How Trump’s Plan To Close The Ed Department Might Impact Students With Disabilities

President-elect Donald Trump says he wants to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education, but experts are split on what that would mean for students with disabilities across the nation.

On the campaign trail, Trump pledged to close the federal agency responsible for overseeing implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and enforcing it.

Shuttering the Education Department would require an act of Congress, but with the former president headed back to the White House, the question of how such a move might impact students in special education emerged at a public briefing of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights late last week.

Amidst a discussion about teacher shortages, Commissioner Mondaire Jones asked a panel of experts to address how closing the Department of Education could affect students with disabilities.

Eric Hanushek, a fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University who specializes in the economics of education, said that the push to close the Education Department is largely political and wouldn’t fundamentally alter special education.

“I don’t think eliminating the Department of Education would do much,” he said. “Congress is the one who decides on appropriations and they would just redirect who in the executive branch is in charge of these appropriations. So that I don’t think it has any obvious impacts on IDEA funding or other funding.”

However, Hanushek did acknowledge that that doing away with the Education Department might lead to less emphasis on special education if it were tucked into a larger federal agency with other priorities and such changes could compromise the collection of data and the research role of the agency.

William Trachman, general counsel at Mountain States Legal Foundation, a conservative public interest law firm, said that the implications will largely come down to details.

“A lot of the question depends on what replaces a Department of Education,” Trachman said. “If you are merely moving the civil rights office to the (Department of Justice) and the special education office to (the Department of Health and Human Services) and you are block granting things to the states, a lot of the impact of what happens is going to be revealed through those details which I don’t believe any proposal have spelled out so far.”

Others, however, said the consequences of dismantling the Education Department could be dire for students with disabilities, particularly in terms of access and equity and the protection of civil rights.

“Without a large governing body, there is going to be no regulation on who gets what,” said Amanda Levin Mazin, a senior lecturer at Columbia University’s Teachers College. “So the disparities that already exist in educational opportunities for students not only with disabilities but students who are marginalized for other reasons will be exacerbated. There is no more, there will be no more guarantee of basic educational rights which is really what IDEA, Title I and other aspects of the Department of Education really provide.”

Levin Mazin noted that the Education Department plays a large role in providing funding to colleges and universities to prepare special education teachers and she worries that without the agency, the pipeline of qualified educators would end.

Likewise, Jessica Levin, litigation director at the nonprofit Education Law Center, noted that the Education Department is more than just a means to pass funding to states.

“It’s in federal law that the core of special education rights are found and the Department of Education and the experts within it play a crucial role in enforcing those civil rights for students with disabilities across the country,” she said. “This is an incredibly dangerous proposal both on a practical and symbolic level.”