. Those are often named Disability Rights State, so Disability Rights California. Disability Rights Massachusetts. Disability Rights Iowa, and Illinois, you have Equip For Equality. Look to your local education agency, your local school district’s Board of Education, as well as your state’s Board of Education. Find out the ways to contact them and let your voice be known. Next slide, please.

In California, continue to get involved at the local level or at the County Office of Education level in the community advisory committee for special education, often known as CAC. Contact your School Board and contact the California Department of Education or State Board of Education. Continue to follow the State’s Advisory Commission on Special Education. Make brown act or public records requests of public agencies, and follow your state education budget. You can contact your assembly members and your senate members. You can follow hearings in the state assembly and the state senate and give input and comment on legislation impacting students with disabilities in California. And though it is not without controversy, the California Office for Civil Rights is coming in 2026. There will be an appointed office with a Board and staff. We do not yet know what this would look like and we’re equally waiting to see what will happen. We’re hopeful that there will continue to be a way to hold your school districts accountable when necessary and exercise our rights within a state level office for Civil Rights. Next slide, please.

Here’s what is so important to remember for everyone and every family. Sometimes families will have to move across state lines, and regardless, the IDEA will remain in place. Always look to what the IDEA requires and what it says. It can still be enforced just at the local and family level. So what does the IDEA require for some seeding school districts when students move across the state lines?  No matter what, school districts are required to provide FAPE at all times. They must provide comparable services to the previous IEP that was in place and in consultation with parents and the education rights holder. And until the new receiving school district adopts the previous IEP or conducts an evaluation, if necessary, and develops a new IEP consistent with the state and federal law, the obligation to provide a free appropriate public education remains. Next slide. In California, AB1412 was recently passed. It means that for military families who frequently move, receiving school districts in California must proactively work with families to obtain the student’s special education records from the previous school district. School districts may also work with the family to use unofficial records or diagnosis that will help to develop an IEP providing FAPE until the education records from the previous school district are received. At the end of the day, the receiving school district must be far more proactive in getting the records and information to provide FAPE than currently in place under the IDEA. Next slide, please.

And with that, we will take questions now. But if you have any questions or concerns for DREDF, please contact us here. You can see our contact information as well as our social contact information. So please find us, please follow us. And I believe Denise will also have some information about COPAA to share, likewise.

DENISE MARSHALL: Well, thank you, everybody. It’s a pleasure to have participated and it’s COPAA, two A’s. Thank you.

VOICEOVER: This concludes the webinar.

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