Nov. 19, 2025 Editor, The News-Gazette In October, the Trump administration fired nearly all the employees of the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (DoE/OCR), the unit responsible for enforcing the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and announced that it intends to shift oversight responsibility to the states.
The administration’s action is being challenged in federal court but the odds of reversing the layoffs appear dim given the administration’s commitment to dismantling the entire department.
Initially enacted in 1975, the IDEA guarantees all students with disabilities between the ages of 3 and 21 the right to a free, appropriate public education. In 2022-2023, approximately 7.5 million students, or about 15% of kids enrolled in K-12 public schools, received special education services funded through the IDEA.
Disability advocates, educators and parents worry that states won’t be able to hold local schools accountable. They point out that DoE’s most recent IDEA compliance review found that only 19 states were in full compliance with the law’s requirements. Virginia just re-joined the club last year when it took corrective steps in response to a five-year investigation conducted by OCR.
The law specifies that the federal government is obligated to cover 40% of the cost of educating children with disabilities, but in practice the federal share has never come close to that level. It represented 12% of total spending in the most recent school year. Local school boards, with state assistance, pick up the lion’s share of special education costs. The additional costs of monitoring IDEA compliance would be piled on top of the many other reductions in federal aid to state and local governments that the Trump administration is proposing.
I’m old enough to remember when many local school districts refused to serve children with significant disabilities. Returning to the bad old days of denying them access to education would be a national tragedy. BOB GETTINGS Lexington
