Overview
- Recent downsizing has all but eliminated the Office of Special Education Programs, the federal agency that enforces schools’ civil rights obligations under IDEA.
- The administration is weighing whether to eliminate OSEP entirely, despite the office’s role in guiding states, supporting families and directing roughly $15 billion in funding.
- IDEA serves about 6.6 million students ages 6 to 21 plus hundreds of thousands of infants and toddlers, yet the federal share of costs remains roughly 10% to 15% versus the 40% originally envisioned.
- Advocates caution that reduced federal capacity would shift oversight to uneven state systems and leave many families pursuing costly private litigation to secure services.
- In response, CRPE launched Unlocking Potential and a Special Education Data Center with a 50‑state record of identification rates since 1976 to inform research and policy redesign.