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Dive Brief:
Only four-year institutions would be subject to significantly stepped-up reporting requirements for admissions data disaggregated by race and sex, under a notice issued by the Trump administration on Wednesday.
The plan, first introduced in August, would require affected colleges to submit six years worth of application and admissions data — disaggregated by student race and sex — as part of the next reporting cycle.
The updated terms would exempt two-year colleges and open-enrollment institutions that only award aid based on financial need from having to report this data to the National Center for Education Statistics, which oversees the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System.
Dive Insight:
The U.S. Department of Education currently only requires institutions to submit data disaggregated by race for enrolled students.
But under the Trump administration’s proposal, colleges would have to disaggregate data for applicants, those admitted and enrolled students by race and sex. They would also have to cross-reference the data with each individual’s admissions test scores, GPA, family income, Pell Grant eligibility and parents’ educational level.
Colleges would be required to submit this information for every academic year dating back to 2020-21 for the first IPEDS reporting cycle of the new plan, currently proposed as 2025-26.
The administration intends to use the data points to “indicate whether institutions of higher education are using race-based preferencing in their admissions processes,” according to the Federal Register notice filed by Ross Santy, data officer at the agency’s Office of Planning, Evaluation and Policy Development. The U.S. Supreme Court struck down the use of race-conscious admissions practices in 2023.
The plan would also mandate that colleges submit their graduation rates from 2019-20 to 2024-25.
In its August notice, the Education Department said it expected to focus these additional reporting requirements on four-year institutions with selective admissions processes. It said these colleges “have an elevated risk of noncompliance with the civil rights laws,” both in admissions and scholarships, while it considered community colleges and trade schools at low risk for civil rights noncompliance in admissions since they admit all or virtually all of their applicants.
The department at the time sought public comment on which institutional types should be subject to the new reporting proposal. This week, it made revisions based on that input, according to Santy.
Since the Trump administration first announced the proposal, higher ed groups and colleges have raised concerns about the administrative burden it would put on institutions and the rapid turnaround time necessitated by a 2025-26 start date.
Wednesday’s update would bring relief for two-year institutions and many of those with open enrollment policies. But many of the sector’s concerns went unaddressed, including comments about unclear language in the proposal, issues around student privacy and unease that the Trump administration would construe the data with the intent of attacking colleges further.
Since President Donald Trump began his second term in January, the federal government has alleged that colleges supporting diversity efforts or permitting student protests are in violation of civil rights law and has opened numerous investigations on these grounds.
by Jill Barshay, The Hechinger Report November 10, 2025
Even with the government shut down, lots of people are thinking about how to reimagine federal education research. Public comments on how to reform the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), the Education Department’s research and statistics arm, were due on Oct. 15. A total of 434 suggestions were submitted, but no one can read them because the department isn’t allowed to post them publicly until the government reopens. (We know the number because the comment entry page has an automatic counter.)
A complex numbers game
There’s broad agreement across the political spectrum that federal education statistics are essential. Even many critics of the Department of Education want its data collection efforts to survive — just somewhere else. Some have suggested moving the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) to another agency, such as the Commerce Department, where the U.S. Census Bureau is housed.
But Diane Cheng, vice president of policy at the Institute for Higher Education Policy, a nonprofit organization that advocates for increasing college access and improving graduation rates, warns that shifting NCES risks the quality and usefulness of higher education data. Any move would have to be done carefully, planning for future interagency coordination, she said.
“Many of the federal data collections combine data from different sources within ED,” Cheng said, referring to the Education Department. “It has worked well to have everyone within the same agency.”
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She points to the College Scorecard, the website that lets families compare colleges by cost, student loan debt, graduation rates, and post-college earnings. It merges several data sources, including the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), run by NCES, and the National Student Loan Data System, housed in the Office of Federal Student Aid. Several other higher ed data collections on student aid and students’ pathways through college also merge data collected at the statistical unit with student aid figures. Splitting those across different agencies could make such collaboration far more difficult.
“If those data are split across multiple federal agencies,” Cheng said, “there would likely be more bureaucratic hurdles required to combine the data.”
Information sharing across federal agencies is notoriously cumbersome, the very problem that led to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security after 9/11.
Hiring and $4.5 million in fresh research grants
Even as the Trump administration publicly insists it intends to shutter the Department of Education, it is quietly rebuilding small parts of it behind the scenes.
In September, the department posted eight new jobs to replace fired staff who oversaw the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the biennial test of American students’ achievement. In November, it advertised four more openings for statisticians inside the Federal Student Aid Office. Still, nothing is expected to be quick or smooth. The government shutdown stalled hiring for the NAEP jobs, and now a new Trump administration directive to form hiring committees by Nov. 17 to approve and fill open positions may further delay these hires.
At the same time, the demolition continues. Less than two weeks after the Oct. 1 government shutdown, 466 additional Education Department employees were terminated — on top of the roughly 2,000 lost since March 2025 through firings and voluntary departures. (The department employed about 4,000 at the start of the Trump administration.) A federal judge temporarily blocked these latest layoffs on Oct. 15.
There are also other small new signs of life. On Sept. 30 — just before the shutdown — the department quietly awarded nine new research and development grants totaling $4.5 million. The grants, listed on the department’s website, are part of a new initiative called, “From Seedlings to Scale Grants Program” (S2S), launched by the Biden administration in August 2024 to test whether the Defense Department’s DARPA-style innovation model could work in education. DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, invests in new technologies for national security. Its most celebrated project became the basis for the internet.
Each new project, mostly focused on AI-driven personalized learning, received $500,000 to produce early evidence of effectiveness. Recipients include universities, research organizations and ed tech firms. Projects that show promise could be eligible for future funding to scale up with more students.
According to a person familiar with the program who spoke on background, the nine projects had been selected before President Donald Trump took office, but the formal awards were delayed amid the department’s upheaval. The Institute of Education Sciences — which lost roughly 90 percent of its staff — was one of the hardest hit divisions.
Granted, $4.5 million is a rounding error compared with IES’s official annual budget of $800 million. Still, these are believed to be the first new federal education research grants of the Trump era and a faint signal that Washington may not be abandoning education innovation altogether.
This <a target=”_blank” href=”https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-risks-higher-ed-data/”>article</a> first appeared on <a target=”_blank” href=”https://hechingerreport.org”>The Hechinger Report</a> and is republished here under a <a target=”_blank” href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/”>Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License</a>.<img src=”https://i0.wp.com/hechingerreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/cropped-favicon.jpg?fit=150%2C150&ssl=1″ style=”width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;”>
File photoThe Department of Education announced a new rule that would allow the agency to exclude certain nonprofit and government employers from the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, targeting organizations that “engage in specific enumerated illegal activities” or do not align with the current administration’s priorities.
The rule, which was published Friday in the Federal Register, grants Education Secretary Linda McMahon unilateral authority to determine which organizations are ineligible for the program. It takes effect July 1, 2026.
According to critics, the rule could disqualify employees of sanctuary jurisdictions and nonprofit organizations that provide immigrant family support, gender-affirming care, diversity and equity programs, or assistance to protesters exercising First Amendment rights.
The Public Service Loan Forgiveness program was established by Congress in 2007 on a bipartisan basis. Under the program, federal, state, local and tribal government employees, as well as workers for 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations, can have their remaining federal student loan debt forgiven after making 10 years of qualifying payments while working in public service. More than one million workers have received loan forgiveness through the program to date.
Two advocacy organizations, Democracy Forward and Protect Borrowers, issued a joint statement committing to challenge the rule in federal court.
“This is a direct and unlawful attack on nurses, teachers, first responders, and public service workers across the country,” the organizations said. “This new rule is a craven attempt to usurp the legislature’s authority in an unconstitutional power grab aimed at punishing people with political views different than the administration’s.”
Alexander Lundrigan, Higher Education Policy and Advocacy Manager at Young Invincibles, called the changes “illegal” and “politically motivated.”
“The administration cannot unilaterally rewrite a program that was passed into law by Congress,” Lundrigan said. “PSLF eligibility is defined by law, not political ideology.”
Jaylon Herbin, director of federal policy at the Center for Responsible Lending, agrees, adding that the regulation “is the latest in a long list of cruel tricks imposed on workers and groups who hold views or serve people this administration doesn’t like.”
He added that the restrictions “will consign millions of student borrowers to decades of unaffordable debt repayment and will worsen existing shortages of teachers, police and emergency services workers, and nonprofits who help local residents thrive and contribute to building vibrant, economically resilient communities.”
The U.S. Department of Education must reinstate, for now, canceled federal grants for student mental health services due to “numerous irreparable harms flowing from the discontinuation decisions,” according to an Oct. 27 order by a federal judge.
Sixteen states sued the Education Department in late June after the Trump administration in April canceled the multi-yearcongressionally approved funding for the School-Based Mental Health Services Grant Program and the Mental Health Service Professional Demonstration Grant. The order only applies to about 50 colleges, school districts and nonprofit entities who received the grants in the plaintiff states.
In the order, the judge said grant discontinuations were likely “arbitrary and capricious” because they were not renewed based on individual reasons, but rather were discontinued with a generic message saying that the grants “were not in the best interests of the federal government.”
Dive Insight:
On Tuesday, an Education Department spokesperson said the agency stands by its grant decisions and will appeal the order.
The Education Department announced in September that their new $270 million grant competition is accepting applications to use the federal funds from the two programs that were canceled in April. The department issued new priorities prohibiting the mental health grant money to be used for “promoting or endorsing gender ideology, political activism, racial stereotyping, or hostile environments for students of particular races.”
The Education Department spokesperson, in a Tuesday email, said, “Our new competition is strengthening the mental health grant programs in contrast to the Biden Administration’s approach that used these programs to promote divisive ideologies based on race and sex.”
Some education organizations said they were concerned that the new competition focuses only on school psychologists and does not include school counselors and social workers who also provide student mental health supports.
The canceled grants, which were set to expire on Dec. 31, were focused on increasing the pipeline of credentialed school-based mental health professionals working in rural and underserved areas and providing direct services to students in high-needs schools, according to court documents. Court records said that the Education Department valued the canceled grants at about $1 billion.
Addressing the discontinuation of the grants, Judge Kymberly Evanson in the U.S. District Court Western District of Washington said in the order that there was no evidence the Education Department “considered any relevant data pertaining to the Grants at issue,” leaving it difficult to determine “whether the Department’s decision bears a rational connection to the facts.”
Kelly Vaillancourt Strobach, director of policy and advocacy for the National Association of School Psychologists, called the ruling “a win for children, families, and educators across the country.”
Vaillancourt Strobach said in an email Tuesday that the grants “have proven essential in addressing nationwide shortages of school psychologists and other school mental health professionals.”
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Dive Brief:
Two Democratic leaders in the Virginia Legislature are questioning the legality of the University of Virginia’s recent deal with the U.S. Department of Justiceand calling for an independent review of its constitutionality.
In an eight-page letterthis week,state Sens. Scott Surovell and L. Louise Lucassaid the agreement“directly conflicts with state law, commits the University to eliminate legislatively mandated programs, subjects the University President to personal certification requirements and potentially places UVA in violation of its statutory obligations.”
The pair requested UVA Interim President Paul Mahoneyand Rachel Sheridan, the head of UVA’s board,to formally respond by Nov. 7. UVA did not immediately respond to questions Thursday.
Dive Insight:
On Oct. 22, Mahoneysigned a four-page agreement with the DOJ to eventually close five investigations into UVA. In exchange, the public university agreed to adhere to the DOJ’s sweeping July guidance against diversity, equity and inclusion efforts and provide the agency with quarterly compliance reports.
In their letter, Surovell and Lucas lambasted Mahoney and Sheridan for “a fundamental breach of the governance relationship” between the university and the state.
“This agreement was disturbingly executed with zero consultation with the General Assembly, despite the fact that the General Assembly controls the University and provides the bulk of its government funding,” they said, arguing the lack of legislative involvement could violate state statute.
When announcing the deal, UVA said Mahoney struck the deal with input from the university’s governing board, whose members were “kept apprised of the negotiations and briefed on the final terms before signature.”Since the agreement doesn’t include a financial penalty, it did not require a formal vote from the board, the university said in an FAQ.
Along with the board, Mahoney has said he struck the deal with input from the university’s leadership and internal and external legal counsel.
Surovell and Lucas questioned if Jason Miyares, Virginia’s Republican Attorney General and an ally of President Donald Trump, had counseled the university about the deal.
Miyares — who fired UVA’s longtime legal counsel upon taking office in 2022 — is up for reelection in November with Trump’s endorsement, a backing Lucas and Surovell cast as an “inherent conflict of interest.”
It is unclear, they said, if Virginia’s top lawyer is “competent and capable of providing truly independent legal advice to Virginia’s public universities in this area of the law.”
Virginia public colleges “need legal counsel who will zealously defend state sovereignty and institutional autonomy — not counsel whose political fortunes are tied to the very administration applying the pressure,” they said.
The two lawmakers, along with Democratic state Sen. Mamie Locke, previously threatened UVA’s state funding if the university agreed to the Trump administration’s separate higher education compact, which offered preferential access to grant funding in exchange for unprecedented federal oversight. UVA turned it down five days before announcing its deal with the DOJ.
Lucas and Surovell aren’t the only Virginia legislators to question the integrity of the UVA-DOJ deal. State Del. Katrina Callsenand Sen. R. Creigh Deeds, Democrats who represent UVA’s district, condemned it as subjecting the university “to unprecedented federal control.”
In an Oct. 23 letter, the pair told Mahoney and the boardthat their approval of the agreement calls “into grave question your ability to adequately protect the interests and resources entrusted to you by the Virginia General Assembly.”
“Your actions fail to leave the University free and unafraid to combat that which is untrue or in error,” they said. “By agreeing to these terms, UVA risks betraying the very principles you espouse in your letter: academic freedom, ideological diversity, and free expression.”
Callsen and Deeds called on UVA leadership to reverse the deal and “reject further federal interference.”
When asked on Thursday if Mahoney or the board had responded, Deed’s office referred to a story published by The Cavalier Daily, the university’s independent student newspaper.
In a letter shared with The Daily, Mahoney and Sheridan said that they “respectfully disagree” with Deeds and Callsen’s assessment, adding that the deal is the “culmination of months of engagement” with the DOJ and other federal agencies over multiple civil rights investigations.
They also said the institution’s deal with the federal government differs significantly from the “lengthy lists of specific obligations” agreed to by Columbia and Brown universities.
“Our agreement is different — if the United States believes we are not in compliance, its only remedy is to terminate the agreement,” they said.
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The U.S. Department of Education on Thursdayreleased final regulations that will bar organizations the agency deems as having a “substantial illegal purpose”from being a qualifying employer for the Public Service Loan Forgivenessprogram.
The Trump administration’s new rule will exclude organizations from the PSLF program that it determines to be“supporting terrorism and aiding and abetting illegal immigration,” among other activities, according to Thursday’s announcement.
Several advocacy groups immediately vowed to challenge the rule in court. They and other opponents argue the agency is politicizing the PSLF program and will use the new rule to remove organizations with goals not aligned with the Trump administration, such as providing gender-affirming care or supporting undocumented immigrants.
Dive Insight:
Congress created the PSLF program in 2007 to allow college graduates who work for government employers, including school districts, and certain nonprofits to receive debt relief on their student loans after making a decade of qualifying payments.
Many borrowers initially struggled to get relief through the program due to confusing eligibility requirements and loan servicer issues. As of April 2018, for example, just 55 workers had received debt relief through PSLF, according to a report that year from the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
To address the problems, the Biden administration eased some of the program’s requirements in October 2022 for one year.The administration also released regulations that expanded which loan payments counted toward PSLF beginning in 2023.
By October 2024, over 1 million workers had received relief through the program during the Biden administration, the White House said at the time.
But in a March executive order directing the Education Department to change PSLF’s eligibility requirements, President Donald Trump accused the prior administration of abusing the program by relaxing its requirements. Trump also contended that the program sent tax dollars to “activist organizations”that harm national security and undermine American values.
The Education Department’s final rule, which takes effect July 2026, is meant to carry out the executive order.It will bar organizations from the PSLF program if the Education Department determines they illegally:
Aided and abetted violations of federal immigration law.
Aided and abetted illegal discrimination.
Supported terrorism or engaged in violence “for the purpose of obstructing or influencing Federal Government policy.”
Engaged in “chemical and surgical castration or mutilation of children” — a common conservative description of providing gender-affirming care for transgender minors.
Engage in the “trafficking of children” across state lines to emancipate them from their parents.
Have a pattern of violating state laws.
The U.S. education secretary will determine whether employers have a “substantial illegal purpose” based on “a preponderance of the evidence,” which can include final federal or state court rulings or settlements in which organizations admit they engaged in illegal activities, according to an agency fact sheet.
Employers who are notified of such a finding will have an opportunity to respond and appeal.
They will also be able to “enter into a corrective action plan” with the Education Department to avoid being blocked from the program, according to an agency fact sheet. However, if they lose access to PSLF, they will only be able to reapply after 10 years.
If an organization is blocked from the program, loan payments made by its employees will still count toward their PSLF’s 10-year clock until the Education Department’s finding takes effect, according to a fact sheet.
“However, any payment made after an employer is deemed no longer eligible for PSLF will not be counted toward the number of payments to forgiveness,” the department said in the 185-page final rule, set to be published on Friday.“This approach ensures that workers who have served in good faith are not punished, while also protecting taxpayers by preventing benefits from flowing to unlawful conduct in the future.”
Student advocacy and nonprofit groups have decried the new rule.
Aaron Ament, president of the National Student Legal Defense Network, vowed in a Thursday statement to sue in the next few days.
“Instead of supporting first responders, healthcare workers, and teachers working to make our country a better place, the Trump Administration is punishing public servants for their employers’ perceived political views,” Ament said.
Democracy Forward and Protect Borrowers, two other advocacy groups, likewise said they would challenge the rule in court. In a joint statement Thursday, they said the rule would allow the Education Department to target organizations that support immigrants, provide gender-affirming care and protect the free speech rights of protesters.
“This new rule is a craven attempt to usurp the legislature’s authority in an unconstitutional power grab aimed at punishing people with political views different than the Administration’s,” they said.
The University of Virginia is the fourth university, and the first public one, to agree to a settlement with the Trump administration over allegations of discrimination.
Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images
The University of Virginia has reached a settlement agreement with the Department of Justice that will pause pending investigations in exchange for assurances from the public flagship that it will not engage in unlawful practices around admissions, hiring, programming and more.
As part of the deal, UVA agreed to follow a July memo from U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi that bars the use of race in hiring and admissions practices as well as scholarship programs. UVA will be required to provide “relevant information and data” to the DOJ, according to the news release.
While the recent investigations into allegedly illegal diversity, equity and inclusion programs have been paused, that doesn’t mean those probes have been altogether closed. However, the DOJ will close the investigation “if UVA completes its planned reforms prohibiting DEI,” officials said.
“This notable agreement with the University of Virginia will protect students and faculty from unlawful discrimination, ensuring that equal opportunity and fairness are restored,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, and a UVA alum, said in a statement. “We appreciate the progress that the university has made in combatting antisemitism and racial bias, and other American universities should be on alert that the Justice Department will ensure that our federal civil rights laws are enforced for every American, without exception.”
The settlement comes nearly four months after former UVA president James Ryan stepped down abruptly, reportedly under DOJ pressure to resign as part of an effort to resolve investigations.
UVA officials released a statement as well as the text of the agreement on Wednesday.
“We intend to continue our thorough review of our practices and policies to ensure that we are complying with all federal laws,” Interim President Paul Mahoney wrote. “We will also redouble our commitment to the principles of academic freedom, ideological diversity, free expression, and the unyielding pursuit of ‘truth, wherever it may lead,’ as Thomas Jefferson put it. Through this process, we will do everything we can to assure our community, our partners in state and federal government, and the public that we are worthy of the trust they place in us and the resources they provide us to advance our education, research, and patient care mission.”
Education Secretary Linda McMahon called the deal “transformative” in a post on X.
“The Trump Administration is not backing down in our efforts to root out DEI and illegal race preferencing on our nation’s campuses,” McMahon wrote. “A renewed commitment to merit is a critical step for our institutions to once again become beacons of truth-seeking and excellence.”
UVA is one of several institutions to reach an agreement with the Trump administration in recent months, but the first public university to do so. Previously Columbia University, the University of Pennsylvania and Brown University all agreed to deals with the federal government after the Trump administration froze federal research funding over alleged civil rights violations.
While UVA reached a settlement with the federal government, it has rejected other proposals such as the “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” which would have required institutions to agree to tuition freezes, caps on international students and campuswide assessments of viewpoint diversity, among other demands, in order to receive preferential treatmentfor federal research funding. UVA was one of nine institutions originally asked to join the compact, though none of the original group, nor others invited later, have announced they will sign the proposal.
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Dive Brief:
New York City sued the U.S. Department of Education on Oct. 15 over the federal agency’s decision in September to terminate $47 million in federal funding for 19 magnet schools. The department severed the nation’s largest school system from discretionary grant funding after the agency found the New York City Department of Education violated Title IX when it set transgender-inclusive bathroom and locker room policies.
In an unprecedented measure, the Education Department, in a Sept. 16 letter, gave New York City Public Schools a short timeline of just three days to agree to overhaul its Title IX policies in response to the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights decision.
The lawsuit seeks to stop the defunding of the Magnet School Assistance Program, meant to help with desegregation and that primarily serves low-income Hispanic and Black students. OCR said in its letter to New York City that funding the grant is “no longer in the best interest of the Federal Government.”
Dive Insight:
Abruptly discontinuing Magnet School Assistance Program funds threw “into chaos and uncertainty” the future of the magnet schools as well as the 7,700 students who attend them, according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit claims the cuts have also led to “the complete disruption” of the magnet schools’ specialized programming.
The Trump administration already sought to zero-out the program entirely in its proposed fiscal year 2026 budget. That, however, would require congressional approval.
“With this lawsuit, New York City Public Schools is fighting back against the U.S. Department of Education’s attack on our magnet program and transgender and gender expansive students,” said New York City Public Schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos in an Oct. 16 statement. “U.S. DOE’s threat to cut off tens of millions of dollars in magnet funding unless we cancelled our protections for transgender and gender expansive students is contrary to federal, state, and local law, and, just as importantly, our values as New York City Public Schools.”
Districts are increasingly opting to take the administration to court in response to its federal funding threats, rather than comply with the department’s demands. Those demands often include adopting “biology-based” definitions of “male” and “female,” and in some places run against state law that require inclusive policies for transgender people.
Two large Northern Virginia school districts, for example, were among the first to sue the administration in late August after the agency decided the districts violated Title IX by allowing transgender students access to sex-segregated facilities aligning with their identities. Fairfax County and Arlington County school boards collectively have on the line $190 million, which the districts use to fund school meals for low-income students; services to students with disabilities, homeless students; and English learners, among other activities.
In these cases, the administration issued Title IX violations after very brief investigations, and provided recipients with 10 or less days to respond — as opposed to the usual 90-day timeline.
Two months after Education Secretary Linda McMahon was confirmed, she and a small team from the department met with leadership from the National Center for Learning Disabilities, an advocacy group that works on behalf of millions of students with dyslexia and other disorders.
Jacqueline Rodriguez, NCLD’s chief executive officer, recalled pressing McMahon on a question raised during her confirmation hearing: Was the Trump administration planning to move control and oversight of special education law from the Education Department to Health and Human Services?
Rodriguez was alarmed at the prospect of uprooting the 50-year-old Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act (IDEA), which spells out the responsibility of schools to provide a “free, appropriate public education” to students with disabilities. Eliminating the Education Department entirely is a primary objective of Project 2025, the conservative blueprint that has guided much of the administration’s education policy. After the department is gone, Project 2025 said oversight of special education should move to HHS, which manages some programs that help adults with disabilities.
But the sprawling department that oversees public health has no expertise in the complex education law, Rodriguez told McMahon.
“Someone might be able to push the button to disseminate funding, but they wouldn’t be able to answer a question from a parent or a school district,” she said in an interview later.
For her part, McMahon had wavered during her confirmation hearing on the subject. “I’m not sure that it’s not better served in HHS, but I don’t know,” she told Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., who shared concerns from parents worried about who would enforce the law’s provisions.
But nine days into a government shutdown that has furloughed most federal government workers, the Trump administration announced that it was planning a drastic “reduction in force” that would lay off more than 450 people, including almost everyone who works in the Office of Special Education Programs. Rodriguez believes the layoffs are a way that the administration plans to force the special education law to be managed by some other federal office.
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The Education Department press office did not respond to a question about the administration’s plans for special education oversight. Instead, the press office pointed to a social media post from McMahon on Oct. 15. The fact that schools are “operating as normal” during the government shutdown, McMahon wrote on X, “confirms what the President has said: the federal Department of Education is unnecessary.”’
Yet in that May meeting, Rodriguez said she was told that HHS might not be the right place for IDEA, she recalled. While the new department leadership made no promises, they assured her that any move of the law’s oversight would have to be done with congressional approval, Rodriguez said she was told.
The move to gut the office overseeing special education law was shocking to families and those who work with students with disabilities. About 7.5 million children ages 3 to 21 are served under IDEA, and the office had already lost staffers after the Trump administration dismissed nearly half the Education Department’s staff in March, bringing the agency’s total workforce to around 2,200 people.
For Rodriguez, whose organization supports students with learning disabilities such as dyslexia, McMahon’s private assurances was the administration “just outright lying to the public about their intentions.”
“The audacity of this administration to communicate in her confirmation, in her recent testimony to Congress and to a disability rights leader to her face, ‘Don’t worry, we will support kids with disabilities,’” Rodriguez said. “And then to not just turn a 180-degree on that, but to decimate the ability to enforce the law that supports our kids.”
She added: “It could not just be contradictory. It feels like a bait and switch.”
Five days after the firings were announced, a U.S. district judge temporarily blocked the administration’s actions, setting up a legal showdown that is likely to end up before the Supreme Court. The high court has sided with the president on most of his efforts to drastically reshape the federal workforce. And President Donald Trump said at a Tuesday press briefing that more cuts to “Democrat programs” are coming.
“They’re never going to come back in many cases,” he added.
In her post on X, McMahon also said that “no education funding is impacted by the RIF, including funding for special education,” referring to the layoffs.
But special education is more than just money, said Danielle Kovach, a special education teacher in Hopatcong, N.J. Kovach is also a former president of the Council for Exceptional Children, a national organization for special educators.
“I equate it to, what would happen if we dismantled a control tower at a busy airport?” Kovach said. “It doesn’t fly the plane. It doesn’t tell people where to go. But it ensures that everyone flies smoothly.”
Katy Neas, a deputy assistant secretary in the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services during the Biden administration, said that most people involved in the education system want to do right by children.
“You can’t do right if you don’t know what the answer is,” said Neas, who is now the chief executive officer of The Arc of the United States, which advocates for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. “You can’t get there if you don’t know how to get your questions answered.”
Families also rely on IDEA’s mandate that each child with a disability receives a free, appropriate public education — and the protections that they can receive if a school or district does not live up to that requirement.
Maribel Gardea, a parent in San Antonio, said she fought with her son’s school district for years over accommodations for his disability. Her son Voozeki, 14, has cerebral palsy and is nonverbal. He uses an eye-gaze device that allows him to communicate when he looks at different symbols on a portable screen. The district resisted getting the device for him to use at school until, Gardea said, she reminded them of IDEA’s requirements.
Gardea, the co-founder of MindShiftED, an organization that helps parents become better advocates for their children with disabilities, said the upheaval at the Education Department has her wondering what kind of advice she can give families now.
For example, an upcoming group session will teach parents how to file official grievances to the federal government if they have disputes with their child’s school or district about services. Now, she has to add in an explanation of what the deep federal cuts will mean for parents.
Voozeki Gardea, who attends school in the San Antonio area, uses an eye-gaze communication device with the assistance of school paraprofessional Vanessa Martinez. The device verbalizes words and phrases when Voozeki looks at different symbols. Credit: Courtesy Maribel Gardea
“I have to tell you how to do a grievance,” she said she plans to tell parents. “But I have to tell you no one will answer.”
Maybe grassroots organizations may find themselves trying to track parent complaints on their own, she said, but the prospect is exhausting. “It’s a really gross feeling to know that no one has my back.”
In addition to the office that oversees special education law, the Rehabilitation Services Administration, which is also housed at the Department of Education and supports employment and training of people with disabilities, was told most of its staff would be fired.
“Regardless of which office you’re worried about, this is all very intentional,” said Julie Christensen, the executive director of the Association of People Supporting Employment First, which advocates for the full inclusion of people with disabilities in the workforce. “There’s no one who can officially answer questions. It feels like that was kind of the intent, to just create a lot of confusion and chaos.”
Those staffers “are the voice within the federal government to make sure policies and funding are aligned to help people with disabilities get into work,” Christensen said. Firing them, she added, is counterintuitive to everything the administration says it cares about.
For now, advocates say they are bracing for a battle similar to those fought decades ago that led to the enactment of civil rights law protecting children and adults with disabilities. Before the law was passed, there was no federal guarantee that a student with a disability would be allowed to attend public school.
“We need to put together our collective voices. It was our collective voices that got us here,” Kovach said.
And, Rodriguez said, parents of children in special education need to be prepared to be their own watchdogs. “You have to become the compliance monitor.”
It’s unfair, she said, but necessary.
Contact staff writer Christina Samuels at 212-678-3635 or [email protected].
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
In his first two months in office, President Donald Trump ordered the closing of the Education Department and fired half of its staff. The department’s research and statistics division, called the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), was particularly hard hit. About 90 percent of its staff lost their jobs and more than 100 federal contracts to conduct its primary activities were canceled.
But now there are signs that the Trump administration is partially reversing course and wants the federal government to retain a role in generating education statistics and evidence for what works in classrooms — at least to some extent. On Sept. 25, the department posted a notice in the Federal Register asking the public to submit feedback by Oct. 15 on reforming IES to make research more relevant to student learning. The department also asked for suggestions on how to collect data more efficiently.
The timeline for revamping IES remains unclear, as is whether the administration will invest money into modernizing the agency. For example, it would take time and money to pilot new statistical techniques; in the meantime, statisticians would have to continue using current protocols.
Still, the signs of rebuilding are adding up.
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At the end of May, the department announced that it had temporarily hired a researcher from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative think tank, to recommend ways to reform education research and development. The researcher, Amber Northern, has been “listening” to suggestions from think tanks and research organizations, according to department spokeswoman Madi Biedermann, and now wants more public feedback.
Biedermann said that the Trump administration “absolutely” intends to retain a role in education research, even as it seeks to close the department. Closure will require congressional approval, which hasn’t happened yet. In the meantime, Biedermann said the department is looking across the government to find where its research and statistics activities “best fit.”
Other IES activities also appear to be resuming. In June, the department disclosed in a legal filing that it had or has plans to reinstate 20 of the 101 terminated contracts. Among the activities slated to be restarted are 10 Regional Education Laboratories that partner with school districts and states to generate and apply evidence. It remains unclear how all 20 contracts can be restarted without federal employees to hold competitive bidding processes and oversee them.
Earlier in September, the department posted eight new jobs to help administer the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also called the Nation’s Report Card. These positions would be part of IES’s statistics division, the National Center for Education Statistics. Most of the work in developing and administering tests is handled by outside vendors, but federal employees are needed to award and oversee these contracts. After mass firings in March, employees at the board that oversees NAEP have been on loan to the Education Department to make sure the 2026 NAEP test is on schedule.
Only a small staff remains at IES. Some education statistics have trickled out since Trump took office, including its first release of higher education data on Sept. 23. But the data releases have been late and incomplete.
It is believed that no new grants have been issued for education studies since March, according to researchers who are familiar with the federal grant making process but asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation. A big obstacle is that a contract to conduct peer review of research proposals was canceled so new ideas cannot be properly vetted. The staff that remains is trying to make annual disbursements for older multi-year studies that haven’t been canceled.
With all these changes, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to figure out the status of federally funded education research. One potential source of clarity is a new project launched by two researchers from George Washington University and Johns Hopkins University. Rob Olsen and Betsy Wolf, who was an IES researcher until March, are tracking cancellations and keeping a record of research results for policymakers.
If it’s successful, it will be a much-needed light through the chaos.
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
