By Taryn Williams
Introduction
Over the past 18 months, the Trump administration has reshaped the federal infrastructure supporting disabled students as they prepare for adulthood. It has reduced federal capacity, restructured key disability programs across departments and narrowed longstanding federal commitments to enforcing the rights of disabled people. These changes have significant implications for special education, independent living and civil rights. This paper examines a different question: What do these changes mean for the systems that prepare disabled students for adulthood and, ultimately, employment and long-term economic security?
For decades, federal policy has sought to strengthen the pathways from school to work. State and local agencies administer many of the programs that support disabled students, while the federal government provides funding, technical assistance, oversight, research and civil rights enforcement to help them carry out those responsibilities. While the school-to-work pipeline has never fully delivered on its promise, federal law and policy have increasingly emphasized coordination across education and workforce systems alongside enforcement of civil rights protections for students with disabilities. The Trump administration has broken sharply from that approach by reducing federal capacity, dismantling institutional relationships that supported coordination across these systems and retreating from longstanding federal commitments to enforcing disability rights and advancing opportunity.
Women with disabilities already experience some of the nation’s lowest labor force participation rates and widest wage gaps, while also facing high unemployment. The systems supporting students during the transition from school to work can shape their employment opportunities and economic security well into adulthood. The Trump administration’s actions are reshaping that federal infrastructure, with consequences that will shape economic opportunity for disabled girls and women long before they enter the workforce.
Understanding the School-to-Work Pipeline
More than eight million children and youth receive services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), representing more than 15 percent of all public school students. Federal law requires schools to prepare these students for life after graduation, including postsecondary education, independent living and employment for those who choose to work. Fulfilling that responsibility depends on federal leadership across education, vocational rehabilitation, workforce development and civil rights enforcement. IDEA, the Rehabilitation Act as amended by the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) and disability rights civil protections establish complementary responsibilities across those systems to support students’ transition to adulthood. Throughout this paper, those interconnected responsibilities are referred to as the school-to-work pipeline.
The effectiveness of that pipeline has significant implications for economic security. Disabled women participate in the labor force at lower rates than nondisabled women, experience higher unemployment and earn substantially less. Disabled people are also more likely to live in poverty. Disabled women working full time, year-round are paid just 68 cents for every dollar paid to nondisabled men. Many disabled women of color experience even wider disparities. Research consistently shows that educational opportunity, transition planning, paid work experience and workforce preparation shape employment outcomes long before adulthood. Protecting those pathways is especially important for disabled girls and young women, who already experience some of the nation’s largest employment and wage disparities.
Research consistently shows that stronger transition services improve long-term employment outcomes for students with disabilities. In the 2022–23 school year, 75.8 percent of students with disabilities who exited school received a regular high school diploma, compared with 42 percent in the 1987–88 school year. Research using data from the National Longitudinal Transition Study-2 found that employment experience during high school was among the strongest predictors of competitive employment after high school. Other research using NLTS-2 data has linked aspects of self-determination during high school to later employment, postsecondary education and independent living outcomes.
WIOA subsequently required state vocational rehabilitation agencies to provide Pre-Employment Transition Services (Pre-ETS). More recently, Social Security Administration researchers found that youth with disabilities receiving Supplemental Security Income (SSI) were more likely to apply for vocational rehabilitation services, develop individualized employment plans and achieve higher annual earnings after WIOA’s enactment than before. Youth in states with greater access to Pre-ETS also experienced stronger employment and earnings outcomes.
Preparing disabled students for adulthood requires a federal government role beyond the classroom. IDEA requires transition planning beginning in secondary school, while the Rehabilitation Services Administration administers the public vocational rehabilitation program. At the Department of Labor, the Employment and Training Administration administers WIOA, oversees the nation’s public workforce system, supports Registered Apprenticeship programs, distributes workforce development funding and provides implementation guidance and technical assistance to states and local workforce systems.
Civil rights protections are another essential part of the school-to-work pipeline. The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) investigates complaints, conducts compliance reviews, provides technical assistance and administers the Civil Rights Data Collection, which covers every public school district receiving federal education funding. In fiscal year 2024, OCR received a record 22,687 civil rights complaints, with disability discrimination consistently representing one of its largest enforcement areas. The volume of complaints underscores that civil rights enforcement remains an essential federal responsibility for ensuring disabled students can access the educational opportunities guaranteed under federal law.
Federal civil rights responsibilities extend beyond education into the nation’s workforce system. The Department of Labor’s Civil Rights Center enforces Section 188 of WIOA through complaint investigations, compliance reviews, technical assistance and oversight of federally funded workforce programs. Those responsibilities help ensure that disabled job seekers can access American Job Centers, workforce training and other federally funded employment services on equal terms.
These education, workforce and civil rights responsibilities provide the foundation for the school-to-work pipeline. The following sections examine how the Trump administration is reducing the federal capacity to carry out those responsibilities, restructuring where they reside, and narrowing the federal government’s understanding of its role in preparing disabled students for adulthood.
Three Shifts Reshaping the School-to-Work Pipeline
The federal framework supporting disabled students reflects decades of efforts to strengthen the connection between education, workforce development, vocational rehabilitation and civil rights enforcement. Although that framework has never fully delivered on its promise, policymakers and disability advocates have increasingly recognized that coordination across these systems – and effective implementation of federal responsibilities – improves outcomes for disabled students as they prepare for adulthood and, for those who choose to work, employment. The Trump administration has broken sharply from that approach. It has reduced federal capacity, restructured key institutions and narrowed the federal government’s understanding of its responsibilities for advancing opportunity for people with disabilities. The examples that follow are representative rather than exhaustive. They illustrate three distinct strategies the administration is using to redefine the federal government’s role in preparing disabled students for adulthood and long-term economic security: reduction, restructuring and retrenchment.
I. Reduction: Diminishing Federal Capacity
The Trump administration has significantly reduced the federal capacity that supports states, schools and workforce systems as they prepare disabled students for adulthood.
A. Institutional Expertise
The Trump administration’s workforce reductions have diminished institutional expertise across the federal government. At the Department of Education, at least 1,579 of 3,902 employees – 40 percent – separated by the end of March 2025 through the reduction in force and voluntary separation programs. The losses were concentrated among experienced career staff: 44 percent of employees with 31 to 40 years of federal service separated, as did half of those with 41 to 50 years of service. These departures reduced the people and institutional knowledge available to administer programs, provide oversight and support states and schools.
The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) experienced a particularly significant disruption. OCR enforces federal civil rights protections in education, and disability discrimination represents a substantial share of its work. In fiscal year 2024, OCR received 22,687 complaints, including 8,457 alleging disability discrimination. In March 2025, the Department’s reduction in force affected roughly half of OCR’s employees and closed more than half of its 12 regional offices. The Department recalled affected employees in December and rescinded the reduction in force in January 2026, but roughly half of OCR’s workforce had been unavailable for much of the year. During the first six months after the reduction in force, OCR received more than 9,000 discrimination complaints. The disruption reduced the staff available to investigate complaints and enforce civil rights protections.
The Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division has also lost significant institutional expertise. The administration reassigned experienced career attorneys and shifted enforcement priorities, contributing to an exodus of career staff. By May 2025, about 250 attorneys – roughly 70 percent of the Division’s lawyers – had left or were expected to leave. These departures reduced the experienced attorneys and supervisors available to carry out federal civil rights enforcement.
B. Technical Assistance
Federal capacity also depends on technical assistance and specialized expertise that help turn disability policy into practice. These resources help schools and state agencies implement transition requirements, families navigate complex systems, and workforce organizations make pathways more accessible to people with disabilities. Across the Departments of Education, Health and Human Services, and Labor, the administration has cancelled, threatened, or interrupted parts of this support.
At the Department of Education, the administration disrupted funding for the National Technical Assistance Center on Transition (NTACT:C), which helps education and vocational rehabilitation agencies improve transition services and employment outcomes for disabled students. In April 2025, the Department canceled the competition for the Center’s next funding cycle, raising the prospect that it would end when its existing funding expired. The Department later reversed course, reopened the competition, and funded a new center. The restoration preserved an important resource, but the disruption put at risk expertise and relationships built to help education and vocational rehabilitation systems work together.
At the Department of Health and Human Services, federal funding for the National Research Center for Parents with Disabilities at Brandeis University’s Lurie Institute for Disability Policy ended on August 31, 2026. The Center conducted research and provided training and technical assistance for disabled parents and their families. HHS confirmed that the funding stream that supported the Center has been eliminated after the anticipated funding opportunity for its next grant cycle disappeared. The Center has begun phasing out its operations, threatening a national source of research and expertise developed specifically around the experiences of disabled parents and families.
The Department of Labor has disrupted technical assistance closer to the employment end of the pipeline. In 2025, the Department sent termination notices to recipients of Women in Apprenticeship and Nontraditional Occupations (WANTO) grants, which support efforts to expand women’s access to apprenticeship and occupations where they have historically been underrepresented. The administration’s shift also reached a Department of Labor-funded national technical assistance hub created to expand apprenticeship opportunities for underrepresented workers, including people with disabilities. Jobs for the Future operated the hub with partners that included the Institute for Community Inclusion, which brought disability expertise to efforts to make apprenticeships more accessible. At least some work under the hub was halted following the administration’s executive orders on diversity and equity. For disabled women, these actions reached both efforts to open nontraditional occupations to women and specialized assistance intended to make apprenticeship more accessible to people with disabilities.
Some of these resources have been restored, while others remain at risk or have been interrupted. Across the school-to-work pathway, however, the administration’s actions have made federal technical-assistance capacity less stable and signal an intent to invest fewer resources in sustaining it.
C. Research, Evaluation and Continuous Improvement
The federal government also invests in research, demonstration and evaluation designed to improve educational and transition results for children with disabilities. These investments help develop new approaches, test whether they work and improve practice.
The administration has reduced parts of this capacity. In September 2025, the Department of Education discontinued State Personnel Development Grants (SPDG) that supported state efforts to improve personnel preparation and professional development in special education and transition services. The grants were among 25 IDEA Part D awards identified as terminated. Although the Department continued the SPDG program and opened a new grant competition in 2026, ending existing multiyear grants disrupted state investments designed to improve implementation and outcomes for disabled students.
The administration also cut federal research and evaluation infrastructure. In February 2025, the Department terminated numerous contracts at the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), affecting research, data collection and evaluations; the cuts included all 10 Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) contracts, valued at $336 million. The RELs worked with states and school districts to use research and data to improve education. The Department said it planned to issue new contracts to meet federal requirements, but the cancellations closed the existing RELs and interrupted their partnerships and projects. It also cancelled a separate congressionally required evaluation designed to assess the REL program and inform its improvement.
These reductions leave fewer federal resources dedicated to developing, testing and improving practice. That capacity matters during the transition to adulthood, when schools and other systems must identify gaps, adapt approaches and strengthen the practices that help disabled students prepare for work. Reducing it limits the federal role in supporting innovation and continuous improvement across the school-to-work pathway.
II. Restructuring
The Trump administration has proposed relocating key federal responsibilities for preparing disabled students for adulthood. These proposals have drawn widespread opposition from the disability community because they would separate responsibilities that advocates have spent decades working to align in support of disabled students’ transition to adulthood. Maintaining those connections has been a central objective of disability policy because preparing disabled children for adulthood extends beyond any single agency or program.
A. Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services
The Department of Education’s Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS) oversees IDEA implementation through the Office of Special Education Programs and administers vocational rehabilitation programs through the Rehabilitation Services Administration, connecting federal responsibilities for educating disabled students with services that support their preparation for employment and adulthood. Keeping these responsibilities within the Department of Education has linked special education, transition planning and vocational rehabilitation to the Department’s broader mission of preparing students for postsecondary education, employment and independent living.
In June 2026, the Trump administration announced its proposal to transfer OSERS to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as part of its broader reorganization of federal education responsibilities. The announcement has drawn broad opposition from disability advocates and prompted congressional scrutiny. The proposal also builds on earlier interagency agreements that are already the subject of litigation challenging the administration’s efforts to move Department functions to other federal agencies. The legality of those earlier agreements remains unresolved. HHS plays a critical role in administering Medicaid and supporting community living, but moving OSERS would separate federal responsibility for transition planning and vocational rehabilitation from the department responsible for educating the nation’s students. That change would weaken longstanding connections among education policy, transition services and workforce preparation.
The proposal also comes as HHS is reducing its own workforce and reorganizing disability programs across multiple operating divisions following changes to the Administration for Community Living. Those simultaneous changes raise questions about whether HHS will have the capacity to maintain the coordination federal law requires among education, vocational rehabilitation and employment preparation.
B. Office for Civil Rights
The administration also announced it would transfer many responsibilities of OCR to the Department of Justice. The proposal would shift this work to an agency that itself is undergoing significant restructuring, raising questions about its capacity to carry out these additional functions.
Keeping education civil rights enforcement within the Department of Education has historically connected that work to education policy, oversight and implementation. Shifting significant functions to the Department of Justice could weaken that connection by separating this work from the agency responsible for administering federal education programs. Although the DOJ has long enforced civil rights laws in educational settings, its role differs from OCR’s ongoing oversight and implementation responsibilities within the Department of Education.
III. Retrenchment
The administration has also narrowed the federal government’s understanding of its responsibility to advance opportunity for people with disabilities. Federal civil rights protections have long supported disabled students as they prepare for adulthood and, for those who choose to work, employment. Recent actions signal a more limited federal role in enforcing those protections and addressing barriers to participation.
Congress enacted the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990 to prohibit discrimination against people with disabilities, including in state and local government services. Nine years later, the Supreme Court held in Olmstead v. L.C. that unjustified segregation of people with disabilities violates Title II of the ADA and affirmed the right to receive services in the community when appropriate. The DOJ subsequently issued guidance explaining how the integration mandate applies in practice, including to employment and day services for people with disabilities.
The Trump administration has rejected that approach. In June 2026, the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel rejected the longstanding view that Title II of the ADA and Section 504 impose an integration mandate on states. The following month, the DOJ announced that it would no longer rely on its 2011 Olmstead guidance when enforcing Title II and would reconsider that guidance in light of recent Supreme Court precedent. The administration has since taken that position into court. On August 31, DOJ, on behalf of HHS, joined plaintiff states challenging HHS’s 2024 Section 504 regulations in asking a federal court to vacate the rule’s entire community integration provision as well as integration-related language elsewhere in the regulations. The filing cited DOJ’s June opinion in support of that request.These actions pull the federal government back from enforcing protections that have helped disabled people live and work in integrated settings.
The Department of Labor has adopted a similar approach within the nation’s workforce system. Registered Apprenticeships are one of the nation’s primary pathways into skilled trades and other higher-paying occupations. Yet disabled people, particularly women, remain significantly underrepresented: in 2019, just 1,900 of more than 482,000 active apprentices in the Registered Apprenticeship Partners Information Database System (RAPIDS) were identified as having a disability, and only 12.3 percent of apprentices identified as disabled were women. Federal equal employment opportunity regulations have paired access to those opportunities with enforcement, oversight and technical assistance designed to help ensure apprenticeship programs are open to qualified workers with disabilities and other protected groups. The Trump administration has announced that it will no longer enforce portions of the Registered Apprenticeship Equal Employment Opportunity regulations and has proposed rescinding several longstanding equal opportunity requirements. Those actions signal a narrower view of the federal government’s responsibility for ensuring equal access to one of the nation’s largest workforce development systems.
For disabled students preparing to enter adulthood, these actions represent a significantly reduced federal commitment to using civil rights enforcement to expand educational opportunity, workforce participation and long-term economic security.
Looking Forward
As the 2026–27 school year begins, more than eight million students with disabilities are returning to classrooms while the federal systems supporting their transition to adulthood continue to change. While many of the Trump administration’s actions remain the subject of litigation and congressional oversight, students with disabilities – and the schools, vocational rehabilitation agencies and families preparing them for adulthood – must continue navigating these changes in real time.
The administration’s actions reflect more than a change in policy. They redefine the federal government’s responsibilities despite evidence that schools, states and families continue to rely on federal expertise, implementation support and civil rights enforcement to prepare disabled students for adulthood. The need for those functions has not diminished. Instead, the administration is stepping back from federal responsibilities that support disabled students as they prepare for adulthood and, for those who choose to work, employment and long-term economic security.
For more on why economic security for women with disabilities is weakening under the Trump administration and how their policy decisions will compound over time see Economic Security for Women with Disabilities is Under Attack and Erasing the Evidence: How Attacks on Federal Data and Research Harm the Disability Community.