Education Department eyes special education in school choice expansion
By Kara Arundel
The U.S. Department of Education is working with school districts and states to expand school choice models for students with disabilities that will spur innovative and effective learning opportunities, a top federal special education official said during opening remarks Tuesday at the Office of Special Education Programs’ annual conference.
“Our goal is to expand choices for students with special needs so that every family has options to find the best-fit school for their child and not have it be the other way around, where they have to force their child to be a fit in a school that may not be for them,” Diana Diaz-Harrison, deputy assistant secretary of the department’s Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, told the 1,200 conference attendees.
At the same time the Education Department is striving to expand choice options beyond the traditional public school, Diaz-Harrison said, it will be honoring the nearly 50-year-old Individuals with Disabilities Education Act that guarantees educational rights to students with disabilities.
IDEA, originally called the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, was signed into law on Nov. 29, 1975. Nearly 8 million students ages 3-21 were eligible for IDEA services in the fall of 2023. Some 462,847 young children ages 0-2 received IDEA services.
As a “landmark civil rights law,” Diaz-Harrison said, IDEA “has transformed education and created so many opportunities for our most vulnerable children.”
She asked education leaders across the nation “to implement IDEA with innovation in mind” and to “uphold civil rights while embracing 21st century tools.”
IDEA practices must evolve, she said. “Families are seeking choices, flexibility, innovation, high quality and specialization. The promise of IDEA must adapt to the current landscape of education options and to new options.”
This includes giving states and districts more decision-making power and flexibility, Diaz-Harrison said.
Under the Trump administration, the Education Department’s role is being shrunk. In the past few months, the department has slimmed its staff by half through layoffs and other moves. However, no OSEP employees were let go during a massive March 11 reduction in force, according to an April 28 letter from the Education Department to Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester, D-Del.
U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon and President Donald Trump, however, want to move special education oversight out of the Education Department to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. No formal plan for that transition has yet been made public, but more than a dozen former federal special education leaders in July wrote to congressional leaders imploring them to reject such a change.
Public school advocates have pushed back on federal and state efforts to increase private school choice options, saying public schools would lose money and resources if taxpayer-supported funding is shared with private schools. They also worry about equitable access to high-quality education programs and accountability for private schools.
Additionally, school choice opponents point out that private schools can choose which students to enroll while public schools must educate all students, including those with disabilities. Private schools do not have to comply with IDEA.
In July, Congress passed the massive tax and spending “big, beautiful” bill with a provision to create a nationwide federally funded private school choice program. The new school choice tax incentive will generate funds for private school choice, homeschooling expenses and public and private school costs for education, such as tutoring, technology and transportation. States will need to opt into the program.
Diaz-Harrison said her own struggles to find a right-fit school for her son with autism inspired her to found the Arizona Autism Charter Schools. Opened in 2014, the network now has five schools with more planned, she said.
“The power of IDEA was the foundation for our schools,” Diaz-Harrison said. “I knew that every student needed an individual education plan, because, as they say, when you meet one child with special needs, you met one child, and what every child needs is uniquely different.”