Late last week, the Trump Administration released its FY2027 budget proposal. The otherwise austere document contained one major bright spot for advocates for students with disabilities: the administration has proposed $539 million increase for federal special education programs, bringing total IDEA funding to nearly $16 billion. For families who have spent decades fighting for even basic resources, any increase carries weight, and so, on the surface, this seemed like a huge win for special education professionals.
But, more money is not the same thing as more equity. And this budget, read in full, is not what it appears.
In my practice, I study special education through a DisCrit lens — a framework that holds race and disability in view simultaneously, bec
For these students, federal education policy is often the difference between a classroom that sees them and one that doesn’t, and this administration’s new budget funds the latter while defunding the former.
The same document that increases IDEA spending overall eliminates nearly $900 million from English language learner support, despite the fact that a significant share of students with disabilities are also English learners. It cuts over $400 million from programs serving students in migrant families and eliminates federal Equity Assistance Centers, which helped school districts examine and address racial bias in their own systems. It cuts teacher preparation programs that trained educators in culturally responsive practices — for the sixth consecutive year — citing their support for diversity and anti-racism as grounds for elimination based on the idea that cultural competency is a wasteful ideology. And it strips hundreds of millions from Minority-Serving Institutions, dismantling the very pipelines that produce the educators of Color who disproportionately serve these communities.
The budget also proposes consolidating six smaller, targeted IDEA programs into the State Grants block. The administration appears to be framing this move as one of “efficiency”, but the idea that folding funding for programs designed around the most specific and complex student needs into a larger block grant is somehow more “efficient” is silly. What this actually does is ensure that the most vulnerable groups of kids (e.g., students with very intricate needs or those from historically excluded backgrounds) get absorbed into the general pot of funding where their needs must now compete with everyone else’s and where there is no rule that anyone must consider their needs specifically when making decisions about funding.
