The U.S. Department of Education is firing almost 1,400 employees raising questions about how the federal government will uphold its obligations under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and other laws.
The agency said that with the layoffs announced late Tuesday, its workforce will be roughly half the size it was when President Donald Trump was inaugurated in January. Nearly 600 employees have already resigned or retired since that time.
The cutbacks will affect every division within the agency, the Education Department said, with some expected to see major reorganization. However, officials indicated that they would maintain statutory programs including formula funding, competitive grantmaking and “funding for special needs students.”
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“Today’s reduction in force reflects the Department of Education’s commitment to efficiency, accountability, and ensuring that resources are directed where they matter most: to students, parents, and teachers,” said Secretary of Education Linda McMahon.
Trump has pledged to close the Education Department and McMahon said the workforce reduction is part of what she’s dubbed the agency’s “final mission.”
McMahon has outlined plans to return control over education to the states. She has proposed moving oversight of IDEA to the Department of Health and Human Services and sending the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, which handles complaints of disability discrimination in schools, to the Department of Justice.
Disability advocates have been warning that efforts to dismantle the Education Department could have an outsized impact on the nation’s 7.5 million special education students. The agency sends billions in funding to states each year and oversees everything from early intervention for young children with disabilities to vocational rehabilitation. The department is also responsible for ensuring that the civil rights of students with disabilities are protected.
“Trump and McMahon can’t eliminate the Department of Education without an act of Congress but he can suffocate, strangle and cut this department off at the knees,” said Marcie Lipsitt, a special education advocate in Michigan who routinely helps families file complaints with the Education Department’s civil rights office. “Secretary McMahon’s proposed reduction of an already insufficient staff is nothing more than a gutting of the institution of public education for America’s children and their parents.”
Even before the firings, Lipsitt said that complaint processing at the agency had slowed considerably since Trump took office. Without enforcement from the Education Department, she noted that families often have little recourse when schools fail to meet their special education obligations.
“This downsizing will be the end of any enforcement over the IDEA 2004, Section 504 and the ADA,” she said. “Parents will be panicked.”
Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, which represents millions of educators, predicted that the changes at the federal level will trickle down to the classroom.
“The real victims will be our most vulnerable students,” she said. “Gutting the Department of Education will send class sizes soaring, cut job training programs, make higher education more expensive and out of reach for middle-class families, take away special education services for students with disabilities, and gut student civil rights protections.”
Advocates are now weighing next steps.
“We are deeply concerned that the department will not have the capacity to uphold its obligations under the law,” said Denise S. Marshall, CEO of the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, or COPAA, a nonprofit that advocates for the rights of students with disabilities and their families. “Our children deserve better and we will take whatever action is necessary to protect their right to a quality education.”
