The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), originally enacted in 1975, guarantees students with disabilities the right to a free and appropriate public education. Fifty years later, two proposals by President Donald Trump’s administration threaten to scale back one of IDEA’s accountability tools to ensure school’s compliance and enforce federal law against those that violate disabled students’ rights.
The first proposal that has drawn widespread concern is a proposed revision to federal regulations, submitted in April 2024 by the Trump Administration’s Department of Education through the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, in coordination with the Office of Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development. The proposed rule would eliminate the “significant disproportionality” requirement, which currently obligates states to collect and report data on racial disparities in special education identification, placement, and discipline. A second, separate proposal from the Trump Administration would shift IDEA oversight from the Department of Education to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
Educators and advocates say that revising significant disproportionality reporting could weaken oversight of racial and disability-based disparities in special education identification, placement, and discipline. The proposed revision would end states’ obligation to submit data showing whether students of color are over-identified for special education, disciplined at higher rates, or placed in restrictive settings. It would also remove the requirement for states to notify the department when they change how they calculate disproportionality, potentially making comparisons over time and across states more difficult.
These proposals come at a time when U.S. schools are already under strain, facing staffing shortages and the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. But critics, including a coalition of more than 240 civil rights and equity organizations led by The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, warn that rolling back IDEA’s significant disproportionality reporting would do far more than reduce paperwork: It would strip the Department of Education of one of its primary tools for enforcing civil rights protections. In comments submitted to the Education Department this fall, the coalition argued that eliminating the requirement for states to report how they measure significant disproportionality would undermine the Education Department’s ability to ensure that students with disabilities, especially students of color, are appropriately identified, placed, and disciplined under IDEA. Without consistent, nationwide data on how students are identified, disciplined, and placed in special education, advocates say the federal government would be far less able to detect when states or districts are using IDEA in ways that disproportionately harm students of color and students with disabilities.
Since its inception, IDEA has required states to collect and report data to ensure students with disabilities receive a free, appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment. Over time, that reporting has revealed stark patterns in who receives services and how.
In many states, disproportionality data has been used to trigger federally required action plans that redirect funds to early-intervention supports when disparities are found. Without that trigger, states would have no uniform requirement to pursue equity-focused strategies, leaving corrective action to state discretion.
According to the U.S. Department of Education’s 2020 IDEA Section 618 data, Black students represented about 15 percent of public-school enrollment but nearly 27 percent of those identified with emotional disturbance. Other recent findings highlight ongoing inequities in special education identification, with racially, ethnically, and linguistically minoritized students often under-identified for services, while white or English-speaking students with disabilities are identified and receive support. These data trends have informed professional development, policy reform, and state-level monitoring systems aimed at more equitable practices.
In 2013, the Government Accountability Office found that some states used thresholds for significant disproportionality so high that racial disparities went unreported. In response, the Department of Education issued a 2016 rule standardizing how states calculate and report disproportionality. Implementation of the rule was delayed after then-Education Secretary Betsy DeVos ordered a two-year postponement—a move challenged by disability rights advocates and later overturned by a federal judge—allowing the rule to take effect in 2019 after years of litigation, establishing a uniform national standard for identifying and addressing racial disparities in special education.
That tension between burden reduction and civil rights accountability is not new. Each reauthorization of IDEA has carried debate over how much oversight the federal government should exercise in monitoring states. Since 1975, the law has relied on national data to reveal inequities that local reporting often obscures.
“Something that gets lost in the conversation around reporting is the purpose and spirit of IDEA,” says Ebony Perouse-Harvey, lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a special education researcher. “The law was created to ensure that students with disabilities receive equitable access to education. Historically, these students were excluded entirely, and it was data that informed the development of IDEA and helped us continue to work toward inclusion.”
Perouse-Harvey tells The Progressive that when Congress reauthorized IDEA in 1997 and 2004, lawmakers emphasized that the law’s promise had not been fully realized, particularly for low-income students, students of color, and linguistically diverse learners. “The data show that these children are more likely to be placed in restrictive settings or excluded through suspension or expulsion,” she says. “Leveraging this data helps school professionals stay accountable for the success of all children.”
While policy discussions often unfold at the federal level, the consequences are felt most immediately in classrooms. Educators charged with implementing IDEA compliance—along with its Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS), the mechanism schools use to identify, monitor, and support students—say data collection is not just paperwork but the primary way schools track whether students are being equitably served.
Perouse-Harvey’s perspective on federal accountability resonates with educators on the ground who see how these data systems shape everyday decisions. Rachel Cason, assistant principal of special education at a Washington, D.C., public charter school, says that federal oversight creates the kind of structural pressure schools need to stay consistent and equity-minded.
“At the school level, the reporting requirement keeps us steadfast in following [the MTSS] process with fidelity,” she explains. “It doesn’t prevent disproportionality on its own, but that accountability keeps multiple stakeholders invested in implementing the process in a way that protects students.”
Cason says she has seen what happens when those systems lose visibility. “I’ve worked with students who are one or two years behind grade level and move through the MTSS process for several years without a clear exit plan,” she says. “Without oversight, those kids can fall through the cracks, especially in schools with limited intervention resources.”
Her team relies on IDEA data to monitor patterns and ensure that interventions match student needs. “We disaggregate academic, discipline, and attendance data by subgroup to identify where instruction or support may be falling short,” she explains. “That’s how we know whether our systems are equitable or exclusionary.”
Cason and Perouse-Harvey also expressed concern about the possibility of shifting IDEA oversight to Health and Human Services.
“My worry is that it would reinforce a medical model of special education, one that focuses on fixing students rather than systems,” Cason says. “I’m not sure [HHS] would have the capacity to interrogate the learning conditions that lead to over- and under-identification.”
Perouse-Harvey agrees that the proposed change has lacked clarity. “There are many unanswered questions,” she says. “Who within HHS would oversee compliance? Would the department have the staffing to reflect the needs of schools nationwide? And how would that affect how quickly IDEA issues are resolved?”
Advocates note that moving IDEA to HHS could undermine the law’s foundational principle: that education—not medical classification—is the key to equal opportunity. The 1972 PARC v. Pennsylvania and Mills v. Board of Education cases, which paved the way for IDEA, established the right to public education for students with disabilities and tied accountability to public reporting and educational access.
The idea of transferring IDEA oversight to the Department of Health and Human Services gained traction among Trump administration officials, including President Donald Trump, Education Secretary Linda McMahon, and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who argued that shifting special education oversight to HHS could better align education and health services and streamline federal support for children with disabilities. However, education and disability rights groups, including The Consortium for Constituents with Disabilities and the National Center for Learning Disabilities, have opposed the move, warning that it would dilute educational accountability and complicate compliance monitoring.
For educators, the debate over data reporting is not abstract. “When I heard about these proposed changes, I thought about the hyper-visibility of Black boys behaviorally and the invisibility of Black girls academically,” Cason says. “For students and families who are already vulnerable, these changes could remove a layer of protection and create more room for the misuse of standardized test data to misrepresent students’ abilities.”
Perouse-Harvey adds that without clear, transparent data, inequities can deepen quietly. “Unless states make a concerted effort through legislation to require accountability, we risk perpetuating exclusion,” she says. “The progress we’ve made toward equitable identification can quickly be undone.”
Cason and Perouse-Harvey also each emphasize that accountability data should be used to strengthen schools, not penalize them.
“Data allows schools to identify areas of growth and adjust their approach to better support students with disabilities,” Perouse-Harvey says. “Without it, it’s impossible to make informed decisions.”
Cason adds, “Improvement can’t look like stripping away protection. We need policies that reinforce the urgency of disaggregating data by subgroups to understand who is being referred, how race and class affect access to services, and whether interventions are preventing over- and under-identification.”
Since IDEA’s inception, federal reporting has helped identify inequities across race, disability category, and geography. Those insights have guided training, informed resource allocation, and driven reforms that move schools closer to inclusion. As the Department of Education considers the proposed changes, educators and advocates say continued transparency is essential to ensure that progress is not reversed.
As of December 2025, the proposed rule eliminating IDEA’s significant disproportionality reporting requirement remains under review at the Office of Management and Budget. Advocacy organizations continue to urge the Department of Education to withdraw the changes, while state education agencies await guidance on how future reporting cycles would operate if the requirement is removed. For critics, what hangs in the balance is not simply a data system, but whether schools nationwide will continue to have a clear, enforceable way to identify and confront the disparities IDEA was created to prevent.