The Hechinger Report

President Donald Trump has pledged to shutter the Department of Education but also promised that students with disabilities will keep getting the services they need. Special education advocates, school district officials, and teachers say mass federal layoffs mean that too few people are left to carry out a complicated law intended to protect some of the nation’s most vulnerable students’ right to an education. The administration laid off nearly half the Education Department’s staff and slashed its civil rights enforcement arm, and Trump says he wants to move special education programs to the Department of Health and Human Services — an agency that announced its own round of mass layoffs in March. The nation’s teachers’ unions, along with the NAACP, two Massachusetts public school districts, and others have sued, challenging the many changes. 

(NOTE: COPAA CEO Denise Marshall is quoted in this article.)