According to a notice published on August 22, 2025 in the Federal Register, the U.S. Department of Education (USDE) is proposing to remove a requirement for states to collect and report on racial disparities in special education. The data collection, which is part of the annual state application under Part B of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, provides assurances that the state and its districts will comply with IDEA rules as a condition for receiving federal IDEA funding. 

Known in the field as significant disproportionality, the data collection for racial overrepresentation or underrepresentation in special education helps identify states and districts that have racial disparities among student special education identifications, placements and discipline. In the 2021-22 school year, data showed that about 5% of school districts nationwide were identified with significant disproportionality.

The USDE has not said it wants to rescind or pause the significant disproportionality regulation, a rule known as Equity in IDEA, which was last updated in 2016. However, during the first Trump administration, the implementation of the rule was delayed by the USDE until a lawsuit forced the rule to be back in full effect. 

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The U.S. Department of Education (USDE) said it plans to bring back more than 260 Office for Civil Rights staff that it cut as part of its March reduction in force, returning groups of employees to the civil rights enforcement arm in waves every two weeks September 8 through November 3, 2025. Since March, the USDE has been paying the laid-off OCR employees about $1 million per week to sit idle on administrative leave.

The USDE’s August 19, 2025 update was filed as required by a federal judge’s order in Victim Rights Law Center v. U.S. Department of Education directing that the USDE be restored to “the status quo” so it can “carry out its statutory functions.” 

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According to a Federal Register notice published August 7, 2025, the U.S. Department of Education (USDE) is proposing to abandon data collection on transgender and nonbinary students, including on whether they are victims of harassment and bullying and whether school districts have policies prohibiting those incidents. The changes come as part of the Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) for the 2025-26 and 2027-28 school years, a mandated survey of all public school districts that has been administered for over five decades. The USDE noted on its website that the CRDC has “captured data on students’ equal access to educational opportunities to understand and inform schools’ compliance with the civil rights laws” enforced by the USDE’s Office for Civil Rights.”

The proposed changes to the upcoming collections eliminate transgender students and the term “gender identity” from the USDE’s definition of “rape” and “sexual assault and, according to the USDE, are being proposed to comply with the 2020 Title IX rule, which excludes LGBTQ+ students from sex-based discrimination protections.

The CRDC is used to inform civil rights compliance and discrimination investigations.

The USDE is accepting comments on the notice until September 8, 2025.For more from K-12 Dive, click here.

The U.S. Department of Education (USDE) has quietly rescinded Obama-era guidance that called on states and school districts to ensure English learners “can participate meaningfully and equally” in school and “have equal access to a high-quality education and the opportunity to achieve their full academic potential.” In doing so, the USDE said in a statement to K-12 Dive that it rescinded the guidance because “it is not aligned with [Trump] Administration priorities.” The rescission of the guidance is part of a broader effort from the Trump administration to center the English language above all others.

According to K-12 Dive, the comprehensive and long-standing guidance included information on identifying and assessing potential EL students, evaluating EL students for special education services, ensuring their parents have meaningful access to information, and avoiding “unnecessary segregation” of EL students, among other tasks districts typically undertake when serving English learners. 

The current administration’s rescission of the guidance follows the department’s closure of the Office of English Language Acquisition, which was shut down entirely as part of USDE’s downsizing efforts that began in March 2025.

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