Washington Update

2. The Equity in IDEA Rule Is the One to Watch

One agenda item deserves its own section: the Department intends to propose amendments to the IDEA regulations on significant disproportionality, the provisions governing how states measure racial disparities in identification, placement, and discipline. The entry, titled Equity in IDEA, lists a proposed rule as early as August. We do not know what it will say. But these regulations shape state data systems, district reviews, and the requirement that identified districts reserve fifteen percent of their IDEA Part B funds for early intervening services. This is content our members teach and research our members conduct; when the proposal publishes, the comment period is squarely our lane. If your scholarship touches this area, start thinking now about what an evidence-grounded comment would say; we will circulate a plain-language summary when the text lands.

3. The Loan Caps: A Court Order, a Temporary List, and a Moving Target

The new federal loan caps took effect July 1: most graduate students may now borrow up to $20,500 per year and $100,000 in total, while professional degree programs carry limits of $50,000 per year and $200,000 in total. The dispute is over which programs count as professional. On June 25, a federal judge temporarily blocked the Department’s narrowed definition, and on June 29 the Department complied, publishing a temporary list of additional qualifying fields: physician assistant studies, occupational therapy, physical therapy, several advanced nursing degrees, speech-language pathology, athletic training, and audiology. Certain psychology-related and pharmacy programs lost eligibility. The Department says it believes the narrower definition is lawful and will defend it in court.

Read the list with our members’ programs in mind: several restored fields are the related services professions IDEA itself names, the clinicians who staff school-based teams alongside our special educators, while advanced degrees in education and school leadership remain under the general graduate caps. Temporary is doing real work here; the definition could change with a single ruling. If you advise graduate students on financing, use the current list with a clear caveat that it is interim and litigation-dependent.

4. Two Documents on IDEA Oversight: The Determinations and the Monitoring Record

Two recent documents, one from the Department and one about it, deserve to be read side by side. First, the Department’s annual determination letters, released in late June: 33 states and territories need assistance meeting IDEA Part B requirements, and 33 states, territories, and the District of Columbia need assistance on early intervention. Six states and territories plus the District received the more serious needs intervention designation on the Part B side; Louisiana received it for early intervention. These categories carry escalating consequences, up to withholding of funds and referral to the Department of Justice. Second, a June analysis by the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates of the eleven state monitoring reports issued since January 2025 found weaknesses in general supervision, states’ own oversight of their districts, in ten of the eleven states reviewed, plus dispute resolution gaps and widespread fiscal oversight deficiencies. It also documents the federal monitoring schedule itself: two state reviews in 2025 and two planned for 2026, down from roughly ten per year, a pace COPAA calculates would take about 25 years to reach every state.

Both agencies at the center of the reorganization say oversight will be strengthened, and the Department notes that IDEA formula funds went out July 1 as required by law, including a new $144 million investment in interventions for students with disabilities. Hundreds of disability, education, and civil rights organizations have urged Congress to reject the transfers, citing states’ reliance on the Department’s expertise and monitoring.

What this means for our field: Most states need help meeting IDEA requirements, and the monitoring function that identifies where help is needed is operating at reduced capacity. Whoever administers these programs, the standard is the same: monitoring done
on schedule, by people with special education expertise, with findings that get corrected. That is the measurable thing, and we will watch it.

5.  Congress in Motion: Ten Bills, a Letter From Fifty-Some Senators, and the July Markup

The reorganization question moved on three congressional fronts this week, and they point in different directions. That is not confusion; that is the process working in public, and it is worth reading all three primary documents.

1. The House package. On July 9, House Education and Workforce Committee Chairman Tim Walberg announced ten bills, H.R. 9602 through H.R. 9611, that would codify the transfer of Department of Education functions to other agencies, covering areas including workforce development, student aid, K-12 programs, higher education, tribal education, family engagement, and child care for student parents. The committee frames the package as reducing bureaucracy and moving programs to agencies it views as better suited to run them; Chairman Walberg said education policy should focus on helping students succeed rather than preserving a federal bureaucracy. The bills matter for a structural reason we have flagged since June: interagency agreements are executive actions, and only legislation can make the arrangement permanent. Introduction is the first step in that process, not the last; the bills now await committee action.
2. The Senate letter. On June 30, Senators Murray, Baldwin, and Sanders led every Democratic senator on a letter to Secretary McMahon arguing the opposite position: that the four interagency agreements announced June 16 exceed the Department’s authority, and that the annual appropriations laws do not authorize ED to transfer special education funding or vocational rehabilitation services to HHS, or civil rights enforcement to the Department of Justice. The letter asks the Department to halt implementation.
3. The HELP markup. The Senate HELP Committee is still expected to take up the OSERS transfer this month, following Chairman Cassidy’s June commitment to bring the question before the committee, as bipartisan legislation or a vote on the withdrawn Kaine amendment. Cassidy has said he does not support moving special education to HHS. A committee vote, whichever way it goes, would be the first formal congressional action since the agreements were signed.

What this means for our field: IDEA assigns oversight to the Secretary of Education by statute, and the durable answer can only come from Congress. This week, one chamber’s majority moved to write the transfers into law and the other chamber’s minority argued they are unlawful without new legislation. Both positions now point to the same venue. Watch the HELP markup and the committee calendars, not the press releases.

6. The Money in Court: A Lawsuit Over Withheld Research and School Support Funds

On June 30, a coalition of education and disability organizations, including the National Center for Learning Disabilities, the Knowledge Alliance, and the Massachusetts Teachers Association, filed suit in federal court in Massachusetts over congressionally appropriated education funds the complaint says have not been made available, roughly $1.9 billion for education research and school support, including funds for the Institute of Education Sciences, the research centers, and the Comprehensive Centers. The complaint alleges violations of the Anti-Deficiency Act, the Administrative Procedure Act, and the separation of powers; the plaintiffs’ counsel has also published a plain-language explainer on the funds at issue. Two details are worth holding onto. First, these are allegations; the government has not yet answered in court, and we will report what it says when it does. Second, the calendar is doing real work: by the complaint’s accounting, roughly $843 million of the funds at issue expire September 30, 2026, which means the court’s timeline matters as much as its answer.

What this means for our field: NCSER and its sister centers fund the research infrastructure our members work in. Whatever the court concludes about authority, unspent appropriations that lapse on September 30 do not come back. That date belongs on the same calendar as the markup and the comment windows.