Nancy Bailey, retired teacher and veteran blogger, explains how Trump’s Project 2025 will strip away the federally-guaranteed rights of students with disabilities.

She writes:

The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 is generally troubling, and its education plan is worrisome. It involves Milton Friedman’s undemocratic ideas to privatize public education, and its voucher plan for students with disabilities will continue to end public school services as we know them.

Project 2025 will eliminate the costs and hard-fought legal protections for children with special education needs instead of strengthening the public school programs.

The All Handicapped Children Education Act

Since its start in 1975, The All Handicapped Children’s Education Act, now called the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), has opened public schools to children with disabilities. Before then, children had limited services, and many were mistreated in poor institutions.

The momentous passage of this act was a proud moment for America! For years afterward, public education focused on improving education for students with disabilities.

However, many politicians and policymakers have worked to undermine these school programs, believing this law is too expensive or wanting to privatize those services.

They reauthorized the Act in 1997 and 2004, when it changed to IDEA. They shuttered long time programs, turning a blind eye to states and local school districts that have pushed children out of services.

Consider how Texas officials denied children services for years, as did New Orleans  by converting public schools to charters after Hurricane Katrina. Those reading this might have their own examples of how their local schools reneged on the necessary services.

In these cases the U.S. Department of Education (USDOE) did not perform due diligence to stop states from rejecting students. A stronger federal department should have ensured that students who needed disability services got them.

As disability services have been whittled down throughout the years, parents have become increasingly frustrated with public schools and convinced they should remove their students with a voucher, even though other school options lack accountability and are often less than ideal.

Project 2025 is correct that there are too many lawsuits by parents unhappy with public school programs, but without public schools, parents will have no rights!

Please open the link and read the post in full to learn how Project 2025 will hurt the most vulnerable children.