The shrinking Department of Education transferred civil rights enforcement and special ed support to other agencies on Tuesday.
The Office for Civil Rights will move to the Department of Justice while the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services will shift to Health and Human Services. Four new interagency departments have been established with Justice and Health and Human Services.
In just over a year, the Education Department has created 14 interagency partnerships to shift its responsibilities to other federal agencies. The latest agreement marks another step by the Trump administration to scale back the government’s role in public education.
“With federal law as the heavy anchor, our goal in this partnership is to break down the bureaucratic barriers and strengthen the coordination of resources to improve programs that serve infants, toddlers, children and adults,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon wrote in a letter to parents of children with disabilities.
Disability rights advocates are worried that support for students with disabilities will worsen under Health and Human Services.
“This is another vindictive attempt to undermine public education,” Denise Forte, president and CEO of Ed Trust, an education think tank, told . “And at this moment, when we know that children with disabilities need more support, not lessHHS is not the place for that.”
Meanwhile, the DOJ partnership aims to blend its investigative and enforcement capabilities with the Education Department to evaluate, investigate and resolve civil rights complaints. A separate DOJ partnership will govern student privacy protections.
The Department of Justice is proud to partner with the Department of Education to build a stronger, more coordinated civil rights enforcement systemone that makes clear that discrimination on the basis of race, sex, or ability will not be tolerated in our schools,” said DOJ Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.
Here’s a summary of the 10 previous interagency agreements:
Three agreements with the Department of Labor transferred administrative responsibility for adult education and family literacy programs under WIOA, career and technical education under the Perkins Act, key K12 discretionary grant programs and postsecondary education and workforce coordinationwith DOL now issuing awards on ED’s behalf across several of those competitions.
A partnership with the Department of Interior consolidated Indian Education programsspanning K12, higher education, CTE, and vocational rehabilitationunder DOI, which already houses the Bureau of Indian Education.
Two additional HHS agreements addressed foreign medical school accreditation and campus-based child care support for student-parents enrolled in college, with HHS taking on administrative responsibility for the Child Care Access Means Parents in School (CCAMPIS) grant program.
Two agreements with the Department of State focused on international education and foreign language programs, tailoring them to national security priorities and on Section 117 foreign gift and contract reporting for U.S. colleges and universities.
A final agreement with the Department of the Treasury transferred administration of the federal student assistance portfolio, with a stated goal of managing the student loan default crisis and returning borrowers to repayment.
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