The Changemaker — September 2026
A federal reorganization, worse shortage numbers, and a live test of LRE
Four developments from the field this month, and what each one means for a director.
Special education oversight moved to HHS. Here is what changed and what did not.
On September 10, staff from the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services moved into the Department of Health and Human Services building in Washington. Kelly Rogers, who had led OSERS since May, resigned the following day. Her statement expressed confidence in the new arrangement.
The relocation follows interagency agreements announced June 16, which shifted day-to-day management of OSERS, including the Office of Special Education Programs, to HHS, and began moving the Office for Civil Rights' disability enforcement work toward the Department of Justice. The Department of Education describes the change as reducing duplicated administration. The Arc of the United States and the National Down Syndrome Congress have called it unlawful, arguing it reframes disability around diagnosis and treatment rather than classroom access and progress.
Congress has not resolved the question. The FY2026 appropriations bill discouraged the transfer in non-binding language. In July the Senate HELP Committee advanced S. 5046, which would bar the Education Department from moving OSERS and three other offices to outside agencies, on a 13-9 vote. Chair Bill Cassidy voted against it, saying he opposes moving special education to HHS but objected to how the bill was drafted. There has been no floor vote.
What did not change
IDEA's requirements. An interagency agreement does not amend the statute or 34 CFR Part 300. The Department has stated that FY2026 IDEA formula and discretionary grants continue to run through the Education Department's existing grant system, with allocations moving to HHS systems as the transition proceeds. A district's obligations under 34 CFR 300.323 are the same in September as they were in May.
What did change
Who staffs the work. The people who answer technical assistance questions, run discretionary grant competitions, and set OSEP's monitoring priorities now sit inside an agency organized around health care delivery rather than K-12 systems. Districts that rely on OSEP for Part B data questions or monitoring findings should plan for slower responses and less familiarity with school-based service delivery during the transition.
For this fall, that argues for resolving compliance questions against IDEA, Part 300, and your state's process handbook first, and treating federal technical assistance as a second read rather than the starting point.
- AOTA. (2026, June 17). New executive action to move IDEA from ED to HHS is a concern for special education. Read more.
- K-12 Dive. (2026, June 29). Ed Dept addresses "misconceptions" about special education outsourcing. Read more.
- Hoodline. (2026, September). Special education chief quits days before staff forced into HHS building. Read more.
- The Arc. (2026, July 9). Moving special education and civil rights out of Education Department risks a patchwork of rights for students with disabilities. Read more.
- usehighlighter.com. (2026, August). Did special education move to HHS in 2026? What changed and what didn't. Read more.
- 34 C.F.R. § 300.323 (IEPs in effect).
Special education is now a reported shortage area in 45 states
The Learning Policy Institute's 2026 shortage scan lists special education as a reported shortage area in 45 states, ahead of science at 41 and math at 40. Across all subjects, states reported at least 425,412 positions either vacant or filled by someone not fully certified for the assignment, roughly one in eight teaching positions.
Vacancy counts understate the problem in special education because of when people leave. Michigan's Education Policy Innovation Collaborative found special education teachers are 31 percent more likely to leave their position than elementary teachers, and 55 percent more likely to leave mid-year, a pattern the researchers describe as consistent nationally. A spring resignation can be planned around. A January departure usually means a long-term substitute finishing the IEP cycle.
Related service roles are strained on the same timeline. Paraprofessional vacancies run into the double digits in some large districts, and ASHA's 2024 schools survey found 78.5 percent of employers of school-based speech-language pathologists reported more openings than qualified applicants.
Why hiring alone does not close the gap
Two causes show up consistently in the research: pay that does not match the complexity of the role, and caseloads larger than the support available to carry them. Michigan League for Public Policy analysts cite both, and the finding is not specific to Michigan. Filling a position without addressing either one tends to produce another vacancy within a year or two.
That makes retention the underused lever in most districts. A hire who leaves in January costs more in instructional disruption and compliance exposure than a district saves by not funding mentoring or caseload relief for the staff already in the building.
A place to start: how many special education staff left mid-year over the past two years, and whether exit conversations named caseload or support. If that is not tracked anywhere, this year's hiring numbers become next year's exit numbers without anyone being able to say why.
- Learning Policy Institute. (2026). State Teacher Shortages 2026 Factsheet. Read more.
- Education Policy Innovation Collaborative. (2026). Key Findings from the 2026 Teacher Shortage Report. Read more.
- GHR Education. (2026, July 23). Understanding the special education staffing shortage: trends, challenges, and solutions. Read more.
- Spartan Newsroom. (2026, March 13). State struggles with shortage of special ed teachers. Read more.
State apprenticeship money is building teacher pipelines, not director pipelines
Registered apprenticeship for special education teachers is scaling this year with substantial funding behind it. Rhode Island secured a $3.68 million federal grant for a pathway run through Rhode Island College, Cranston Public Schools, and Narragansett School System, with additional funding contemplated through 2031. Pennsylvania's Department of Education has funded special education teacher apprenticeships across several intermediate units, some moving paraprofessionals into certified roles, others building post-baccalaureate routes for career changers. The District of Columbia and Anchorage run comparable programs with special education tracks.
The design is consistent across them: an aspiring teacher works in a classroom under a mentor while finishing degree and certification requirements, earning wages instead of taking on debt for a credential they are not yet using. For classroom staffing, the model works.
The gap the funding does not reach
None of it addresses who runs the department. Every model in this year's state announcements trains classroom teachers. None creates a credentialed route into special education administration, the role that carries compliance, monitoring, personnel, and federal reporting. A district can grow its own teachers and still have no one ready when the director leaves. That turnover carries its own exposure: a new director inherits a caseload system, a monitoring history, and an open due process file, often with no structured handoff into any of it.
If your state's apprenticeship investment is aimed at classrooms, it helps your staffing pipeline and does nothing for succession. Those are separate problems with separate timelines.
The Lab's Assistant Director of Special Education apprenticeship, registered with the Department of Labor, was built for the administrator route rather than the classroom route. Whether other organizations move into director-level registered apprenticeship over the next year is still an open question.
- Rhode Island Department of Education. (2026). RISE Initiative press release. Read more.
- HRTechEdge. (2026). Rhode Island wins $3.68M grant to build special education workforce. Read more.
- Pennsylvania Department of Education. (2025). Pennsylvania sees boost in certified teachers as educator workforce strategy delivers results. Read more.
- EDSI. (2026, April 30). Apprenticeship 2026: steer your apprenticeship to success. Read more.
An OCR investigation in Houston tests what LRE requires in practice
Last issue covered the Tenth Circuit's ruling in Jacobs v. Salt Lake City School District on placement decisions. A federal investigation in Houston is now testing the same question in a district large enough that the outcome will be watched elsewhere.
In May, the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights opened a disability discrimination investigation into Houston ISD over a plan to consolidate certain special education students onto a smaller set of designated specialty campuses beginning in 2026-27. HISD serves more than 21,000 students receiving special education services. The district says about 5,000, primarily those in self-contained settings, would move. The roughly 15,000 in inclusive settings would not. OCR is examining whether the plan violates Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act, both of which require placement to be decided individually rather than through a policy that groups students by disability category.
HISD's position is that consolidation improves access to services in the least restrictive environment and the quality of instruction available in self-contained settings. OCR's then-Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights said in announcing the investigation that placement decisions must be individualized rather than driven by categorical policy. Both statements can hold at once, which is what makes the case useful to watch: a district can believe it is improving services and still face a legitimate inquiry if the mechanism sorts students by category.
The investigation is also moving through a civil rights apparatus in transition, with OCR's disability enforcement work shifting toward the Department of Justice under the June restructuring. Advocates have raised the same objection here as with the OSERS relocation, questioning whether an agency without a K-12 placement record will apply the individualized-determination standard with the fluency OCR's education staff built over decades of LRE casework.
What this means for a district restructuring programs
The record has to show individual decisions. Consolidating self-contained or specialty programming can be defensible under Section 504 and Title II, including where it genuinely improves staffing ratios, but only where each affected student's placement was reconsidered by their IEP team on its own facts rather than assigned by category as part of the system-wide plan.
Worth checking now: if your district changed the location or structure of a self-contained program in the last two years, is there individualized IEP team documentation for each student affected, separate from the district planning document that described the change.
- U.S. Department of Education. (2026, May 8). Office for Civil Rights opens disability discrimination investigation into Texas school district. Read more.
- Click2Houston. (2026, May 8). U.S. Department of Education opens disability discrimination investigation into HISD special education proposal. Read more.
- Houston Chronicle. (2026, May). HISD under federal investigation over plans for special education services. Read more.
- Disability Rights Texas. (2026, May 11). U.S. Department of Education announces investigation into HISD for disability discrimination. Read more.
- 34 C.F.R. §§ 300.114-300.117 (least restrictive environment requirements).
The apprenticeship pathway for special education administrators
Registered with the Department of Labor and built for the director role rather than the classroom.
See the ADSE apprenticeship →