Isolation & Neglect: Disability Advocates Fear Return to a Bleak Past Under HHS

by Beth Hawkins, April 10,2025

Federal law has been clear for decades: The Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act — the landmark set of statutes that guarantee children with disabilities the right to attend public schools — is to be administered by the U.S. Department of Education. Indeed, the law that created the department says it controls IDEA funds and requires it to have an office dedicated to special education. 

Yet in their quest to close the department, President Donald Trump and U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon have said they plan to move special education administration to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and push as much overall responsibility for education as possible to the states. 

Backers of this shift advocate allowing states and districts to use the money as they see fit. “Most IDEA funding should be converted into a no-strings formula block grant targeted at students with disabilities and distributed directly to local education agencies,” the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 recommends. 

One of the red state education leaders pushing to be freed of spending rules, Oklahoma state Superintendent Ryan Walters has even said he wants to use IDEA to fund vouchers for children with disabilities to attend private schools.

Families who use vouchers for private school choice lose IDEA protections for their children. 

Like many of the new administration’s edicts, critics say, much of what has been proposed is likely illegal. And yet, by gutting the agency responsible for enforcing special education laws, Trump and McMahon may get their way. 

“Part of the really challenging moment we are in is on one hand reminding everybody of what’s in the law and what should happen, and then recognizing that we’re living in extrajudicial times where saying, ‘Well it’s in the law, so that can’t happen’ clearly isn’t enough,” says Jennifer Coco, interim executive director of the Center for Learner Equity, which advocates for high-quality special education. “There’s been a pretty broad pronouncement that this administration is thinking about moving [special education] anyway.”

Concerns about those plans fall into two broad areas.

First, moving responsibility for students with disabilities to HHS means taking oversight away from experts in specialized instruction and handing it to an agency ill-equipped to administer non-medical programs. With its own mass firings under the direction of Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — who continues to promote a disproven link between vaccines and autism — HHS will be hard-pressed to adequately attend to children’s health, much less their education, say disability advocates.

Second, advocates predict that states and districts, freed of oversight and rules about spending IDEA dollars, will consign increasing numbers of disabled students to segregated special education classrooms. This raises fears of a reversal of decades-long efforts to integrate students with disabilities with their general-education peers whenever possible and returning to the pre-IDEA norm of isolation and institutionalization. 

It could even mean “making some determinations that we just don’t think [some kids are] capable of learning,” says Coco. “Even if the law says you can’t do that, we have enough examples in our history where decisionmakers have a tendency to go back to that in a way that’s really harmful to kids.” 

Currently, the Education Department oversees the distribution of about 10% of school funding nationwide. By law, most of that money goes to states to pay for specific services. Title I funds help offset the cost of educating children from low-income families, for example, while other grants pay for instruction for English learners and teacher training. 

It is unclear whether McMahon has the authority to deviate from requiring funds to be spent according to established guidelines. The legal guardrails on IDEA funds may be the toughest to skirt. If the secretary ultimately loosens the rules, advocates fear state and local officials will be quick to segregate many more special education students from their general-education peers. 

Before the department’s creation in 1979, children with disabilities were the purview of the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, says Weade James, senior director for K-12 education policy at the liberal Center for American Progress. 

They were typically denied the opportunity to learn in regular classrooms — and often could not attend school at all. No one monitored the quality of instruction. 

“We’ve been down this road before,” says James. “When you leave this up to the states, those things go unchecked. Reverting back to that reverts back to segregation.”

Today, two-thirds of special education students spend 60% or more of their school day in classrooms with their non-disabled peers where, as the law intended, they are most likely to receive grade-level instruction. Keeping them in what IDEA terms this “least restrictive environment” often requires parental advocacy and legal oversight. 

Congress has never funded special education anywhere near the level it promised when it passed IDEA, leaving states to come up with the lion’s share of the money. Most school systems still have to divert general education dollars to make up shortfalls. 

Because of this — and despite federal requirements that they not reduce special education spending, except in narrow circumstances — states and districts are frequently on the lookout for ways to cut costs. 

One example: In 2016, a Houston Chronicle investigation found that Texas education officials had for years threatened to sanction districts that identified more than 8.5% of their students as having disabilities that merited an individualized education program, the legal document spelling out how their needs would be met. Nationwide, some 15% qualify for services. 

Advocates complained about the number of children — including students who are blind, deaf, hearing-impaired or medically fragile — going unserved. But until the Chronicle’s investigation, the department failed to intervene. In recent weeks, the division that investigates complaints when students’ rights are violated has been decimated by mass firings. 

Also stripped to bare-bones staffing were the parts of the agency dedicated to researching strategies for educating disabled students and training their teachers. This, too, is likely to fuel segregation because poorly equipped educators often resort to sending a challenged student out of general education. 

“It is easier for the adults involved to remove children with disabilities when they can’t or won’t support those kids,” says Carrie Gillispie, senior policy analyst at the think tank New America. “If the adults in the room don’t have the resources they need, it’s easier to remove the child.”

Other endangered services include Medicaid reimbursement for in-school therapies and health care for children who are medically fragile or have chronic conditions; early childhood services that diagnose youngsters at ages when interventions are likely to have the most profound impact; and vocational programs to help older students become independent and enter the workforce.

Unable to get local or state officials to enforce their kids’ rights, and effectively shut out of the department’s complaints process, affluent parents will increasingly turn to the courts, Gillispie predicts. 

“But for the families with fewer means and less social capital, it’s going to be especially hard,” she says. “Every month is a big time period for kids. A little kid waiting a month or two for education, accessible education, can mean a big difference for really young kids.” 

Read this article on The 74 website here.