Ask the expert: How further US Department of Education layoffs would gut special education

In March of 2025, the Trump administration eliminated roughly half of the U.S. Department of Education’s 4,200 positions. Now, the administration is seeking to remove an additional 4,000 federal workers across a range of agencies, which would include almost 500 staff at the Department of Education.

This latest round of cuts would eliminate most of the work of the remaining Department of Education offices, including that of the Office of Special Education Programs, which is responsible for ensuring children with disabilities across the U.S. receive a free, appropriate public education, as required by federal law.

Despite the administration’s latest efforts being ruled illegal and in excess of authority by a U.S. district judge, the administration is expected to appeal this decision.

Josh Cowen is a professor of education policy at Michigan State University’s College of Education. Here, he answers questions about why special education programs are important and how terminating the U.S. Office of Special Education Programs will negatively affect families throughout the nation.

Responses and excerpts are from an interview published in The Conversation.

What would these cuts mean for parents, children and schools?

With these cuts, we are talking about getting rid of some really important positions. People in these roles serve kids and families across the country. They help answer questions about how school districts are providing for children — in the way they are legally required to — if a child has special needs.

Special education is a very broad category. Under the Department of Education, it encompasses everything from dyslexia to a child who is blind. There is no educational need so severe that a child is not entitled to free and adequate education.

When navigating challenges related to your child’s special needs education, you really need an advocate — in the legal sense of the term rather than the political one. You need someone whose job it is to take your call and walk you through options or just document your call and start an inquiry into your case.

What does the Office of Special Education Programs do?

The Office of Special Education Programs is part of the Department of Education’s Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, which has about 179 employees. The government spent more than $20 billion on its work from April 2024 through March 2025, making the broader Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services the third-largest branch of the Education Department, in terms of spending.

There are very strong federal legal obligations — and often state ones, too — for schools to serve kids with whatever need they have. This office’s main job is to be a resource to parents for their child’s education, particularly if parents feel they are not having these legal obligations met.

Let’s say a child with autism is in school. Their parent does not believe the school district is providing the accommodations that their child is legally entitled to. The school district disagrees and thinks the child is doing well in school. When things get fuzzy about what a child’s needs actually are, or parents feel they are being ignored, OSEP can help parents learn what their options are, and then can even become involved and serve as an arbitrator to figure out the best course of action.

Sometimes, public school districts and state departments of education have very clear, accessible ways for parents to receive information about their rights and obtain instructions for putting together an Individualized Education Plan for their child. If those rights are not met, states may open an investigation into the matter to ensure compliance.

Throughout this process, parents may seek support and guidance from OSEP to make sure state investigations into special education cases are being done and being done well.

What could these investigations result in?

The Department of Education can help hold states and districts accountable and push districts and schools to be more responsive. In the best-case scenario, additional or tailored programming and support — whether it is a teacher’s aide or something else — can come from an OSEP investigation.

What does your research show about the impact of cutting services like these?

Well, we don’t really know what happens when you gut OSEP because no one has tried to do it before.

But it’s safe to say that parents will get really frustrated. I have been contacted by parents who have shared heartbreaking examples of the special education system not working over the past couple of years.

Feeling like the education system is really not serving you can push parents to leave the public school system and consider homeschooling or private options. In the long run, this may actually make parents even worse off because those sectors have have no obligation at all to serve students with special needs. So what’s happening at the U.S. Department of Education right now is not only creating more dissatisfaction and distrust in the system as it stands, but it’s also going to leave parents and kids with fewer options to get the support they need.