UCLA professors and researchers expressed concern about uncertainty around federal support for special education programs under the Trump administration.

The U.S. Department of Education laid off 121 of 135 employees in the Office for Special Education and Rehabilitative Services during the federal government shutdown from Oct. 1 to Nov. 12. Employees were reinstated following the shutdown’s end. However, employment protections are set to expire on Jan. 30.

The office, first established in 1979, is meant to oversee schools’ compliance with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, a law that guarantees that students with disabilities have access to an equal education.

Connie Kasari, a distinguished professor of education, said the act provides students with disabilities an individual education plan and the right to learn with non-disabled peers to the greatest extent possible.

Kasari added that without federal enforcement, schools could neglect annual Individual Education Program reviews – meetings conducted by school personnel and parents to evaluate a student’s academic, functional, and developmental progress. This could result in students falling short of benchmarks established in their IEPs – with little recourse for parents – she added.

“The one thing that the IDEA does is it allows parents to have due process,” she said. “There’s a certain amount of time that the school has to assess the child and place the child.”

Nearly 200,000 students in Los Angeles County with active IEPs were enrolled in special education programs during the 2024-25 school year, according to the California Department of Education. Kasari, who conducts community-based research in under-resourced schools, added that she fears many of those students may disappear from research samples altogether.

Jennie Grammer, an associate professor of education, said the office oversees the dispersal of federal funds. She added that the office also provides direct support to parents and teachers through a call center.

Kasari said she believes the Trump administration’s proposed division of the DOE across separate agencies threatens coordination and support for special education.

Moving IDEA enforcement to the Department of Health and Human services frames disabilities primarily as medical conditions, Kasari said.

Without a unified federal department, education specialists could be replaced by officials without education expertise, Kasari added.

“You want to have some kind of federal oversight so that a child with a disability in California has the same access to supports in school as they would in Arkansas,” she said.

Laura Rhinehart, an assistant researcher studying learning disabilities, said she worries that – without proper special education support – students with disabilities may struggle to attend higher education institutions, like UCLA.

“You’ll see potentially fewer neurodiverse students at UCLA because they won’t have gotten the right support in their K-12 education,” Rhinehart said.

The Joint Doctoral Ph.D. Program in Special Education – UCLA’s joint doctoral program in the graduate school of education with California State University, Los Angeles and the university – is funded by the Office of Special Education Programs, which is a branch of the DOE under the special education office.

According to the Council for Exceptional Children, the branch’s staff was temporarily reduced to fewer than five employees during the shutdown.

The program is designed to train doctoral students to become education faculty who will then prepare future special education teachers, Grammer said.

“When you’re cutting funding for teacher preparation, that means that there will be fewer teachers and, ultimately, schools will be more hard pressed to have enough skilled educators,” Grammer added.

Rhinehart said she believes the public should contact local representatives and support the CEC – an organization which supports special education professionals – to oppose the funding cuts.

“It’s not good to have to go backwards,” Kasari said. “The reason we have federal law is because parents banded together and they went to Congress.”