Separating fears from facts
After campaigning on a promise to close the U.S. Department of Education and return control of education to the states, President Donald Trump has now signed an Executive Order to effectively close the federal Education Department. Education Secretary Linda McMahon has shuttered some of the department’s offices, laying off 1,300 career department staff and propelling an additional 600 to retire or resign.
What does this mean for New York City’s public schools and students? As with so many of the Trump administration’s initiatives, it can be challenging to distinguish smoke from substance. Indeed, the president’s order to shut down the Education Department is likely to have relatively mild effects on New York City in the short run. But the longer-term downstream effects could be scary.
The U.S. Department of Education is a relatively new part of the federal bureaucracy. It was created by an act of Congress in 1980, consolidating various federal education initiatives spread across other Cabinet agencies. (My own association with the department spans its entire existence, including a stint as an employee and as a recent research grant recipient.) The two best-known functions of the department involve ensuring state compliance with federal laws and distributing dollars authorized by Congress — most notably about $19 billion flowing from Title I, which provides funds to supplement the education of economically disadvantaged students, and about $15 billion authorized by the IDEA, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which ensures that students with disabilities receive a free appropriate public education. The Education Department also has managed approximately $1.5 trillion in postsecondary student loan debt incurred by more than 40 million borrowers.
As the largest public school system in the U.S., educating about twice as many students as the second-largest district (Los Angeles), New York City receives hundreds of millions of dollars each year from these two sources. Of the roughly 900,000 students enrolled in New York City public schools, 22%, or nearly 200,000 students, have a disability that entitles them to special services, and 74%, or approximately 660,000 students, are economically disadvantaged. These vulnerable children and youth benefit from the more than $600 million in Title I funds that the federal Education Department sends to New York City each year, and the more than $500 million earmarked each year for students with disabilities. If you have children in the New York City schools with a disability, or know someone who does, those children are getting essential opportunities to learn that are supported by these funds.
As with so many of the Trump administration’s initiatives, it can be challenging to distinguish smoke from substance.
Do the Trump administration’s efforts to close the Department of Education jeopardize Title I and IDEA funds? Not if the administration follows the law. Only Congress can actually close the Department of Education, and Title I and IDEA funds are specifically authorized in Congressional legislation to be administered by offices in the Department of Education. The stroke of a pen to an Executive Order doesn’t close the department or cancel these outlays. Nor can the administration arbitrarily move the administration of IDEA to the Department of Health and Human Services, as some have suggested, where critics fear Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s skepticism about autism and other disabilities, and the agency’s inexperience with public schools, could compromise the efficient flow of these essential dollars.
To be clear, Title I and IDEA funds are not the only money from Washington going to the city’s schools. More than $500 million each year comes to New York City via the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s signature child nutrition programs, the National School Lunch Program and the School Breakfast Program. The Department of Health and Human Services’ Head Start and Early Head Start, programs to provide early childhood education to low-income families, send more than $70 million each year to New York City. And New York City is able to cover some of the costs of health and medical services for students with disabilities via reimbursements from Medicaid, a federal health program that provides comprehensive health coverage for low-income New Yorkers.
All of this seems like a lot of money, but only about 5% of the New York City Department of Education budget comes from federal dollars. Most of the revenues originate in state funds and local tax revenues. This is true of most states and school districts across the U.S.; only six states depend on the federal government for 20% or more of their K-12 school funding. The relatively small footprint of the federal Department of Education also pertains to day-to-day instruction in schools and classrooms; federal law prohibits the Education Department to dictate school curricula, which instead are chosen at the state and local level.
If you have children in the New York City schools with a disability, or know someone who does, those children are getting essential opportunities to learn that are supported by federal funds.
The greatest threat to New York City’s parents and schoolchildren arising from the massive downsizing in the federal Department of Education is the closure of the local enforcement office of the Office of Civil Rights (OCR). OCR investigates complaints against school districts and colleges and universities and ensures that schools do not discriminate on the basis of disability, sex, race or other differences. This often includes examining school district compliance with Individualized Education Programs (IEPs), the written legal documents that specify how teachers, parents, school administrators and other education service providers work together to ensure that a student needing special education and related services gets the free and appropriate public education they need, including access to services in general education settings to the greatest extent possible. Currently, there are 228 open complaint investigations by OCR in New York State and 36 for the New York City Public Schools. With the federal Department of Education on the case, these complaints will be resolved, often via voluntary changes agreed to by the New York City Department of Education. Without the intervention of the Office of Civil Rights, these complaints about unequal access and opportunity will languish for years, and the families initiating a complaint, and many other families, will suffer.
For example, in 2012-13, the Office of Civil Rights initiated an investigation into how the New York City Department of Education communicated with the parents of children receiving special education services. Forty percent of the students in the New York City schools had a home language other than English, and OCR determined that the city’s Department of Education did not ensure that IEPs were translated into parents’ native languages, nor that appropriate interpretation services were provided during special education-related meetings or due process hearings.
The case was voluntarily resolved eight years later, in 2020, with the New York City Department of Education enacting new rules for the provision of translation and interpretation services; new guidance for ensuring competent interpretation and timely translation; staff training regarding the responsibility to provide translated documents and interpretation services to the parents of children with disabilities; and outreach to parents of students with disabilities regarding their rights to language access.
This is but one concrete example of how OCR has advocated for the civil rights of children, and their parents, in the face of local contingencies. One need not demonize the city’s Department of Education, nor those of other districts across the country, to recognize that when local school districts are short on money and staff, corners may be cut. Most of the complaints that OCR receives and investigates are allegations that qualified individuals with disabilities have been denied participation, benefits or services to which they are legally entitled.
Only about 5% of the New York City Department of Education budget comes from federal dollars.
Was a disabled student barred from participating in a class trip? Did the school provide reasonable accommodations to enable a student in a wheelchair to participate in a particular class? Does a school act quickly and decisively when a student with a disability is subject to slurs or threats? Was a disabled student’s teacher certified as a special education teacher with the specialized knowledge to customize that student’s classroom experiences? New Yorkers and others across America count on the federal government to enforce the laws protecting these vulnerable children.
Shuttering the federal Department of Education could hurt New Yorkers in other ways — but the ramifications wouldn’t be felt for some time. For example, closing the research arm of the U.S. Department of Education, the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), robs the nation of the opportunity to monitor trends in student achievement at the national and state levels, and in urban districts such as New York City. Much of what we know about learning losses during the COVID pandemic; the performance of U.S. students relative to students in other countries; the level of mathematics and literacy proficiency over time; “what works” in promoting student literacy and the learning of science, technology and mathematics; and how to use data to inform decision-making at the state, local and school building level — all this stems from programs and projects supported by the Institute of Education Sciences, part of that very same federal bureaucracy many Republicans loathe.
There’s one more significant loss that’s harder still to quantify. Since its inception, the U.S. Department of Education has served as a “bully pulpit,” enabling a Cabinet-level agency to speak out on the importance of public education at the elementary, secondary and post-secondary levels. It has enabled the federal roles and responsibilities for education that Congress envisioned to be coordinated in fair and efficient ways, effectively giving schoolchildren a seat at the most important table in Washington.
The Trump administration’s current efforts to dismantle the department, including closing our nation’s federal infrastructure for education research and statistics, are about institution-bulldozing, not institution-building. If Congress does not stand in the way of these staffing and funding cuts, the damage in New York City and elsewhere, while not felt immediately, will be difficult to reverse.