Federal Legislation & News
in Special Education
EdTrust Issues Principles to Advance Equity in State Literacy
EdTrust has published a thirty-page policy report titled 6 Principles to Advance Equity in State Literacy Policy. The report emphasizes that literacy is a fundamental civil right and a gateway to educational success, economic opportunity, and civic engagement. EdTrust data reinforces what we know nationally -that reading proficiency remains alarmingly low in the U.S., especially among students of color, English learners, students with disabilities, and economically disadvantaged students. The report highlights the impact of dyslexia and also outlines six principles to guide policymakers and advocates in addressing the nation’s literacy crisis through equitable, evidence-based state policies. The six principles include: ensuring that instruction is grounded in the science of reading; using culturally relevant materials; providing equitable and differentiated support; investing in high-quality, inclusive early childhood education and family literacy programs; empowering teachers; and equipping families with clear feedback about student progress and co-creating effective strategies for student improvement with families.
Ed Department preparing to cut millions in special education funding, advocates warn
Disability Scoop
In his budget proposal, the president sought to fold preschool grants as well as many activities currently overseen by the Office of Special Education Programs under IDEA Part D into grants that are distributed to states under Part B. But, in its first test before lawmakers, a key Senate panel soundly rejected Trump’s plan for IDEA late last month. The bipartisan vote to keep IDEA as is “stands in direct conflict with what ED is preparing to do,” 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. “Saving money off the backs of our children and the school personnel who work hard to educate them is appalling. Parents need to be meaningful partners in their education as required by statute (and) Part D funds allow them to be trained on their rights and receive support,” Marshall said. “We’ve heard from reputable sources that the withdrawal of funds is imminent, and we urge Congress, state legislators, and governors to raise their voices to say no.”
Ed. Dept. Hasn’t complied with order to restore civil rights staff, judge says
Education Week
A federal judge said Wednesday the U.S. Department of Education has not meaningfully complied with his June order to reinstate hundreds of civil rights enforcement staff after layoffs greatly reduced their ranks. The statement by Judge Myong J. Joun, a Masschusetts-based U.S. district judge, was part of an order he issued denying the Trump administration’s request to drop his initial directive to the agency, which stemmed from an April lawsuit challenging only terminations in the office for civil rights—the Education Department division charged with enforcing federal civil rights laws in the nation’s schools. The administration sought to have Joun overturn his June order after the U.S. Supreme Court blocked another, broader order from Joun in a separate case that directed the Education Department to restore all laid-off staff from across the agency. Administration lawyers argued that aspects of the separate cases were “functionally identical.” But Joun, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, wrote that he was “unconvinced” by the administration’s arguments.
COPAA Explains ED Waiver Authority, Impact on Students with Disabilities
This year, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) has provided States with several guidance documents promoting the Secretary of Education’s waiver authority under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). In response, COPAA has developed an Overview and Frequently Asked Questions resource to help COPAA members understand how ESEA waivers work and how advocates can engage in state applications for waivers.
New Report Provides Guidance for Embedding Privacy into Inclusive AT
The Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) and the American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD) have released a new policy brief titled Inclusive Innovation: How to Incorporate Privacy into Inclusive Design for Assistive Technologies. This brief explores how assistive technologies (AT) can and should be designed with both accessibility and privacy in mind. While these tools are increasingly AI-enabled and widely used in work, education, and daily life, they often pose privacy risks, especially when sensitive data is shared without adequate safeguards. The report highlights how inclusive design must integrate “privacy by design,” a framework with seven key principles, including embedding privacy into the design, limiting data collection, ensuring transparency, and respecting user consent. The authors contend that too often, privacy is treated as an afterthought, which can expose users to data misuse by advertisers, government agencies, or through security breaches.
Education Department eyes special education in school choice expansion
K-12 Dive
The U.S. Department of Education is working with school districts and states to expand school choice models for students with disabilities that will spur innovative and effective learning opportunities, a top federal special education official said during opening remarks Tuesday at the Office of Special Education Programs’ annual conference. “Our goal is to expand choices for students with special needs so that every family has options to find the best-fit school for their child and not have it be the other way around, where they have to force their child to be a fit in a school that may not be for them,” Diana Diaz-Harrison, deputy assistant secretary of the department’s Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, told the 1,200 conference attendees.
At the same time, the Education Department is striving to expand choice options beyond the traditional public school, Diaz-Harrison said, and it will be honoring the nearly 50-year-old Individuals with Disabilities Education Act that guarantees educational rights to students with disabilities. She asked education leaders across the nation “to implement IDEA with innovation in mind” and to “uphold civil rights while embracing 21st century tools.” IDEA practices must evolve, she said. “Families are seeking choices, flexibility, innovation, high quality, and specialization. The promise of IDEA must adapt to the current landscape of education options and to new options.” This includes giving states and districts more decision-making power and flexibility, Diaz-Harrison said.
Medicaid cuts may impact special education services
The Washington Post
Special-education advocates and some public school districts are bracing for potential budget constraints as they prepare for the $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts the president signed into law last month. The billions that public schools get each year in reimbursements from Medicaid for services such as counseling and speech therapy are at risk, advocates warn.
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Principals don’t always understand special education. That’s a problem
EdWeek.org
One main responsibility for principals: supporting their teachers. But some special education teachers, who deal with heavy caseloads, mountains of paperwork, and individualized expectations, feel like their school leader doesn’t quite understand what’s happening in their classrooms. This was something that Jodee Prudente, a principal at Washoe County school district in Reno, Nev., had heard when she began teaching special education early in her career. Teachers were saying, “The people who supervise and evaluate me don’t know and understand what I’m supposed to be doing with the student population,” said Prudente. “From there, it was, well, do they? Let’s find out.” Prudente paired up with MaryAnn Demchak, a professor of special education at the University of Nevada, to study whether principals in rural Nevada understood how special education teachers led their classrooms, and learn how principals felt about the kind of support they provided to special education teachers.
Senate Appropriators Advance Bill to Protect IDEA Funds and Keep ED Intact
COPAA’s members and team have been urging appropriators since early spring to protect students with disabilities and support special education funding in annual appropriations bills. With last week’s activity in the Senate Appropriations Committee, COPAA is pleased to report that your advocacy, in partnership with the disability and education communities, has led to several incredibly positive outcomes, including funding and protections for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Specifically, Senate appropriators voted 26-3 to finalize the Fiscal Year (FY) 2026 Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Services (Labor-H) bill, preparing it for a floor vote next month. Critical wins in the bipartisan bill include a proposed total of $79 billion for education overall, with no programs eliminated, thus keeping the U.S. Department of Education’s (ED) discretionary budget intact. Senate appropriators ignored recommendations made by the White House to eliminate or block grant certain parts of IDEA and other education programs, and have kept current funding levels for both IDEA at just over $15 billion as well as Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) at $18 billion. Consistent with COPAA’s recommendations and in a preventative move to keep Title I and IDEA at ED, the bill prohibits any transfer of these funds and their programs to other agencies and requires ED to maintain sufficient staffing “to fulfill its statutory responsibilities.”
Other wins include language specifying for IDEA as well as the Institute for Education Sciences (IES) -which funds longitudinal data collection, special/general education research, and more- that ED must fund and oversee each of the funding lines as outlined in the bill “report.” COPAA advocated for this specificity in the underlying appropriations statute to ensure that all of IDEA (e.g., Part B-611 (ages 6-21), Part B-619 (preschool), Part C (ages 0-2), and Part D-National Activities) and other education laws are funded and implemented by ED as required by federal authorizing statutes. Finally, in an unequivocal move to protect state access to appropriated funds, the bill requires funding for IDEA, ESEA, homeless education, career/technical education, and adult education to be distributed to states “on the date such funds become available for obligation” which according to Senate Appropriations Labor-H Subcommittee Chair Senator Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), “…it’s so [state] grantees have no surprises about when they’re getting the money Congress promised them.” For the health and disability support programs overseen by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Senate bill funds all early childcare and disability support programs (e.g., university centers for excellence in developmental disabilities, protection and advocacy, developmental disability councils), which in some cases were targeted by the White House for elimination. Vice Chair Patty Murray noted, “Our bills reject devastating cuts and reject many of this Administration’s absurd proposals like dismantling the Department of Education or destroying HHS and more.”
Next steps on FY 2026 spending bills: While the specific legislative strategy to finalize all twelve spending bills by October 1 by either the House or the Senate remains unclear, the Senate did pass a ‘minibus’ last Friday that contained three of the twelve funding bills: Military Construction, Veterans, and Agriculture. To pass the Labor-H bill in the full Senate, one option being discussed is to bundle it with the Defense bill to ease [both] their passage on the Senate floor, where a 60-vote margin is required. COPAA will keep you informed as things develop.
ACT NOW : COPAA encourages its members to email your Senators TODAY and urge passage of the bipartisan FY 2026 Labor-H bill which supports special education, protects all of IDEA, and ensures states and districts receive the funding they need to educate children with disabilities and support their families.
COPAA Urges Congress to Maintain Funding and Support DEIA in Civil Rights Laws
COPAA has signed with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., and stakeholders to urge House and Senate leadership and appropriators to oppose provisions in and [potential] amendments to the Fiscal Year (FY) 2026 appropriations bills that would prohibit the use of federal funds for diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA). The letter, signed by over 75 organizations, describes the “attacks on DEIA” by the Administration and some members of Congress as falsely claiming that DEI is illegal and anti-American. Together, LDF and advocates assert that in fact, “diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility efforts are essential to ensuring federal programs serve all communities with fairness and dignity.” The letter urges House and Senate leaders to reject any legislative effort that would “severely hinder the federal government’s ability to serve all people equitably and uphold its commitment to equal opportunity and civil rights” and to support the programs designed [by Congress] to “legally break down barriers for Black, white, Latino, Asian American, and Indigenous people; women; LGBTQ+ people; people with disabilities; and other groups.”
Final day for many Education Department workers
NPR
For hundreds of civil servants, today marks the end of their work at the U.S. Department of Education, though most haven’t been allowed to work since March when they were placed on leave and later laid off. These employees performed a wide range of jobs, from safeguarding students’ civil rights to helping borrowers navigate a bewildering federal student loan system. Nearly 1,400 department workers are being fired as part of a broad reduction-in-force (RIF) that began on March 11. Days later, when President Trump signed an executive order to dismantle the Education Department, he said, “We’re going to be returning education, very simply, back to the states where it belongs.” He also claimed that many department employees “don’t work at all” and that “we want to cut the people that aren’t working or are not doing a good job.” Trump’s education secretary, Linda McMahon, called the mass firing “a significant step toward restoring the greatness of the United States education system.”
For decades, the feds were the last, best hope for special ed kids. what happens now?
The 74
Last December, after a year and a half of blind alleys, impenetrable paperwork, and bureaucratic stonewalling, it seemed like the complaints Sierra Rios had filed against her fifth-grader’s elementary school were finally getting a proper investigation. A lawyer in the Dallas office of the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights was asking hard questions of the school where Rios said her daughter, Nevaeh, was repeatedly denied special education services. But then, a few weeks into the probe, the San Antonio mother got a bounce-back email informing her that the attorney working on her case was no longer employed by the agency. As part of its plan to shutter the department, the Trump administration had fired 40% of the civil rights division’s staff and closed half of its regional offices. The March email did not say what would happen to Rios’ case. In May, she got a message asking for a form that had somehow not been transferred from Texas to the agency’s office in Kansas City, Missouri. Rios re-sent the document, but it no longer mattered. During the churn, she was told, the complaint had become too old to pursue.
Did SCOTUS make it easier to sue schools for disability discrimination?
K-12 Dive
School districts likely won’t see a significant increase in lawsuits in the long term in the aftermath of a U.S. Supreme Court decision in June that endorsed a lower burden of proof for claims of disability discrimination against school systems, legal experts say. “For school districts, frankly, I think the general impression people have is going to be overblown,” said Perry Zirkel, an expert in special education law. “I don’t see it having a major long-range effect for school district people or for parents.” But Zirkel and other education attorneys say school districts need to take several steps to ensure they don’t become vulnerable to civil rights claims for monetary damages related to supports and services for students with disabilities. That includes preventing discriminatory practices through training sessions about disability-related policies and practices, as well as addressing problems as soon as they are known.
Child care centers often reject kids with disabilities. Ohio and other states are trying to change that
Hechinger Report
When Selina Likely became director of the Edwards Creative Learning Center six years ago, she knew there was one longstanding practice that she wanted to change. For as long as she had taught at the thriving child care center, it had turned away many children with disabilities such as autism and Down syndrome. The practice was even encoded in the center’s handbook as policy. Likely, the parent of a child with a disability, wanted to stop telling families no, but she knew that to do that, she and her staff would need more support. “I said, ‘Let’s start getting training and see what we can do.’” Not too long after, her effort received a big boost from a state-funded initiative in Ohio to strengthen child care teachers’ knowledge and confidence in working with young kids with disabilities and developmental delays. That program, Ohio PROMISE, offers free online training for child care workers in everything from the benefits of kids of all abilities learning and playing together to the kinds of classroom materials most helpful to have on hand.
ED AI Guidance Priority Includes Students with Disabilities
In conjunction with the White House release of America’s AI Action Plan, Education Secretary Linda McMahon issued a Dear Colleague Letter (DCL) to states announcing the addition of a proposed discretionary grant priority to leverage education outcomes through the use of artificial intelligence (AI). The DCL details ways education funding, including upcoming discretionary grants, can enhance learning by employing AI-enhanced instructional materials, tutoring, and exploring pathways to successful careers. A key focus includes advancing responsible AI education by integrating AI literacy into teaching, expanding AI and computer science instruction across all education levels, and providing professional development for educators. The initiative specifically promotes the “use of AI to support early intervention, K–12, or postsecondary instruction or services for children and students with disabilities and their families,” along with the use of AI to personalize learning, reduce administrative tasks, and enhance teacher preparation. Public comments are invited through the Federal Register by August 20, 2025.