Federal Legislation & News
in Special Education
ARCHIVE
FL: As lawmakers fix Florida’s school voucher system, educators, students cope with financial fallout
WLRN After Juliet Sanomi came to the realization that traditional public school wasn't the right setting for her son, who has autism, she decided to take matters into her own hands. She started a school where he and others like him would thrive. She began that mission...
FL: Florida proposing school emergency plan for runaway disabled students
islandernews.com Florida is seeking to ease parents' concerns by creating a plan for public schools, including forming an emergency search team, if a student with a disability runs away unattended. State Rep. Anna Eskamani, a Democrat from Orange County, filed House...
MD: Maryland is rethinking how it pays for special education
The Baltimore Banner Maryland’s education department awarded a major contract to the American Institutes for Research, asking the Virginia-based nonprofit to recommend a model that would adequately fund special education. They’ll answer a multipronged question: What...
NY: ‘That is unacceptable’: Lawmaker pushes for new safeguards after shocking school incidents
CBS 6 News The proposed bill creates enforceable statewide standards and strengthens protections against the use of physical restraint as a behavioral intervention, such as what happened at Lincoln Elementary School in Schenectady. In northern New York, parents of an...
Deal Reached Between House-Senate on Education Funding, COPAA CEO Responds
Early this morning, House and Senate appropriators announced that a final deal has been reached on education, health, and other domestic spending. The negotiated Fiscal Year 2026 Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Services (Labor-H) bill includes...
Ed Department Pushing Ahead With Plan to Offload Special Education
Disability Scoop With a pair of new hires and recent comments, advocates say the Trump administration appears to be actively laying the groundwork to transfer special education out of the U.S. Department of Education. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon told a group...
From Head Start to Civil Rights, 8 Ways Trump Reshaped Education in Just 1 Year
The 74 Before she became education secretary, Linda McMahon spent four years strategizing President Donald Trump’s return to the White House. His election was a triumph for conservatives and a chance to unwind decades of what they consider intrusions into state and...
Trump official, Project 2025 author: No cuts to special education
Chalkbeat The future of special education remains up in the air, but the Trump administration is feeling pressure to assuage the concerns of parents of students with disabilities that efforts to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education could put their children at...
In Trump’s First Year, at Least $12 Billion in School Funding Disruptions
Education Week The constitutional principle known as “the power of the purse” has been a fixture of American history classrooms for generations. Federal law explicitly prohibits the executive branch from overriding Congress’s spending decisions. But with a cascade of...
An Analysis of the Impact of Endrew F. in the Courts
Perry A. Zirkel, University Professor Emeritus of Education & Law at Lehigh University, has just released his latest law review article, You can read “The Impact of Endrew F. : An Updated Analysis of Resulting Judicial Rulings,” here, published in the January 15,...