Carol Ann Heath, Ed.D. Uncategorized

Federal Changes to Special Education Funding Under Trump

Yes — there have been a significant number of proposed reductions, terminations, and administrative changes under President Trump that impact special education funding and supports for students with disabilities. Some are formal cuts, others are consolidations or shifts that many fear will amount to reduced support for special education.

  1. Termination of Certain IDEA Part D Grants
    • The U.S. Department of Education (USDE) terminated grants totaling over $14.8 million for special education teacher training, parent resource centers, Braille/interpreter training, deaf-blind supports, etc. napsa.com+1
    • An additional $3.5 million in grants under the Rehabilitation Services Administration were ended. napsa.com
  2. Cuts in Teacher Training Grants in California to punish the state
    • For example, $600 million in federal teacher training grants that include special education teacher training were cut or terminated in California. EdSource
    • Various SELPAs (Special Education Local Plan Areas) projected losses: e.g., $10 million in Tulare County, $4.1 million in San Diego’s South County, etc. EdSource
  3. Budget Proposals for FY 2026
    • The Trump FY 2026 proposes level‐funding for IDEA overall, but also proposes consolidating or collapsing several grant programs (Part D competitive grants, technical assistance, etc.) into the main formula grant (Part B). Learning Forward+3cecpd.exceptionalchildren.org+3K-12 Dive+3
    • Some concern that maintaining funding in name isn’t sufficient when inflation, rising costs, or structural changes reduce the real purchasing power or flexibility of the programs. Education Week+2Brookings+2
  4. Proposals to Shift Oversight or Structure
    • There’s a proposal (and concern) to move special education oversight from the Department of Education to the Department of Health and Human Services. EdSource+1
    • Also, merging or eliminating grant subcomponents under IDEA (like certain competitive grants, parent‐resource centers, etc.) so that states have more discretion but possibly less accountability. K-12 Dive+2cecpd.exceptionalchildren.org+2
  5. Cutting “Supplemental” or Discretionary Programs
    • Some discretionary grants that support special populations (deaf/blind, those needing interpreter training, etc.) have seen cancellation or have been proposed for elimination. opb+3Education Week+3napsa.com+3
    • For instance, in Oregon, some disability support / interpreting centers lost grants citing conflicts with new policy priorities. opb

What’s proposed, and what risks or concerns people have identified

  • “Flat funding” = de facto cuts: Even when the budget proposal claims to “maintain” or “level‐fund” IDEA, inflation, rising costs (e.g. staff salaries, health benefit costs, materials) mean that a fixed dollar amount is worth less over time. This erodes capacity. Education Week+1
  • Loss of oversight/accountability: If programs are consolidated or oversight shifted, there is concern that certain specific protections or supports may no longer be required, or that states may reduce services to save costs. Brookings+1
  • Impact on equity, access: Programs targeting smaller or specific disability populations (e.g. deafblind, braille, interpreter services, parent resource centers) are especially vulnerable under competitive grants. Eliminating or reducing them could disproportionately impact students who depend on them. inewsource+3Education Week+3napsa.com+3

The core IDEA Part B formula grant (for school‐age children) is being proposed to be maintained at current levels in many of the budget documents. Education Week+2cecpd.exceptionalchildren.org+2. While we don’t know what a weakened Congress will ultimately do so far, IDEA funding has remained intact in its recent appropriations . CalMatters

*Information has been obtained from ChatGPT and the web.

 

Carol Ann Heath, Ed.D. Uncategorized

How did Public Law 94-142 Come to Enact Special Education Laws

It is helpful to know how laws are named or referred to. Whenever an Act is passed by Congress and signed into law by the President, it is given a number, such as P.L. 94-142. “P.L.” stands for Public Law. The first set of numbers means the session of Congress during which the law was passed. For example, the 94 means the 94th session of the U.S. Congress. The second set of numbers identifies what number the law was in the sequence of passage and enactment during that session. Thus, the 142 means that this was the 142nd law that Congress passed and the President signed during the 94th session of Congress.

It is also important to understand that federal laws are often changed or amended regularly. Public Law 94-142, the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EHA), has had several amendments since its passage in 1975. Laws passed by Congress provide a general legal framework of policy related to a particular issue. Once a law is passed, Congress delegates the task of developing detailed regulations to guide the law’s implementation to an administrative agency within the Executive Branch. Federal regulations are detailed in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR). The CFR interprets the law, discusses each point of a law, and further explains it. Copies of most federal regulations are available in the public library. State agencies must comply with federal laws and regulations.

At the federal level, special education is an area in which elaborate sets of regulations exist. The regulations for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), for example, spell out the procedures and programming that must be provided to children and youth with disabilities for states to receive federal funds. States may go beyond what is required in the regulations. For example, some states have broader definitions of which children are entitled to special education and, thus, may include gifted children in their special education programming.

Carol Ann Heath, Ed.D. Children with Disabilities, Early Intervention Services, Special Education, Uncategorized

Changing Special Education

In spite of what many younger educators and parents of children with disabilities may think, special education has formally existed since post the World Wars era. Limb loss and head injury were the initial issues addressed by hospitals and adult services. Schools for the deaf and blind have existed since the 1800s. The first school for the deaf in the United States was founded in 1817 in Hartford, Connecticut. The first school for the blind was the Perkins School for the Blind, founded in 1829 in Massachusetts. Major access by a wider range of children with disabilities occurred in the mid-1900s, with public and private schools available within some communities and institutional settings. By 1960, special schools were the main strategy to provide educational services, particularly for students with significant disabilities.

In the 1970s, several states had begun to enact laws mandating educational services to all students with disabilities, 5-18 years of age. By the mid-1970s, some states had enacted requirements, three to 21 years of age but many of these students were still served in separate classrooms or special schools. Through the 1970s, some states had begun to provide classes in general education settings, with services provided within these settings, including occupational, physical, and speech therapy.

The Education for Handicapped Children Act was a Federal law passed in 1975 and required states to provide special education to all children 5 to 18 years of age nationwide through assessments of their needs and the development of individualized education programs (IEPs). The IEP detailed individual education interventions and therapies for each student with a wide range of disabilities.

In 1990, the law was reauthorized as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) in 1990. After 1990, multiple reauthorizations have been enacted by Congress. These authorized many student changes to support children with disabilities and their families, including preschool special education services. In 1986, Part H, now Part C, was enacted, authorizing services for children from birth to 3 and provided funding to states to develop programs.

Carol Ann Heath, Ed.D. Uncategorized

Get the Information While it lasts!

Since January, many changes have taken place in the Department of Education, including those related to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). This is an ALERT for anyone interested in the history and requirements of the law. These pages include the background and resources for professionals and parents.

This is a call-to-action encouraging you to share the information with interested parties.

Essential Resources for IDEA and OSEP Stakeholders

OSEP Update Newsletter

The OSEP Update newsletter provides monthly email blasts with important OSEP announcements as well as a monthly newsletter with updates for OSEP stakeholders.

Related Resources

Carol Ann Heath, Ed.D. Uncategorized

Autism Revisited

So it starts…too much information without acknowledging the complexity of the factors and issues. 

            <h1>Arizona Autism Charter School Founder Tapped as DOE Special Education Chief</h1>

            <h2>Diana Diaz-Harrison’s schools use a controversial intervention. She wants to use her new position to help others launch more like them.</h2>

            <p class="sans">By <a rel="author" href="/about/team/beth-hawkins/">Beth Hawkins</a></p>

            <img src="https://www.the74million.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/linda-mcmahon-Diana-Diaz-Harrison.jpg">

            <p>This story first appeared at <a href="https://www.the74million.org">The 74</a>, a nonprofit news site covering education. <a href="https://www.the74million.org/about/newsletters/?utm_source=republish-button&utm_medium=website&utm_campaign=republish">Sign up for free newsletters from The 74</a> to get more like this in your inbox.</p>

The founder and executive director of a network of Arizona charter schools serving autistic children has been named the U.S. Education Department’s deputy assistant secretary for special education and rehabilitative services. Education Secretary Linda McMahon made the announcement while touring the Arizona Autism Charter Schools’ Phoenix location.

Diana Diaz-Harrison, whose son is autistic, said that in her new job she hopes to continue her efforts to help others launch autism charter schools throughout the country. Her schools, she said in remarks captured on video by AZ Central, are a testament to what happens “when parents like me are empowered to create solutions.”

“My vision is to expand school choice for special needs families — whether through charter schools, private options, voucher programs, or other parent-empowered models,” she said in a statement to The 74. .

The five-school network uses a controversial intervention that attempts to train children to appear and behave like their neurotypical peers. Created by the researcher behind LGBTQ conversion therapy, applied behavior analysis, or ABA, is widely depicted as the gold standard despite scant independent evidence of its effectiveness and mounting research documenting its harms. 

Diaz-Harrison opened the network’s first school in 2014 as a free, public alternative to private schools for autistic children, which are popular in Arizona but typically charge tens of thousands of dollars a year in tuition. Her Arizona charter schools are a 501(c)3 nonprofit financed by state and federal per-pupil funds. ABA is specifically endorsed by Arizona education officials as a strategy to use with autistic students.

In the time since those charters opened, ABA has grown to be a national, multi-billion-dollar industry, with for-profit companies tapping public and private insurance to pay for as much as 40 hours a week of one-on-one therapy. The intervention uses repeated, rapid-fire commands that bring rewards and punishments to change a child’s behavior and communication style.

A 74 investigation last year showed that most data supporting ABA’s effectiveness is drawn from research conducted by industry practitioners. Independent analyses, including a years-long U.S. Department of Defense review, found little evidence the intervention works. Former patients who underwent the therapy as children reported severe, lasting mental health effects, including PTSD.

Diaz-Harrison told The 74 the therapy is both valuable and sought-after. “For the autism community, specifically, many families seek schools that integrate positive behavioral strategies,” she says. “The evidence supporting behavioral therapy is extensive and well-established. It has been endorsed by the U.S. surgeon general and the American Academy of Pediatrics as an effective, research-backed approach for individuals with autism.”

During her visit, McMahon told students and staff she was eager to tell President Donald Trump about the schools. “He doesn’t believe any child, whether they have neuro-difficulties or any other problems, should be trapped in a school and not have the facilities that they need,” she said. 

Since Trump’s second inauguration, he has issued numerous orders that have alarmed disability advocates and the autistic community. Though both edicts contradict longstanding federal laws, in March he ordered the closure of the Education Department and said responsibility for special education will be transferred to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

About half of the Education Department’s staff has been fired, including most of the people responsible for investigating what had been a backlog of some 6,000 disability discrimination complaints. Though it’s unclear whether Trump and McMahon may legally disregard special education funding laws and allow states to spend federal dollars as they see fit, both have said they favor giving local officials as much decision-making power as possible.

Meanwhile, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has stoked fear in the autistic community by announcing a new effort to tie autism to vaccines or other “environmental toxins” — a hypothesis discredited by dozens of studies. The man he appointed to head the study has been cited for practicing medicine without a license and prescribing dangerous drugs to autistic children. 

Last week, the new head of the National Institutes of Health announced that an unprecedented compilation of medical, pharmaceutical and insurance records would be used to create an autism “disease registry” — a kind of list historically used to sterilize, institutionalize and even “euthanize” autistic people. HHS later walked back the statement, saying the database under construction would have privacy guardrails.RelatedAdvocates Still Alarmed Even as HHS Walks Back Autism Registry Announcement

Among other responsibilities, the offices Diaz-Harrison will head identify strategies for improving instruction for children with disabilities and ensure that as they grow up, they are able to be as independent as possible. The disability community has raised concerns that the administration is retreating from these goals.   

Advocates have said they fear the changes pave the way for a return to the practice of separating students with disabilities in dedicated special ed classrooms rather than having them attend class with typically developing peers. The Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act guarantees special education students the right to instruction in the “least restrictive environment” possible.          

Families’ preferences vary widely, with some parents of autistic children refusing any form of behavior therapy, while others want their kids in settings with children who share their needs. Many insist on grade-level instruction in general education classrooms 

Diaz-Harrison has a master’s degree in education and worked as a bilingual teacher in California early in her career. From the late 1990s until she began supporting her son full time, she worked as a public relations strategist and a reporter and anchor for the Spanish-language broadcast network Univision. 

In 2014, frustrated with her son’s school options, she organized a group of parents and ABA providers who applied for permission to open what was then a single K-5 school serving 90 children. The network now has about 1,000 students in all grades and features an online program. RelatedAmerica’s Most Popular Autism Therapy May Not Work — and May Seriously Harm Patients’ Mental Health

At the end of the 2023-24 academic year, 9% of the network’s students scored proficient or highly proficient on Arizona’s annual reading exam, while 4% passed the math assessments.      

In December 2022, the network won a $1 million Yass Prize, an award created by Jeff and Janine Yass. The billionaire investors have a long track record of donating to Republican political candidates and organizations that support school choice. 

One of the award’s creators, Jeanne Allen, is CEO of the Center for Education Reform. The center nominated Diaz-Harrison for the federal role. 

Yass award winners were featured at the 2023 meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, a conservative forum where state lawmakers are given model bills on education and other policies to introduce in their respective statehouses. 

Diaz-Harrison has partnered with a Florida autism school to create a national charter school accelerator program to help people start schools like hers throughout the country. She told The 74 the effort has so far supported teams of hopeful school founders from Louisiana, Texas, Florida, Alabama and Nevada. 

Parents of young autistic children and autistic adults often disagree about ABA. Told by their pediatrician or the person who diagnosed their child as autistic that they have a narrow window in which to intervene, families fight to get the therapy. Adults who have experienced it, however, report lasting trauma and have lobbied for research — much of it now at risk of being defunded by Kennedy — into more effective and humane alternatives.

        <img id="republication-tracker-tool-source" src="https://www.the74million.org/?republication-pixel=true&post=1014643&ga3=UA-64416702-1&ga4=G-YQBR2DBZ9Z" style="width:1px;height:1px;">

Carol Ann Heath, Ed.D. Children with Disabilities, Early Intervention Services, Special Education

Washington Post and Rights of Students with Disabilities: My field has moved back, not forward.

To say I was let down would be an exaggeration. I waited with great hopes for the Panel Discussion on the current chaotic state of the education of students with disabilities and the lack of implementation of the requirements of the IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act).

The panel discussants were eloquent, polished in their presentations, and vibrant. They included the secretary of the federal Department of Education, the Ford Foundation program officer for disability rights, and the CEO of the National Center for Learning Disabilities. The moderator did not ask challenging questions but encouraged the presenters on the theme of their professional expertise. 

The title “Disability Rights in U. S. Schools” was only lightly touched on but on the broadest subject of access throughout life and work settings. The major themes included the shortage of teachers, professional development, salary, working conditions, and respect for the profession, all very critical issues in teacher retention. 

The rights of students with disabilities, over 15% of the public school student population, to implementation of their IEPs (Individualized Education Plans) in the appropriate educational setting were not mentioned. For some students, this would be in an inclusive classroom, while for others, special settings may be appropriate for the implementation of their IEP. The role of parents and their rights in the special education process were not mentioned. At the state and local level, where special education happens, the costs of special education are an explosive issue for education budgets, frequently a target for advocates of non-disabled students. Federal funding covers less than 10% of the costs, depending on the wealth of the state and local system. 

Key to a discussion of the rights of students with disabilities is the recognition of the specific legal and procedural requirements, in addition to the push for inclusive educational environments, and teacher training and compensation.

Carol Ann Heath, Ed.D. Children with Disabilities, Special Education

Disability vs Illiteracy

With the increasing population of non-English speaking immigrants to the United States, educators are challenged to distinguish students with an identifiable disability from children who have not had access to education and were not literate in their native language. Frequently, access to interpreters for each spoken language is limited and confounds the ability of teachers to identify the educational needs of students and make referrals for special education. 

English learners (ELs) are a growing part of the K–12 student population. Between the 2009–10 and 2014–15 school years, the percentage of EL students increased in more than half of the states, with increases of an amazing amount of over 40 percent in five states. There are more than 4.8 million Els in the country with most of them participating in language instruction. The majority of Els are Hispanic or Latino, while only one-quarter of all students were Hispanic or Latino.  Asians account for only 5 percent of students but represent 11 percent of Els.  

Overall, the impact on subgroup populations varies. While 10 percent of all students were Els, a similar percentage of students with disabilities were ELs (9.9 percent). In comparison, ELs represented 14 percent of all homeless children enrolled in public school, 15 percent of students served by either Public Title I Schoolwide Programs or Targeted Assistance School Programs, and 39 percent of eligible migrant children who resided in the state.

ELs with disabilities were more likely to be classified as having a specific learning disability, or speech or language impairment.  Nearly 50% of these students were identified as having a learning disability.  In addition, 21% of ELs were identified as having a speech or language impairment.  

Under the Every Student Succeeds Act, states must annually assess the English language proficiency of ELs, provide reasonable accommodations for them on state assessments, and develop new accountability systems that include long-term goals and measures of progress for ELs. While Spanish was the most common language spoken by ELs at home in 2014–15, in some states there was more variation in the home language. The need to support less commonly spoken languages could also be different across school districts.

Illiteracy becomes a disability only if it is the result of an identifiable physical or mental impairment, meaning loss of vision, hearing, or mental retardation. It is important to be able to distinguish if a student’s lack of learning is due to lack of access to education or to an identifiable disability.  In addition, the need to make this determination in the child’s native language is an important component of diagnosis. 

Sources:

https://www2.ed.gov/datastory/el-characteristics/index.html

Carol Ann Heath, Ed.D. COVID, Early Intervention Services

Implementing Services for Young Children, birth to 3, Post Covid

While many families have been struggling to work from home, stay healthy, and provide opportunities for their children, young children who may be eligible for early intervention services are not being referred to agencies providing Part C services. Referrals have declined due to a decrease in visits to pediatricians and fewer children in early care settings. Parents may have been unaware of the more subtle indicators of delay or reduced muscle tone given the chaos of pandemic issues for work, social activities, fewer play dates with age peers, and COVID anxiety.

States are being encouraged to increase their efforts to implement “child find” activities to identify, and evaluate all infants and toddlers who may be eligible for early intervention services. This will require increased efforts as families may still be working from home and options for child care remain more limited. Pediatricians nationwide are being encouraged to reach out to patients for routine well baby care and developmental assessments.

Any children, who were referred prior to the pandemic and services were disrupted by the pandemic, may be eligible for compensatory services. Referral sources are required to refer a child within seven days of when the child is suspected of having a disability. If the child is determined eligible, the initial child and family assessment must conducted and the individualized family service plan (IFSP) meeting held within 45 days. Higher priority is to be given to those children referred prior to the pandemic and if the child is over three, the EIS system must coordinate with the Part B Preschool program to meet their child find requirements. If parents have declined services during the pandemic, the State Lead Agency is encourage to recontact parents and encourage the parent to re-engage. If the child is over the age of three, information about the Part B Preschool program should be provided.

As parents and local early intervention systems become more comfortable with in-person evaluations and services, a return to a more typical model of service delivery. Getting past a backlog of referrals and evaluations may require additional temporary staff to ensure timelines and delivery of services in a more timely manner.

Check out this article from Disability Scoop: https://www.disabilityscoop.com/2021/11/01/ed-department-reminds-states-of-early-intervention-obligations-under-idea/29574/