A pair of decades-old promises from Congress — ensuring disabled students receive a free and appropriate education and protecting all pupils from discrimination in schools — have been thrown into doubt after a round of sweeping layoffs at the Education Department.
The department’s Office of Special Education Programs was decimated by the cuts, which the Trump administration issued on Friday in its latest reduction of the federal work force. The special education office has been the principal government arm overseeing billions of dollars that support about 10 percent of the nation’s school-aged children, but will have fewer than a half-dozen employees, a reduction of about 95 percent since the start of the year.
The Office of Civil Rights in the department was also slashed. After starting the year with 12 regional sites, the Office of Civil Rights was cut in half in March and may go down to a site or two when the layoffs take effect in 60 days, according to data compiled by the union representing education workers. Over 22,600 discrimination complaints in schools were filed with the department last year, more than double the number from five years earlier.
And the layoffs gutted the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, which oversees a wide range of funding for states and school districts. The firings included a team of employees who oversee federal funding for low-income students, known as Title I, which is the largest source of federal funding to school districts, according to three Education Department employees with knowledge of the cuts.
About 466 workers at the Education Department have been fired since Friday, according to the White House Office of Management and Budget, and the breadth and depth of those cuts appeared to touch nearly all aspects of an agency that President Trump has vowed to eliminate, part of his bid to end the federal role in supporting roughly 54 million students in the nation’s elementary and secondary schools.
Education Department officials have not disclosed precise numbers on where those cuts were targeted as of Tuesday; the Trump administration declined to discuss the changes, and a spokeswoman declined to comment. The administration has described the more than 4,000 layoffs across federal agencies as punishment to Democrats for the government shutdown.
The lack of communication left unions scrambling to piece together the fallout. But the individual notices sent to Education Department staff were sent to their official emails, which workers had been repeatedly warned would be illegal to check during a shutdown. The administration sent word in recent days that government workers could check their messages to see if they had been fired, but several employees said on Tuesday that they were refusing to open their email because they did not trust the Trump administration.
Unions representing federal workers have sued over the firings and described the cuts as an attempt from the administration to use the government work force as a bargaining chip in a political feud.
“If you are a kid in America, regardless of where you live or what your capabilities are, or what year you are in school, you are going to be affected by these cuts,” said Rachel Gittleman, president of AFGE Local 252, which represents Education Department employees.
The Education Department, which had about 4,100 employees at the start of the year, lost about half its work force to layoffs in March. The new layoffs, which target about one-fifth of the remaining workers, spanned the agency — striking even some programs that President Trump has said he supports.
The layoffs included employees who work on funding for charter schools, historically Black colleges and tribal universities, areas that the Trump administration has fought to increase funding for, even as it wants to claw back education spending elsewhere.
Many of the remaining Education Department employees work in the office of Federal Student Aid, which handles federal student loans for college students and appears to have been largely spared.
But the layoffs effectively gut two key offices that handle money for students that goes out the door to states and school districts across the country. And it threatens to further upend the Office of Civil Rights, which historically has focused on investigating complaints of discrimination against students of color and students with disabilities. Under President Trump, it has instead sought to prevent schools from recognizing transgender identities or directing extra resources toward Black students.
Denise Forte, president of EdTrust, said the wide-ranging layoffs appeared to be a backdoor attempt to free states from laws and regulations established by Congress, which require them to spend federal education dollars on the most vulnerable children, including those from low-income families, students with disabilities and homeless children.
“This is the way he is trying to accomplish Project 2025,” Ms. Forte said, referring to the conservative policy document that has been embraced by the Trump administration and outlines a plan to shut down the Education Department.
Current law, as passed by Congress, requires the agency to maintain offices that oversee elementary and secondary education, special education and many other policy areas.
“It’s impossible for the department to carry out its statutory functions with this level of staffing,” said Josie Eskow Skinner, a former department lawyer who was laid off earlier this year.
Some of the staff slated to be laid off act as something of a help desk for states and school districts. They might answer questions about which in-class supports a child with autism is entitled to, or how to count the number of homeless children.
Katy Neas, a former deputy assistant secretary in the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services under President Joseph R. Biden Jr.,
noted that the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act was created by Congress in 1975, in part because states were not effectively educating students with disabilities. She said that the office had played a role in monitoring compliance, such as when Texas put a cap on the percentage of students who could receive special education services.
“This administration has said they want to return education to the states — it’s for the reason that states refused to educate kids with disabilities that we have this law in the first place,” said Ms. Neas, who is now the chief executive of the Arc of the United States, an advocacy organization for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
The Office of Elementary and Secondary Education handles a wide range of funding for states and school districts, including funds that Mr. Trump wants to cut or consolidate, arguing that federal government adds bureaucracy to education, without improving student outcomes. He withheld funding from some of those programs this summer and has proposed cutting education spending by 15 percent for next year.
Jodi Grant, the executive director of the nonprofit Afterschool Alliance, said it was “shocking, devastating, utterly without any basis” to lay off federal workers who help support grants for after-school programs that serve nearly 1.4 million students nationwide, mostly lower income.
“This small staff at the U.S. Department of Education that has long administered these grants had a big impact,” Ms. Grant said.
It’s unclear how the layoffs, which are set to take effect in December, will impact federal funding itself.
Mr. Trump’s education secretary, Linda McMahon, has repeatedly sought to assure parents and lawmakers that the Trump administration would not cut federal funding for low-income students or students with disabilities. She has suggested that funding to carry out the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act could be moved to the Department of Health and Human Services.
During her confirmation hearings, Ms. McMahon also suggested that the Justice Department could take over her department’s civil rights investigations.