by Jackie Mader, The Hechinger Report January 21, 2026
To an untrained eye, the “gross motor room” at the Edgerley Family Horizons Center in Boston looks like any other indoor gym for preschoolers. There are mats on the floor, large foam blocks, shapes and stairs to play with and climb on, fabric swings hanging from the ceiling and sensory boards attached to the walls, covered with various materials that provide touch-based activities.
But this room was thoughtfully designed to be much more than a play space: It includes features meant to support emotional development and provide a calming place for children experiencing big feelings. For example, the cocoon swings provide a “hug” feeling that helps children relax. The blue lights above promote a sense of peace. And the soft foam tunnel gives children a place to hide when they need a break. The teachers are also specifically trained to foster feelings of safety and trust, and to reduce child stress.
At Edgerley, which is run by the nonprofit Horizons for Homeless Children and serves more than 250 children ages 2 months to 5 years old, there’s a need for this resource. All the children who are enrolled have experienced or are experiencing homelessness, which for kids, can lead to difficulty regulating emotions, ongoing health issues and developmental delays.
Over the past few years, infant and toddler homelessness has increased in nearly every state. Nearly half a million of the country’s youngest children are living in shelters, in overcrowded homes with other families, or sleeping in temporary spaces, like cars or hotels. At the same time, fewer of these children are enrolled in early learning programs like the one at Edgerley. Such programs, with their enriching environments and stable teachers, can help buffer the effects of homelessness on young children and their growing brains. I recently traveled to Boston to learn more about the early learning program run by Horizons. My story, which also looks at what other cities and states are doing to help these families, was published last weekend with The Boston Globe.
This story about homeless kids was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.
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Sleep is a rare commodity at Lindsay Crain’s house. Most nights, she and her husband are up dozens of times, tending to their daughter’s seizures. The 16-year-old flails her arms, thrashes and kicks — sometimes for hours.
But these days, that’s not the only thing keeping Crain awake. The Culver City mother worries about how President Donald Trump’s myriad budget cuts could strip their daughter of services she needs to go to school, live at home and enjoy a degree of independence that would have been impossible a generation ago.
“Every family I know is terrified right now,” Crain said. “We still have to live our everyday lives, which are challenging enough, but now it feels like our kids’ futures are at stake.”
Trump’s budget includes nearly $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid, which funds a wide swath of services to disabled children, including speech, occupational and physical therapy, wheelchairs, in-home aides and medical care. All children with physical, developmental or cognitive disabilities – in California, nearly 1 million – receive at least some services through Medicaid.
Meanwhile, at the U.S. Department of Education, Trump has gutted the Office of Civil Rights, which is among the agencies that enforce the 50-year-old law granting students with disabilities the right to attend school and receive an education appropriate to their needs. Before that law was enacted, students with disabilities often didn’t attend school at all.
“We have a delicate web of services that, combined, support a whole child, a whole family,” said Kristin Wright, executive director of inclusive practices and systems at the Sacramento County Office of Education and the former California state director of special education. “So when the basic foundational structure is upended, like Medicaid, for example, it’s not just one cut from a knife. It’s multiple.”
Republicans have also suggested moving the office of special education out of the Department of Education altogether and moving it to the Department of Health and Human Services. Disability rights advocates say that would bring a medical – rather than a social – lens to special education, which they described as a major reversal of progress.
Trump has chipped away at other rights protecting people with disabilities, as well. In September, the U.S. Department of Transportation said it would not enforce a rule that requires airlines to reimburse passengers for damaged or lost wheelchairs. Trump has also repeatedly used the word “retarded,” widely considered a slur, alarming advocates who say it shows a lack of respect and understanding of the historical discrimination against people with disabilities. It’s all left some wondering if the administration plans more cuts to hard-fought rights protecting people with disabilities.
Fewer therapists, less equipment
The Medicaid cuts may have the most immediate effect. People with developmental disabilities typically receive therapy, home visits from aides, equipment and other services through regional centers, a network of 21 mostly government-funded nonprofits in California that coordinate services for people with disabilities. The goal of regional centers is to help people with disabilities live as independently as possible.
More than a third of regional centers’ funding comes from Medicaid, which is facing deep cuts under Trump’s budget. The money runs out at the end of January, and it’s unclear what services will be cut.
Schools also rely on Medicaid to pay for therapists, equipment, vision and hearing tests and other services that benefit all students, not just those with disabilities. In light of state budget uncertainty, it’s not likely the state could backfill the loss of Medicaid funding, and schools would have to pare down their services.
Uncertain futures
For Lelah Coppedge, whose teenage son has cerebral palsy, the worst part is the uncertainty. She knows cuts are coming, but she doesn’t know when or what they’ll include.
“I go down this rabbit hole of worst-case scenarios,” said Coppedge, who lives in the Canoga Park neighborhood in Los Angeles. “Before this happened, I felt there was a clear path for my son. Now that path is going away, and it’s terrifying.”
Coppedge’s son, Jack, is a 16-year-old high school student who excels at algebra and physics. He loves video games and has a wide circle of friends at school. He uses a wheelchair and struggles with speech, communicating mostly through eye movements. He’ll look at his mom’s right hand to indicate “yes,” her left hand for “no.”
Coppedge and her husband rely on a nurse who comes four days a week to help Jack get dressed, get ready for bed and do other basic activities. Medicaid pays for the nurse, as well as other services like physical therapy. Even though Coppedge and her husband both work and have high-quality private health insurance, they could not afford Jack’s care without help from the government.
They also rely on the local regional center, which they assumed would help Jack after he graduates from high school, so he can remain at home, continue to hone his skills and generally live as independently as possible. If that funding vanishes, Coppedage worries Jack will someday end up in a facility where people don’t know him, don’t know how to communicate with him and don’t care about him.
“It feels like we’re going backward,” Coppedge said. “Half the time, I put my head in the sand because I’m just trying to manage the day-to-day. The rest of the time I worry that (the federal government) is looking at people like Jack as medical problems, not as unique people who want to have full, happy lives. It feels like that’s getting lost.”
The current uncertainty is stressful, but it’s even harder for families who are immigrants, Wright said. Those families are less likely to stand up for services they’re entitled to and are facing the extra fear of deportation. English learners, as well as low-income children, are disproportionately represented among students in special education, according to state data.
“That’s the other piece to all this — how it’s affecting immigrant families,” Wright said. “It’s a whole other level of anxiety and fear.”
Decades of progress on the line
Karma Quick-Panwala, an advocate at the nonprofit Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, said she worries about the rollback of decades’ worth of progress that was hard-won by the disability rights community.
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, the 1975 law that created special education, actually predates the federal Department of Education. In fact, Congress created the department in part to oversee special education. Removing special ed would be a devastating blow to the disability community — not just because services might be curtailed, but philosophically, as well, Quick-Panwala said.
In the Department of Education, special education is under the purview of education experts who promote optimal ways to educate students with disabilities, so they can learn, graduate from high school and ideally go on to productive lives. In the Department of Health and Human Services, special education would no longer be overseen by educators but by those in the medical field, where they’re more likely to “look at disability as something to be cured or segregated and set aside,” Quick-Panwala said.
“The disability rights community has worked so hard and gave so much to make sure people with disabilities had a right to a meaningful education, so they could have gainful employment opportunities and participate in the world,” Quick-Panwala said. “The idea is that they wouldn’t just be present at school, but they would actually learn and thrive.”
For the time being, Wright, Quick-Panwala and other advocates are reminding families that federal funding might be shrinking, but the laws remain unchanged. Students are still entitled under federal law to the services outlined in their individual education plans, regardless of whether there’s money to pay for it. The funding will have to come from somewhere, at least for now, even if that means cutting it from another program. And California is unlikely to roll back its own special education protections, regardless of what happens in Washington, D.C.
An imperfect but successful routine
Those reassurances are scant comfort to Crain, whose daughter Lena will rely on government support her entire life. Born seven weeks prematurely, Lena has cerebral palsy, epilepsy, a cognitive impairment and is on the deaf-blind spectrum. But she has a 100-watt smile and a relentless spirit, Crain said. Even after the whole family has been up all night, Lena insists on going to school and getting the most out of every day.
From left, Jack Deacy, his daughter Lena Deacy, and Lindsay Crain at their home in Culver City on Dec. 1, 2025. The family fears potential Medicaid cuts because Lena, who has cerebral palsy, epilepsy and other medical conditions, relies on Medicaid-funded services for her daily care and well-being. Photo by Zaydee Sanchez for CalMatters
Funny and assertive, she has a few close friends and, like many teenagers, plenty of opinions about her parents. She loves her English teacher and spends most of her day in regular classrooms with help from an aide. Her favorite book is about Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani activist who won a Nobel Peace Prize for fighting for girls’ right to an education.
Between school and home visits from aides and after-school therapists, Crain feels the family has pieced together an imperfect but mostly successful routine for Lena.
“Our entire lives are about teaching her self-advocacy, so she can have the most independent life possible,” Crain said. “Just because you need support doesn’t mean you can’t have a say in your life. There’s been so much work around the culture and the laws and the education system to make sure disabled people can make their own choices in life. We’re absolutely terrified of losing that.”
America’s special education system is facing a slow-motion collapse. Nearly 8 million students now receive services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), but the number of qualified teachers and related service providers continues to shrink. Districts from California to Maine report the same story: unfilled positions, overworked staff, and students missing the services they’re legally entitled to receive.
“The promise of IDEA means little if there’s no one left to deliver it.”
The data tell a clear story. Since 2013, the number of children ages 3–21 served under IDEA has grown from 6.4 million to roughly 7.5 million. Yet the teacher pipeline has moved in the opposite direction. According to Title II reports, teacher-preparation enrollments dropped 6 percent over the last decade and program completions plunged 27 percent. At the same time, nearly half of special educators leave the field within their first five years.
By 2023, 45 percent of public schools were operating without a full teaching staff. Vacancies were most acute in special education. Attrition, burnout, and early retirements outpace new entrants by a wide margin.
Why the traditional model no longer works
For decades, schools and staffing firms have fought over the same dwindling pool of licensed providers. Recruiting cycles stretch for months, while students wait for evaluations, therapies, or IEP services.
Traditional staffing firms focus on long-term contracts lasting six months or more, which makes sense for stability, but ignores an enormous, untapped workforce: thousands of credentialed professionals who could contribute a few extra hours each weekif the system made it easy.
Meanwhile, the process of credentialing, vetting, and matching candidates remains slow and manual, reliant on spreadsheets, email, and recruiters juggling dozens of openings. The result is predictable: delayed assessments, compliance risk, and burned-out staff covering for unfilled roles.
“Districts and recruiters compete for the same people, when they could be expanding the pool instead.”
The hidden workforce hiding in plain sight
Across the country, tens of thousands of licensed professionals–speech-language pathologists, occupational therapists, school psychologists, special educators–are under-employed. Many have stepped back from full-time work to care for families or pursue private practice. Others left the classroom but still want to contribute.
Imagine if districts could tap those “extra hours”through a vetted, AI-powered marketplace. A system that matched real-time school requests with qualified providers in their state. A model like this wouldn’t replace full-time roles; it would expand capacity, reduce burnout, and bring talent back into the system.
This isn’t theoretical. The same “on-demand” concept has already modernized industries from medicine to media. Education is long overdue for the same reinvention.
What modernization looks like
AI-driven matching: Districts post specific service needs (evaluations, IEP meetings, therapy hours). Licensed providers choose opportunities that fit their schedule.
Verified credentials and provider profiles: Platforms integrate state licensure databases and background checks to ensure compliance and provide profiles with all candidate information including on-demand, video interviews so schools can make informed hiring decisions immediately.
Smart staffing metrics: Schools track fill-rates, provider utilization, and service delays in real time.
Integrated workflows: The system plugs into existing special education management tools. No new learning curve for administrators.
A moment of urgency
The shortage isn’t just inconvenient; it’s systemic. Each unfilled position represents students who lose therapy hours, districts risking due-process complaints, and educators pushed closer to burnout.
With IDEA students now representing nearly 15 percent of all public school enrollment, the nation can’t afford to let a twentieth-century staffing model dictate twenty-first-century outcomes.
We have the technology. We have the workforce. What we need is the will to connect them.
“Modernizing special education staffing isn’t innovation for innovation’s sake, it’s survival.”
Kevin Eberly, FillerB
Kevin Eberly is the co-founder of FillerB, a platform modernizing special education staffing by connecting schools with licensed providers. He has over two decades of experience in education and technology leadership.
Latest posts by eSchool Media Contributors (see all)
This is part two of a two-part series on the 50th anniversary of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. For part one, click here.
Special education staff turnover is a constant challenge at Godwin Heights Public Schools in Michigan.
Sometimes a special education role will turn vacant just a month or six weeks after the district hired someone because they start and leave so quickly, says Derek Cooley, the district’s special education director.
“We used to have staff that would spend their whole careers in special education” at Godwin Heights, Cooley says. “We just don’t see that anymore.”
People often enter the special education field because they have family members with disabilities, or they come from a family of public educators, says Cooley. Throughout his own hiring history and over 20-year education career, he’s noticed this pattern, he says.
But what keeps special educators in schools “isn’t just passion,” Cooley says. “It’s also having strong mentoring and coaching, a manageable workload, and practical supports like tuition reimbursement that make the job sustainable and rewarding.”
Godwin Heights Public Schools is not alone in the struggle to recruit and retain special education staff. In fact, this field is typically cited as one of the top staffing problem areas among districts nationwide. During the 2024-25 school year, 45 states reported teacher shortages in special education, according to the Learning Policy Institute.
45
The number of states that reported teacher shortages in special education during the 2024-25 school year.
Source: Learning Policy Institute
These shortages can also lead to costly litigation between districts and families for missed special education services. To fill special educator vacancies, schools often rely on teachers not certified in special education or hire outside contractors to fill these roles.
These widespread shortages — which researchers and special education experts say were exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic — continue to be a sticking point as the education community celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. The historic legislation, signed into law on Nov. 29, 1975, guaranteed students with disabilities the right to a free and appropriate public education nationwide. Until then, there was no federal requirement that schools must educate students with disabilities.
But five decades later, special education experts and advocates say much work remains to ensure that all students with disabilities indeed have access to a high-quality education.
Since the 1990s, special education has been the top staffing shortage area in U.S. schools, said Bellwether Education Partners in a 2019 data analysis.
Meanwhile, the number of students with disabilities ages 3-21 served by IDEA has surged by nearly 20% since 2000-01, to 7.5 million students in the 2022-23 school year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
Derek Cooley is special education director at Godwin Heights Public Schools in Wyoming, Mich.
Permission granted by Derek Cooley
While all students are falling behind academically since the pandemic, as measured by the Nation’s Report Card and other data collections, students with disabilities are performing even worse than their general education peers. A majority — 72% — of 4th graders with disabilities scored below basic in reading, and 53% scored below basic in math on the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress. That’s compared to the 34% of 4th grade students without disabilities who scored below basic in reading, and the 19% who scored below basic in math.
Research and special education experts agree that special educator turnover and student outcomes are inextricably tied. A study released in May by the Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research, for instance, found that in Washington state, high turnover among special educators is “especially detrimental to students with disabilities” and their academic performance.
“I think we’re far from the vision” and commitments of IDEA, says Heather Peske, president of the nonprofit National Council on Teacher Quality. As the latest scores from the Nation’s Report Card reveal, “there is the need for access to effective teachers, and so states and districts really need to focus on the opportunities available to them to increase both the quantity and the quality of special ed teachers,” Peske says.
But hope remains alive — and is actively fueling efforts by researchers and state education leaders to implement innovative strategies to address the widespread, decades-long struggle to staff special education.
When we fail to fully staff our classrooms, we fail to deliver on the promise of a free and appropriate public education for students with disabilities.
Abby Cypher
Executive director of the Michigan Association of Administrators of Special Education
In late September, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights released a report acknowledging that the special education teacher shortage is more than a staffing problem — it’s also a civil rights issue.
“I 100% agree with that,” says Abby Cypher, executive director of the Michigan Association of Administrators of Special Education. “When we fail to fully staff our classrooms, we fail to deliver on the promise of a free and appropriate public education for students with disabilities.”
Viewing the special education shortage as a civil rights issue is what keeps pushing Cypher to improve special educator recruitment and retention in Michigan. And it also reminds her that this is a problem that needs urgent solutions.
In recent years, Cypher says, the Michigan association has implemented new strategies to tackle the shortages as recommended by a state Legislature task force known as OPTIMISE, or Opening the Pipeline of Talent into Michigan’s Special Education. While the work is only just beginning, early results are promising, she said.
Special educators commonly leave the profession for a myriad of reasons, including low pay, poor working conditions, large workloads and heavy paperwork, as well as lack of school leadership support and professional development, according to special education experts.
With IDEA’s 50th anniversary upon us, K-12 Dive spoke with special education leaders and researchers about promising innovations to tackle special education teacher shortages and best practices for implementing the ideas at state and local levels.
Special educator shortages persist as a top staffing issue
The percentage of surveyed public schools that anticipated a need to fill certain teaching positions by subject areas before the start of the next school year.
Targeted compensation
Eighteen states differentiate compensation for special education teachers by paying them more than general education teachers. But Hawaii is the only one that offers over $5,000 in additional annual pay — the amount that research suggests could make a meaningful impact, according to a September NCTQ report.
The Hawaii Department of Education found in an October study that its $10,000 differential pay for special education teachers boosted teacher retention. But lower amounts had no impact on recruitment or retention in that state, the department said. The state’s average annual salary for all teachers is $78,124.
Increasing compensation or creating student loan forgiveness opportunities for special educators could boost both recruitment and retention, says Laurie VanderPloeg, associate executive director for professional affairs at the Council for Exceptional Children. “People are going to stay if they feel that they are being compensated for their workload and the time and the effort that they’re putting in.”
One way districts could cover higher salaries for special educators would be to stop paying teachers more across the board for having a master’s degree, Peske says. “We found that 90% of large school districts across the U.S. pay teachers more for having a master’s degree, and nearly one-third of states require districts to pay for these master’s degrees despite the evidence that master’s degree premiums are bad policy for almost everyone.”
In NCTQ’s own research, the nonprofit has found that master’s degrees for teachers do not correlate with effectiveness in the classroom, Peske said.
If we don’t have a strong climate and culture within the building, if we don’t have the administrative support, if we don’t have other areas to incentivize staff … they’re not going to stay.
Laurie VanderPloeg
Associate executive director for professional affairs at the Council for Exceptional Children
Meanwhile in Michigan, several educator unions have been able to negotiate higher wages for paraprofessionals who complete training developed by MAASE, Cypher says.
But VanderPloeg emphasizes that higher compensation is just “one piece of the puzzle.”
“If we don’t have a strong climate and culture within the building, if we don’t have the administrative support, if we don’t have other areas to incentivize staff … they’re not going to stay,” says VanderPloeg, who served as director of the federal Office of Special Education Programs during the first Trump administration.
Tammy French, autism special education teacher at Bishop Elementary School in Rochester, Minn., goes over a new educational tool with autism paraprofessional Marion Fosdick after class on March 14, 2019.
Ken Klotzbach/The Rochester Post-Bulletin via AP
Training and professional development
In Michigan, Cypher says schools face a lot of turnover among paraprofessionals who often say in exit interviews that they left because they had neither the skills nor access to the training they needed to be successful. Paraprofessionals don’t need teaching licenses, and they typically are paid significantly less than full-time licensed teachers. These staffers perform various roles, such as assisting teachers in their classrooms through tutoring, helping to manage student behaviors or organizing instructional materials.
To address the paraprofessional turnover challenge and hopefully improve paraeducator retention, Cypher says that MAASE developed paraeducator standards with CEC. Since March, the Michigan association has trained nearly 5,000 paraeducators through this new professional development program, she says.
Special education administrators in schools don’t always have the capacity to provide high-quality professional development for their paraprofessionals, Cypher says. The new training empowers those administrators, including instructing them separately on how to effectively and consistently train staff across their districts.
But targeted training needs to go beyond paraprofessionals and special education administrators.
Prospective special education teachers, during their clinical training, should work with mentor teachers who are certified in special education, Peske says. This strategy has been proven to boost a new teacher’s efficacy in the classroom later on, she adds.
School principals also need more training in special education, according to industry experts and leaders. That is especially true given that special education teachers often cite a lack of support from their building administrators as a factor for leaving, says Natasha Veale, a special education leadership consultant.
States should require principal preparation programs to include more content and instruction on special education, Veale says.
And districts should provide principals with professional and personal development opportunities to help foster relationships with their special education teachers, she says.
Veale expresses optimism about the future of special education staffing given the increasing conversations at education conferences she’s seen about integrating a deeper understanding of special education issues more into school leadership.
Michigan is looking to tackle the leadership challenge through a new 18-month program called Developing Inclusive Leaders. This initiative, also from the Michigan Association of Administrators of Special Education, trains principals and building administrators on special education law, inclusive practices and collaboration with educators, families and communities.
A year into the program, Cypher said the association is already starting to see meaningful gains in school leaders’ knowledge of and confidence with overseeing school inclusion practices.
Developing pipelines
In recent years, grow-your-own programs have gained steam as an innovative approach for recruiting and retaining teachers across all instructional areas.
While these programs vary by district and state, they typically focus on bringing high school students into the education field or moving paraprofessionals into fully professional positions. Such initiatives can offer college tuition assistance to prospective teachers as they gain classroom experience working alongside veteran teachers — with the ultimate goal of earning a teaching degree or certification.
Illinois alone has 15,000 paraprofessionals with a bachelor’s degree, says Daniel Maggin, associate dean of research and professor in special education at the University of Illinois Chicago. If the state trained all those paraprofessionals as special education teachers, he said, its special educator shortage would be solved and there would even be a surplus.
That’s because paraprofessionals represent the group with the most accessible and fastest on-ramp for getting a special education license and endorsement, Maggin says.
Those professionals are local and they’re right there, and they’re familiar with students in the area, and it just makes more sense to capitalize on that population.
Natasha Veale
Special education leadership consultant
While that gives Maggin hope about addressing Illinois’ special education teacher shortage, he says it’s still unclear how the state could train that many people — and where the money would come from to do so. Such an effort would require district, state and federal support, he says.
Veale says most paraprofessionals have a strong desire to teach in special education full time, so grow-your-own programs for these staffers can be “a great way” to help alleviate the shortage.
“Those professionals are local and they’re right there, and they’re familiar with students in the area, and it just makes more sense to capitalize on that population,” Veale says.
Districts and states are indeed using the model to build up the special educator pipeline.
In 2024, Arizona launched two grow-your-own programs for special educators. One program offers tuition reimbursement to school districts for general education teachers who want to move into special education. Another Arizona program provides tuition reimbursement to school districts helping paraprofessionals earn a teaching certificate in the field.
And two years before that, North Dakota invested in an online grow-your-own program that trains paraprofessionals in rural areas to become licensed full-time special education teachers.
A group of high school students from Charlevoix-Emmet Intermediate School District in Michigan participate in a paraprofessional boot camp together in April 2025.
Permission granted by Michigan Association of Administrators of Special Education
In Michigan, grow-your-own programs often focus on training paraprofessionals for full-time and licensed teaching roles, according to Cypher. But without a pipeline to backfill their roles, that can lead to a deficit in paraprofessionals, she says.
To address that gap, Cypher says, the Michigan Association of Administrators of Special Education worked with the state education department to help high schoolers participate in a similar grow-your-own program, known as a paraprofessional boot camp, that started in March 2025.
The boot camp is offered as a career and technical education course where high school students train and work in elementary schools for several hours in a day. Then after graduating high school, they can immediately step into a paraprofessional role.
This new initiative not only helps fill paraprofessional positions but could lead to more interest in full-time special educator roles, Cypher says. “Once students have access to those standards on being a paraeducator, it might entice them to consider going into teaching as well.”
News Graphics Developer Julia Himmel contributed data and graphics support to this story.
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Teacher preparation experts fear ongoing special education teacher shortages will worsen as the Trump administration continues to downsize the U.S. Department of Education.
During the 2024-25 school year alone, 45 states reported shortages in special education — the most frequently reported shortage area nationwide, according to Learning Policy Institute. The other most common shortages reported by states include science (41), math (40), language arts (38), world languages (35) and career and technical education (33), LPI found.
A wave of layoffs in October at the Education Department that decimated most of the Office of Special Education Programs — a decision that is currently tied up in the courts — sent shockwaves throughout the special education community. OSEP helps administer and oversee the distribution of federal funds through the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
One of the grants impacted by these changes in particular is IDEA Part D for personnel development to improve services for children with disabilities.
The IDEA Part D personnel development grants received $115 million in federal appropriations during fiscal year 2024. Under the Trump administration’s FY 26 proposal, that same program would be zeroed out, and the newly allocated funds would go to IDEA Part B programs into a single state block grant program.
The budget proposal stated that even with this consolidation of funds, “states would continue to meet key IDEA accountability and reporting requirements aimed at ensuring a free appropriate public education is available to all students with disabilities and protecting the rights of those students and their families.”
Regardless, there’s minimal support in Congress for this kind of state block grant program, as both the House and Senate appropriations committees have rejected the measures in their budget planning for FY 26.
These IDEA Part D funds are typically awarded for five years to state education agencies, school districts, higher education institutions and nonprofits.
On top of challenges for OSEP to oversee the IDEA Part D personnel preparation funds while it is shortstaffed, experts and advocates say the Trump administration’s budget proposal to consolidate IDEA Part D into state block grants will harm teacher prep programs’ ability to train high-quality special educators.
The changes this year are of particular concern for Laurie VanderPloeg, associate executive director for professional affairs at the Council for Exceptional Children, who said the absence of IDEA Part D preparation program funds could reduce the number of special education teacher candidates in educator preparation programs.
Even at current enrollment levels in special education teaching programs, VanderPloeg said, there’s still not enough people in the pipeline to meet the demands in the field.
“So with the reduction in enrollment in the educator prep programs, it’s going to reduce our national flexibility with being able to fill all of the open positions with good, qualified personnel,” said VanderPloeg, who also served as director of OSEP during the first Trump administration.
The uncertainty around IDEA Part D grant funds is also hanging over the heads of educator preparation programs, leaving many wondering how long these federal dollars dedicated to training special educators will last, VanderPloeg said. If these grants are disrupted, she said, there could be other implications for teaching candidates currently enrolled in programs that benefit from the funds.
“Would they be able to complete the program in the absence of having funding availability?” VanderPloeg asked. “Would it put them into a position where they would have to financially support themselves through the completion of the program?”
Still, the Trump administration has suggested its efforts to eliminate the Education Department and give more control to the states will not impact instructional services for students with disabilities. President Donald Trump and U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon have named the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services as a potential agency to take on special education oversight from the Education Department. But there is no official plan in place to make such a move yet.
Marquita Grenot-Scheyer, former chairperson of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education board of directors, also said that the Education Department shakeups impacting special education will only make the declining enrollment in special education teacher training programs worse.
Educator preparation programs are worried about how these cuts will further strain working conditions for special educators, she said — and that’s especially the case if there’s less federal funding for technical assistance and possible increased class sizes in special education programs. At the same time, an analysis of federal data by The Advocacy Institute found that the number of students with disabilities, ages 3-21, could jump by about 1 million students between 2021 and 2025.
VanderPloeg agrees that those workforce strains exist, noting that the optics of these drastic changes to federal special education programs could cause those training in the field to question if there will be adequate resources and professional development opportunities to support them as they enter the profession. The cuts in funds and staffing for oversight to bolster the special education teacher pipeline sends a message to prospective teachers that may deter them from pursuing a career in the field, she said.
“So many of our university programs are uncertain with how best to address this or plan for the future — not only from a recruitment perspective into their educator prep programs, but certainly from a staff perspective as well,” VanderPloeg said.
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Most clicked story of the week:
The U.S. Department of Education’s downsizing under the Trump administration has intensified debate among parents, special education advocates and policy experts about the federal government’s role in serving students with disabilities. Some critics of the Education Department’s Office of Special Education Programs say an overhaul is needed to improve responsiveness to parents’ concerns and school districts’ needs, while others have called for the office, which oversees implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, to be eliminated altogether.
Advocates, however, have warned that shrinking the department would “decimate implementation of key education and disability laws.”
Number of the week:
6%
The size of enrollment declines in Wisconsin for the 2025-26 school year, based on preliminary unaudited state data recorded in September and compared to the same time the previous school year. That amounts to about 46,180 students. Numerous states and districts nationwide are seeing enrollment trend downward due to factors such as declining birthrates and competition from school choice initiatives.
Policies in the spotlight
California’s McKinleyville Union School District was making progress on a key mental health initiative, having won a $7.2 million grant in October 2024 from the U.S. Department of Education that would help it hire the equivalent of six full-time credentialed school social workers, psychologists or counselors over the next five years. The funds were also expected to help the district hire three full-time instructional coaches to implement a multi-tiered system of supports. However, almost five months into its mental healthcare system overhaul, the rug was pulled out from under the district’s plans when the Trump administration canceled those school mental health grants.
There’s still no official plan from the Trump administration to move special education oversight from the U.S. Department of Education to another federal agency such as the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Over the past several weeks, however, advocates have sent multiple letters and hosted online forums to stave off such a transition.
All Colorado public school students will continue to have access to free school meals after voters on Tuesday approved two state referendums, one of which — Proposition MM — will raise state income taxes for those earning an annual income of $300,000 or more. Backed by 58% of voters, Proposition MM will increase the average income tax by $486 for Colorado residents at that income threshold, providing an expected additional $95 million in annual revenue for the state to continue funding its universal school meals program approved by voters in 2022.
What’s working in classrooms?
Some upsides of using artificial intelligence chatbots to help students improve writing and studying skills are that these tools can act as coaches or mentors when humans aren’t available, offering generic but reasonably good and “relatively creative” feedback to middle and high school students during brainstorming, says Sarah Levine, assistant professor at the Stanford University Graduate School of Education. On the other hand, she says, students sometimes “hand over the thinking work” of writing to bots, which create the end product quickly — and “they can do B-plus work all the time.”
Teachers and school leaders can take certain approaches to ensure students with autism thrive in the classroom. Among the best practices are direct and multisensory instruction, role-playing and modeling behaviors, employing a variety of communication strategies, and being sensitive to overstimulating situations.
Despite state and district leaders making significant progress in closing student access gaps to devices, internet and other technology, these gains haven’t led to “meaningful improvements in teaching and learning,” according to a report from the State Educational Technology Directors Association and other education organizations. The report said a “digital use divide” is persisting, at least partially due to a lack of sustained teacher professional development to help students engage in deeper learning experiences through technology — especially as AI becomes more prevalent.
Districts nationwide are grappling with increased special education demands amid persistent staff shortages and compliance pressures. At the intersection of technology and student support, Maura Connor, chief operating officer of Better Speech, is leading the launch of Streamline, an AI-powered special education management platform designed to ease administrative burdens and enhance service delivery.
In this Q&A, Connor discusses the realistic, responsible ways AI can empower educators, optimize workflows, and foster stronger connections between schools and families.
1. Many districts are experiencing an increase in special education caseloads while struggling with staff shortages and retention. From your perspective, where can AI most realistically help relieve pressure on special educators without compromising their quality of service?
AI is most impactful when it handles time-intensive, repetitive tasks that don’t require nuanced human judgment. For example, AI can assist in drafting initial progress or intervention notes and tracking intervention outcomes to help identify students who may need additional support. By automating these administrative tasks, special educators and service providers can spend more time delivering direct instruction or therapy, collaborating with colleagues, and planning individualized support for students.
Importantly, AI is a tool that augments, not replaces, human expertise. It can relieve pressure in the special education ecosystem while allowing educators to maintain the high-quality services students need.
2. Special education leaders need to balance efficiency with compliance when it comes to IEP evaluations and goals. How can AI help schools and districts with this?
AI can standardize data collection and analysis, ensuring evaluations capture all legally required components while reducing the manual burden. Advanced AI analytics can also flag potential compliance gaps before they become serious risks and help identify patterns across a student’s performance.
For case managers and providers, especially those new to special education, AI can accelerate skill-building by helping draft legally-defensible, evidence-based IEP goals and recommendations. Rather than spending hours on formatting and documentation, this allows educators and administrators to focus on meaningful decision-making, personalized student support, and family engagement.
3. Beyond easing paperwork, what are some practical ways school and district leaders can use AI to reallocate staff time toward more student-facing work?
AI can help leaders identify trends and bottlenecks across their special education programs, such as caseload imbalances, scheduling inefficiencies, budget planning, or capacity in high-demand intervention areas. By surfacing these insights, districts can make data-informed staffing adjustments, prioritize coaching and professional development, and streamline workflows so teachers and service providers are freed up for individual instruction, small-group interventions, and collaborative planning.
Essentially, AI can turn administrative time into actionable intelligence that translates directly into better targeted student support.
4. When it comes to parent engagement, how can AI support stronger, more transparent communication between schools and families?
Parent engagement in the special education process can be a sensitive experience for districts and families alike. And, it’s a critical challenge we often hear about from leaders and teachers.
AI relieves some of the pressure by generating clear, real-time updates on student progress. In this way, AI can increase transparency and communication, helping families stay informed and engaged without overwhelming staff through repetitive outreach. For example, automated notifications about milestones, progress toward IEP goals, or upcoming meetings can ensure families receive timely, understandable information.
AI can also assist in translating materials for non-English-speaking families, creating more equitable access to information and empowering parents to be active partners in their child’s education.
5. Given the growing availability and use of generative AI tools, how can school and district leaders set guardrails to ensure educators use these tools ethically and securely?
Responsible and ethical use of AI in education starts with districts setting clear policies and engaging in targeted professional development. Leaders should define boundaries around student data privacy, clarify when AI outputs require human review, and provide training on responsible AI use. AI should always enhance staff capacity without compromising student safety or the integrity of decision-making. Since AI can “hallucinate,” it is absolutely critical that educators and providers use their own professional and clinical judgment in reviewing and approving any recommendations generated by AI. Districts should also consider using a proprietary, evidence-based LLM engine instead of open-source AI tools to lessen this risk.
Establishing guardrails also means monitoring usage, maintaining transparency with families, and fostering a culture where AI is a support, not a replacement, for professional and clinical judgment.
6. Overall, what role can AI-powered analytics play in helping school and district leaders make more data-driven, proactive decisions?
AI-powered analytics can transform reactive management into proactive planning. By aggregating and analyzing multiple data points–from academic performance to intervention outcomes–leaders can identify trends and potential compliance issues before they become legal risks. District leaders can also allocate resources more strategically and design targeted programs for students who need the most support or readily plan for coverage or extra resources when settings need to increase capacity.
Overall, AI’s predictive capability can help districts move beyond compliance toward strategic continuous improvement, ensuring every decision is informed by actionable insights rather than intuition alone.
Maura Connor is Chief Operating Officer of Better Speech, where she leads the launch of Streamline, an AI-powered special education management platform that reduces administrative burden and empowers schools to better support students and families. With extensive leadership experience across education and healthcare technology, she specializes in scaling organizations, driving innovation, and advancing solutions that improve outcomes for children and communities.
Laura Ascione is the Editorial Director at eSchool Media. She is a graduate of the University of Maryland’s prestigious Philip Merrill College of Journalism.
This week on the podcast we get across the Westminster government’s post-16 white paper – its headline target of two-thirds of young people in higher-level learning by 25, the plan to index the undergraduate fee cap to inflation (with TEF-linked eligibility), the maintenance package holding to the status quo, and a push for institutional specialisation via research funding alongside changes to access, participation, and regulation.
We ask whether these levers add up – will automatic indexation and selective controls actually stabilise university finances while widening opportunity, or do TEF-conditioned fee rises, classroom-based foundation year limits, and OfS expansion risk new “cold spots”, tighter choice, and a tougher deal on student maintenance?
Plus we discuss the proposed international student levy and quid-pro-quo on quality; tougher franchising rules and agent oversight; a “statement of expectations” on student accommodation; governance and TPS pressures; and much much more.
With Debbie McVitty, Editor, Wonkhe, David Kernohan, Deputy Editor, Wonkhe, Jim Dickinson, Associate Editor, Wonkhe, Michael Salmon, News Editor, Wonkhe, and presented by Mark Leach, Editor-in-Chief, Wonkhe.
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.
Related: Become a lifelong learner. Subscribe to our freeweekly newsletter featuring the most important stories in education.
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.
The U.S. Department of Education has terminated nearly every employee in the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services in a sweeping wave of layoffs that began Friday, according to the union representing agency staff—a move that advocates say will devastate services for millions of students with disabilities.
While the agency has not provided official numbers, reports from staff and managers indicate that most employees below the leadership level in the division were eliminated, said Rachel Gittleman, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 252. Employees in the college access program known as TRIO, housed in a different office, were also let go.
The union has challenged the firings in court, arguing they “double down on the harm to K-12 students and schools across the country,” Gittleman told USA TODAY.
Education Department spokespeople did not respond to requests for comment. However, Education Secretary Linda McMahon has previously stated that safeguarding students with disabilities and ensuring their access to legally mandated educational resources is a top priority. “I would like to see even more funding go to the states for that,” she told CNN in March.
In a Friday court filing, the Justice Department confirmed that more than 460 Education Department employees had been laid off, cutting roughly one-fifth of the agency’s workforce. The terminations, which have affected more than half a dozen federal agencies, are part of a broader Trump administration effort to pressure congressional Democrats to end the ongoing government shutdown. Nearly 90% of the Education Department remains furloughed.
The agency eliminated nearly every employee responsible for administering funding under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)—the primary federal law supporting students with disabilities. The staffer expressed uncertainty about how these programs will continue to function.
Secretary McMahon has suggested that oversight of IDEA funding might be better positioned within the Department of Health and Human Services rather than at the Education Department, though officially moving it would require congressional action.
The mass firings have drawn sharp criticism from education equity advocates who warn of dire consequences for vulnerable students.
“The Trump administration’s attack on public education continued this weekend as students with disabilities are at risk of losing the services, supports, and oversight that protect their civil rights,” said Denise Forte, president and CEO of The Education Trust.
“The administration’s unfathomable decision to fire all employees who administer the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) abandons the 7.5 million students with disabilities and their families,” Forte continued. “Roughly 15% of public school students have a disability, and federal enforcement of IDEA is crucial to ensuring that these students receive a free and appropriate public education.”
Forte said that the layoffs will have particularly significant consequences for students of color with disabilities, who already face greater barriers to accessing services and are subjected to disproportionately harsher discipline.
“This is a direct assault on all parents of and students with disabilities and all students and families who know that an excellent education system is a diverse and inclusive one,” Forte said. “I call on the Trump administration to reverse these cuts immediately.”
The firings come amid widespread disruption across the Education Department, which has also experienced problems with financial aid administration following earlier rounds of layoffs.
