“Frankly, had not been for the resources accessible to the public that the Ministry of Education provided with disabled students like me, I would probably not have been to the college,” explains Gwiazdowski, who is now both a university graduate and defender of invalidity rights.
“And I would certainly not expect that the law faculty begins this fall if it was not for these resources.”
But the role of the American education department by helping students with disabilities could change soon.
President Trump said his administration was move “Special needs” for the American Department of Health and Social Services (HHS), an agency that recently announced His own drastic cuts. Its administration has not specified exactly which programs will be inappropriate and if the idea is among them, but the game of conservative policy 2025 project offers an idea of moving to HHS.
The spokesman for the Ministry of Education, Madi Biedermann, said: “The department actively examines where programs (department of education) can be managed in a responsible manner to serve students and families.
Experts say that such a decision would be incredibly complicated. The laws on special education are “linked” to the Department of Education, explains Katy Neas, former assistant assistant secretary at the office of the Department of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services.
“Setting separation from a broader education institution seems poorly oriented to me,” explains Neas, who now directs the arc, a defense organization for disabled people. Neas says that moving some of the legally protected programs to another agency would also require an act of the congress.
But some conservatives wonder if the federal government has even been also useful with regard to special education.
“I mean, the parents do their (education plans) with their local educators, right?” With their school and school district. They do not do it with Washington, ”explains Jonathan Butcher, a researcher in education at the Heritage Foundation, who helped shape Project 2025.
With so many swirling questions in the future of federal participation in special education, here is an overview of the way in which the Ministry of Education traditionally contributes to the schooling of disabled students.
Helping schools to follow federal laws for disabled students
The Ministry of Education oversees many federal laws that govern the way students with and without disability live the school.
But the idea is one of the main ways in which the federal government helps to educate disabled students. The law devotes the right of each child to “free and appropriate public education”, and he says that disabled students are entitled to individual education programs (IEP) who present the services to which each child is entitled. The idea is also the vehicle by which the federal government sends money to schools to help pay these services.
“Not only does the Ministry of Education provide funding for personnel and resources to individual school divisions, but I mean, it is your framework for responsibility,” explains Mark Burnette, superintendent of the County County public schools in the rural regions of southwest of Virginia. He says that almost a fifth of his students qualify for services at the idea.
Nationally, the idea serves around 7.5 million students, or 15% of the student population from kindergarten to the 12th year. During the year 2024, the congress put aside $ 15.4 billion for the idea. The Department of Education is responsible for distributing this money to the States, which then transmit these funds to qualified school districts.
Ideas funds are used to pay special education teachers and staff, technology to meet the individual needs of students, teaching materials, transport and more.
“A child who has a hearing impairment may need an interpreter or subtitling of the sign language to really follow what is going on in class,” explains Neas. “These are the things that allow a disabled child to really learn the same material as their unabled peers.”
The Ministry of Education is responsible for monitoring whether states and school districts follow the idea and other laws for disabled students. This includes article 504 of the rehabilitation law, which indicates that students are entitled to reasonable arrangements, such as breaks provided for a diabetes child to take a snack or check their level of insulin.
The department also provides advice from ideas to heads of state and collect data that helps determine eligibility for ideas.
Apply special education law and civil rights of disabled students
The Civil Rights Office, or OCR, is the application branch of the Department of Education. When students face discrimination in school, they can file a complaint with the OCR, which could lead to a federal survey.
This office is responsible for discrimination complaints based on race, sex, national origin and other categories, but OCR data Discrimination in people with disabilities has historically constituted most of complaints.
Seli Gwiazdowski wants her to take advantage of the OCR during her schooling.
“The official complaint process would have allowed me to be a child,” she said.
This would have enabled him to put the responsibility of the application “in the towers of lawyers and investigators who are paid to do so at the Office of Civil Rights”.
In recent years, the number of OCR complaints has reached record heights, and Many have dragged into the system For months. But recently, the OCR’s ability to manage all these cases has been tense: when the American secretary for education Linda McMahon reduced the workforce of the Department of Education almost in two, also OCR has lost more than 40% of its staffas well as seven of its 12 regional offices.
The Trump administration has promised that it would preserve “resources for special disabled children”. But mass layoffs also affected the special education and rehabilitation services office, where the Neas worked. Teams that carry out special education research help determine the eligibility for ideas and those who provide legal advice to the leaders of local states and leaders have also been affected.
“If you have no type of standards of responsibility or someone to present themselves, this leaves room for people to take advantage of the programs and not provide the services they have to provide,” said Burnette, the Superintendent.
Michael Gilberg, a lawyer in special education in New York and Connecticut who is also in autism, said that one of his disabled customers recently filed a complaint with the OCR.
“Without Department of Education that works in this area, it (their case) is stopped,” he says.
Gilberg notes that without OCR, “the only recourse that a family would have, in theory, to continue the school district before the Federal Court or the Court of State … and it takes a lot of time and a lot of money.”
The future role of the federal government in special education
Several of the experts with whom NPR have maintained themselves expressed their concern about the transmission of special education programs in HHS, and far from the education department, an establishment specializing in helping all students.
Alison Barkoff, who directed disability programs at HHS until last year, says that the savings of special education programs in different agencies “is really counterproductive at the idea and objectives of special education, who are disabled students as a student, as part of their schools, part of their classrooms. And that cannot happen if this is separated from general education. ”
Jonathan Butcher of Heritage Foundation considers the measures proposed as an opportunity to improve the role of the federal government in the life of students.
“I think that moving it to another agency is an appropriate decision because I do not think we have proof that the United States Ministry of Education has actually served these families,” he said.
“Change is difficult and that is why it does not very often happen at the federal level, but this is an opportunity to rationalize federal processes.”
The disability defender Seli Gwiazdowski says History has shown The dangers of separating the rights of students with disabilities from non -disabilities.
“When the education of disabled students was not considered to be part of the general normative education, what did this look like? It looked like institutionalization. ”
She is concerned if special education should go to HHS, disability could be classified as a health problem rather than an integrated part of public life, including in schools.
