National Parents Union Statement on the Dangerous Shift of Special Education to the Department of Health and Human Services

March 21, 2025, Boston, MA – National Parents Union President Keri Rodrigues released the following statement in response to the dangerous shift of special education to the Department of Health and Human Services:

“As the fierce voice of America’s parents, the National Parents Union strongly condemns any effort to move oversight of special education from the U.S. Department of Education to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). This is not a minor bureaucratic reorganization—it is a fundamental redefinition of how our country treats children with disabilities.

“In Project 2025, the closure of the Department of Education would move special education services—guaranteed under federal law as an educational right— to the Department of Health and Human Services, opening up the potential for the recategorization of learning disabilities as medical issues, subject to approval by health bureaucracies and, alarmingly, by insurance companies. We know how this story ends: insurance companies, which already have a long and shameful history of denying care and services, will now have the power to deny the very supports our children need to learn and thrive. Insurance companies are threatening to cut off anesthesia mid operation – do we really think they are going to pay for our kid’s reading interventions? 

“Our children are not sick. They are not broken. They are not insurance claims. They are students with rights to a free and appropriate public education and they deserve access to education—not gatekeeping by private insurance adjusters and conspiracy theorists.

“This deeply troubling shift is made even more dangerous by the appointment of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services in the Trump administration. RFK Jr. has repeatedly cast doubt on the legitimacy of autism as a real diagnosis and has a well-documented record of spreading dangerous misinformation. Putting someone with this perspective in charge of children’s services—especially for children with disabilities—is a betrayal of families who have fought for decades to secure educational rights and protections for their kids.

“We must call this what it is: an effort to dismantle protections, disempower families, and turn education into a battleground for profit-driven insurance corporations. We will not allow it.

“The National Parents Union demands:

• Special education must remain within the Department of Education.
• Our children’s learning needs must be addressed through educational, not medical, frameworks.
• Insurance companies must not be given veto power over our children’s learning opportunities.
• We must increase, not restrict, access to special education services in schools.
• The voices of parents, not political appointees or corporate executives, must guide the future of special education.
• We will not stand by as our children are pathologized, marginalized, or denied their rights. We will fight tooth and nail for a system that sees the potential in every child—and invests in helping them reach it.”