Trump’s Impact on Special Education

Anthony P. Teso

Special Education is necessarily expensive. It requires smaller classrooms and policies that allow children with disabilities to flourish. (Jim West)

THE FIRST TRUMP administration already approached education with an agenda focused on deregulation, expanded school choice, and reduced federal involvement.

None of that was subtle. Whether people liked those priorities or not, special education — an area defined by federal safeguards, compliance structures, and funding obligations — was inevitably affected.

Special education sits at the intersection of civil rights law and public spending. Disrupting either side reverberates through classrooms.

Special education law is compliance-heavy. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) requires measurable progress, individualized services, transition planning, data reporting, monitoring, and due-process protections.

Under the Obama administration, the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) and the Department of Education (ED) actively enforced corrective actions when school districts violated disability protections.

The Trump administration reversed that orientation. The Trump era didn’t rewrite IDEA, but it reshaped implementation, oversight, enforcement priorities, and the long-term stability of programs serving millions of students.

Weakening Compliance

In 2017, the administration rescinded more than 70 disability rights policies. Many of these memos simply clarified procedures — how to evaluate students, how to define “least restrictive environment,” and how schools should document accommodations.

Rescinding them didn’t erase formal legal protections — but it removed guidance on which schools relied on to interpret compliance. When a sector already struggles to meet obligations, removing guardrails effectively softens enforcement.

OCR also adopted a narrower investigative approach. Rather than reviewing systemic issues when individuals filed discrimination complaints, OCR often investigated only on a case-by-case basis.

Previously a single parent’s complaint could trigger system-level investigations, because civil rights violations rarely affect just one child. Under Trump, investigations frequently stopped at the surface level. This saved administrative work, but meant fewer reforms for entire school districts.

This shift mattered because students with disabilities disproportionately face illegal suspensions, shortened school days, and placement in segregated settings. Those trends need oversight.

The administration largely stepped back, favoring local discretion. Local discretion is great when a system is functioning well. Special education systems often aren’t.

One explicit policy decision significantly affected disability-related equity, delaying the enforcement of the Equity in IDEA regulations. These rules were designed to force states to identify when districts disproportionately classify minority students as disabled, discipline them at higher rates, or place them in restrictive programs.

The Trump administration froze enforcement in 2018, arguing that states needed more flexibility and that federally prescribed definitions could “over-identify” racism where none existed. The courts eventually struck down the delay, calling it “arbitrary,” but the pause cost time.

Special education inequities were not theoretical; they were persistent, documented patterns. Delaying accountability meant districts avoided corrective funding reallocations, even when racial disparities were egregious.

The policy outcome was predictable: minority students continued to be labeled with Behavior Disorder at disproportionate rates, segregated classrooms remained disproportionately filled with students of color, and states avoided financial consequences tied to compliance failures. When schools have decades-long disproportionality problems, “wait and see” regulations function less like caution and more like enabling.

Pushing Vouchers

The Trump administration aggressively pushed private-school vouchers, charter expansion, and tax incentives for educational choice.

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos made school choice her defining mission. The problem: special education laws follow public funds, not necessarily students.

Public schools must comply with IDEA. Private schools receiving voucher students generally do not. When a student leaves their district school for a voucher-funded private school, the school is not obligated to provide full special-education services, and parents typically lose due-process protections.

So the “choice” was this: stay in public school, receive full legal protections, or move to a private school with limited accommodations, minimal legal recourse, and often higher out-of-pocket costs for therapy. Families with mild disability needs could sometimes benefit; families with complex needs often could not.

Charter schools likewise continued chronic patterns: lower enrollment of students with disabilities, counseling-out practices (politely telling families “your child would be better served elsewhere,” and limited service capacity.

The Trump administration did not cause these conditions, but it strengthened structures that make exclusion easier. When federal leadership champions alternatives without requiring stronger disability enforcement, inequities scale.

IDEA has never been fully funded — Congress originally promised roughly 40% of the per-pupil cost, but federal contributions hover around 14-16% nationwide.

Trump budgets consistently proposed cuts to the Department of Education, including reductions in discretionary grants that many states use for professional development, behavioral supports, assistive-technology upgrades, and preschool special-education capacity.

Those cuts didn’t always pass. Congress rejected many. But the repeated proposals sent a clear signal: the administration did not see special-education investment as a priority.

Inadequate Funding and Consequences

The most consequential funding impact occurred indirectly. States facing overall budget uncertainty have reduced staffing expansion, classroom paraprofessionals, related-service positions (speech-language, PT, OT), early-intervention funding, and transportation supports.

When special education is expensive — and it is — any budget tightening hits services first. During COVID-19 school shutdowns, special-education costs rose.

Remote learning in the pandemic emergency required individualized supports, teletherapy, assistive-technology platforms, individualized instructional modifications, adaptive curricula, extended-year interventions, and compensatory instruction after return.

Federal leadership largely delegated responsibility to states. There was no coordinated national strategy ensuring IDEA compliance during emergency conditions. Districts improvised. Families litigated. Courts were overwhelmed. Inequity widened.

Because enforcement stepped back, families relied more on legal action. Due-process filings rose in many states between 2017 and early 2021, especially around school placement disputes, insufficient service hours, illegal shortened school days, restraints and seclusion policies, and COVID-related service failures

Families that could afford legal advocacy pursued compensatory education or reimbursement. Families that couldn’t often lost services permanently. Special education increasingly operated like everything else in America: those with resources navigated the system; those without made do.

The Trump administration did not dismantle IDEA. It did something subtler: it reduced enforcement, narrowed investigative power, delayed equity rules, and made funding uncertain. That combination matters more than dramatic legislative changes, because special education survives or collapses at the implementation level.

Special education needs relentless oversight, guaranteed funding, and legally enforceable standards. Remove any of those, and families must fight district by district, student by student.

Some administrations expand rights; some merely maintain them; some treat them as optional. The Trump administration placed disability rights squarely in the “local-discretion” category. For millions of children — whose access to literacy, communication, independence, and inclusion depends on uniform enforcement — that choice carried long-lasting consequences.

Sources

American Civil Liberties Union. DeVos Delays Special Education Protections. 2018.

Baker, Bruce D., Mark Weber, and Ajay Srikanth. State School Finance Equity and Adequacy Studies, 2017–2020. Rutgers Graduate School of Education, 2020.

Center for American Progress. “Trump Administration Weakens Civil Rights Enforcement in Schools.” CAP Analysis, 2018.

Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates (COPAA). Impact of Federal Policy Changes on Students with Disabilities. COPAA Policy Report, 2019.

Individuals with Disabilities Education Act Regulations, 34 C.F.R. §300, Office of Special Education Programs.

National Council on Disability. The Segregation of Students with Disabilities. NCD Report, 2018.

Office for Civil Rights. Annual Report to Congress, FY 2016-2020. U.S. Department of Education.

Schneider, Jack. Beyond Test Scores: A Better Way to Measure School Quality. Harvard University Press, 2017.

Shaw, Hanna. “Civil Rights Enforcement Trends in Education Under Betsy DeVos.” Educational Policy Review.

March-April 2026, ATC 241