ED RIFs update: # 5
What has happened in sped world since the US Department of Education reductions in force?
Editor’s note: SET aggregated news about the US federal government’s reductions in force that occurred in the special education offices of the Department of Education since about 10 October 2025. This is the fifth in a series of updates that I’ll be posting here on Special Education Today. At the foot of this message there is a catalog of earlier posts on SET about this topic.
Please note: If you know of an announcement, activity, or news story about the reduction in force related to the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services in the US Government, please advise me. See the thread in the SET chat. Also, please note that the documents in this series grew too long (in bytes,1 not words) to mail readily, so I’m no longer including the images associated with the previous updates. Those links will just be textual. —JohnL
Here is some of what we have learned about the reduction in force at the US Department of Education since the previous update (see “previous coverage” later in this post). This is our latest; it was updated 13 November 2025 at ~4:00 PM, so it doesn’t include content posted by major news organizations after that time
Updates
An important development in current events was a vote to “end the shutdown” or “reopen the government.” According to multiple news sources, things are changing after the US Congress completed negotiations and voted to pass bills that US President Donald J. Trump signed.
One of the most important changes of interest to many readers of Special Education Today is that the agreements reached in the negotiations included a return to work for the 100s of employees of the US Department of Education. More than 400 employees are to be reinstated within 5 days of the passage of the legislation. Many ED employees who were furloughed or had their positions discontinued during the shutdown were responsible for administering functions affecting special education (e.g., handling parents’ complaints, overseeing grants).
Here are some press reports covering the stories emerging with the reopening:
Slate’s Mary Harris had Pepper Stetler as a guest on the podcast, “What Next?,” 10 November 2025 (“Is Special Ed Getting Left Behind?: The Trump Administration is targeting the funds that oversee special education. Will they ever come back?”); listen on your favorite streamer). Slate made a transcript available here (may be behind paywall) on 13 November 2025.
Over on The 74million for 13 November 2025, Linda Jacobson published reporting entitled, “As Shutdown Ends, Education Dept. Resumes Efforts to Downsize: Reviewing block grant requests and writing guidance on school prayer were among the activities interrupted when most staffers were furloughed.”
Writing for Education Week on 13 November 2025, Brooke Schultz published a report entitled “Ed. Dept. Layoffs Are Reversed, But Staff Fear Things Won’t Return to Normal”; she included reporting about how staff members at ED have been on unpaid leave (the work isn’t getting done!) and that members’ are skeptical about whether they actually will return to work.
For NPR on 13 November 2025, Cory Turner reported a story entitled, “Federal special education staff may get their jobs back. But for how long?” Mr. Turner wrote about the 131 employees (out of 135 positions) in the US Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation whose jobs were lost.2
Jessica Blake, writing for Inside Higher Ed for 12 November 2025, published “With Government Reopened, Will Education Department Staff Return?” Her report, which of course has a tilt toward post secondary education, also has content about changes in departments other than ED (e.g., Veteran’s Affairs).
Via Disability Scoop for 11 November 2025, Anna Claire Vollers reported about likely future policies from ED in “Special Education Enforcement Would Be Up To States Under Trump Plan.” As a part of her report, she provided a warning about potential drawbacks to having states responsible for special education by cataloguing some of the problems encountered in states’ special education policies and practices.
As reported by NPR’s Andrea Hsu on 29 October 2025 in “Judge indefinitely halts shutdown layoffs noting human toll,” Judge Susan Illston of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California enjoined the administration of President Donald Trump from laying off employees during the government shutdown. Judge Illston had previously issued a temporary injunctin. The injunctions were not specific to the US Department of Education.
Previous SET coverage
Here are links to posts published earlier on SET that cover aspects of this story.
On 17 October 2025 at hh:hh SET published ED RIFs update: # 4: What more happened in sped world with the US Department of Education reductions in force?
On 15 October 2025 at 2:35 PM SET published ED RIFs update: # 3: What more happened in sped world with the US Department of Education reductions in force?
On 14 October 2025 at 7:30 PM SET published ED RIFs update: # 2:
What additional news is there about the US Department of Education reductions in force?
On 13 October 2025 at 2:00 PM SET published ED RIFs update: # 1
What has been happening in sped world with the US Department of Education reductions in force?
On 12 October 2025 at 5:00 AM SET. published US federal special education workforce reduced: Should we be fretting about losing the entire enterprise?
Footnotes
”Bytes“ is a computing word. It refers to the number of zeros and ones (i.e., “bits”) as a unit. (Remember that computers use binary notation, so a “bit” can only have a value of “0” or “1”). Each different combination of bits in a byte can indicate something more familiar to we humans. Computers very often use 8-bit bytes, meaning there are 8 position in the unit of a byte; that is, there can be a 0 or a 1 in each of eight places (“place value!”) in a byte. Here are some examples (converting to binary (some via ASCII):
“a” = 01100001
“m” = 01101101
“M” = 01001101
“7” (the numerical value) = 00000111
“7” (the ASCII symbol or character) = 00110111
This string of binary bits “01000101 01111000 01100001 01101101 01110000 01101100 01100101” converts to the more familiar ASCII text, “example.” Somebody who actually knows this stuff should check me on these. I could be making mistakes. And, yes, there’s lots of other declarative knowledge connected here, such as UTF-8, ASCII, extended ASCII, and more.
Do your own research. consult the Wikipedia entry for “byte.” Also, try this converter, binary to ASCII converter, or one of the many others available on the Intertubes.
For readers who are keeping track (or just interested), this is another news report that included observations by a member of the SET community. In this case, Mr.
Turner interviewed frequent reader and long-time subscriber Jackie R.