As part of President Donald Trump’s effort to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education, officials at the federal agency are proposing to end a decades-old requirement that holds states accountable for racial inequities in special education.
If the Department ends up moving forward with this idea, advocates for children with disabilities say, it would be harder to identify racial disparities among students with disabilities at the state or district level. It would also weaken the federal Individuals with Disabilities Act, or IDEA.
The Trump administration says eliminating this requirement will ease the bureaucratic burden on states. But advocates say the federal government is ditching its responsibility to guarantee a quality education for disabled children, a core tenet of IDEA.
“It’s yet another maneuver by this administration to try to skirt its obligations under the law to students of color,” says Denise Stile Marshall, CEO of the nonprofit advocacy group Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates. Marshall says the possible move would also strip those students, namely those who are Black, of protections given to them by Congress.
In August, the Education Department asked the public for comments on a proposal to remove data collection on “significant disproportionality,” which refers to the overrepresentation of students from certain racial groups in special education. Each year, states report this data to the federal government to qualify for IDEA grants.
But the Department argues that by nixing this requirement, states would be less burdened by loads of paperwork when applying for federal funds.
Advocates say that without data collection requirements, it will be harder to hold states accountable for systemic bias in special education, such as the overrepresentation of Black students, their misidentification, and the punishments they disproportionately face.
The nixing of data collection could limit the guidance available to states to help resolve these problems.
States are advised to use federal dollars to reduce racial disparities. In 2022, nearly 6% of Learning Educational Agencies — school districts and county offices of education — were advised to use federal funds due to their significant disproportionality, according to data extracted from EdTrust, an education policy think tank.
In an online comment, Jennifer McKinnish, the Nevada State Chair of the National Grassroots Network of the National Council on Severe Autism, called the Department’s suggestion that removing its data collection requirement would reduce a burden on states “disingenuous.”
McKinnish, whose child is on the autism spectrum, said that families like hers spend hundreds of hours a year fighting to make sure their children get the education they are entitled to. In her eyes, that places an undue burden on parents who must navigate bureaucracy to ensure states follow the law and properly educate their children.
“Removing this data reporting allows states to make promises without proof,” she writes in a Sept. 3 comment. “As families, we cannot afford blind trust. We need verification that the law is being applied fairly across race, disability type, and placement decisions.”
In early October, the federal government laid off nearly all staff in the Education Department’s Office of Special Education Services and Rehabilitative Services. Although these layoffs were reversed after President Trump signed a FY 2026 spending bill, preventing further firings through Jan. 30, 2026, the staff enforcing IDEA will return to a weakened department.
But Marshall said that, come Feb. 1, 2026, it’s uncertain whether more firings will continue.
“It’s just a systemic gutting of the capacity at the Department of Education to assure that states are following the law when it comes to students with disabilities and students of color,” says Marshall. “And the message they’re basically sending is we don’t care, and this is not a priority, and we’re not going to do anything about it.”
