WASHINGTON — Former U.S. Department of Education officials in Republican and Democratic administrations sounded the alarm Monday over the agency’s efforts to outsource its special education programs and civil rights enforcement to other agencies.
U.S. Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state convened the former officials, along with advocates and educators, at a virtual press conference to blast those sweeping moves, which are part of a broader effort by President Donald Trump’s administration to dismantle the 46-year-old Education Department.
Murray rebuked the transfers as “outrageous” and “completely unacceptable,” noting that while she is fighting “tooth and nail” against any effort to dismantle the agency, she is “especially concerned about what this could mean for all students, especially students with disabilities.”
The agency in June said the Department of Health and Human Services will administer programs under Education’s Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, or OSERS, while civil rights enforcement under its Office for Civil Rights will be transferred to the Department of Justice.
The Education Department had announced 10 earlier interagency agreements, or IAAs, with HHS, Labor, Interior, State and Treasury, which transfer several of Education’s responsibilities to those agencies.
The department has said it “will continue to perform all statutorily required duties and responsibilities” involving 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 umbrella unit OSERS includes the Office of the Assistant Secretary, Office of Special Education Programs and the Rehabilitation Services Administration.
The civil rights office is tasked with investigating complaints from students and families.
‘Learners, not patients’
Katy Neas, CEO of The Arc of the United States, an advocacy group for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, said that the transfers “would split apart the offices responsible for making disability rights real in schools, leaving families chasing answers across the federal government instead of getting accountability from one education agency.”
Neas was the deputy assistant secretary and acting assistant secretary at OSERS during the Biden administration.
“The stakes have never been higher,” she said. “If we allow the Department of Education to be dismantled, we not only undo decades of progress, we also risk abandoning the promise that every child deserves a chance to try and to succeed.”
Catherine Lhamon, executive director of the Edley Center on Law and Democracy at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law said the “new interagency agreement between the Department of Education and the Department of Justice is what someone would create if the person were designing a system to fail.”
Lhamon served as assistant secretary for civil rights during the Obama and Biden administrations.
“The principal harm of this new agreement is that it guarantees lengthier continued silence from the federal government on the classic kinds of discrimination cases families experience,” Lhamon said. Examples include restraining or secluding students, she said.
It raises “the core question (of) whether students with disabilities have the free appropriate public education to which the law entitles them,” Lhamon added.
Stephanie Smith Lee, co-director of policy and advocacy at National Down Syndrome Congress, pointed out that “IDEA is an education and civil rights law, not a healthcare program.”
“Students with disabilities are learners, not patients,” added Lee, who served as director of the Office of Special Education Programs under 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 depend on,” she said.
Savannah Newhouse, a spokesperson for the Education Department, dismissed the criticism, saying in a statement to States Newsroom that Murray and the former officials were part of a failing status quo.
“As Senator Murray is well aware, the Department of Education’s interagency partnerships do not alter the Trump Administration’s dedication 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 protections for students.”
US House bills ‘dead’ in Senate
Meanwhile, earlier in July the House Committee on Education and Workforce advanced a package of 10 bills permanently transferring several of Education’s functions to other departments and largely reflecting many of the earlier IAAs.
Notably, that package does not include any efforts to transfer Education’s responsibilities regarding special education programs and civil rights enforcement to other agencies.
“As long as this former preschool teacher is a United States senator, every one of those bills is dead on arrival,” Murray said.
