A school bus stops at an intersection in south Minneapolis in January 2025. (Ellen Schmidt/Minnesota Reformer)
WASHINGTON – Former U.S. Department of Education officials in Republican and Democratic administrations raised the alarm Monday over the agency’s efforts to outsource special education and civil rights enforcement programs to other agencies.
Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state convened former officials, along with advocates and educators, for a virtual news conference to condemn the sweeping moves, part of a broader effort by President Donald Trump’s administration to dismantle the 46-year-old Department of Education.
Murray reprimanded transfers she found it “outrageous” and “completely unacceptable,” noting that while she “fights vigorously” against any attempts to dismantle the agency, she is “particularly concerned about what this could mean for all students, especially students with disabilities.”
In June, the agency said the Department of Health and Human Services would administer the programs under the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services (OSERS), while civil rights enforcement under the Office of Civil Rights would be transferred to the Department of Justice.
The Ministry of Education announced 10 earlier interagency agreements or IAAs with HHS, staff, internal affairs, state and Treasurywhich transfer some of the responsibilities related to education to these agencies.
The department said it “will continue to perform all statutorily required duties and responsibilities,” including special education programs and civil rights enforcement.
OSERS is responsible for administering the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, which guarantees a free public education for students with disabilities. The OSERS parent unit includes the Office of the Deputy Secretary, the Office of Special Education Programs, and the Rehabilitation Services Administration.
The Office of Civil Rights is responsible for investigating complaints filed by students and their families.
“Students, not patients”
Katy Neas, executive director of The Arc of the United States, an advocacy group for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, said the transfers “will split the offices responsible for making disability rights a reality in schools, leaving families looking across the federal government for answers rather than being held accountable by a single educational agency.”
Neas served as deputy assistant secretary and acting deputy secretary at OSERS during the Biden administration.
“The stakes have never been higher,” she said. “If we allow the Department of Education to be abolished, we will not only reverse decades of progress, but we also risk abandoning the promise that every child deserves a chance to try to succeed.”
Catherine Lhamon, executive director of the Edley Center on Law and Democracy at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, stated that “the new interagency agreement between the Department of Education and the Department of Justice is what someone would create if a person were designing a system that was going to fail.”
Lhamon was assistant secretary for civil rights under Obama and Biden.
“The main harm of this new agreement is that it guarantees a longer silence from the federal government on the classic types of discrimination families face,” Lhamon said. Examples include restraining or isolating students, she added.
This raises “the fundamental question of whether students with disabilities have access to the free and appropriate public education to which they are entitled,” Lhamon added.
Stephanie Smith Lee, co-director of policy and advocacy at the National Down Syndrome Congress, noted that “IDEA is an education and civil rights act, not a health care program.”
“Students with disabilities are students, not patients,” added Lee, who served as director of the Office of Special Education Programs during the George W. Bush administration.
“Moving special education and vocational rehabilitation to the Department of Health and Human Services would separate them from the rest of federal education policy and weaken the expertise and coordinated oversight that students, families and states rely on,” she said.
Savannah Newhouse, a spokeswoman for the Department of Education, rejected that criticism, saying in a statement to States Newsroom that Murray and former officials were part of a failing status quo.
“As Senator Murray is well aware, the Department of Education’s interagency partnerships do not change the Trump Administration’s commitment to students with disabilities and federal civil rights laws,” she wrote. “These agreements simply ensure that well-positioned agencies can support the workload, pool their expertise and ultimately strengthen student protections.”
The US House of Representatives bills “died” in the Senate
Meanwhile, in early July House Committee on Education and Labor introduced a package of 10 bills permanently transferring several education functions to other departments and largely mirroring many earlier IAAs.
It is worth noting that this package does not include any efforts to transfer Education’s responsibilities for special education programs and civil rights enforcement to other agencies.
“As long as this former kindergarten teacher is a United States senator, every single one of these bills will be dead the moment we get them,” Murray said.
