Linda McMahon says she heard parents. Parents say special education changes shows she didn’t listen.

“Sign up for Chalkbeat’s free weekly newsletter to keep up with how education is changing across the U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon had a message for parents of students with disabilities on Tuesday as she announced seismic shifts to federal special education oversight: “I’ve heard you.” In listening sessions and at school visits, McMahon said thousands of parents described struggles to get their children the services to which they’re legally entitled. Moving special education oversight out of the Department of Education, she wrote in an op-ed for Fox News , will reduce red tape and open opportunities. McMahon may have heard parents, many advocates said Tuesday, but she didn’t listen. “It is accurate what they said today, that they spent six months talking to people, but we’ve been very consistent in our message that we didn’t want this to happen,” said Jennifer Coco, interim executive director for the Center for Learner Equity and a parent of students with disabilities. Agency officials announced Tuesday the department will move oversight of special education to the Department of Health and Human Services and aspects of civil rights enforcement to the Department of Justice through interagency agreements without approval from Congress. The Department of Education touted holding multiple listening sessions with hundreds of parents, educators, and special education directors. But some of those same people said the decision flies in the face of what they’ve told McMahon and agency leaders. They raised concerns about dysfunction across special education programs nationwide, but they did not want the department to fracture the system even further. “To remove that federal oversight piece in an already fragmented system, it just feels like an extra blow to parents of kids with disabilities who are already dealing with so much,” said Jillian Benfield, whose son Anderson, 11, has Down Syndrome and attends public school in Florida. Some conservative organizations say the steps the Trump administration has taken to dismantle the Education Department will be positive for students with disabilities, arguing too many layers of bureaucracy limit opportunities . A senior department official said the changes would not change students’ rights and would instead lead to more effective services for students and families, with more coordination of services for young children and adults. But many advocates said they are worried about how much is at stake in these agency agreements and what could be lost in the transition, particularly because the Office for Civil Rights — where the bulk of the case load involves complaints from students with disabilities — has also been upended. Calling it the “next step in a lawless decimation” of an agency created by Congress, Catherine Lhamon, who ran the civil rights office in the Education Department under Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, said the new structure may ensure dollars will flow from one agency to another, “but rights will not flow to anyone.” “It’s incredibly dangerous for the rights of kids in schools to learn on an equal basis,” she said. Parents worry federal shifts could trickle down to their children Lanya Elsa is the parent of two children who are deafblind. She is a special educator who helps support families while they pursue school accommodations. Program officers with the Department of Education oversee multiple state and federal programs for students who are deafblind, she said. And parents with children with those disabilities worry these programs will be the next to be cut or shifted away from the Department of Education. “If my kids were born 40 years ago they would have been put in an institution,” she wrote in a text message. “Instead they have college degrees and are working. That’s why many of us are uneasy about moving oversight away from education.” Benfield and other parents also are skeptical of the department’s argument that shifting responsibilities to other agencies is an efficient choice. “There’s already so much as a parent of a kid with a disability that you have to navigate, so many different systems,” she said. “Now, where are parents going to go? You’re just making an already complex system more complicated for parents.” In addition to tangible impacts on families, disability advocates say moving the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services to the Department of Health and Human Services reinforces stigma by associating disability with an agency dealing largely in healthcare and medical issues. Robyn Linscott, director of Education and Family Policy at the Arc of the United States said it’s notable that other K-12 functions were moved to Labor, ostensibly because the long-term goal of education is a good job , while special education was not. “I think it can’t be overstated enough that the way we think about students with disabilities and the messages we send about the potential of students with disabilities really matters,” she said. “And the irony that we’re talking about this 50 years after IDEA is not lost on me. The idea that it’s OK to segregate students with disabilities, that they can’t learn with other students, really concerns me.” Shifting agency duties to Health, Justice departments Linscott said Tuesday’s announcement caught many advocates off guard, even though the idea has been discussed since the early months of the Trump administration and even earlier in Project 2025 . Advocates had spoken repeatedly with senior administration officials and thought their message might be heard. “Despite the number of families sharing the difficulty their students were having accessing services, not a single person said moving OSERS to HHS was the way to approach this,” Linscott said. “Not a single parent, advocate, or educator said that.” But Coco recalled one meeting where agency officials were explicit that these functions would move out of the Education Department. “It wasn’t a question of whether this should be done or whether it was right —- that had already been predetermined,” she said. “The question that’s been lingering is, well, where are they going to move it to?” Asked what problems the Education Department was trying to solve and how services would improve through moving functions to other agencies, a senior department official said that McMahon “has been very clear about the final mission of the U.S. Department of Education,” referring to promises to dismantle the department entirely. Moving oversight to other agencies allows the federal government to meet its legal obligations, the official said. While HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. promised in a press release to “help every child reach their full potential,” advocates worry about how a department led by him will approach special education. Kennedy has spent over a decade spreading misinformation about autism , and 13% of students served under IDEA fell under the autism category, according to federal data from the 2022-23 school year . McMahon tried to reassure parents their children will be treated as students, not patients. “IDEA, as an education law, ensures that a child’s disability isn’t viewed as a medical condition that needs to be treated,” she wrote. Advocates’ concerns are compounded by moving special education and civil rights enforcement to different agencies. Having the two under the same roof meant the department had multiple ways to communicate with schools about how to best serve students, said Eric Duncan, director of P-12 policy for the progressive advocacy group The Education Trust. “The Office for Civil Rights is not just a punitive office,” Duncan said. “It’s really to support the systemic issues that are affecting why certain students are overly disciplined or referred for certain things, why students are in settings where they’re not comfortable or aren’t able to learn because of their specific challenges.” The Department of Justice can’t replicate the work done by the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, Lhamon said. It’s a “totally different agency,” she said, whose work ranges from helping entire school communities resolve issues to answering “any mom’s question about whether civil rights have been violated.” Lily Altavena is a national reporter at Chalkbeat. Contact Lily at laltavena@chalkbeat.org . Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org .

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