The details vary, but one theme emerges repeatedly: Obtaining support often depends less on a child’s needs than on a parent’s ability to understand and navigate complex education laws and systems, ask the right questions and persist when answers are unclear.

Last winter, NCLD convened a focus group of Family Leadership Council members representing families across the country. Despite differences in geography and school systems, parents described remarkably similar experiences, including opaque processes, inconsistent communication and a system that left them feeling responsible for navigating special education on behalf of their children. One participant described it as “playing a game I didn’t have the rules to.”

Parents shouldn’t be required to act as case managers

Nearly every parent described being handed forms to sign with little explanation. One mother recalled sitting in meetings “with people who had language I didn’t understand so I couldn’t respond in an educated way.” Another parent spent hours building her own data presentations to prove her child wasn’t making progress — work that felt necessary to ensure someone was monitoring it. 

In special education, families cannot be true partners when they do not understand the rules, processes or terminology shaping decisions about their child’s education. Collaboration requires transparency. Families cannot participate as equal partners when they lack clear information about how and why decisions are being made.  

When schools rely on parents to push for services using sophisticated advocacy skills, that widens inequities for children whose caregivers lack time, resources or English proficiency. has consistently documented disparities in special education access and parent participation based on socioeconomic resources, language proficiency and knowledge of school systems.

Many children in the focus group had more than one disability. Yet parents repeatedly described schools treating a single diagnosis as a catch-all explanation for every challenge a child faced. One mother shared that her district insisted her son’s autism accounted for all his learning needs, despite clear signs of dyslexia. Another parent’s child was initially labeled with a “processing disorder,” only to later receive diagnoses of dyslexia, ADHD and anxiety after an outside evaluation. Their experiences reflect a broader reality: Learning disabilities with conditions such as ADHD, autism spectrum disorder and anxiety disorders — making comprehensive evaluation essential.��

Relying on a single diagnosis delays identification, intervention and learning. Meanwhile, the child continues to struggle academically, emotionally and socially.

Outside evaluations and parent advocacy shouldn’t be the only path to clarity

Five of the 14 children discussed in the focus group received outside evaluations because parents felt their concerns were not being fully heard or addressed. These evaluations were expensive, time-consuming and often the only way families could get answers. Parents described the relief of finally understanding what was going on — and the frustration that it took so much effort to get there.

When schools resist diagnoses or updating evaluations, families with resources find workarounds, while families without resources have no choice but to wait. And waiting has consequences, including widening skill gaps, increased anxiety, and a growing sense of failure in children who are trying their hardest. They are not lazy or unintelligent; they’re struggling with needs that have not yet been adequately identified or addressed.��

One of the most powerful themes was how many parents grew into advocates not just for their own children, but for others. Several now work in organizations supporting families navigating the special education system. They do this because they know “what happens when children don’t get the services they need.” They have witnessed the consequences firsthand.

But their stories raise an important question: Why should families have to become advocates simply to secure appropriate support? Parent advocacy is valuable, but it should be a safeguard when systems fail, not the force that makes them work.

What schools can do differently starting now: 

The stories parents shared point to clear, actionable steps schools can take to make early learning disability identification more transparent, equitable and respectful of families’ experiences. 

• Communicating in plain language. Parents need to understand evaluations, timelines, and their rights before making decisions.

• Evaluating the whole child. One diagnosis should not prevent further assessment when concerns remain.

• Make progress transparent. Families should receive regular, understandable updates about goals, growth and next steps.

The parents in NCLD’s focus group were persistent, resourceful and determined. Many eventually secured the services their children needed. But children should not receive different opportunities simply because one family knows how to navigate special education while another does not. 

Advocacy matters. Yet it should function as a safeguard, not a requirement. Schools cannot eliminate every obstacle families face, but they can ensure that access to services depends on student needs rather than parental advocacy skills. That’s not just good practice. It’s a matter of educational equity.

The urgency could not be greater. According to the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), only 31% of fourth graders performed at or above the proficient level in reading, while 40% scored below the basic level, the highest percentage since 2002.

The Science of Reading has transformed what educators know about teaching children to read. The challenge now is no longer one of knowledge. It is .

That implementation gap has given rise to what we call the dyslexia industrial complex. This is not a criticism of dyslexia advocates, researchers, or the many organizations improving outcomes for students. Rather, it is the rapidly expanding ecosystem of evaluations, tutoring, advocacy organizations, curriculum publishers, professional development, certification programs, legislation and private intervention that has emerged to address reading difficulties. 

At its best, this ecosystem has transformed lives. At its worst, it reveals an uncomfortable truth: Public education has become increasingly dependent on external systems to provide what should be coherent, evidence-based literacy instruction within schools.

Families experience this fragmentation every day. When a child struggles to read, parents are often encouraged to seek private neuropsychological evaluations costing thousands of dollars. Although a diagnosis can unlock services and accommodations, obtaining one through public schools is often slow and inconsistent. States such as New York have responded by expanding insurance coverage for private dyslexia evaluations, expanding access for families. 

Yet these policies also reveal a larger problem. Rather than building schools’ capacity to identify and support struggling readers, they increasingly rely on outside providers to fill the gaps. The same pattern extends into instruction.

Districts now face an overwhelming marketplace of literacy programs, intervention products, tutoring services and professional development offerings. Not all evidence claims are created equal. Too often, districts assume that materials labeled standards aligned are also aligned with the Science of Reading. They are not. 

Standards define what students should learn, but they say little about how reading should be taught. Schools can adopt programs that satisfy accountability requirements while failing to reflect decades of cognitive science and reading research.

Even within schools, fragmentation persists. Multi-tiered systems of support are intended to provide increasingly intensive instruction, but core curricula, intervention programs and supplemental resources often come from different publishers, each with different instructional routines, terminology, assessments, scope and sequence.

Instead of reinforcing one another, these programs operate in parallel. Students move between disconnected instructional experiences rather than progressing through a coherent continuum of learning. Teachers must navigate multiple systems instead of developing expertise within one aligned framework.

The irony is striking. The Science of Reading has never been better understood, yet implementation has rarely been more fragmented.

When classroom instruction fails to operate as an integrated system, families naturally seek support through tutoring, private evaluations, enrichment programs and outside intervention. This is true for all students, not just those with dyslexia. The marketplace grows not because schools lack dedicated educators, but because they lack coherent systems that consistently translate research into classroom practice.

Awareness was the first step. Implementation is the next.

The next phase of literacy reform is not about discovering new science. It is about implementing the science we already have.

We’ve long described this challenge as a three-legged stool.

The first leg is research. Decades of cognitive science have shown how children learn to read. We know the importance of explicit instruction in phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, morphology, fluency, language comprehension and knowledge building.

The second leg is professional learning. States and districts have invested millions of dollars training educators in the Science of Reading. Teachers are learning the instructional practices proven most effective. For students with dyslexia, this means greater access to explicit, systematic, and cumulative instruction in phonology, phonics, word recognition, fluency and language comprehension.

But the third leg is often missing: High-quality, aligned instructional materials allow teachers to consistently implement the research they have been trained to use.

Too often, educators leave excellent professional learning only to return to classrooms equipped with instructional materials grounded in different instructional philosophies. They are expected to bridge the gap by rewriting lessons, creating supplemental resources, adapting intervention materials and reconciling conflicting instructional approaches.

Imagine asking a surgeon to attend training on a new procedure but then requiring her to use outdated instruments in the operating room. No one would expect successful implementation. Yet this is exactly what happens when educators receive Science of Reading training but return to classrooms without materials designed to support what they have learned.

We know what works. We train teachers to do it. Then we ask them to succeed with materials that don’t align with that training. Until that changes, implementation will continue to depend on extraordinary teachers overcoming ordinary systems.

Rather than introducing isolated programs that require students and teachers to learn new instructional routines, districts should prioritize interventions that complement their core literacy framework. Effective interventions reinforce, not compete with, the language, instructional routines, vocabulary and skill progressions students experience during Tier 1 instruction.

Some schools are already demonstrating what this looks like. At P.S. 125 Ralph Bunche School in Harlem, educators that support striving readers while complementing their broader literacy framework. The program aligns with their tiered interventions. It reinforces explicit decoding, morphology, vocabulary, background knowledge and comprehension through linguistically rich texts.

Publishers also have a responsibility to reduce fragmentation. Too often, instructional programs are marketed as stand-alone solutions, leaving districts to determine how they fit within existing literacy systems. Publishers should provide transparent alignment charts that show how their materials connect to widely adopted core curricula, intervention programs and assessments. These crosswalks should show how instructional routines, vocabulary, scope and sequence, and assessments reinforce one another so districts can build coherent literacy systems instead of disconnected collections of products.

Districts should not have to become curriculum engineers.

Now we must transform how schools put that knowledge into practice.

The dyslexia industrial complex did not emerge because educators failed or because families demanded too much. It emerged because public education left gaps that others stepped in to fill. Those organizations have played an essential role, and many will continue to do so. But the long-term goal should not be to make the marketplace bigger. It should be to make schools stronger.

My son Harry is twice exceptional, a term often used for children who are both gifted and learn differently. Like many kids who think intensely, he did not always fit neatly into the usual categories adults tend to understand. He was curious, capable and full of potential, but the places where children are often expected to find confidence did not always feel like the right fit.

Then chess entered the picture.

At first, it looked like a game. A board, some pieces, rules to learn, moves to remember. But the more I watched Harry play, the more I realized that chess was giving him something deeper than an activity. It was giving him an arena.

For children who think or learn differently, that word matters. An arena is not just a place to perform. It is a place to practice. It has structure, boundaries, feedback, challenge and room to improve. For some kids, the right arena can make the difference between feeling constantly measured and finally feeling capable.

Not every child finds confidence on a field, a stage or a basketball court. Not every child feels successful following the same classroom routines or social settings that seem to work for others. Some children need a different kind of place to discover that their mind is not a problem to solve, but a strength to develop.

Chess has a way of making thinking visible. A child makes a move and sees what happens. The feedback is immediate, but it does not have to be humiliating. A lost piece is not a ruined day. A mistake is not a permanent label. It is information.

That may sound simple, but for a child who struggles with frustration, impulsivity, perfectionism or self-doubt it can be powerful.

In school, mistakes can feel public and heavy. A wrong answer on a test, a confusing assignment, a social misstep,or a moment of lost focus can quickly become part of how a child sees himself. Chess gives kids a smaller and safer place to practice the same emotional muscles they need everywhere else.

Pausing before acting, noticing the whole board, considering what might happen next, making a choice, living with the result, learning from it and trying another move are not only chess skills. They are life skills. They are school skills. They are friendship skills. They are the skills children need when something is hard and they want to quit.

This is especially important for neurodivergent children, gifted children, ADHD kids, autistic kids, twice-exceptional kids and children who may be bright but easily overwhelmed.

In chess, a child who rushes may learn to pause. A child who hates losing may learn that losing a piece is not the end of the game. A child who struggles to plan ahead may begin to see that one choice can affect the next three. A child who feels clumsy or out of place in other activities may discover a world where patience, curiosity, pattern recognition and imagination matter.

The goal is not to turn every child into a tournament player, which is where adults can easily get it wrong. Chess loses much of its value when it becomes another pressure system that sorts children into winners and losers.

The gift of chess is not just competition. It is practice.

A child can benefit from chess without trophies, rankings, private coaching or long tournaments. Playing a short game, moving only a few pieces and talking through one decision can matter. The point is not perfect play. The point is giving a child a place to slow down, think and experience progress.

There is also something deeply encouraging about visible improvement. In chess, a child can look back and see growth. A move that seemed impossible last month suddenly makes sense. A mistake that used to happen every game starts to disappear. A child begins to notice, “I am getting better at this.”

For kids who think differently, that realization can be profound. Confidence is not built only by praise, it is built by evidence. Chess gives children evidence that effort can become skill.

This matters in education because schools not only teach content, they shape how children understand themselves as learners. A student who repeatedly feels unsuccessful may begin to believe that effort does not help. But a child who finds even one arena where effort leads to progress may carry that lesson back into the classroom.

That does not mean chess is a cure, a therapy or a universal answer. It is not right for every child. Some will love it and some will not. Some will need a gentle introduction, short sessions, simplified rules or a patient adult sitting nearby. That is okay.

But chess deserves a place in the conversation about how to support kids who do not fit the mold. It is inexpensive and portable. It can be played in classrooms, libraries, afterschool programs, community centers and homes. It can be social or quiet, competitive or casual, simple or endlessly complex.

In writing “Decoding Genius,” I became fascinated by the long history of chess and the extraordinary minds shaped by the game. But the most important lesson for me remains the one I first saw through my son: Chess can help a child feel capable.

For a child who thinks differently, that can be everything.

Unfortunately, our history — and too often our present — shows that many students still do not experience classrooms where educational expertise and civil rights protections work together. 

When a student with a disability is singled out and ridiculed because of disability-related behaviors, or when students with unevaluated disabilities are suspended instead of receiving assessment and support, their rights to educational opportunity are being denied in ways our nation’s laws have long prohibited. Every delay in identifying and correcting these failures deprives students of educational opportunities they cannot recover. 

Students cannot afford confusion about who is responsible for protecting those rights. The Trump administration’s agreement to move responsibility for administering the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act from the U.S. Department of Education to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is based on the mistaken assumption that educational rights can simply be transferred between agencies as an operational function. In reality, doing so risks weakening the protections IDEA was designed to guarantee. 

Similarly, the administration’s agreement to transfer civil rights investigations and resolutions away from the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights to the Department of Justice reflects another significant misconception: that students have time to wait for federal actors to develop the expertise necessary to understand and resolve civil rights concerns in schools quickly, fairly, and in ways that keep students learning. 

Children only get one third grade. One seventh grade. One senior year. Learning is cumulative, and childhood does not pause while governments reorganize. 

A last week to reflect disapproval of some but not all of the responsibility transfers reflected in these interagency agreements.  That vote reflects that these new “agreements” deserve far more attention than a debate over federal bureaucracy. They raise a fundamental question: Do we still understand that students with disabilities are first and foremost students whose right to learn must be protected by both educational expertise and civil rights enforcement? 

For decades, the answer has been yes. 

IDEA, like Brown v. Board of Education and subsequent federal civil rights laws, affirmed that equal educational opportunity is a right. Its most important contribution was recognizing that in schools, disability is fundamentally an educational responsibility requiring skilled instruction, accommodations and schools prepared to help every student learn. 

Helping a child with dyslexia learn to read. Designing instruction that enables a student with autism to participate fully in class. Developing an individualized education program that balances high expectations and meaningful inclusion. These are not intuitive acts. They draw upon decades of scholarship and professional preparation in learning, child development, assessment, curriculum, instructional design, and educational leadership. 

Lawyers protect educational rights. Educators make those rights real. 

For decades, that partnership has shaped our nation’s approach to educational civil rights. Education’s Office for Civil Rights has helped schools understand their obligations, provided technical assistance, resolved complaints without resorting to litigation, monitored compliance and worked to ensure students receive equal educational opportunity. That work requires not only legal expertise but also an understanding of how schools operate, how students learn and how educational systems improve. 

The DOJ plays an essential role through litigation and enforcement, but those responsibilities are fundamentally different from the day-to-day work of helping schools prevent discrimination and resolve problems before students lose years of learning. 

Those functions are complementary, not interchangeable. 

Students learning in school do not experience government through organizational charts. They experience it when a disability evaluation happens on time, or doesn’t; when an accommodation is implemented or postponed; or when a discrimination complaint is resolved before years of instructional time are lost. 

Reasonable people can disagree about the size and organization of the federal government. But educational rights cannot be separated from educational expertise without risking the very outcomes those rights were created to secure. Rights alone do not teach children to read, create inclusive classrooms, or prepare young people for college, careers, and civic life. Skilled educators do. 

And, as this nation learned in and after Brown v. Board of Education, the daily work of ensuring that educators, their administrators and campus counsel understand and apply the legal guarantees of our nation’s civil rights laws is equally essential to ensuring that every student has an equal opportunity to learn free from discrimination. 

We write from different professions. One of us leads a school of education dedicated to improving teaching, learning and the systems that support education. The other, a former assistant secretary of the Office for Civil Rights, leads a law school center committed to strengthening democracy and protecting civil rights. Our work reminds us every day that educational opportunity depends on both educational expertise and legal protections. 

Our nation did not spend half a century moving toward inclusion only to forget the lesson that made that progress possible: educational opportunity is a civil right, and educational rights are strongest when they remain rooted in the institutions whose mission is helping every child learn.

Released this month, the shows the number of students with disabilities spending much of their days in general education classrooms grew by 25% between 2012 and 2024. The largest growth came in the population spending 80% or more of their school days in inclusive settings, in accordance with a federal civil rights law enacted more than 50 years ago.

But the rigorous monitoring and technical assistance provided by the federal Department of Education’s Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services are at risk amid severe staff cuts, reduced state visits and the office’s shift to another agency, say lawmakers who requested the report.

“I’m glad this report was delivered, and was heartened to see a significant increase in the number of students with disabilities being placed in general education classrooms for much of their day,” U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, a Democrat from Virginia, wrote in an email to ����Ӱ��. “But this report makes plain that progress is not being made equally in all places — and that it would be extremely foolish to move oversight over special education programs out of the Department of Education to other agencies that lack the expertise and experience to close those gaps.”

Sens. Kaine and Bernie Sanders of Vermont requested the report as part of a broader examination of where students with disabilities receive their education. In 2025, Kaine was among a group of senators who U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon’s proposal to shift special education out of the Department of Education as a move that will “reverse decades of progress in how we support students with disabilities and their families.” 

On June 16, the move was formalized with . The Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to requests for comment, but in the agreement the agency’s director, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., described the move as a “partnership” that will eliminate bureaucracy, save money and “deliver more effective support for individuals with disabilities and their families.” 

Under the 1975 Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, children with disabilities must be educated alongside their non-disabled peers whenever appropriate. The law aligns with research that shows positive outcomes from inclusive educational practices. A foundational by the National Center on Educational Outcomes found that up to 85% of special education students can meet the same achievement standards as other students if they are given specially designed instruction, access, support and accommodations.

also shows that students with disabilities in inclusive general ed classrooms do better academically and socially, pursue postsecondary education, and are more likely to get a competitive job and live independently.

Disabilities studied in the GAO report include autism, hearing impairment, visual impairments, orthopedic impairments and intellectual impairments among others.

The report shows modest but steady gains in national inclusion rates, but progress was uneven. In 42 states and the District of Columbia the number of students with disabilities spending at least 40% of their time in mainstream classrooms increased, but in North Dakota and Nevada that share of students decreased by about 3%. Inclusion rates also went down in Minnesota, Alabama, Ohio and Georgia over the 12-year period.��

Educators in some states pointed to district staffing shortages to explain why some students with disabilities who require an aide have not joined general education peers. Others noted that a school’s success largely depends on its leadership.

“[School culture] is the No. 1 issue,” a school official told GAO investigators. “The [principal] is the most powerful benefit or hindrance to inclusion. Unfortunately, a lot of principals do not have special education background or depth of knowledge in special ed.”

Advocates worry that moving special education services to HHS will erode a core element of the IDEA.

“It’s a very real separation,” said Jennifer Coco, interim executive director of the New York-based Center for Learner Equity. “What will make inclusion happen is setting an expectation that students with disabilities are students first. We start with the presumption that they’re going to be in the general education classrooms being taught by general ed teachers.” 

Until this year, the federal Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services has visited and monitored 10 states a year to ensure that the IDEA is being enforced and to offer support and assistance where it is not. Those state visits are expected to drop to two per year, Coco said, which means less insight into how students are being educated and less support at the state and district levels.

“All of the foundational pieces at the federal level that drive the results we see in this report have been dismantled,” she said. The Department of Education’s staff cuts and decision to move special education services is “pulling the rug out from underneath all of us in terms of how we’re going to sustain the progress that this report shows us.”

Advocates are also concerned that by housing special education services in HHS — whose director drew criticism with his that children with autism “will never pay taxes” — will add stigma for students with disabilities.

“It matters who’s overseeing special education,” said Lisa Mosko Barros, founder of the California-based advocacy organization Speducational. “The tone they set matters.” Kennedy’s remarks about people with autism indicate a “mindset that is concerning,” Barros added. “It’s like enlisting the support of a hospital to oversee a school district.”

We deeply understand how the U.S. Department of Education protects and supports children with disabilities. Laurie served as the director of the Office of Special Education Programs in the first Trump administration. Stephanie led that office in the George W. Bush administration. We both agree that the federal department is key to ensuring every child deserves a fair chance to get a quality education and the opportunity to reach their full potential.

That is why we oppose moving the office that oversees special education to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. We are concerned this step, announced last month, is being driven by a broader push to close the Education Department, rather than by clear evidence that it would improve services for children.

The proposals to dismantle the department are framed as “returning education to the states.” Yet this proposal simply splits federal education responsibilities across multiple agencies, separating expertise that is meant to work together. It risks placing education decisions for children with disabilities in an agency primarily built for health programs and shifting oversight of school-age programs to agencies whose core mission is not K-12 learning.

These changes won’t reduce bureaucracy or empower states. They would add confusion, duplicative processes and hurdles, and inconsistent guidance across agencies. That creates a more fragmented system that is harder for parents, school districts and states to navigate, especially when families are already working to secure timely evaluations, services and coordinated support.

We recognize that the education system is not perfect, and improvement is needed. But meaningful reform must be grounded in facts about how the system actually works and the role the federal government plays within it.��

States and local school districts already control the vast majority of education decisions. The federal department does not set curriculum, determine reading lists, decide how subjects are taught or control teacher certification.

What it does is less visible but critically important. It distributes and oversees federal education funding, provides technical assistance to states and districts and ensures accountability when the rights of students are not upheld.

Breaking up the department will affect all students, families and educators. It also carries an outsized risk for children with disabilities, because services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act depend on clear accountability, coordinated implementation and accessible pathways for families when something goes wrong.

More than 8 million students with disabilities (15% of all students) require and currently have the right to special education services. We are talking about children with dyslexia, autism, Down syndrome and other disabilities. These are children who can learn and grow up to become productive members of their communities and taxpayers — if they get the support they need.

They are also kids who, until 50 years ago, were largely excluded from public schools. Most people don’t know that it was federal action, through the enactment of Public Law 94-142 in 1975, that established the right for children with disabilities to attend public schools and receive a free, appropriate public education. That federal role is intrinsic to the success of children with disabilities. It provides essential oversight and technical assistance to states who are not otherwise equipped to implement the law and protect the rights of children with disabilities.

Dismantling the federal role in special education is rolling the dice for children with disabilities. Any breakdown in the system has devastating effects. When learning is delayed, the impact compounds; each missed milestone makes it harder to catch up, creating a ripple effect that can last for years.

For as long as we can remember, special education has had broad support. While we both worked in Republican administrations, we know that families, regardless of party or ideology, want the same thing: a school system that helps every child learn, belong, and succeed. Leaving parents and educators to fend for themselves, without the support they need to navigate a complex system, is not what they are asking for and is not what students need.

This is a moment for parents, families, educators and community members across the political spectrum to pay close attention and speak up. Every person who cares about children has a responsibility to truly understand what is being proposed, ask practical questions about how services and accountability would work, and share your perspective and concerns with state and federal policymakers.

Children need adults to protect consistent support and clear rights. The time to act is not tomorrow. It is today.

Then someone picks up a guitar.

From the first notes, his face transforms, and just like that, he is with us. He sways to the rhythm, eyes alive with an emotion we almost never see in him. In those moments, music gives him something the rest of the world rarely does: the chance to participate and enjoy the moment equally.

I grew up watching this and wondering why. The science, it turns out, is unambiguous. nearly every region of the brain simultaneously. Singing, moving to a beat, even passive listening engages the brain’s centers for emotion, memory and motor function.��

For people with disabilities, this makes music an unusually powerful tool capable of regulating emotions, rewiring neural pathways and opening channels of communication that language cannot reach.

A of intellectually disabled youth in Senegal found that music therapy improved both fine and gross motor skills and reduced social discrimination by fostering inclusion. Healthcare professionals routinely prescribe it for neurological conditions. The evidence is settled. Not uncertain. 

This begs the question of why it is so hard for people with disabilities to access it. And the answer, the honest answer, is that this is a policy failure, not a scientific one. 

are the professionals assigned to work most closely with disabled students, but are trained in behavior management, not in how rhythm and movement support motor development. Music teachers, meanwhile, receive virtually no instruction in adaptive or inclusive techniques. A found a severe lack of resources and training specifically for inclusive music education. In practice, that means music teachers are rarely trained to adapt lessons for students with motor, cognitive, or communication challenges, and paraeducators are not equipped to use music as part of developmental support. 

The result is a cruel paradox: Even when programs exist, the students who stand to gain the most from music are the least likely to receive it.

Fifty years after the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act promised students with disabilities access to a free and appropriate public education, access still depends on local resources, staffing and training. When budgets are stretched, programs like music and the arts can be treated as optional. But for students with disabilities, music is not enrichment. It can be a pathway to confidence, movement, memory and community.��

I saw what that access can look like through in New York City. I first encountered DMF when I performed with the Dalton Chorus at the in 2024. During George Dennehy’s song “The Moment,” I was so focused on his voice that only when the song ended did I fully register that he had been playing the guitar with his feet. What stayed with me was not difference, but sameness: the same joy, nerves, pride and hunger for expression that I feel when I sing.��

DMF is built on the belief that music is a right, not a privilege, and its free online and in-person classes show what that belief looks like in practice. With my family, I later organized Harmony Without Borders, a cross-cultural benefit concert supporting DMF. We brought together Indian and Western music and invited students, teachers, and community members so that more people could see inclusive music not as charity, but as a shared space where everyone can belong equally.

I understood that even more clearly when I volunteered at the DMF in-person classes, sharing Indian and Western solfège and Bollywood dance steps. The response was immediate: Rhythm turned into movement, repetition into confidence, and high-energy music into a room full of attention and connection. Watching that happen made the research feel real. Music engages movement, emotion, memory, and learned patterns all at once. Students with disabilities deserve the same chance to participate in music.

Organizations like DMF have been quietly expanding that access for years. But they were never meant to replace public systems. Their work matters because it shows what is possible. It also shows what is still missing.

This is what brings me back to my uncle. He never received music therapy. He never had adaptive music education. His response to a song is entirely instinctual. I think often about what structured musical support might have unlocked for him or others with cerebral palsy over a lifetime.

That question carries a specific kind of grief, because the support he needed existed. It just never reached him. For my uncle, music is the closest thing he has to a common language with the rest of us. Protecting that connection for my uncle, and making it possible for every student with disabilities in America, requires two things: training teachers to deliver inclusive music education, and defending the funding and oversight that make any of this possible.

New of these schools, shared exclusively with ����Ӱ��, was published Thursday by Education Reimagined, a national nonprofit that helps schools implement . It’s an approach where young people have ownership of their education, learn in their communities and show their knowledge through multiple ways, not just tests, according to the nonprofit. 

Over the 2024-25 school year, Education Reimagined studied in St. Paul, Minnesota; in LaFayette, New York; and in Mukwonago, Wisconsin —  a mix of urban, suburban and rural communities that enrolled a total of 388 K-12 students. More than 45% had individualized education programs or 504 plans — documents that spell out how needs will be met under the Americans with Disabilities Act. 

“In all the sites we studied, the systems are designed to fit the learner and their needs, not the other way around,” said Khara Schonfeld, one of the organization’s researchers. “They’re seeing differences as the norm as opposed to the exception. That means learners are showing up.”

That included mindsets that shifted how staff understood learning differences and student potential; different organizational structures; and key daily practices for student support and success.

The approach has produced positive academic results. At Norris School District, students with IEPs increase reading performance by an average of 8 percentage points and math by 4 percentage points per trimester. Avalon students with IEPs consistently for students with IEPs on math and reading tests. 

In the LaFayette Central School District, the opening of LaFayette Big Picture in 2008 correlated with graduation rates for students with IEPs in the district rising from a range of 50% to 70% to a scale of 95% to 100%.

Students who enrolled in these schools also experienced a decline in behavioral incidents and became more engaged in their education, according to the research.

“A lot of the learners came with past trauma, including education trauma — they had a hard time in previous schools,” she said. “So it all really focused on this idea of healing and making sure that they felt safe and cared for. We had a couple of alumni say, ‘I went to the school. I can talk to anyone about anything that I want to get or find out because the school taught me how to do that.”

Schonfeld said common accommodations students with disabilities need in traditional classroom settings are provided to everyone — a key factor in the learner-centered system’s success.

In Minnesota’s Avalon School, staff begin each day with a session where students and their advisors connect in a sensory-friendly setting  — an environment that reduces stimuli like harsh lighting and loud noises. Norris School District’s single campus, where 75% of the students have IEPs, celebrates small accomplishments that might go unnoticed, such as a student’s ability to hold an entire conversation, the case study said.

Leadership structures are also different at these schools. Avalon, a charter school, has a teacher-majority board that allows educators to redesign schedules and positions. LaFayette Big Picture School pairs students with mentors, while Norris School District has staff meetings every day.

Some daily practices include offering internships onsite to ensure students don’t have to be “ready” to travel outside the building to experience career education. The schools also interpret disruptive behavior as communication about unmet needs rather than misconduct, according to the research. For example, Avalon School uses a strategy called relational repair, where educators ask reflective questions after a disruptive behavior to build trust with students. At Norris, students are taught to name feelings to help staff find the right support during a behavioral incident.

This learner-centered framework has a positive ripple effect with families and educators, Schonfeld said. Parents of students at all three schools have shared they no longer have to fight for their child’s special education accommodations. 

Teachers also feel more supported and satisfied with their jobs, the researchers found. Avalon School has maintained a 90% year-to-year retention rate over two decades, with current teachers averaging 10 years of experience. At LaFayette, more than half of the staff have been at the school for at least nine years.

After a , the department’s Office for Civil Rights said the district must create a new division focusing on students with disabilities, improve transportation services for those students, and take steps to better identify and accommodate their needs.

“The district must take immediate action to remedy their violations and protect the rights of current and future students to a free and appropriate public education,” Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey said in a statement. 

The proposed resolution agreement also requires the district to train staff, including bus drivers, on any updated policies. If officials don’t agree to the terms, OCR “may initiate enforcement,” the announcement said. 

The district, which said from the outset that it would cooperate with the department, is “carefully reviewing” the findings, a spokesman said, adding that OCR makes important points about providing clear information to parents and getting their children to and from school. 

Neither the department nor the district, however, has made the full results of the investigation available.

With OCR largely focusing its resources on investigating districts that allow students to compete in sports or use bathrooms based on gender identity, the D.C. investigation is one of the few disability-related cases it has launched and completed since President Donald Trump returned to office. A from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, which sparked the probe, found that the district has one of highest rates of special education complaints in the nation. An advisory committee to the commission determined that young children in the district were under-identified for special education services or accommodations for disabilities and that parents were often encouraged to file lawsuits in order to get their children help. 

“That obviously favors those who have means, can hire an attorney and know how to get through the system,” said Craig Leen, former vice chair of the advisory committee. A civil rights attorney who served in the Labor Department during Trump’s first term, he also struggled to get services for his daughter. Now a senior at a charter school in the district, she has autism and an intellectual disability.

The bus was often late or didn’t arrive at all, creating disruptions to his daughter’s routine, Leen said. Since the investigation began, he said he’s seen improvements. The bus comes on time, and to keep parents updated, the Office of the State Superintendent of Education, which oversees transportation for students with disabilities in both DCPS and charter schools in the city, is developing a bus .

The district, according to the spokesman, is working with the state agency to “improve real‑time visibility into bus delays to make certain students do not lose instructional time or access to required services.”

Leen said he’s not concerned about Education Secretary Linda McMahon’s plans to transfer OCR or the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services to another federal agency as she continues efforts to phase out the department. 

“My main concern is that they have a designated agency addressing special education,” he said. 

Many of the advisory committee’s recommendations were based on testimony from Maria Blaeuer, director of programs and outreach with Advocates for Justice and Education, Inc., The organization trains parents and provides to families who haven’t been able to get services for their children.

The organization is “thankful that OCR is paying attention to the many challenges that students with disabilities in the District of Columbia are facing,” Blaeuer said. But she added that it would be premature to comment on the department’s announcement “without access to the actual determination” or until a resolution has been reached.

More than 50 Minnesota school districts continue to use so-called seclusion rooms, according to data obtained by the . Districts use seclusion rooms for children with a disability and who are at risk of harming themselves or others.

This practice is banned or extremely limited in 21 states.

The 50 school districts maintain 194 registered seclusion rooms across 100 school buildings across the state, according to the records.

For the first time, the Minnesota Disability Law Center set out to document the state’s seclusion rooms, photographing more than 80 of them and documenting their locations in a report titled “.”

“I think the average person does not know this is happening in their schools. When they see the rooms and they find out how they’re used, the average person is appalled and is very upset and curious as to why this antiquated and traumatizing practice is still allowed in our schools,” said Jessica Heiser of the Minnesota Disability Law Center in an interview with the Reformer.

Multiple school districts in Minnesota do not practice seclusion, including Minneapolis Public Schools and Fridley Public Schools. Neither Spiro Academy nor Intermediate District 287 — which both specialize in serving students with disabilities — use seclusion.

During the 2023-24 school year, show that 553 students with disabilities were subjected to 3,451 instances of seclusion. In the 2024-25 school year, after seclusion was banned for students in third grade and below, 358 students were subjected to 1,867 episodes of seclusion.

The most recent from the U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights states that repeated use of seclusion for the same student by a school is likely a violation of the student’s rights.

Heiser said she believes one reason Minnesota has been slow to eliminate seclusion is because the policy affects a small number of students, and remains mostly hidden from the general public — and even from educators, school staff and parents of school-age children.

“Nobody wants their kids in one of these rooms. As a parent, I cannot look at this room and say in good grace that there is a single child that deserves to be locked in a cinder block room in a school,” Heiser said.

In 2023, the Minnesota Legislature passed a law that banned seclusion for students with disabilities from birth through third grade. At the time, the Minnesota Department of Education recommended that the state work towards eliminating the practice entirely by the start of the 2026-27 school year.

But progress towards that goal has halted in the Legislature. Sen. Judy Seeburger, DFL-Afton, proposed legislation last year to rollback the 2023 law banning seclusion for the youngest students. Seeburger also led a , which met 11 times between August and January. In the group’s , Seeburger explained how her adult son was subject to seclusion as a student and why she believes the practice was beneficial.

“The seclusion working group, everybody around the table, except Sen. Seeberger, said ‘We don’t want this practice,’” said Jessica Webster, an attorney at Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid. “What a bizarre place for us to be standing that all of the voices agree that this is a harmful and traumatic practice that we shouldn’t be using, but we’re still using it.”

Seeberger did not respond to an interview request.

The working group’s meeting materials show a dozen letters that support letting schools continue to use seclusion, with varying degrees of support for rolling back the 2023 ban on using them on younger students. Five of the letters come from a single school district, Intermediate School District 917, which serves as a special education cooperative for nine districts in the south metro. Another five come from other special education cooperatives around the state. Intermediate and cooperative districts typically provide services for students with disabilities who often require services that are provided in separate school buildings.

Black students with disabilities are disproportionately subjected to seclusion, making up just 12% of students with disabilities in Minnesota but subject to 22% of all instances of seclusion.

“It is unquestionable in every state, including our own, that seclusion and restrictive procedures in general, like holds on children and locking children in rooms by themselves, is used against boys of color with disabilities more so than any other demographic,” Heiser said.

Heiser added that multiple federal investigations have led to banning seclusion in particular states or school districts because data show it is disproportionately used on boys of color.

Seclusion is primarily used on students between the ages of 6 and 10. Before the ban was implemented for students in third grade and below, these children with disabilities made up about one-third of students with disabilities in Minnesota, but were subject to more than two-thirds of all episodes of seclusion. In the same year, 16% of students with disabilities were ages 16-21, but they made up just 7% of the students subjected to seclusion.

After the K-3 seclusion ban, in the 2024-25 school year, 6 to 10 year olds still made up about one-third of students with disabilities, but they accounted for only 46% of all episodes of seclusion.

Heiser says that some defenders of seclusion say it is necessary because the children can become violent and could hurt someone if not locked in a room. But she calls this a “red herring.” She said it is “common sense” that an older child would be bigger and stronger, and thus more likely to cause injury to another person. She said there’s a simple explanation for why younger children are more likely to be subjected to seclusion: They’re smaller.

“It really just comes down to how easy is it to grab a kid and put them in the closet? It’s easier when they’re littler,” Heiser said.

Students with autism or whose disabilities are categorized as emotional or behavioral disorder are disproportionately more likely to experience seclusion. Just 10% of students with disabilities are in the emotional or behavioral disability category, while they experience about 2 of every 5 seclusion episodes. Students with autism make up about 16% of students with disabilities but experience more than one-third of all seclusion episodes. This did not change after seclusion was banned for K-3 students.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Minnesota Reformer maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor J. Patrick Coolican for questions: info@minnesotareformer.com.

Imagine knowing exactly what you want to say, but the words don’t make it from your brain to your lips. You know how you want to move, but your body fails to comply. You’re thirsty, but your hand refuses to reach for your cup. You see the traffic but can’t stop your feet. 

It’s what I refer to as a brain-body disconnect. My brain knows what I want to do, say or stop doing, but my body doesn’t usually comply.

This is the reality of millions of people living with autism who have unreliable or minimal speaking skills or can’t speak at all. This is the reality of living with something called full-body apraxia, a term I hadn’t heard until recently, despite my 30 years of being diagnosed with this and or that disorder. But apraxia perfectly sums up my lifelong struggles.

Apraxia is a neurological condition that affects an individual’s ability to plan and carry out intentional movements, even though the physical ability and desire to complete the action are present. It’s a disorder that can very easily deceive onlookers into believing the individual lacks an understanding of the most basic concepts of danger or human emotion, or that they fail to comprehend the simplest instructions — or are choosing not to comply. 

Most well-meaning autism professionals are creating and implementing therapies based on these inaccurate and dangerous assumptions: the assumption that their student’s inability to complete their assigned tasks are due to either a behavioral or cognitive impairment. This is despite the fact that many of us have the correct diagnosis of motor planning and/or sensory processing disorder. Many treatment providers fail to recognize how these motor and sensory differences might manifest when implementing hours of behavior training or when assessing our cognitive abilities. 

These dangerous assumptions lead to children with autism enduring hours of dehumanizing and at times abusive therapies. And these assumptions rob us of our right to receive an adequate education and limit our access to and acceptance of alternative therapies. 

We are burdened with the impossible task of proving our intelligence with bodies that are not fully connected to the intentions and instructions of our brains, with bodies that not only fail to move how we want, but in many cases, take over and do what they want. Often instead of what I intend, my body will say what it wants, point where it wants and complete loops that I have little to no control over. 

Because educators and treatment providers fail to understand this, our basic human rights are withheld until we are able to prove our intelligence, emotional awareness and worth. We are often not treated with dignity until we can prove that our outward appearances and actions are not a true reflection of our minds and hearts.

I was a victim of those dangerous assumptions for 30 long years. Educators and doctors repeatedly told my parents that I had the intelligence of a 4-year old, and I was relegated to living out my days in a windowless warehouse called a day program. These are programs designed to house those who society believes don’t know, understand or feel enough to recognize the inhumanity of the system in which they exist. 

This system holds overwhelmed families hostage, forcing them into accepting only their approved options. The experts running these systems are blind to our needs, and often dismiss parent questions and concerns, treating them as if they are unfamiliar with their own children.

That was my life, a lesson in patience and surrender. I was resigned to accept my bleak and uncertain future until my family learned about . This is a motor-based communication method that understood that my inability to communicate was due to a motor challenge rather than a cognitive one. 

It’s a therapy designed to support my regulation and my body movement, and has taught me how to override my body’s automatic actions and create new ones. It taught me how to coordinate my eyes with my hand in order to accurately point to letters on a letterboard to spell my thoughts. It’s a therapy that, within a year, had changed my life beyond recognition. It was no easy task. 

If my family would have taken my behavior as communication, which is common when you have nothing else to rely on, we wouldn’t have made it past the first few sessions. My body rebelled. The prospect of finally being able to communicate overwhelmed my system with excitement. I spent the first several months screaming and shaking uncontrollably, but with the skilled guidance and quiet determination of my practitioner, I slowly progressed from one large letter to all 26, from answering questions with only one possible response to spelling out my thoughts. 

It’s been a long journey but worth every moment. I’m now able to express my love for my family and my dreams and desires. And I can give my family strategies for helping me. This seemingly has changed everything about my life. 

I’m writing this article, pointing one letter at a time to my letterboard in the hopes of reaching the parents of nonspeaking autistics and the professionals supporting them. I am asking you to put aside everything you’ve been taught about your autistic child or student, everything you’ve been told or think you know, and imagine you might be wrong. Imagine they are in there, understanding everything but unable to show it. 

There is a growing community of parents, therapists and teachers who have discovered just that. They are uncovering what decades of experts have missed. Everything about my life changed when I was given a reliable means of communication. I am sharing my story because I am able to. I am one of the lucky few who have been freed from my prison of silence.

This piece was initially published in the .

These moves raise significant concerns that the federal government won’t be able to meet its legal obligations to students with disabilities under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act ().

Education Secretary Linda McMahon has numerous times that federal special education funding will continue flowing, no matter where the office and programs land within the government. But what she has not acknowledged — and what is troubling — is how moving the program to an agency like HHS inevitably shifts the focus of special ed from education to health care, thus pathologizing disabled students.

This is especially true considering HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has made about children with autism, calling them tragic and doubting their ability to lead full and meaningful lives. His statements indicate a belief that a medical diagnosis absolutely leads to tragic outcomes — which is simply untrue. 

Framing students with disabilities solely in medical terms hinders their potential for growth by narrowly confining them to a diagnosis and perceived limitations — resulting in low expectations in school. As recently as the , this allowed most states to exclude disabled students from academic assessments. Many schools encouraged their parents to keep their children at home on testing days.

Since then, the country has steadily moved away from low expectations for students with disabilities. Under the Biden administration, the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services issued specifically focused on setting a high bar for these children. The guidance included a focus on inclusive education practices to ensure students with disabilities have access to high-quality education with the opportunity to meet challenging goals. It also offered details about how states and districts could leverage federal funding to achieve those ends. 

Inclusive education practices are flexible and creative. Using such an approach, a team determining appropriate classroom settings during an Individualized Education Program meeting might decide that instead of placing a student in need of behavioral support in a segregated class of peers with disabilities, the student could be put in a general-education classroom, assisted by a paraprofessional or special education teacher. operates this way. Teachers or paraprofessionals accompany students with disabilities to general-education classes, providing behavioral and academic support in real time, innovatively and effectively meeting a child’s unique education needs. Instead of limiting children with disabilities, guidance and practices like these help students look to an expansive future. 

But between moving special education to HHS and the longer-term to convert IDEA grants into formula block grants, it will fall to the states to ensure that their special education laws and regulations are robust. IDEA includes minimum requirements for supporting disabled students. States can and should do more, including developing their own laws and guidance on issues like inclusion, challenging academic standards, teacher and service provider support and training, and requirements to provide services in an equitable manner to all students.

Families and advocates can work to hold states and districts accountable by, for example, pushing for state-level disaggregated reporting on timely provision of services, restrictive class and school placements, and disproportionate disciplinary practices. Additionally, states must work toward timely resolutions of and for any violations of disabled students’ civil rights. 

Leaving schools without timely access to federal funding to provide legally mandated services means students will unnecessarily struggle, and their lack of progress will be used as an indication of the failures of the current program. There have already been that shifts of education programs to other federal agencies have tied up resources in even more layers of bureaucracy. 

Shifting responsibility for specific IDEA and special education programs to HHS means that when states come looking for guidance, the staff with deep understanding of the interplay among civil rights, disability and education will no longer be available to help them. What guidance they do receive could be limited and unsupportive of students’ true intellectual, cognitive or physical capabilities.

Burying special education deep in the can only make things more difficult for children with disabilities. Finding essential services that families are desperate to reach will be like looking for a needle in a haystack. 

Last year marked the 50th anniversary of IDEA. What should be a time for celebrating milestones in increasing inclusivity and accessibility in America’s public schools has instead been fraught with fear and fights to retain the unique supports provided to disabled children through the Department of Education. It doesn’t have to be this way, and it shouldn’t. 

Harold Hinds, is a civil rights attorney and Ph.D. student at the New School’s School for Public Engagement, also contributed to this essay.

CHINA, Maine – When Saige Bird moved to Maine, her first order of business was to get support for her then 3-year-old son, who is autistic and has a speech impediment that renders him unintelligible to most people.

Over the past year and a half, she has struggled to get him the speech or other support he needs and is legally entitled to.

While Child Development Services — a quasi-state agency responsible for providing disability services to Maine children under the age of 5 — to a new model for serving 3- and 4-year-olds, a significant number of preschoolers who remain in the existing system are being left behind.

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Over the 2024-2025 fiscal year, 875 3- and 4-year-olds, or 15% of preschool-aged children served by Child Development Services, were on waitlists for 1,690 services including speech, occupational and physical therapy, according to data provided by the Maine Department of Education. Historically, Child Development Services has not kept track of waitlist data, but this is an increase from 2019, when a report requested by the Maine Legislature’s Education and Cultural Affairs Committee found that 10% of children requiring services were on waitlists.

When Bird’s son, whose name she asked be omitted for privacy reasons, was first referred to Child Development Services for evaluation, Bird was thrilled.

“I thought I was gonna get the help I need for my son,” she said.

But that excitement soon turned to disappointment.

Four months after her initial appointment, she received an email from a speech therapist, only to discover she was based in Texas and the sessions would be remote, which she didn’t think was a good fit for her son, then 4 years old, who is hyperactive and has a low attention span.

Another four months later, Child Development Services offered a preschool placement for her son at Augusta Children’s Center. She ultimately declined it due to, among other reasons, trouble scheduling around her son’s outside occupational and speech therapy.

“I know some people love the Children’s Center,” she said. “But it wasn’t right for my son and our family.”

Under federal law, children are supposed to receive all services they’re found eligible for within 30 days of being evaluated.

But that deadline is not always met.

“We are frequently hearing about waitlists and hearing that these waitlists are persisting,” said Jeanette Plourde, an attorney for Disability Rights Maine. “We continue to see parents being told in (Individualized Education Plan, known as IEP) meetings that (Child Development Services) doesn’t have the staffing, that there are no placements, that it’s just not possible to fulfill their child’s IEP.”

This, says Plourde, is simply not okay.

“Our state has an obligation to provide these services under federal and state law,” she said. “Full stop.”

Bird is one of many parents who gave up completely and opted to find her child the services he needs in a different way. Three to five days a week, Bird drives an hour and a half round-trip to and from Belfast for in-person speech, which Child Development Services determined her son needed, and occupational therapy, which she sought separately. Since January, she has spent at least $550 on co-payments for both services.

The Maine Department of Education, which oversees Child Development Services, is well aware of the agency’s challenges, , and is working to turn the tide by of providing preschool special education from Child Development Services to the state’s public schools, a mammoth task it says will better serve preschoolers by utilizing the state’s resources more efficiently.

But while Child Development Services works to implement this systemic change, there’s not much that can be done for the children who aren’t getting their needs met, said Child Development Services State Director Dan Hemdal.

“It’s an unfortunate reality of early childhood special education in the state,” said Hemdal of children ending up on waitlists.

Hemdal and others say that a lack of preschool placements and providers — including speech, occupational and physical therapists — can make it difficult, if not impossible, to match preschoolers with the resources they need.

But while the state works to create a system that better serves preschoolers with disabilities, children across the state lose valuable time.

The first five years of life are crucial for development and can shape the trajectory of a child’s life.

“You only have a certain amount of time while the brain is this plastic,” said Nancy Cronin, the executive director of the Maine Developmental Disabilities Council. “This is a magic time for development that no child can afford to lose.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Maine Morning Star maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Lauren McCauley for questions: info@mainemorningstar.com.

We’re often left out of schoolwide instructional conversations. We don’t always have mentors who understand our setting. And there’s still resistance in some buildings to true inclusion and co-teaching. 

But when it comes to reading, especially in special education, we celebrate small victories. A student decoding her first word. Another raising his hand to read aloud. A reluctant reader smiling as she opens a book. But those moments — joyful as they are — shouldn’t be rare. And they shouldn’t feel miraculous. They should be common. 

I’ve been a special education teacher for seven years. And I’ve seen firsthand what happens when we as teachers believe in students with disabilities — and give them structured, high-quality reading instruction. I’ve also seen what happens when we don’t. 

Far too often, we quietly accept that some kids, especially those with individualized education programs, just won’t learn to read. That they’ll always struggle. That their reading growth will be slow, if it comes at all. We build systems that manage that failure. We adjust our expectations. And we wait. 

This year, I stopped waiting.  

For years, I cobbled together lessons from online worksheets and Pinterest printables, trying to meet each student’s reading needs during 30-minute blocks that felt shorter every day. I’m often responsible for more than 40 students across kindergarten through fifth grade, with service times ranging from 30 to 300 minutes per week. 

I had no curriculum, no sequence, no scaffolding — and worse, no results. 

That changed this past year when, for the first time, I began using an evidence-based, structured, supplemental foundational curriculum. I’m not in the business of promoting one curriculum over another, but you can find programs like this from , , , and others. Whatever you choose, ensure it’s research-based, structured, focused on foundational reading skills, and proven-effective for the resource room population.

 My program followed a consistent daily routine, built-in review, and offered skill checks that I could actually use to inform my IEP goals. Once my students understood the structure, they knew what to expect. They knew where we were going. And they started to believe that they could get there. 

Many of my students went from dreading reading instruction to asking to come early. They saw their own progress and became more motivated by it.  

This was the year I saw the most academic growth of my career. 

Students with disabilities face daily uncertainty in school: instructions they don’t understand, tasks they’re not ready for, expectations that shift depending on the classroom. This is why routines and procedures matter so much. 

From the first week of school, I taught every group the expectations of our classroom. Together, we created a classroom contract around three core values: Be kind. Work hard. Respect our learning environment. We didn’t just sign it — we lived it. Eventually, students began referring one another back to it. It gave them ownership. It gave them structure. 

That consistency made my room feel safer. And when students feel safe, they can take academic risks. They can read aloud. Ask questions. Try again. 

Even for students I saw just once a week, the structure stuck. That’s the power of routine. It doesn’t just save time — it builds trust. 

One of the most important lessons I’ve learned is about language — and how much of it our students are expected to process at all times. For students with disabilities, especially those with ADHD or slow processing speed, every word we say adds to their cognitive load. That’s why I’ve learned to cut “language clutter” wherever possible. 

Instead of giving constant verbal feedback, I use gestures or visual cues. I simplify my instructions. I give students room to think. This shift has made a remarkable difference — not just in student focus, but in confidence. 

Teaching isn’t about how much we say. It’s about how much our students can absorb, make sense of, and apply. 

This past year affirmed what I’ve always believed but hadn’t always seen: students with disabilities can make significant reading growth — when we give them the proper support. 

That starts with structured instruction that’s actually usable in a resource setting. It means giving special education teachers access to curricula that are efficient, repeatable, and grounded in research — not just programs that check a box. 

It also means investing in mentorship and training tailored to the realities of resource classrooms. New teachers need more than general guidance — they need support from people who understand their schedules, caseloads, and instructional demands. Educators need to understand the reading brain, the science behind structured instruction, and what real IEP implementation entails. 

Finally, we need to create school cultures where general and special educators collaborate, rather than compete — where co-teaching is supported from the top down, and students benefit from a unified team. 

As I move into a new role as a reading specialist this coming school year, that’s where I’m putting my energy. I want to help other teachers implement IEPs with fidelity, understand the reading brain, and make structured literacy work in real classrooms. 

We don’t need to wait for perfect conditions. We just need to start with what works, stay consistent, and hold onto the belief that every student — especially those with IEPs — deserves the chance to become a reader. 

But after this weekend, when President Donald Trump Bowen, who specializes in primary care pediatrics, fears a new obstacle: her patients might lose access to the publicly funded health insurance that makes her work possible.

“Before they had insurance, but then they couldn’t get to the provider,” Bowen said. “Now you’ll have providers coming out — but they won’t have the insurance.”

Experts say Bowen’s concerns are not unfounded. The sweeping, which Republicans pushed through Congress last week without any Democratic votes, will cut federal spending on Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program benefits by $1.02 trillion and increase the number of uninsured Americans by 7.8 million people over the next decade, according to estimates by the nonpartisan

Cuts to the Medicaid budget will have “just tremendous impacts,” Bowen added. Schools receive about $7.5 billion annually from , a popular joint federal and state health program that insures nearly 70 million Americans, most of whom are low income. For more than 30 years, it’s paid for services in schools for students with disabilities as well as low-income students.

If all provisions in the bill are enacted, it will lead to enrollment drops in the , which provides low-cost health coverage to children in families that earn too much money to qualify for Medicaid, and a $125.2 billion reduction in Medicaid by 2034, the Budget Office predicted, though it’s not clear just how many kids would be impacted. 

The cuts will come through a variety of mechanisms over the next decade, ranging from immediately enacted provisions that curb states’ ability to raise their share of Medicaid funding to new federal limits on eligibility — including work requirements for parents of kids 14 years or older — which will go into effect in 2027. These, in particular, could harm children, who are less likely to be covered themselves if their parents lose access, according to Anne Dwyer, an associate research professor at Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families.

“Like many, we’re still unpacking exactly what this will mean for states and for individuals covered by Medicaid and for students in schools,” Dwyer said. “Some of these cuts are immediate and some go into effect over time.” 

Republican lawmakers, though, argue they’re actually Medicaid recipients by removing undocumented immigrants and others they say never should have had access in the first place.

While there weren’t any provisions in the bill that directly slash school-based Medicaid services, the 20-plus Medicaid provisions it does include will ultimately place immense financial pressure on states to make up for the lost funds, which will have trickle-down impacts on schools, according to Dwyer.

In response, states will either have to raise taxes, or make further cuts within their Medicaid programs — the more likely option, Dwyer said. They could also look to backfill budget shortfalls by slashing other school-based programs.

“It’s just hard to imagine a scenario where states are faced with these levels of cuts, and individuals across the program aren’t impacted,” she said. 

School-based Medicaid makes up less than 1% of the overall program’s budget, but is still the fourth-largest federal funding stream for districts and allows them to pay for a swath of resources, including therapies for students with disabilities, school nurses, mental health care and specialized equipment, such as wheelchairs. 

The loss of funds will significantly impact how schools are able to cover mandatory services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, according to Mia Ives-Rublee, the senior director for the at the Center for American Progress, a left-of-center think tank.

Kids who are eligible for Medicaid through expansions or waivers — state-based mechanisms that widen access to some people who wouldn’t normally qualify — are particularly at risk of losing services, since their eligibility isn’t required by federal law, said Ives-Rublee. 

But, she added, children will largely remain more protected than adults since a number of pediatric services are mandated at the federal level, including preventative screenings, check-ups and vision and hearing services. 

Still, if fewer children are enrolled in Medicaid overall, it will reduce the pool of money that goes towards school-based services leading to fewer resources and providers.

“What we will start seeing, and what we’ve seen in previous states, is that there will be a chunk of people who will just lose eligibility … because they either don’t get the information about the new paperwork requirements, they don’t understand that they now have to do check-ins twice a year [to determine eligibility vs. once a year] … and they might miss a recertification process,” Ives-Rublee added.

The changes could also result in fewer social workers or school-based psychologists and decreased access to health care — especially in rural and urban communities, according to a opposing any proposed cuts that was spearheaded by the Medicaid in Schools Coalition and signed by 65 organizations.

of districts use Medicaid funding to pay for the salaries of health professionals, according to 2017 data. And — 40 million — are now insured through Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

In Alabama, where Bower sees patients, over are enrolled in these programs.

“If you put all the kids in the country together, they’re the largest group of impoverished people,” said Bowen, who also serves as the president of the National Association of Pediatric Nurse Practitioners, “and they have no political voice … They rely on adults to hopefully do the right thing so that they can grow up and be healthy and contribute to this country …. but if they’re sick, they’re hungry, they can’t be educated. It’s an all-around impact.”

These impacts will be challenging to track, though, as they play out over the next decade, experts warn — especially less tangible ones like the amount of time states will spend trying to untangle how to implement the bill’s complex provisions.

“We’re in for a long haul here,” said Dwyer. “A lot of these changes aren’t going to be overnight. They’re going to be over the next months and years to come. And so I think just documenting what’s happening, what’s working [and] where pressures are coming up will be really important.”

The need for a reliable compass is greater now more than ever before. Significant budget cuts and efforts to weaken the Department of Education call into question the federal government’s role in ensuring educational excellence. As policy and research leaders at the National Center for Learning Disabilities, an organization with nearly 50 years of experience advocating for the rights of individuals with learning disabilities, we fear the country may be entering an era in which we will be navigating this path without a reliable compass.

NAEP, often referred to as the “Nation’s Report Card,” is the only standard assessment administered to students in all 50 states, allowing Americans to see trends in educational attainment over time. NAEP data is an invaluable indicator for understanding areas of growth and identifying unmet needs for students with learning disabilities. The center publishes NAEP Data Snapshots in and to compare the achievement of students with learning disabilities to that of all young people. Research and experience demonstrate that students with learning disabilities can achieve at the same level as their peers when given the appropriate support. Thus, these NAEP snapshots are a powerful tool for highlighting persistent discrepancies that warrant additional investment and innovation, and celebrating and learning from progress. 

Not long ago, substantial numbers of students with disabilities were barred from taking  NAEP. Only 15 years ago, over a third of students with disabilities were excluded from the test-taking sample. In 2009, representatives of the center testified before the National Assessment Governing Board to have students with disabilities included in the assessment. Since then, there has been progress. In 2024, about 89% of students who identified as having disabilities took the reading assessment. Their performance is part of the national conversation about how the nation navigates the journey toward educational excellence together.

NAEP also spurs innovation. Technology is changing rapidly, and because students take the exam on the computer, that data can be used in informative and transformative ways. Researchers have used not just the NAEP results, but also information about the testing process to help better understand how students interact with exams. For example, because of , it is clear that it isn’t just students with disabilities who use built-in accessibility features like text-to-speech.

In February, NCLD was alarmed to learn that the National Center for Education Statistics, the primary agency responsible for administering NAEP, had been reduced to a staff of three. Both administering the test and disaggregating and reporting the resulting data are critical work requiring expertise and staffing that are now at a skeletal level. Though Education Secretary Linda McMahon has stated that NAEP is safe and will be given as planned in 2026, we have many questions and concerns about its future and the ability of researchers in the field — disability advocates in particular — to use the data as we do now. The president’s budget request for Fiscal Year 2026 proposes a 29% cut to funding for NAEP, which only adds to our concerns about the test’s administration next year.

Policymakers at all levels need reliable data upon which to base their decisions. Researchers need valid and reliable achievement data to understand trends as well as differences in needs across states and student characteristics, including disability status. NAEP allows policymakers to compare their state with others nationwide, encouraging the adoption of best practices and reforms that have worked elsewhere, like Science of Reading-based reforms. At the national level, advocates like us use NAEP results to push for changes in legislation or investments that support students with disabilities.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the passage of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Yet, today, the federal government continues to underfund both special education and the broader effort to ensure all students, especially those from underserved communities, have the resources and opportunities they need to succeed. 

Educators, researchers, advocates and families committed to disability rights and inclusive education must speak up about the importance of NAEP data. This information has long helped school leaders and policymakers understand where students are excelling and where they are being left behind. Without this insight, funding, accommodations and student resources decrease, and NAEP data becomes a mirror, not a map forward.

Carter was in first grade when the suspensions began. His mom describes it as the year “all hell broke loose.”

As he made his way through the public school system in York County, South Carolina, the now-15-year-old, who has multiple disabilities, continued to struggle.

The situation reached a crescendo in 6th grade, when Carter was suspended out of school for 7.5 days and in school about a dozen times, according to school district records and his mother’s estimates. This was in addition to numerous lunch suspensions — during which he was forced to sit at a table alone in the cafeteria — and bus suspensions, which meant Carter couldn’t ride school-provided transportation. His offenses, Kimberly Tissot, his mom, said, ranged from minor ones,  like “incessant talking” and “cussing,” to the more extreme, including breaking one classmate’s glasses and threatening another.

While Tissot understands why these behaviors needed to result in clear consequences, she argued that every one of them was a manifestation of her son’s disabilities, which include ADHD, fetal alcohol syndrome, a disability involving written expression and a mild intellectual disability. They could have been avoided, she said, if Carter’s school had followed his Individualized Education Program, which lays out the supports and services the school is legally mandated to provide Carter so he can progress and learn.

Ultimately, her son, who has difficulty connecting his actions to their ramifications, was left confused and convinced, “he’s in trouble because he’s bad,” said Tissot, who is also the president and CEO of , an advocacy organization. 

Carter is one of hundreds of thousands of students with disabilities across the country who are suspended from school each year. It’s long been documented that this population of kids is generally more likely to face exclusionary discipline , but because of where he happens to live, Carter is particularly susceptible: No state removes students with disabilities from school for 10 days or fewer at a higher rate than South Carolina.

There, some 15% of special education students faced out-of-school suspensions for up to 10 days in the 2022-23 school year — nearly twice the national average, according to ����Ӱ��’s analysis of the most recently available data.

These numbers may also be a substantial undercount, according to experts who told ����Ӱ�� they’ve witnessed widespread in South Carolina — in some cases to avoid the legal protections that kick in for students with disabilities once they’ve been kept out of the classroom for more than 10 cumulative days. Tissot said she was asked to pick Carter up from school without an official suspension on multiple occasions, a practice she knew to push back on only because of her advocacy work. And she said she only learned of some of Carter’s in-school suspensions, which weren’t all officially documented, from him.

Macaulay Morrison is assistant director of a at the University of South Carolina Law School who represents special education families in their legal battles with schools.

“It’s just reflective of the state of public education of South Carolina as a whole,” Morrison said of the IDEA suspension data. “Sometimes it’s easier for schools to exclude these students than it is for them to figure out how to support them.”

In response to ����Ӱ��’s findings, a South Carolina Department of Education official said they remain “committed to ensuring that all students, including those receiving special education services, are supported in safe and positive learning environments.”

The department has established a goal of working with districts to reduce suspension rates for students with disabilities to 9% or less — significantly lower than its current rate, but still higher than the national average — by working with advocacy and support groups, like the Behavior Alliance of South Carolina, to provide conferences, institutes and training opportunities.

And the department will continue to “closely monitor student discipline data to track progress toward this target … including assisting with district reviews of disciplinary referral data, revision of policies and procedures, and the development of targeted improvement plans at both the school and district levels.”

South Carolina was the only state whose numbers were not broken down by race after state officials notified the U.S. Department of Education of data quality concerns, according to federal Education Department staff. The South Carolina state education department official told ����Ӱ�� that they provided corrected data once they were made aware of the issue, but that update was not reflected in the final federal dataset. 

The federal Department of Education did not respond to repeated requests for comment from ����Ӱ��.

The IDEA dataset is particularly significant because it’s the first to document disciplinary rates among students with disabilities at the national level post-pandemic, a time when . The U.S. Department of Education’s more frequently scrutinized has long shown disparities in discipline between students with disabilities and their general education peers but the most current available complete numbers are from the 2021-22 school year — when most kids were back to in-person learning but some districts were still offering a hybrid model and still others were allowing kids to

����Ӱ��’s analysis of the more recent IDEA data of some 7.5 million students with disabilities across three suspension categories reveals the differences experienced within this vulnerable student group. For example, in addition to South Carolina, special education students living in North Carolina, Delaware and Nevada are far more likely to be excluded from school than students with similar disabilities living in Vermont, Utah and New York.  

The IDEA data, which is released annually, shows that race — also a well-established to suspensions — plays a role among students who are already facing disproportionate discipline. While Black students made up 16% of all students with disabilities nationally, they accounted for nearly a third (31%) of all those students suspended out of school for 10 days or less. 

In some cases, race and geography combined in striking ways in the IDEA data, such as in Nebraska, where almost 1-in-10 Black students with disabilities were removed from school for more than 10 days (a figure which includes in-school and out-of-school disciplinary removals) in 2022-23 — more than any other group in any other state.

Other key findings of the ����Ӱ��’s analysis include:

• Nationally, boys are more likely than girls to be identified as having a disability, and — even when that’s considered — are disproportionately removed from classrooms: While about two-thirds of students with disabilities are male, they account for about 75% of special education students removed from school for any duration of time.

• On average nationally, just over 7% of all students with disabilities received at least one out-of-school suspension for 10 days or fewer.

• Black students with disabilities are disproportionately suspended out of school for 10 days or less in every state, to varying degrees. In Georgia, for example, they make up 39% of those with disabilities, but 59% of those who were suspended. In Delaware, Black students make up just over a third of those with disabilities, but over half of those suspended.  In five states (Indiana, Nevada, Iowa, Nebraska and Wisconsin), at least 20% of Black students were suspended out of school for 10 days or fewer. 

• In both West Virginia and Pennsylvania, almost 1-in-10 Hispanic children with disabilities were suspended for 10 days or less outside of school — more than any other state for this group, though closely followed by Nevada, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin.

• In South Dakota, 17% of students with disabilities who identified as Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander were suspended for 10 days or less in school — a greater share than in any other state.

• California suspends students with disabilities for 10 days or fewer in school at the lowest rate (0.8%), and Vermont suspends them out of school at the lowest rate (3%).
  
• No state removes students for more than 10 days at a higher rate than Missouri (4%), 2.5 times the national average.

While supporters of stricter school discipline argue suspensions and expulsions are necessary to keep schools safe, research also shows that these measures are associated with a host of negative outcomes, including , and a lower likelihood of and greater involvement with the

exclusionary discipline, which children with disabilities are more frequently subjected to, does not seem to positively impact students’ future behavior and, for younger students, may even exacerbate it. 

For students with disabilities, the loss of instruction time can be particularly devastating, said Amy Holbert, CEO of , a training and information center for families whose children have disabilities. And especially when students receive out-of-school suspensions, it can put a strain on working families who suddenly have to scramble to find child care, she added.

These challenges have only worsened since the pandemic, according to Holbert, who said referrals to her organization for educational concerns have increased 128% since 2020.

����Ӱ��’s data analysis confirms “what advocates across the country have been saying over and over again about the students most likely to experience school pushout and get deprived of access to instructional time,” said Jennifer Coco, interim executive director of .��

It holds up an “important mirror” she added, “on who is getting appropriate interventions and who are the students that we still collectively need to do better by.”

‘The Wild Wild West of civil rights enforcement’

Keisha Sims-Williams’ son, Savion, was just 2 years old when she began to suspect he might have a disability. He was hyperactive and impulsive. Sometimes she’d call his name and he wouldn’t respond. And he would often walk on the tips of his toes — a characteristic more common in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Some of these behaviors made starting school particularly challenging. 

Sims-Williams said she told Savion’s Columbia, South Carolina, school as early as pre-K that he would need extra help. But instead of having him evaluated for an IEP they repeatedly removed him from school — both formally and informally — and ultimately relocated him to a transitional program, though not one for students with disabilities, she said. 

“His pre-K year it got so bad, he was out of school more than he was in,” she said, estimating Savion was suspended for at least 30 days that year. 

Ultimately, Savion was diagnosed with ADHD and autism by clinicians outside of school, but still he wasn’t evaluated for an IEP, which meant he went through his kindergarten year without the same protections around school removals as other students with disabilities. 

As a kid with a suspected disability, though, he should have still had access to at least some of those guardrails, according to Morrison, the South Carolina attorney, who later filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Sims-Williams family.

And so, Savion had another year filled with so many removals his mom lost count. 

“At some point it was like they were on a mission to get rid of him,” she said.

In November of his kindergarten year, Sims-Williams filed a formal written request for an in-school evaluation, but his IEP wasn’t developed until May or implemented until the following August.

“It took two years of me fighting and pleading in order for him to finally get an IEP and be heard and seen as he should,” Sims-Williams said. She believes if that IEP had come along sooner, her son’s early years in school could have looked a lot different.

“No child’s experiences in their education should have been as bad as my son’s,” she added. “They ruined his good years of school. They ruined it.”

Much of this was confirmed by the state’s response to the family’s lawsuit. The South Carolina Department of Education found that the district had violated a number of Savion’s rights as a student with a suspected disability — including by not evaluating him for an IEP in a timely manner and not officially recording removals or creating a behavior plan once he hit 10 days of removals. These failures ultimately led to even more suspensions, according to court records shared with ����Ӱ��.

Since extra supports were implemented, school has been significantly better for Savion. He’s been on honor roll, won awards and no longer cries when she drops him off each morning.

Still, “he’s had some bumps here and there,” she said, noting the now-7-year-old was suspended out of school for about eight days throughout first grade, but “compared to 20 or 30, that’s progress to me.”

“I’m hoping next year we’re down to five. Or none.”

Savion’s race, gender and disability status all make him particularly likely to be suspended, as does the fact that his family also lives in South Carolina. The Palmetto State leads the nation in , as well.

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act provides protections to students who have been removed from school for more than 10 days, but much of the enforcement is left up to schools, districts and states, leading to a patchwork landscape, according to interviews with over two dozen advocates, experts, parents and attorneys. 

“Schools don’t seem to have any incentive to improve their processes and procedures because there isn’t anybody holding them to task,” said Mike Mathison, a juvenile justice resource attorney at the Children’s Law Center at the University of South Carolina Law School.

And in certain cases — like Savion’s — even if a student has a documented disability, it can be challenging to get schools to provide an IEP in a timely manner, leaving vulnerable kids unprotected. 

The disproportionate removal of students with disabilities — especially for boys and those who are Black — experts told ����Ӱ�� is the result of a confluence of systemic issues including discrimination, teacher and school counselor shortages and a dearth of training in positive behavior management techniques, like establishing strong relationships with students and clear routines. Added to that are administrators not understanding or enforcing students’ IEPs or the law, parents not knowing their kids’ rights, a return to top-down “zero tolerance” disciplinary policies and a lack of federal accountability.

This trend of disproportionality is well established: In the 2017-18 school year, 9% of students with disabilities were suspended, compared to 4% of their general education peers, according to a 2022 from the Learning Policy Institute — largely based on analyses of four years of Civil Rights Data Collection. For Black students with disabilities, that figure was even higher: 20% were suspended. 

Students with disabilities are also more likely than their peers to be punished for “broad and subjective categories” of behavior like defiance, according to a 2024 investigation by  .

“There’s disadvantages of being Black when it comes to disciplinary outcomes, and there’s a disadvantage of being a student with a disability as well,” said Richard Welsh, associate professor of education and public policy at Vanderbilt University and author of “You can times that together … and that’s the definition of intersectionality.”

While disparities are cause for closer inspection — and can be evidence of discrimination — they alone are not proof of bias, cautioned Paul Morgan, director of the at the University of Albany. That being said, he added, even when controlling for differences in behaviors, Black students appear to be more frequently suspended than their peers. And a recent GAO report determined that Black girls are more likely to be removed from class than their white female peers for similar behaviors in the same schools.

Regardless of whether or not active discrimination is at play, the disparities are at least “a sign of weak systemic practices” and “a call to action,” said Coco, from The Center for Learner Equity.

Despite this, in April, President Donald Trump released an saying he intended to roll back Biden administration discipline guidance, which encouraged school districts to collect, analyze and adjust their policies in light of disproportionate racial outcomes. Trump argued that approach actually weaponized federal civil rights laws in ways that discriminated against white students.

Critics have the executive order, titled Reinstating Common Sense School Discipline, will only further widen disparities for students of color and students with disabilities, especially as  more than consider a return to stricter student discipline policies, including four that have already done so. 

“Common sense is students in school every day learning, and students can’t learn if they’re not in school,” Coco said. “I recognize we need to keep schools safe, so to me a common sense investment is saying, ‘How do we ensure that schools are a place where students are getting access to what they need to thrive and be successful, both in terms of education and wraparound supports?’”

Trump has also been systematically working to dismantle the Education Department, which could mean even less federal accountability and data collection moving forward, said Dan Losen, senior director of education at the National Center for Youth Law.

“We’re in the Wild Wild West of civil rights enforcement,” he said.

A ‘huge oversight’ in IDEA enforcement

The federal law defining the rights of students with disabilities was first passed in 1975 and then updated and renamed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in 1990. IDEA mandates a “free appropriate public school education” for eligible students ages 3-21. In the 2022-23 school year that included or 15% of all those attending public schools — a two percentage-point increase from the 6.4 million students covered under IDEA a decade ago. The federal guidelines provide baseline regulations that states must follow, but some — like New Jersey — have implemented stronger protections as well. 

Under IDEA, states must submit annual data about students who receive special education and related services to the Education Department, including the data analyzed by ����Ӱ��.

And the law provides certain protections around disciplinary removals: If a student with a disability is removed from their classroom for more than 10 days, IDEA mandates a process called a Manifestation Determination Review, a hearing during which a group — including the parents and the student’s  IEP team — meets to determine if the child’s behaviors were either related to their disability or the result of a failure to implement their IEP. 

If the answer to either of these questions is “yes,” the school can’t move forward with the removal and has to instead make a plan to provide updated support.

Experts and parents told ����Ӱ�� that once a student is diagnosed with a disability, schools tend to become particularly cautious about hitting that 10-day mark and triggering the legal review process. In some cases, that means educators pay closer attention to implementing a student’s IEP. But, in others, schools attempt to skirt the system by suspending students “off-the-books.” 

And when schools do implement the hearing process, they don’t always do so thoroughly or with intention, sometimes just “doing [it] to check the box,” said Morrison, the South Carolina attorney.

A recent , for example, found that New York City’s public schools routinely flout these federal guidelines by not properly considering a student’s disability during hearings. 

It can be challenging to hold schools and districts accountable for faithfully implementing these hearings, since the federal government isn’t collecting data around them, according to Losen, from the National Center for Youth Law.

“For monitoring the enforcement of these supposedly important protections, we don’t get to see any of that data,” he said. “Nothing. And I think that’s a huge oversight.” 

Carter, the South Carolina student suspended multiple times throughout his school career, is now leading his own IEP meetings and learning to control his behaviors, his mother told ����Ӱ��. 

Tissot said he made it through the past school year without any suspensions — a first for him — and this fall he’ll start high school. His mom describes the teenager as a sweet, talkative kid who loves to try new foods — “He’s a little foodie!” — play video games and make people laugh.

While Tissot is proud of Carter’s progress, she also worries he’s still not where he needs to be academically, and his history of repeated suspensions has heightened his anxiety at school. 

“He has told me that he tries so hard to control himself that he’s unable to concentrate,” she said.

And she worries for other students with disabilities who don’t have the same resources Carter has — like a mom who’s an advocate in the field — a fear that’s only intensified under the Trump administration.

“The future is not looking good for kids with disabilities who require IEPs,” she said. “It’s very scary because they’re taking away the federal oversight right now so really relying on parents to enforce it. And, I mean, that’s not going to work at all.”

Now, with the rise of private school choice, lawmakers are on the verge of further eroding their commitments to students and families. Instead of fully investing in IDEA and embracing its promises of ensuring all children can access and receive the services they need — something America has never done — Congress is considering passing the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill” (), which would only further undermine the rights and opportunities of students with disabilities. 

The bill would by slashing Medicaid and other funding for programs that help students with disabilities in public schools. But the require private schools to admit these children, or provide the same level of services as a public school must. Other than unenrolling and switching schools yet again, families of kids with disabilities would have no way to hold these schools accountable for providing services.

I know firsthand what accountability looks like in a private school setting — and it’s bleak. My son was recently evaluated for special education eligibility because of developmental delays, a process we navigated independent of his private preschool. Soon after his diagnosis, the school began calling family conferences to complain about his behavior, having never raised any concerns during the two previous years. The school alleged he was having trouble listening, completing classwork he doesn’t enjoy, and standing or sitting still; it demanded that we find, pay for and send a therapist to school. 

My son is 4 years old. When he’s running around, it’s because he’s pretending to be Sonic the Hedgehog — typical preschool behavior. The school administrator said they were at a loss for what to do, and that if we didn’t fix my son’s behavior, then the school was no longer a good fit. The school relinquished any responsibility for how they might adapt to meet my son’s needs. It felt like they had made a unilateral decision to push him out once they realized he had developmental delays. 

As an attorney and advocate for children with disabilities, I’ve spent nearly two decades working to ensure that schools are welcoming places for families, providing instruction that meets the needs of all students. I’ve sat in versions of this meeting dozens of times with kids of all learning profiles. But experiencing it as a parent, I felt shame, defensiveness and anger. Private school choice is intended to empower parents to find the education that best meets their children’s unique needs and different learning styles. Yet, a school of choice was telling me that it was choosing not to serve my son.

The administration wasn’t responsive to my suggestions for what it could do differently to engage with my son — and they don’t have to be. It’s a private school. It is free to define a narrow box of acceptable child behavior and wait for kids to fit into it. The private school is not accountable for the same expectations and responsibilities that I can expect of my local public school, where my son now receives specialized instruction, along with speech and occupational therapy. Expanded private school vouchers and the policies espoused in H.R. 1 could result in thousands more students being put in the same position as my son.

I am not one to defend maintaining the status quo for students with disabilities across the nation. But the country can and we must do better. America’s children and adults with disabilities can be undone only by actively prioritizing their inclusion. As citizens, we cannot passively assume it will happen.

Giving up on the promise of IDEA and disinvesting in public schools is not the answer. Neither is lowering the bar for services and somehow expecting better results. The solution lies in a relentless commitment to quality and accountability. This means adequate local and federal resources and meaningful accountability structures to support all public schools and policies that help all children. Congress must honor the promise made 50 years ago and reject H.R. 1. 

If the justices had agreed with the district’s longstanding argument, children with disabilities would have had to prove their school system intentionally acted in bad faith in denying them in-school accommodations. In “friend of the court” briefs, numerous advocacy groups had warned that holding special education students to a different — and extraordinarily strict — definition of discrimination would have made it virtually impossible for families to assert their rights. 

The court agreed, saying everyone who files suit under the ADA should have to meet the same standard of “deliberate indifference,” or disregard for an individual’s need for accommodations.

“That our decision is narrow does not diminish its import for A.J.T. and ‘a great many children with disabilities and their parents,’ ” Roberts wrote, citing language from a lower court decision. “Together they face daunting challenges on a daily basis. We hold today that those challenges do not include having to satisfy a more stringent standard of proof than other plaintiffs to establish discrimination under Title II of the ADA and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act.”

In a concurring opinion, Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson elaborated, citing examples of discrimination that, intent notwithstanding, must still be addressed. 

“Stairs may prevent a wheelchair-bound person from accessing a public space,” Sotomayor wrote. “The lack of auxiliary aids may prevent a deaf person from accessing medical treatment at a public hospital; and braille-free ballots may preclude a blind person from voting, all without animus on the part of the city planner, the hospital staff or the ballot designer.”

“Today’s decision is a great win for Ava, and for children with disabilities facing discrimination in schools across the country,” said Roman Martinez, a lead attorney on the case. “This outcome gets the law exactly right, and it will help protect the reasonable accommodations needed to ensure equal opportunity for all.”

In a statement to ����Ӱ��, a district spokesperson said the high court “declined to decide what the particular intent standard is for such claims,” noting that “the case will now return to the trial court for next steps consistent with the court’s ruling.”

In 2015, when Ava was in fourth grade, her family moved from Kentucky to Minnesota. Because her severe form of epilepsy causes frequent seizures during the morning, she had been allowed to attend school in the afternoon and early evening. Initially, the Osseo district agreed to a modified schedule, but reneged after the family moved, saying it was unwilling to provide services outside the normal school day. 

The state administrative law judge who heard the family’s initial complaint called the district’s arguments “pretextual,” saying it was more concerned with “the need to safeguard the ordinary end-of-the-workday departure times for its faculty and staff” than with outside evaluators’ assessments of Ava’s needs. 

As the case made its way to the , the district had consistently argued Ava had to prove the school system acted out of ill intent — a standard that would have applied only to K-12 students. But in the brief it submitted before oral arguments, Osseo , saying that a showing of bad faith is required in all ADA cases, not just those involving schools.

The April 28 hearing erupted in rare verbal fireworks when Justice Neil Gorsuch took exception to a statement by the district’s attorney that lawyers for the U.S. Department of Justice, who sided with the family, were “lying” when they said the district had changed its argument. Justice Amy Coney Barrett characterized the district’s shift as “a pretty big sea change,” while Jackson questioned whether the district was saying the ADA does not necessarily require accommodations for people with disabilities.  

In their concurring opinion, Sotomayor and Jackson noted that when they wrote the act, lawmakers addressed the question at the heart of the case head-on: “Congress was not naïve to the insidious nature of disability discrimination when it enacted the ADA and Rehabilitation Act. It understood full well that discrimination against those with disabilities derives principally from ‘apathetic attitudes rather than affirmative animus.’ ”

The decision comes at a time when disability protections have come under fire from the second Trump administration and a number of Republican governors. In October, motivated by new rules that said gender dysphoria could be considered a disability, 17 states . Gender dysphoria is the clinical term for distress caused when a person’s gender does not match their sex assigned at birth.

That suit, Texas vs. Kennedy, originally sought to have Section 504, the portion of the ADA that outlaws in-school discrimination, declared unconstitutional. The states have since dropped that demand from the suit but are to overturn rules prohibiting discrimination in a wide array of public settings. 

Whether the states will continue to press the new, broader case in the face of Thursday’s decision remains to be seen.

For their part, disability advocates were quick to celebrate. The district’s position was “flatly inconsistent with the law and would have stripped millions of people with disabilities of the protections Congress put in place to prevent systemic discrimination,” said Shira Wakschlag, senior executive officer of legal advocacy and general counsel for The Arc of the United States, which submitted a brief on the issues. “The very foundation of disability civil rights was on the line.”

“Medicaid is there to catch us all when we fall,” said Amidon, who lives in Manistee, Michigan. “It’s not just for people who’ve always needed it; it’s for people like my family as well, who never thought that we would be in a position to rely on it. Without Medicaid and these early intervention services, our family would be facing a much different reality.”

As plans for cutting hundreds of billions of dollars in Medicaid take shape and, parents and child health advocates are warning about collateral damage. Namely, the healthy development of young American children.

Nationwide, 31 million children rely on Medicaid, and experts such as Julie Kashen, senior fellow and director for women’s economic justice at , have, saying, “Reductions in coverage could worsen the health of those children and their communities.” 

While Congressional debate is largely focused on cutting coverage for low-income adults and limiting states’ ability to raise taxes for healthcare spending, the impact could well cause children to lose services and access to health care. 

“There’s not a lot of fat to cut in Medicaid,” Elisabeth Wright Burak, senior fellow at the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families said on a . “Cuts would put states in a very difficult position of making hard decisions between spending more or rolling back existing coverage or services.” 

Medicaid, a state-federal partnership, supports American families in many different ways. The health coverage it provides to low-income children has been shown to . Nearly are covered by Medicaid, and it is a major funder of community health workers. 

Medicaid also helps fund part C of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which provides early intervention screening and services., the program is designed “to enhance the development of infants and toddlers with disabilities, to minimize their potential for developmental delay and to recognize the significant brain development that occurs during a child’s first three years of life.” The program provides early intervention screening and services with resources that

Nationwide, about 540,000 children under age 3 receive Part C services, and about half of them are enrolled in Medicaid, from the Infant and Toddler Coordinators Association. Part C saves taxpayers money by minimizing long-term costs for children with disabilities, promoting school readiness and reducing the prevalence of severe disabilities in adulthood. These benefits have been extensively documented:

• These services are proven to support outcomes for infants and toddlers with .
• As a result of early intervention services, did not need special education by the time they reached kindergarten.
• Infants and toddlers with disabilities who receive services under Part C — with two-thirds substantially improving and about one half catching up to a level appropriate for their age.

Every state has different Medicaid , which can limit the support that children receive. In Texas, 75% of the state’s Medicaid enrollees are children, said Adriana D. Kohler, policy director of , a children’s advocacy nonprofit. About 2.8% of the state’s children under age 3 receive Part C services compared to 7% nationwide, the show “It’s pretty complicated for the early intervention providers,” Kohler said. “We leverage over a dozen different funding sources, and Medicaid is a critical source of funding.”

Owing to in Medicaid that Texas lawmakers enacted in 2011, the number of early intervention providers dropped from 58 to 40, while enrollment in the Part C program dropped by 20% to 30% in some areas, according to Kohler. “You had to be a more severe case or have higher needs in order to qualify,”  she said. “These programs are having to do more with less.” 

Texas is also that has not agreed to the Medicaid expansion approved in the Affordable Care Act, meaning that uninsured adults living under the poverty line cannot access Medicaid unless they are pregnant, gave birth in the past year, have a disability or live in a nursing home. 

Burak underscored the particular risks for children’s health care in states that did not expand Medicaid and rely on taxing managed care organizations to pay for services. A proposal now before Congress would prohibit such meaning states like Texas would likely be forced to cut back on coverage or services for kids.

The consequences are real and immediate. Many districts are struggling to plan effectively for the upcoming school year amid the uncertainty. Meanwhile, the 7.5 million students served under IDEA — 15% of the U.S.  student population — continue to face stark disparities: achievement gaps of more than 40 points on national assessments, twice the suspension rates, three times higher dropout rates, and dramatically lower college enrollment compared to nondisabled peers. Despite 50 years of federal mandates, the current system still fails these students, raising urgent questions about what could happen if those safeguards erode.

I’m not writing to simply sound another alarm. The reality is that when federal protections unravel, state and local leadership becomes the first line of defense. That responsibility can feel daunting, but it also comes with opportunity. In many places, local leaders are already stepping up, showing that progress is possible even in the face of uncertainty. In a midsize district in Vermont where schools committed to clear expectations, coaching and data-informed practices, the quality of students’ Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) improved on The Ability Challenge’s IEP rubric by 40% in a single year. Better IEPs directly help students because they accurately identify learning needs, set meaningful goals connected to grade-level standards and specify the right supports to help students succeed.

Leaders of this district and others who are moving forward aren’t starting from scratch. They are drawing on what decades of research have made clear: that students with disabilities thrive when they learn alongside their peers in classrooms designed to support all learners. Success means improving processes to create clear pathways and align resources — rethinking how schools group students, measure progress and embrace learning differences. Effective leaders build inclusive systems that ensure compliance while improving outcomes.

Here are a few key steps schools  and districts can take (and states can reinforce) to protect students with disabilities and enhance learning for all students:

Champion inclusive education as a whole-school benefit. consistently shows that focusing on making schools and classrooms more accessible benefits everyone, not just students with learning differences.  Schools that invest in these practices can avoid wasting resources on separate classes or duplicate services and create a more collaborative workplace where teachers feel valued and effective. 

Invest in collaborative models. The most successful schools have a common feature: They maximize the time general and special educators work together to plan instruction and build on each other’s expertise. One D.C. charter school that developed an interdisciplinary team to address behavior issues , shifting teachers’ time from managing individual students’ actions to increasing instruction for everyone.

Redesign schedules to maximize capacity. Planning a school schedule can be a highly intensive process that involves many priorities and moving parts. Fitting them together takes a great deal of attention, and technical tasks like student and staff grouping and scheduling can be overlooked. A Northeastern middle school strategically redesigned its schedule to ensure that special education teachers integrated specialized instruction for students with IEPs within their grade-level reading and math classes. This created more efficient use of teacher time by reducing the need for separate pullout groups, provided all special education instruction required by student IEPs, minimized instances where students missed important content and allowed for weekly planning meetings for each teaching team.

Train leaders to coach for inclusive practice. Many general education teachers  —, by some estimates — report feeling unprepared to teach students with disabilities, not because they don’t care, but because they haven’t been given the tools or time. When instructional leaders provide coaching that addresses how students with learning differences engage with content, achievement improves. In another D.C. charter network where assistant principals were trained to identify and coach all their teachers on learning differences and specialized instruction, achievement gaps between students with disabilities and their non-disabled peers shrank to across grades. 

Develop creative solutions to maximize resources and impact. This could include neighboring school districts sharing costs of speech therapists or behavior specialists, partnerships with local universities or arrangements with third-party providers to train staff on inclusive teaching methods. These partnerships can fill gaps in expertise, provide guidance on implementation and help districts sustain momentum on improvement initiatives.

These examples show what’s possible when schools commit to accessibility for all students. Making this the norm means taking these successful approaches — collaborative teaching teams, strategic scheduling, shared expertise and inclusive classroom practices — and implementing them systematically across entire schools and districts.

While state and local leaders drive immediate change, strong federal protections remain crucial for ensuring consistency and access. History has shown that without federal oversight, vulnerable students face dangerously inconsistent support. Education leaders must both advocate for maintaining robust federal accountability and act boldly at state and local levels. State education leaders, superintendents and district administrators cannot wait — they must set clear priorities, allocate resources strategically and maintain essential services despite uncertainty. 

The cost of inaction is far greater than the investment required for change. While federal policies may shift, the imperative for building educational systems where disability doesn’t determine destiny is critical. The question is whether state and local leaders have the courage.

Today I sit on the sidelines, but with a heart tilted toward young people.

It seems that every day there is a wave of fresh cuts at federal agencies, including the U.S. Department of Education. I personally know a reading specialist who will not be able to return to her position next year because of these decisions. The cuts keep coming, and they will affect the education that schools are able to provide.

With each announcement, my stomach churns. Staff layoffs will be debilitating. I am also concerned that the proposed closure of the will reduce or severely limit access to vital support for students.

As a mother, a retired school nurse, and a woman of faith, I am pleading with elected leaders to invest in children — including our most vulnerable. Investing looks like ensuring that students and educators have what they need to thrive. It looks like maintaining consistent standards for the education of young people.

The Education Department is responsible for ensuring that schools meet the needs of neurodivergent students and those who need extra support to succeed academically. It also holds schools accountable for providing services to students of all ages and abilities. Shuttering the department means not only widening the achievement gap, but pushing children and young people into the cracks.

Our nation cannot thrive if we continue to perpetuate a system in which some students receive a quality education and others do not. Further, any family can find themselves in need of support, whether it’s for their child’s physical, mental or special education needs. Education in America should mean that regardless of where you come from or what you need, you will have an opportunity to have your needs met.

Moreover, if the federal agency  is fully dissolved, the responsibilities for mandating services and providing expertise will fall to the states. Every state operates differently, has different priorities and different challenges. Educational services may become wildly inconsistent. Students in Colorado could receive vastly different services than students in, say, Utah.

No essential service —which helps children, families and communities — should exist in a state of uncertainty. When faced with budgetary challenges or limited oversight, I fear that some schools may consider special education services and student accommodations as disposable.

Though I am no longer in schools, I am now the national president of United Women in Faith. Among our many campaigns for justice is a fight against “school pushout.” Pushout occurs through a patchwork of policies that disproportionately funnels children of color, children with disabilities, and students identifying as LGBTQ from the classroom into the criminal justice system.

Currently, it is estimated that for students with disabilities is about 40%, which is twice that of their peers without disabilities. Far too often, students with disabilities are unfairly maligned and funneled into the criminal justice system. 

We need a functioning Department of Education to ensure that preventative services and those provided under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) give children their best chance to succeed and not end up as just another statistic. I, along with my sisters at , will keep pushing for education justice, but this is not our fight alone. Everyone has a role to play to ensure students get what they need in schools.

Children are our future, and their education shouldn’t be an option or an afterthought.

Until the 1970s, numerous U.S. states used registries to identify disabled people to be subjected to forced sterilization and institutionalization. A number of states still maintain lists of autists.

“The history there is deeply, deeply disturbed,” says Larkin Taylor-Parker, legal director of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network. “It doesn’t usually end well for us. It has ended in murder — industrial-scale incarceration and murder.” 

In given to NIH leaders April 21, Bhattacharya said the registry will draw from an unprecedented compilation of public and private databases to be used for U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s controversial new study of autism. In addition to information collected by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the registry and research database will include pharmacy records, private insurer claims, lab and genetic testing information, treatment records from the Department of Veterans Affairs and Indian Health Service — even data from smartwatches.

Though the plan described is still too vague for advocates to know for sure, NIH might also tap state records that identify neurodivergent children who receive special education services. In the 2022-23 school year, almost 1 million autistic students attended U.S. schools.  

Bhattacharya promised “state of the art” protections to guard patient confidentiality, explaining that 10 to 20 groups of outside researchers would be allowed to use the data but not download it. It is unclear whether this meets any legal standard for privacy safeguards.  

As ����Ӱ�� has reported, the man tapped to lead Kennedy’s study was found to have practiced medicine on autistic children without a license, prescribing a dangerous drug not approved for use in the U.S. and improperly giving them puberty blockers. 

Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaxxer, intends the study to find a link between autism and vaccines. More than two dozen studies have discredited the notion of any connection.

With few details released about how the NIH will compile data — some of which is subject to privacy restrictions at various federal agencies— it’s unclear how patient confidentiality will be maintained. 

NIH researchers are not bound by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, the main law that restricts who can access private medical information, and under what circumstances. Instead, the institutes to the Privacy Act of 1974, which protects “records that can be retrieved by personal identifiers such as a name, Social Security number or other identifying number or symbol” and, with limited exceptions, “prohibits disclosure of personally identifiable records without the written consent of the individual(s) to whom the records pertain.”

The privacy law was enacted in large part to stop federal agencies from sharing damning information about people singled out by former President Richard Nixon and former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover as political enemies. Since President Donald Trump’s second inauguration, privacy law experts have that Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has gone into sensitive government records systems without legal authority to do so. Some courts have ordered a stop to the practice.

“The thought of a federal registry of autistic people that includes incredibly personal data that makes us very easy to find deprives us of the privacy that other citizens enjoy,” says Taylor-Parker. “It taps some of my community’s deepest fears and the specters of some of the most horrifying episodes in our history.”

In the 1930s and ’40s, German and Austrian public health officials of “malformed children” to the Third Reich’s Ministry of the Interior for a list of those targeted for sterilization or death. Among those supplying names was early autism researcher and Nazi collaborator Dr. Hans Asperger. He identified nearly 2,700 children, most commonly citing “education problems” as the reason.

Until 2013, Asperger’s Syndrome was a diagnosis given to autistic children who were believed to be “higher functioning” — Asperger himself called the visibly intelligent children he experimented on “little professors.” 

Most advocates now recognize efforts to distinguish higher- and lower-functioning autists as false and harmful. In his presentation to NIH staff, however, Bhattacharya said the new research will consider the perceived severity of subjects’ autism. 

“I recognize, of course, that autism, there’s a range of manifestations ranging from highly functioning children to children that are quite severely disabled,” he said, according to . “And of course, the research will account very carefully for that.” 

This, too, terrifies Taylor-Parker, who notes that autistic people who are nonverbal or also have a developmental disability have historically been involuntarily placed in asylums and other facilities and are still often excluded from general education classrooms. 

“We already have a societywide problem…with ignoring the support needs of people who can hold down a job, can drive a car and maybe score well on an IQ test,” she says. “On the other hand, we ignore the capacities, the capability, the humanity of people who don’t do those things.”

Further, she points out, compiling as much diagnostic and prescription information on autistic individuals as possible is likely to uncover other private information that people fear could end up on future “disease registries.” 

“I’m very concerned about this becoming a slippery slope,” says Taylor-Parker. “There is very good research demonstrating that [autistic people] are trans and gender-nonconforming at above-average rates.”

In the interest of establishing the prevalence of autism and in some cases understanding which services are helpful, several states and two national philanthropies . With a goal of ensuring that as many children as possible are offered early intervention services, at least two contain identifying information. 

Good intentions notwithstanding, many autistic people oppose the existence of any registry, citing the historical danger they pose for disabled people in general. Indeed, recognizing this last year, New Hampshire lawmakers eliminated the state’s autism registry. 

Since Kennedy’s appointment, autistic people have repeatedly decried his plan to again attempt to link autism to vaccines, despite dozens of credible studies that have ruled out immunizations as a cause. His plan, they charge, would divert resources from research into therapies and services that can improve the lives of people with disabilities. 

Says Taylor-Parker, “That discussion sucks the oxygen out of the room when it comes to making life better for autistic people who are already here and who will be born in the near future.”

According to the NIH, will be posted in the coming days. 

In making moves to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education, like the large-scale layoffs and dramatic cuts to research grant programs, the Trump administration and Secretary Linda McMahon have promised to eliminate “bureaucratic bloat” without affecting programs mandated by federal law, like student loans, Title I funding, and support for students with disabilities. 

Even if it was possible to dismantle the department without impacting those programs (and it seems very unlikely), eliminating the department’s other valuable work—including in educational research—will have an outsized impact on the ability of our education system to serve all students well. 

As a career education researcher working for focused on access and opportunity for students with disabilities, I have witnessed firsthand the uniquely powerful role the department’s Institute for Educational Sciences (IES) plays in both supporting research directly and setting the agenda for how we measure effective educational practice. Though IES funds are a tiny fraction of federal spending, they play an essential role in focusing educational reform on evidence and data. 

Arguments for eliminating the department seem to center on the idea that few of its functions support teachers and students. Empirically, this is just plain wrong: goes directly to students, and 96% goes either to student loans or directly to states, localities and tribes. But even the less than 0.5% of that budget focused on research through IES goes beyond bureaucratic largess: It includes essential services and functions that allow schools to focus on their core work and give all Americans valuable information on how students are learning. 

The department’s research arm performs essential functions to maintaining high quality education in the United States. For example: 

• The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is the largest and only continual and nationally representative measure of what students in the United States know and can do. While McMahon has promised to keep the NAEP in some form, it’s important to remember that developing, administering, and validating the assessment is a massive undertaking requiring expertise in educational content and psychometrics; it is also overseen by a publicly accountable governing board that ensures the test accurately reflects key knowledge and skills in three grade levels across multiple subjects. Without this combination of expertise and the mandate of law, it would be impossible to deliver a comprehensive view of student achievement over time and across states. 

•  Research, development, and dissemination grants funded by IES are a critical source of funding for efforts to understand how to teach students well. High-profile efforts to fund and collect research at IES, such as the What Works Clearinghouse, have driven a national conversation on effective teaching and learning in areas like effective reading instruction, teacher training, and behavior management. Our national revolution in reading instruction has been driven, in no small part, by IES-funded research through the and other efforts. No entity outside the federal government has the size or scope to make these investments and ensure that the results of that work remain open to the public. 

• The 10 Regional Educational Laboratories (RELs) provide critical technical support to school districts large and small to apply research and data to the work of teaching and learning. Most districts aren’t large enough to afford dedicated research or data staff: for these districts, the local REL is often the only resource available to process student achievement data or learn from the work of other nearby districts. In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, the RELs have served as critical hubs of information about academic recovery, particularly for marginalized students. 

While each of these programs is tiny compared to the scale of the federal budget, they each provide unique value that could not be replicated by private foundations, state departments of education, or districts themselves. Further, IES has served as an important coordinating entity, connecting expertise in education that is otherwise spread across universities around the country and coordinating activities of many overlapping governmental agencies and organizations. 

Eliminating, reducing funding or dramatically altering these programs like these also has an outsized impact on traditionally ignored groups of students, like students with disabilities. Funding cuts have IES research focused on students with disabilities, including grants aimed at closing achievement gaps widened by the pandemic, improving training for paraeducators, and evaluating early literacy skills programs for students with diverse needs. There are few outside incentives encouraging research like this; in the absence of IES grants, it is unlikely such work would happen at all. 

Like every educational researcher, I don’t agree with every funding choice made by IES since its founding in 2002. Eliminating IES, however, would remove Congressional oversight from any aspect of how educational research is conducted or prioritized: and with it, the accountability that ensures that research focuses on the needs of all students. Perhaps more troublingly, lawmakers and superintendents would have significantly less evidence to drive decisions in policy and practice, like data on teacher shortages or whether costly education programs are actually effective. 

At a time when student achievement is stagnating, it can be tempting to change everything about how federal education programs function. But make no mistake: destroying the programs that give the federal government a voice in the education conversation isn’t reform, it’s giving up on public education, at a time when the stakes couldn’t be higher.

It is evident that the White House will not stop until it wipes out the most basic protections and supports for the American people, including the youngest children. The first step was the attempt to defund Head Start and Early Head Start, impacting 800,000 young children across the nation. This order was halted by a federal judge in Washington, thanks to the lawsuits filed by Democracy Forward and attorneys general from 23 states. 

The mass layoffs will severely hamper the department’s ability to execute on its core responsibilities. This move is a direct assault on millions of students, teachers and families. It is clearly a precursor to dismantling the department without congressional consent, which would have an even more devastating impact. The department serves and protects the most vulnerable children and young adults, ensuring that they have equal access to education. This includes:

• 26 million students from low-income backgrounds — more than half of all K-12 students — who rely on the department for reasonable class sizes; school meals; tutoring; afterschool and summer programs; school supplies such as laptops and books; parent engagement programs; and, in some cases, transportation

• 9.8 million students enrolled in rural schools
  
• 7.4. million students with disabilities
  
• 5 million English learners
  
• 1.1 million students experiencing homelessness
  
• 87 million college students who receive Pell Grants and student loans 

The department was created in 1980 with a single, crucial purpose: to ensure equal access to education and to promote educational excellence throughout the nation. Its creation followed decades of systemic inequities that left children in disadvantaged communities without the same learning opportunities as their more privileged peers. The department’s work has been a critical safeguard against discrimination in schools, whether on the basis of race, disability, gender or income. 

Without the federal government’s intervention and oversight, the more than 13 million children who live in poverty would be even more vulnerable to systemic inequities. The department ensures that federal dollars are distributed to those students most in need, ensuring that underserved children have the same opportunities for success as their wealthier peers. Without the federal oversight and the department’s support, these students will fall even further behind, and the national achievement gap will grow wider.

The federal government is the only entity that can ensure a baseline level of educational equity across the entire nation. The department holds states accountable for ensuring that all children, regardless of where they live or what their socioeconomic status may be, receive a quality education. If this accountability is removed, the children most at risk — those in underfunded schools, children of color, children with disabilities, English learners and those experiencing homelessness — will be the first to suffer. These children would be denied the critical services and protections they need to succeed in school and in life.

Moreover, the president’s plan to turn education policy over to the states would completely dismantle the federal safety net that ensures that the most vulnerable children are not left behind. Each of the 50 states has different priorities, resources and political climates. While some might be able to provide excellent educational opportunities, others will leave children behind, particularly in rural or economically disadvantaged areas. Inequities between states could widen to an intolerable degree, and the resulting lack of uniform educational standards would only further disadvantage the children who need the most help.

To be clear, the department cannot be dissolved at the whim of a sitting president. Under the Constitution, only an act of Congress can create or dismantle a federal agency. The president does not have the unilateral power to eliminate an entire federal institution that serves the educational needs of millions of children across this country. Attempting to do so would not only undermine the law, but also inflict tremendous harm to the very foundation of America’s educational system.

The idea that dismantling the department could somehow improve that system is not only misguided, but dangerously naïve.

It’s vital that we, as a nation, recognize the long-term damage this action would cause. The attempt to dismantle the Department of Education is not just an attack on a government agency — it is an attack on the future of America’s children.

To parents across the country: This policy is not only unconstitutional — it is a grave threat to your children’s future. Whether your child is in a classroom in New York, Los Angeles or a small town in the Midwest, the U.S. Department of Education has worked to ensure that their educational opportunities are protected, funded and regulated. A president who seeks to eliminate this essential agency is jeopardizing the future of every single student in America.

This is why we must all rise up and make our voices heard. We must demand that our leaders stop this dangerous plan in its tracks, that they fix what isn’t working and that they use this opportunity to reimagine public education and invest in a more effective, equitable system that gives all children the opportunity to succeed.