Category: Federal Government Actions

USDE Cancels Grant for Postsecondary Transition Services for Students with Disabilities (April 4, 2025)

On April 3, 2025, the U.S. Department of Education (USDE) announced it was canceling a fiscal year 2025 grant application for a technical assistance center that supported postsecondary transition services for students with disabilities saying that the decision was part of a comprehensive review to ensure “competitions align with the objectives established by the Trump Administration.” The notice also stated that, “The Department is dedicated to optimizing the impact of our grant competitions on students and families, as well as enhancing the economic effectiveness of federal education funding.”

The move flies in the face of U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon testifying at her confirmation hearing that a priority of hers as education secretary would be to ensure funds for students with disabilities are not impacted.

In efforts to combat the drastic funding reductions to the USDE and a proposed transfer of special education programming to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, in an April 2nd letter from 23 Democratic senators to McMahon stating that such moves will cause “immense harm” to students with disabilities and that “Congress has promised to families that students with disabilities will have a free appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment and has specifically charged the Department of Education with making that promise real in the lives of students with disabilities.”

The letter also asks McMahon to provide information in specific questions by April 11, 2025.

For more from K-12 Dive, click here.

School Shooting Database Funding is Slashed (April 2, 2025)

Despite an overall increase in school shootings in recent years, a school shooting database funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is the latest target of President Donald Trump’s attempts to downsize the government. The research was part of the now-cancelled Terrorism and Targeted Violence Database, which tracked domestic terrorism and compiled the first-ever dataset that overlapped school-based targeted violence alongside other types of violence with terrorism events.

The database “was the only publicly available source of information that allowed homeland security professionals, law enforcement, school administrators, prevention practitioners, and policymakers to analyze the scope and nature of terrorism and targeted violence in the United States,” according to the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism at the University of Maryland, College Park, which oversaw the project.

As a result, it was found that between 2023 and 2024, 400 out of more than 1,800 incidents targeted U.S. schools, leading to 81 successful attacks that occurred at educational institutions and took the lives of dozens of children.

For more from K-12 Dive, click here.

Trump Plans to Move Special Ed. to HHS (March 24, 2025)

On March 21, 2025, President Trump announced that federal special education operations, currently spearheaded by the U.S. Department of Education (USDE), will move to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). He also said he would move federal student loan and school nutrition program oversight from the USDE to the Small Business Administration.

The USDE oversees the distribution of about $15.4 billion for supports to about 8.4 million infants, toddlers, school children, and young adults with disabilities. The USDE’s Office of Special Education and Rehabilatives Services (OSERS) and Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) also conducts monitoring, provides technical assistance to states and school districts, and holds states and school districts accountable for compliance to IDEA.

Despite saying that tremendous results from the move will be experienced, what is unclear is how HHS will handle the increased workload and whether staff will require training — or whether remaining staff that handled those areas will be transferred if still employed at USDE.
Chad Rummel, executive director of the Council for Exceptional Children, said in a statement that, “IDEA is an education law, not a healthcare law, and belongs at the Department of Education.”

National Parents Union President Keri Rodrigues released a statement that said, “This is not a minor bureaucratic reorganization — it is a fundamental redefinition of how our country treats children with disabilities.” The National Parents Union is a 1.7 million membership organization with more than 1,800 affiliated parent organizations in all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. “We must call this what it is: an effort to dismantle protections, disempower families, and turn education into a battleground for profit-driven insurance corporations,” Rodrigues said.

For more from K-12 Dive, click here.

How Medicaid Cuts will Harm Students (March 23, 2025)

A new report, How Medicaid Cuts Will Harm Students & Schools, presents the findings of a nationwide survey of over 1,400 school district leaders, including superintendents, school business officials and school health coordinators, on the impact Medicaid cuts would have on school health services, student resources and district funding. The executive summary and related graphics highlight key data points and respondents’ quotes.

The report was published by Healthy Schools Campaign (HSC) in partnership with The School Superintendents Association (AASA), Association of School Business Officials International (ASBO), National Alliance for Medicaid in Education (NAME) and Council of Administrators of Special Education (CASE). 

A public dissemination toolkit is available to help share the report with your networks.

Cuts Essentially Eliminate Ed. Research at USDE (March 22, 2025)

Cuts by the Trump administration has all but eliminated the U.S. Department of Education’s (USDE)  statistical research arm, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), which has conducted statistical research by collecting, analyzing, and reporting U.S. education data for over 150 years. The loss of almost all of the staff in the NCES, which traces its existence to an 1867 law establishing a federal statistical agency to conduct research, analyze everything from graduation rates and student outcomes to teacher and principal development, and provide the Nation’s Report Card.

For more from K-12 Dive, click here.