Jan Resseger unravels the implications of the latest major policy changes for the Department of Education, and collects many reactions to the shift. Reposted with permission.
Last week, with additional interagency agreements, Education Secretary Linda McMahon moved more of the work of the Department of Education to be housed in other federal departments. The work of the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, which administers the Individuals with Disability Education Act (IDEA), will move to Health and Human Services, and the Office for Civil Rights will move to the Department of Justice.
Education Week‘s Mark Lieberman details last week’s interagency agreements: “The Education Department office that oversees special education and employment programs for adults with disabilities will move to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The U.S. Department of Justice will take on the Education Department’s office for civil rights, student privacy enforcement, and a quartet of equity assistance centers that help K-12 schools with desegregation efforts. Department officials have teased many of these moves for more than a year. The conservative policy agenda, Project 2025… recommended moving both special education and civil rights enforcement to their respective new agencies.”
McMahon claims that the work will continue and students will not be affected in any way. She has justified redistributing to other agencies the work of the Department along with some of its staff to be housed in other departments as part of a scheme for “proof of concept.” It seems she is trying to prove to members of Congress that the Department of Education is unnecessary in hopes that Congress will enact legislation to end the Department, as Trump has charged her to do. Only Congress has the power to shut down a federal department.
One of the most disconcerting things about the interagency agreements taking place in recent months between the Department of Education and the other departments to which work is being transferred is that, once announced, they just happen. As operational transactions within the executive branch, they are not overseen by Congress. Back in November, the Washington Post‘s Laura Meckler and Danielle Douglas-Gabriel explained: “The interagency agreements amount to a work-around under which policy decisions will remain with the Education Department but the programs will be administered elsewhere. Staffers who work on the programs are expected to move to the new agency.” The work of the Office for Elementary and Secondary Education including Title I, for example, is now happening in the Department of Labor. This week, the NY Times‘ Michael Bender and Dana Goldstein remind us, however, that, “The changes ere expected to be challenged in court immediately as part of a continuing lawsuit that a coalition of Democratic attorneys general first filed last year over the administration’s attempts to dismantle the Education Department.”
The Office for Civil Rights The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) lost hundreds of its attorneys last year after seven of its regional offices were shut down and many staff attorneys were put on administrative leave for months. Not surprisingly, an enormous backlog of complaints from families has built up. There is, however, deep concern about the prospect of moving OCR to the Department of Justice. Lieberman points out that Harmeet Dhillon leads the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, where OCR’s work is being moved: “Harmeet Dhillon… has upended the agency’s approach to anti-discrimination enforcement.”
In a February, 2025, letter in opposition to Dhillon’s confirmation as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, the Legal Defense Fund wrote: “Ms. Dhillon portrays herself as a civil rights lawyer who makes it her job to fight what she refers to as ‘the woke mob.’ Her conception of ‘civil rights,’ however, is fundamentally flawed. It ignores the rights of Black and other marginalized communities who have experienced discrimination since the formation of this country, instead focusing on perceived, unsubstantiated grievances primarily of white men who object to respecting the rights of Black and Brown people, women, people who identify as LGBTQ+ and other marginalized individuals.”
The concern about moving the work of the Office for Civil Rights is more than about Ms. Dhillon’s biases, however.
The OCR’s methodology and strategy for resolving civil rights violations has been significantly different from the Department of Justice’s legal enforcement. While the Justice Department metes out penalties and cancels programs, the Education Department’s OCR’s purpose has been to work with school districts to develop policies that respect and protect students’ rights. Chalkbeat‘s Erica Meltzer explains: “While the Department of Justice has always played a critical role in civil rights enforcement, the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights historically has focused specifically on getting school districts to change their practices rather than penalizing violations. Advocates have valued that approach as a way of improving education for a larger group of students.”
For K-12 Dive, Kara Arundel and Naaz Modan explain that there is confusion about how civil rights enforcement will happen after the OCR moves to the Department of Justice: “The Education Department said that while the federal agency will retain management and leadership of OCR, it will refer civil rights complaints to the Justice Department for evaluation, investigation and potential resolution. The agency did not specify whether it plans to refer all or only certain types of complaints to the Justice Department, and said the departments are still ironing out shared responsibilities… OCR will continue to facilitate mediation and negotiation, develop policy guidance and procedures, and provide technical assistance to states… Documents provided by the Education Department show the Justice Department will also help with… technical assistance, training and advisory services for districts and states, especially for desegregating schools. The Justice Department under the current administration has already overturned a handful of desegregation orders for districts, saying they are outdated and discriminatory.”
OCR’s operations have already begun to change over the past year as a huge backlog of complaints from families has grown while OCR has instead increasingly prioritized “directed investigations” to pursue Trump administration priorities. Lieberman explains that since 2025: “OCR has… taken on new enforcement priorities, investigating dozens of school districts and colleges, state education departments, and athletic associations for alleged violations of Trump executive orders….”
Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS) Mark Lieberman reports: “Advocates for students with disabilities have been decrying the prospect of the Health and Human Services move ever since McMahon floated it during her Senate confirmation hearing in February 2025. They worry that funding—starting with billions of dollars Congress approved in February for the upcoming school year—will be disrupted and that enforcement against schools depriving students of needed services will dwindle. They’ve also criticized the decision to move disability support programs for students to an agency that isn’t centered on education. ‘IDEA is fundamentally an education law—not a healthcare law—and should continue to be administered by education policy experts who understand schools, teaching, learning, and accountability,’ Phyllis Wolfram, executive director for the Council of Special Education Administrators (CASE), wrote on Tuesday.”
Arundel and Modan remind readers about the number of students who could potentially be affected by the Department of Education’s move of this program to HHS: “About 8.2 million students ages 3-21 qualified for services under IDEA in 2024—a 3.8% increase over the year before. IDEA also provides early intervention supports to nearly 460,000 infants and toddlers with disabilities and developmental delays… OSERS oversees about $15.5 billion in FY26 for early intervention and K-12 special education services.”
Lieberman cites the point of view of Larry Wexler, a division director in the Education Department’s office of special education programs from 2006 until late 2024: “The special education move, while not inherently catastrophic, threatens to place federal staffers (from the Department of Education) in a workplace culture that clashes with their current focus on disability services… HHS, for instance, doesn’t have relationships with school districts like the Education Department does. The agency is ‘inherently a model that is incompatible with education because it’s a medical model’… It’s just not the same mentality.”
For many years, well organized parents of children with special needs have worked to ensure that public schools serve their children with well designed, as well as desegregated and inclusive, educational services. As McMahon’s department begins to move services funded by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act to the Department of Health and Human Services, NY Times reporters Michael C. Bender and Sheryl Gay Stolberg highlight a specific concern of many of these advocates about the attitude off HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy, and statements he has made specifically about autism: “Mr. Kennedy said earlier this year that children with autism would never hold a job, play baseball or go on a date. He quickly talked back those remarks… only to insist that special education should be moved into his department. ‘They’re health-related problems rather than particularly educated programs,’ Mr. Kennedy said.” Katy Neas, CEO of the Arc, a support group for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, replied: “It shows a fundamental lack of understanding of who kids with disabilities are and how their futures can be very bright.”
The relocation of the Office for Civil Rights may also directly affect students in special education. In recent years, the majority of civil rights complaints filed by families have demanded added protection for disabled students whose rights are being violated. A recent report from the Office of Senator Bernie Sanders points out that in the past year, as OCR has pursued the President’s anti-DEI agenda, Linda McMahon’s department has failed to address many complaints from parents of students with disabilities: “Students with disabilities—whose complaints make up the largest share of OCR cases—have been abandoned… OCR reached 78.7% fewer disability discrimination resolution agreements in 2025 (83) compared to 2024 (390).”
Meckler and Douglas-Gabriel describe advocates who have been frustrated by widespread lack of public attention to the potential impact of Linda McMahon’s attempts to move education programming to other departments: “Many of these office moves have attracted scant public attention, as they are largely bureaucratic, but the special-education community has rallied to try stopping the transfer of the offices that handle disability work. Advocates met with McMahon to press their case, but they said that they were told the move was happening and the only question was where the office would move.”
Although Linda McMahon continues to claim that her interagency agreements will reduce bureaucratic red tape, parents and educators have been outraged by her attempt to justify the reduction of the federal government’s protection of their children’s rights. It is clear that McMahon is doggedly trying to prepare Congress to shut down the Department of Education as President Trump has demanded.
Senator Patty Murry (D-WA), who has served for years on the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) declared: “It makes zero sense to scatter federal education programs all over the government—with different agencies managing different educational programs and each of them lacking the expertise to do it.”