In Trump's America, Every Parent and Child for Themselves

New York Times

11-05-2025

Last week, President Trump introduced the Special Education Simplified Funding Program as part of his 2026 budget proposal. The president's budget isn't binding, but it suggests that the way the administration proposes to allocate funds to the states could have an impact on the education of students with disabilities, both in classroom instruction and enforcement of minimum standards.
For almost 50 years, parents of students with disabilities have relied on federal oversight to ensure that their children receive a fair education. But under the proposed budget, money earmarked for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) comes with a promise to limit the federal government's role in education and provide states with greater flexibility, which could mean drastically reducing oversight of how states will use that money.
To me and many other parents of the 7.5 million public school students in the country served by IDEA, Mr. Trump's efforts to eliminate the Department of Education and potentially just give IDEA funding directly to the states is our worst nightmare.
Last spring, a group of parents in Oklahoma filed a complaint with the State Department of Education against the Bixby School District, stating that the district had placed their children in segregated classrooms, and that it did not try instead to use supplementary aides and support services, thereby violating the law under IDEA. When students with disabilities are educated primarily in such segregated classrooms, they are often denied the full breadth of learning opportunities and interactions. Most significantly, they learn they do not belong among their peers.
Nick and Kristen Whitmer chose to live in Bixby, a suburb of Tulsa, because of the school district's reputation for inclusive special education. This was what they wanted for their daughter, Adaline, who is 8 years old and has Down syndrome. But her experience last fall hadn't been what they hoped. Adaline spent less than half of her time at school in a general education classroom. She started her day there with a morning meeting with the other children. But after 10 minutes, a teacher guided her down the hall to the special education room. She rejoined other first graders for recess and lunch, but spent little time in an academic classroom with nondisabled peers. It was hard for Adaline to make friends with classmates. 'Adaline is not viewed as a member of the community,' Ms. Whitmer told me. 'She is a guest.'
In preschool, Adaline had been placed in the Oklahoma Alternative Assessment Program, which is reserved for 'students with the most significant cognitive disabilities.' That meant that Bixby district administrators determined Adaline would not be given the opportunity to earn a high school diploma. Ms. Whitmer said that she pleaded with district representatives to put her daughter on the diploma track, but that they initially refused and began bringing a lawyer to meetings.
After the state weighed in, and after intense advocacy, as of today Adaline is no longer in the alternative diploma track and is spending more time in a general education classroom in the morning.
But all that could change. 'Is it the same for you?' Ms. Whitmer asked me. No, it's not. Like Adaline, my daughter has Down syndrome. Yet their educational trajectories couldn't have been more different. The discrepancies offer a glimpse of what is likely to become more common now that Mr. Trump has gutted the Department of Education and pledged to give full control to the states.
My daughter, Louisa, goes to school in a rural college town in southwest Ohio. We have our share of challenges. But I never had to face a teacher or school administrator who openly resisted her inclusion in a classroom with nondisabled peers. Unlike in Oklahoma, removing students from a curriculum that would prepare them to earn a high school diploma requires written parental consent in Ohio. A bill to make it a parental decision in Oklahoma was recently signed by the governor.
Before 1979, when the education of disabled children was in the hands of the states, many chose to not educate children with disabilities at all. A congressional investigation from 1972 found that 1.75 million children nationwide were turned away from public schools. Nineteen states provided a public education to less than a third of children with disabilities, and many had statutes that exempted such children from compulsory attendance laws.
Congress implemented IDEA, then called the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, in 1975 to guarantee that every child with a disability received a free and appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment. The Department of Education requires states to monitor how districts use the funding for disability-related services like specialized instruction, teacher training, speech and physical therapy, communication devices and classroom support staff. Oversight of a program as complicated as IDEA is challenging, but it has aimed to ensure that states are doing the right thing by providing the most inclusive education possible.
To receive this funding, states are required to submit annual performance reports. The U.S. Department of Education uses 18 indicators to assess each state's compliance with IDEA, including graduation and dropout rates, post-school outcomes, parent involvement and the percentage of time students spend in a classroom with nondisabled peers. Based on those metrics, the Office of Special Education Programs (O.S.E.P.) evaluated whether states were meeting IDEA's requirements.
But the 2026 budget proposes consolidating seven IDEA programs and using a 'simplified funding program,' which, while vague, suggests that the administration might be aiming to send the money to the states as block grants. This would likely allow school districts to use that money at their discretion. Acting on such changes to IDEA funding would require Congress to amend the law. The proposed restructuring could also reduce the federal government's power to intervene when states do not fulfill their responsibility under the law. Without more robust federal oversight, enforcement on the local level would continue to be uneven.
Without a fully functioning Department of Education, states will not be held accountable for meeting even the minimum requirements of IDEA, and this landmark piece of legislation risks becoming essentially toothless, save for civil litigation. We will see an erosion of the promise of a free and appropriate public education for students with disabilities and fewer ways for parents and advocates to do anything about it.
After what I have learned from the Whitmers and other parents around the country, I'm not sure why my family has been so lucky. But I do know that Louisa spends most of her time in classes with her peers, because of the creative thinking and support of compassionate educators. I also know that learning with her peers has had an astounding impact on her social and intellectual development. Louisa reads fantasy novels in her spare time. She is excited by the periodic table and the lab experiments she completes in small groups in her science class. She has sleepovers with friends. None of this would be possible if she was forced to learn in a segregated classroom.
The significant disparities in Adaline's and Louisa's educations run counter to federal law. IDEA and several Supreme Court decisions have established a mandate for the education of students with disabilities — even those with the highest support needs. But states have been slow to end the practice of placing students in separate classrooms, even when parents like the Whitmers advocate for more time in a mainstream academic setting. As recently as 2022, the latest year for which data is available, only 67 percent of students with disabilities were spending at least 80 percent of their school day in a general education classroom.
States have had 50 years to meet the standards of education promised in IDEA and its predecessor, yet those standards have never been universally met. In 2024, 24 states (including Oklahoma), six territories and Washington, D.C. were labeled 'needing assistance' for two or more consecutive years. States in that category are directed to use IDEA funds specifically for areas where they are not meeting requirements. Now that the Department of Education has lost nearly half of its staff members, too few are left to ensure that states meet their responsibilities to students with disabilities. If the Whitmers and other parents choose to file a due process claim with the Office for Civil Rights in the Department of Education, there is most likely not enough staff left to investigate.
IDEA has never been widely followed, and the Department of Education's bureaucracy wasn't perfect. But the lack of federal oversight will only worsen existing problems. It will make it even easier for states to interpret the law as they see fit. Those disparities could mean that many students with disabilities will lose the right to a free and appropriate education and their parents will lose the power to force change.
Some parents who participated in the complaint against Bixby Public Schools told me that not enough has changed, and the cost to those parents, including for time off work and lawyers' fees, have been significant. As Ms. Whitmer put it, 'We've burned every bridge with everyone in the district.' But she pledges to keep on fighting. The alternative would be to acquiesce to the district's dim vision of her daughter's capabilities and her future.