Sign up for Chalkbeat’s free weekly newsletter to keep up with how education is changing across the U.S.Federal teams charged with making sure states are doing right by students with disabilities appear to have visited fewer than half of the states originally scheduled for review in 2025 and 2026. That information comes from U.S. Department of Education documents compiled and analyzed by the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, a group that supports students with disabilities and their families, as well as additional review by Chalkbeat of publicly available monitoring schedules. If federal reviews of state special education systems continue at this pace, each state would be reviewed only once every 25 years, COPAA said in a report released Tuesday. That would mean many students would go their entire school careers without federal oversight of state systems. “The new administration has quietly rolled back their state oversight,” said Chris Roe, COPAA director of state policy. “We are worried that this sends a signal to states and eventually to local schools that this is not important, and they don’t need to be concerned about it.”Drawing on nearly a dozen state monitoring reports based on reviews that started under the Biden administration, the COPAA report also raises concerns about states’ capacity to adequately monitor school district’s compliance with special education requirements as the Trump administration pledges to “return education to the states.”The Trump administration has taken steps to dismantle the Education Department by assigning key duties to other federal agencies. Most recently, the department announced that special education oversight would move to the Department of Health and Human Services, a change that has drawn significant organized opposition and some bipartisan skepticism. U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a Republican who chairs the Senate education committee, has promised Democratic colleagues a vote on that change later this month. By itself, a committee vote won’t reverse the Trump administration’s actions, but a vote against it would represent the strongest formal objection from Congress to date.COPAA opposes having another government agency handle special education oversight. The group’s report calls on Congress to intervene. A spokesperson for the Education Department said COPAA’s “entire premise is false,” without describing any specific errors in the findings. The department pointed to monitoring reports — the same ones that COPAA reviewed for its analysis — as evidence the department continues to keep tabs on states. Citing previous remarks by Education Secretary Linda McMahon, the spokesperson said the partnership between Health and Human Services and Education would improve coordination and benefit families and students, and “ensure states are in compliance with federal law.”“Students will not lose any rights, including their right to a Free Appropriate Public Education,” the unnamed spokesperson said. “No agreement can alter the rights that students with disabilities are afforded under federal law.”But Roe said the flaws identified in the monitoring reports show that students and families might struggle more to defend their rights without federal involvement. Meanwhile, Politico this week highlighted the large number of states flagged by the Education Department as needing assistance or intervention to meet their goals for serving students with disabilities. “When they say let’s return education to the states, there’s an assumption that states will backfill those responsibilities,” Roe said. “The case that that is not going to happen is pretty strong.” Federal oversight finds gaps in special education protectionsThe Biden administration had previously urged states to take more responsibility for ensuring school districts meet their special education obligations. But according to monitoring reports, auditors repeatedly found shortcomings.These included lax fiscal oversight; limited supervision of school district practices; states allowing districts to pick which student files they wanted reviewed; states not investigating parent complaints in a timely manner; and states either not informing parents of their rights or giving them incorrect information. Roe said this system isn’t perfect. COPAA’s reviews of federal monitoring efforts over the years have found many cases where auditors identified problems, but there was limited follow-up and the problems continued. Nonetheless, the reports provide an important tool for advocates and lawmakers to press for changes, he said. “Without them, we definitely face more of an uphill battle to getting systems in place to support our students,” Roe said. The Education Department spokesperson said the department is “on track” to complete monitoring visits to all states by 2028, in keeping with a schedule established in 2022. However, the spokesperson did not provide a schedule that showed how monitoring teams would visit roughly half the states in the next two years. The schedule that’s been posted on the department website since the spring of 2025 identifies only four states, Puerto Rico, and a few Pacific island territories for monitoring during the 2025-26 cycle and none thereafter. One of those states, Georgia, was supposed to be reviewed this spring, but monitoring visits have been pushed back to the fall, the department said. During the Biden administration, the Education Department set a goal of monitoring 10 states a year, creating a five-year cycle for regular monitoring, in addition to off-cycle visits to address specific issues. COPAA found the Education Department monitored eight states in 2023 and 10 in 2024. A monitoring schedule archived by the Wayback Machine shows the department previously had plans to monitor nine states plus the territories in the 2025-26 cycle, and another 10 the next year. It’s not clear why states previously identified for monitoring were removed from the schedule. However, the Education Department has laid off large numbers of workers. A report from the Office of Inspector General published last month raised questions about whether the department could carry out its responsibilities at current staffing levels. Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.
