Trump nixes special education agency, lays off staff amid shutdown

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Last Updated: October 13, 2025

Tags: Education, Featured Special Project, Government, Institutionalization, Politics, School to Prison Pipeline
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Aaron Kittredge via Pexels

Donald Trump’s onslaught of cuts to federal services is now being directed at programs dedicated to disabled students. According to multiple reports, the most recent layoffs at the U.S. Department of Education, already slated for elimination under education secretary Linda McMahon, have decimated the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services. This is the office that monitors compliance for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, a 1975 law commonly known as the IDEA. The employees’ union has already challenged these cuts in court, but advocates are concerned that this will have significant downstream effects on a group of students who already have some of the poorest education outcomes in the nation. 

According to National Center for Education Statistics’ (NCES) reporting, children who fall under the IDEA graduate at a 71% rate, compared to the  87% American average. This is a  large swath of students, with 7.3 million children under the IDEA’s jurisdiction according to the NCES. The amount of funding that now lacks federal oversight is large as well, totaling approximately $15 billion. The office is now left with very few staff to oversee everything from early intervention programs to initiatives focused on data collection.

These cuts follow a pattern when it comes to the administration’s approach to Disabled people. Beyond cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, Trump has not followed the recommendation to eliminate a federal program that allows Disabled people to be paid below minimum wage, published an executive order calling for forced confinement of those with mental health disabilities, and has overseen the likely reorganization of the Administration for Community Living, a federal department that is key in keeping Disabled people living in community rather than locked away in institutions. While McMahon herself has argued that Disabled students should receive more money at the state level, it’s unclear how these cuts achieve that goal.

For experts in the field, one concern is that a key cog in the machine that keeps the system running is now missing. As Glenna Wright-Gallo, a former assistant secretary in the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services told USA Today, “The system is designed to happen at the school level, with oversight from the district, with oversight from the state, and then with oversight form the federal level…Now we’re losing that checks and balances system.”

This is an outcome that key advocacy organizations have been warning about for months. In July,  the Center for American Progress released a report titled “The Trump Administration’s War on Disability.” In it they laid out the case for why the destruction of the Department of Education would lead to dire educational outcomes for disabled students and issues for their families. 

As one office employee told NPR, “Who will families go to when there’s nobody left?”

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