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California resident Katie Prather remembers thinking that her son, who has autism, could have mastered math skills if he had less work to complete on assignments in elementary school. By middle school, she thought he would fare better if he had more social pragmatic skills to navigate interactions with his teachers and students.
At the start of high school, she said, her son was “hanging out with the wrong crowd,” hoping to fit in after years of being called a problem child by teachers and classmates. Often he was overstimulated, “spent by the end of the school day,” and failing his classes at school even though he had an individualized education plan, which is guaranteed to students with disabilities under federal law.
That’s when Prather started to fear that the services the school district was providing him weren’t working. Even worse, she worried he wouldn’t graduate on time.
“I felt like we kept bumping into this ‘There’s nothing we can really do to help him’ attitude of the school,” she said. “He was failing some classes even though he was super-smart. There was a huge gap in how he was performing and what he was capable of in that school district.”
About 7.5 million students with disabilities in the U.S. are protected under the federal Individuals with Disabilities Act from being turned away at public schools. These kids are guaranteed the right to a “free and appropriate public education” and can access Individual Education Programs, or IEPs, to help them succeed.
The journey to obtaining and modifying an IEP that works for a student with disabilities is notoriously challenging for parents, said Carrie Gillispie, a senior policy analyst with the education policy program at the national liberal-leaning think tank New America.
Parents and educators often disagree on what a child needs to succeed, and often there’s a lack of knowledge about what parents know their child has access to and reality, she said.
The plans are also expensive for school districts – costing up to tens of thousands of dollars per student – and the paperwork brings administrative burdens for teachers and staff at the nation’s schools, Gillispie said. The workload of IEPs often drives teachers away from special education jobs, leaving heavier workloads for the teachers who are in the field, Gillispie said. The nation faces a shortage of special education teachers.
All these challenges often come at the expense of student achievement and well-being.
Trump wants to scrap the education department. What does that mean for IEPs?
Special education experts are now warning that families’ paths to accessing a working IEP for their children could get worse with the Trump administration’s attempts to dismantle the Education Department. That agency has enforced the Individuals with Disabilities Act, a federal law guaranteeing students with disabilities the right to a “free and appropriate public education” for decades.
The Trump administration recently slashed $900 million in education-related research contracts and more than $600 million in educator preparation grants. Both cuts will affect students with disabilities, experts say.
President Donald Trump has said federal protections for the millions of students with disabilities across the U.S. “will be fully preserved” and transferred to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The federal education agency continues to oversee special education services, said Madi Biedermann, a spokesperson for the Education Department. Congress would ultimately decide whether the agency can be eliminated.
Moving to a residential school after the local one couldn’t help
School staff at the high school where Prather’s son attended his freshman year ultimately recommended that the family try another school that specializes in educating students with disabilities.
The 10th grader is now enrolled at Hanna Academy, a state-funded residential private school for students who have severe disabilities or behavioral problems, in Sonoma, California.
Every child who attends the school has an IEP. So far it has worked for the Prathers – aside from exposure to violent outbursts on the school campus from time to time, Prather said.
“The smaller class setting and no homework has been a game-changer,” she said. “He’s really continued to learn and done credit recovery from classes he failed last year. There are reports from the school his behavior has improved.”
Looking back, she doesn’t blame the school district entirely for her son’s struggles in schools. School staff tried to help her son, and he had an IEP for years, she said, but even the smaller class size options that were available wouldn’t have worked for him.
“Unfortunately with smaller setting stuff, in most regular schools that usually means kids with autism are in classrooms with kids who have more intellectual disabilities and aren’t at grade level,” she said. “That’s not him. We didn’t find anywhere in a public school setting that worked for us.”
‘Kicked out of every school they’ve been in’
For Hanna Academy Principal Courtney Jackson, it has been a challenge to accommodate the IEPs of 48 students – especially since the school transitioned from a parochial private school to a school solely serving students with disabilities two years ago.
Family and educator involvement to figure out what works for each student is especially crucial for these kids, he said.
“These are parents typically dealing with kids who have had disability issues for so long,” he said. “Their kids have been kicked out of every school they’ve been in, and they’re looking for any sort of resources.”
In Maryland, Rich Weinfeld and his team of consultants at The Weinfeld Education Group work with parents of families with IEPs to help them advocate for their kids at their schools. They often encourage parents to seek data from the Education Department’s research arm.
The Institute of Education Sciences has historically researched and collected nationwide data on what interventions work for students with specific disabilities at specific ages and learning levels.
That could range from how a student with dyslexia should be taught to how much homework a student with autism should be assigned.
“In terms of medicine, that would be the dosage: What does evidence say about what kind of medicine should be given and how many per day?” he said. “When we attend IEP meetings with parents to advocate for their kids, we look at the data. We can all agree kids should have an intervention, but we don’t know how often should it be provided.“
The Trump administration recently laid off the entire staff at the Institute of Education Sciences, effectively gutting its ability to conduct further research on students with disabilities.
Weinfeld worries about what resources families nationwide will have moving forward.
Gillispie said she’s also concerned about the research freeze. As a former school counselor, she has seen the agency’s guidance help parents advocate for their children in the IEP process.
“The important part of the IEP is the individualized part,” she said. “It’s all about data monitoring and collection.”
Understaffed schools and deadlines to complete IEPs
In Sonoma, Jackson said he has struggled to fill special education staffing jobs.
Nearly three-quarters of public schools with special education teacher vacancies reported they’d “experienced difficulty” filling the positions for the 2024-25 school year, according to the Education Department’s National Center for Education Statistics.
“The paperwork burden of IEPs often cause teachers and other school staffers stress, and it’s part of the reason why it’s hard to retain and hire these teachers,” Gillispie said.
Special education staff often have to work more hours when there are huge workforce shortages because schools must meet deadlines throughout the IEP process, Gillispie said.
“Many times schools go over that timeline, and many times it’s because they’re understaffed and the paperwork is bureaucratically burdensome,” she said.
The Trump administration has also eliminated special education teacher training programs at the federal level.
Disability advocates worry the cuts could affect an already staggering workforce shortage of special education teachers who are turned off by the administrative burden of IEPs.
“Without addressing the workforce issue, the rest of the of causes of frustration are not going any better,” Gillispie said.
Funding for special education is uncertain
The Education Department pays out funding appropriated by Congress for IEPs and other education services to states.
Jackson, from Hanna Academy, is worried about any future funding cuts or freezes at the federal level. The school is state-funded and could be affected by any financial deficits.
He’s one of many school officials unsure about how much money they’ll receive for special education services from the federal government for the upcoming school year. It has been difficult for him and others to lay out their budgets.
Trump has not indicated whether any federal funding cuts will specifically affect students with disabilities, but his administration has made clear it wants to cut excess spending in multiple ways.
On the other hand, Gillespie argues it will be much more expensive to get rid of the Education Department in the long run.
“It would just lead to huge legal costs and programming disputes,” she said.
‘That would be a huge concern’
Prather’s son is now on track to graduate high school at Hanna Academy.
She says his individualized education plan there is exactly what he needed to succeed all along.
But she worries what’s happening at the Education Department could sever that feeling of triumph, especially if his school loses funding or any of its services.
“If my son had to go back to a regular high school, that would be a huge concern.”
Contact Kayla Jimenez at [email protected]. Follow her on X at @kaylajjimenez.
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