Trump Moves Special Education And Civil Rights Out Of The Education Department, Resolving Long-Standing Concern That Disabled Students Could Still Find The Office Created To Protect Them

WASHINGTON. In a move the administration described as a routine partnership between agencies, the Department of Education announced Tuesday that it would hand oversight of the nation's students with disabilities to the Department of Health and Human Services and its enforcement of student civil rights to the Department of Justice, resolving a long-standing concern within the administration that the agency charged with protecting schoolchildren was still in possession of the two functions most directly responsible for protecting them.

Under the reorganization, the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, which ensures that states comply with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, will relocate to HHS, a department now led by a secretary best known for his views on vaccines. The Office for Civil Rights, whose attorneys investigate discrimination against students on the basis of disability, sex, race, and national origin, will move to a Justice Department that has spent the past year reassigning the civil rights lawyers it already had.

In a letter to staff obtained by reporters, two assistant secretaries explained that the offices would be 'partnering' with their new departments in order to end what the administration has called micromanagement, a term officials used to describe the practice of a federal office managing the programs Congress assigned it to manage. The letter did not specify how many employees would keep their jobs, where they would sit, or which department a parent of a disabled child should now call, noting only that the change reflected 'careful consideration.'

Education Secretary Linda McMahon, who was confirmed to run the department on the understanding that she would dismantle it, has described the effort as peeling back layers of bureaucracy by partnering with agencies better suited to the work, an arrangement under which the agency best suited to overseeing special education is now any agency other than the one created to oversee it. Officials declined to identify the layer of bureaucracy that had been protecting the right of a child with a disability to attend public school.

The administration said the change would better serve some of the nation's most vulnerable children, describing a plan to remove those children's programs from the department built around them. Advocates noted that the law guaranteeing those programs remains on the books, a detail the administration confirmed would have no bearing on which building enforces it, or on whether anyone in that building has been assigned to.

At press time, the Education Department had successfully reduced itself to a short remaining list of duties, a milestone officials hailed as proof that the agency was finally close to no longer needing to exist.