Jan Resseger explains why one of Trump’s education goals is problematic. Reposted with permission.
The primary function of the U.S. Department of Education has, since its inception in 1979, been to ensure the promise of education for students across our nation, whatever their particular state’s capacity or willingness to protect all students’ rights.
On Monday, March 24th, the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association both joined lawsuits to block the implementation of President Trump’s executive order to shut down the U.S. Department of Education and move some of its functions to other federal departments or, in some cases, eliminate those functions. While the President bragged he would return the responsibility for public education to the states, where, he said, that responsibility belongs, the Education Law Center, which represents plaintiffs in the lawsuit filed by NEA, the NAACP, AFSCME Maryland, and a group of public school parents, describes the fundamental role of the Department of Education:
“While state and local governments are responsible for the vast majority of America’s public education system, Congress created the Department to help bridge longstanding gaps in educational opportunity and provide critical funding and supports to students. The Department fulfills that role by enforcing civil rights laws, supporting students with disabilities, promoting equal educational opportunities, bolstering the educator workforce, and administering the Federal Student Aid programs that place college within reach of working Americans. Eliminating or effectively shuttering the Department puts at risk the millions of vulnerable students, including those from low-income families, English learners, homeless students, rural students and others who depend on Department support.”
The ranking member of the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce, Rep. Robert C. “Bobby” Scott (VA) was more blunt: “Dismantling the department will exacerbate existing disparities, reduce accountability, and put low-income students, students of color, students with disabilities and rural students at risk.”
Vulnerable Students Will Be Deprived if IDEA is Moved to the Department of Health and Human Services
One wonders whether Trump has the slightest understanding or even the slightest interest in the services provided by specific federal staff. Last Friday, Trump suggested moving responsibility for implementation of the Individuals with Disability Education Act (IDEA) to the Department of Human Services: “I think that will work out very well… (IDEA) will be taken out of the Department of Education, and then all we have to do is get the students to get guidance from the people that love them and cherish them, including their parents by the way, who will be totally involved in education along with boards and the governors and the states.”
Reporters, on the other hand, have been investigating some of the reasons why, in 1979, Congress pulled together into one department a number of education programs scattered across the departments in the federal government. K-12 Dive’s Kara Arundel outlines the work of the division that implements the Individuals with Disability Education Act: “The Education Department oversees the distribution of about $15.4 billion for supports to about 8.4 million infants, toddlers, school children and young adults with disabilities. The department’s Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services and Office of Special Education Programs also conducts monitoring, provides technical assistance to states and districts, and holds states and districts accountable for compliance to IDEA.”
IDEA protects students whose schools work with parents to create Individual Education Plans (IEPs) for students who struggle with physical disabilities, learning delays, learning disabilities like dyslexia, autism, and severe behavior problems. Hiring experts and developing programs for such a range of students is enormously expensive, and in some ways, the federal government has already left much of the responsibility for these programs to states and local school districts. Despite that in 1975, when IDEA passed, Congress promised to pay for 40% of the required investment in these programs, the federal government covers only about 14% or 15% of the cost.
The law requires that students with special needs shall not be shunted away from society as they were before IDEA passed in 1975, when too many disabled students were kept home or isolated in institutions and special schools for the disabled. Chalkbeat‘s Kalyn Belsha and Erica Meltzer quote Robyn Linscott, director of education and family policy at The Arc, an agency that advocates for children with disabilities: “There was a recognition that the education of students with disabilities should occur alongside non-disabled students.” Schools are required by IDEA to educate students with disabilities in the “least restrictive” possible environment. All of this requires expert staff, enormous planning, and collaboration with families. Federal funds and guidance help local public schools to undertake this responsibility.
Why does the federal government need to be involved? The Chalkbeat reporters explain, for example, how in response to a Texas case, staff in the U.S. Department of Education’s special education office collaborated with the Department’s Office for Civil Rights when, “Texas… maintained an unofficial cap on identifying students with disabilities. The result was that many students missed out on services they were legally entitled to and struggled in school. State education officials denied there was ever a cap, but the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights under the first Trump administration found widespread violations and ordered the state to rectify the situation.”
Another Vulnerable Group of Students Will Lose Essential Services Due to Staff Cuts in the Office of English Language Acquisition
Chalkbeat‘s Kalyn Belsha recently described another way massive staff cuts to the Department of Education will remove needed support for local public schools serving an extremely vulnerable population, English language learners:
“President Donald Trump has declared English the official language of the United States. But his administration has fired nearly every Education Department staffer who ensured states and schools properly spent the hundreds of millions of dollars earmarked to help over 5 million students learning English. It appears that just one staffer remains from the Office of English Language Acquisition, or OELA, after the Trump administration announced last week it would cut the Education Department staff in half… The office supports dozens of universities, nonprofits, and others who train bilingual education teachers. It oversees a grant program that helps Native American and Alaska Native children learn English alongside indigenous languages. And the staff maintain the National Clearing House for English Language Acquisition, a hub for data, research and best practices for schools to rely on… OELA had 15 staffers in January….”
Belsha shares a bit of little known history: “In 1974, the Supreme Court ruled in Lau v. Nichols that the San Francisco Unified District violated the 1964 Civil Rights Act by failing to provide supplemental English language classes to students of Chinese heritage who did not speak English. The ruling led to significant changes in federal law and regulations, and spurred nationwide efforts to help English learners. Several school districts, including Chicago, Denver, and San Francisco, entered into court-ordered settlements, known as consent decrees to better serve English learners. But progress has been slow and uneven.”
The federal government’s role has been to investigate and help school districts respond when they fail to ensure that students lack access to required services. Belsha quotes David Holbrook who leads the National Association of English Learner Program Administrators: “There’s plenty of districts and states who would do the right thing… But the reason we have laws, and the reason we see all the regulations, and the reason we have watchdog agencies is because some would not.”