As a result of a November 18, 2025 announcement by the U.S. Department of Education (USDE) that said it was developing interagency agreements with other federal agencies to support six programs, an amended lawsuit was filed on December 2, 2025 claiming that the USDE’s plans are illegal and harmful to K-12 and higher education students, educators and families. The suit was filed by a broad coalition of school districts, employee unions, and a disability rights organization and seeks to halt the outsourcing of USDE programs. 

In fact, a December 2nd statement by Democracy Forward on behalf of the plaintiffs said, “Taking away the services and supports students rely on will irreparably hurt children, families, educators, schools, and communities, in states across the nation. The Department of Education offers important support to educators and communities throughout the nation and the unlawful attempts to shut down the Department are nothing less than an abandonment of the future of our country.”

In response, a USDE statement was emailed to K-12 Dive on December 3rd, saying, “It’s no surprise that blue states and unions care more about preserving the DC bureaucracy than about giving parents, students, and teachers more control over education and improving the efficient delivery of funds and services.”

The updated complaint in Somerville v. Trump, which was consolidated with New York v. McMahon, was brought against the USDE by groups of states, school districts, and teacher unions. The Arc of the United States is now an additional plaintiff in the case.

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A negotiating committee convened by the U.S. Department of Education (USDE) agreed to a recent proposal that excludes education from being considered a “professional degree,” according to the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators. A lowered cap on federal student loans available to certain graduate students was approved in the “One Big, Beautiful Bill,” which established the term “professional degrees” to be used internally by the agency to distinguish programs that qualify for higher student loan limits, according to a USDE fact sheet released November 24, 2025. The law also directed the USDE to identify “professional degree” programs that will be eligible for the higher federal lending limits, which resulted in education being omitted.

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Moving control of federal career, technical, and adult education from the U.S. Department of Education (USDE) to the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) as part of an agreement earlier this year was meant to centralize and streamline government workforce programs. However, critics say issues with accessing federal career and technical education (CTE) funding could foretell bigger problems when the Trump administration starts to outsource more of the USDE’s responsibilities to other agencies.

According to Politico, a combination of technical problems, communication lapses, bureaucratic hurdles and scant preparation related to new grant payment systems snarled the process of distributing money from a $1.4 billion program for CTE initiatives for schools and local governments. The record-breaking government shutdown also contributed to the problems. “The shift is like asking states to fly with no air traffic control,” said Richard Kincaid, an assistant state superintendent for college and career pathways at the Maryland State Department of Education, which is among the states that experienced difficulties with its funding from the Carl D. Perkins CTE program. “When you put these sort of programs into agencies that are not well-equipped with the subject matter expertise to take on a number of these large educational programs, the result is going to be a lot of confusion. We’ve now shifted not only to a new grant system but an entirely new grantmaking agency. And now we’ve injected all this chaos into the system, trying to fix something that wasn’t broken to begin with.” he added.

Many of the issues regarding the Perkins program transition are linked to a decision to abandon a unified USDE system that managed federal grants for schools and local communities in favor of what are now two DOL systems.

“The administration’s decision to transfer these congressionally mandated responsibilities and programs to other agencies that lack the necessary policy expertise may have lasting negative impacts on our young people,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said in a recent social media post. “And simply moving the administration of these programs to other agencies will not return control of education to the states.”

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On Nov. 29, the landmark Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) turns 50. President Gerald Ford signed the legislation, originally known as the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EAHCA), guaranteeing students with disabilities the right to a free and appropriate public education.

Before then, no federal requirement existed that schools must educate students with disabilities. In addition to opening public schools to a whole population of children, the law became the catalyst for legions of innovative practices and tools cultivated from both public and private sources. The transformations, special education experts say, were spurred by an ongoing need to individualize student supports while helping children with disabilities progress in general education classrooms.

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