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A first grader reads an entire page on her own after months of specialized instruction. A middle school student with autism delivers his first classroom presentation. These moments are not medical breakthroughs, they are educational ones. 

Unfortunately, our history 鈥� and too often our present 鈥� shows that many students still do not experience classrooms where educational expertise and civil rights protections work together. 

When a student with a disability is singled out and ridiculed because of disability-related behaviors, or when students with unevaluated disabilities are suspended instead of receiving assessment and support, their rights to educational opportunity are being denied in ways our nation鈥檚 laws have long prohibited. Every delay in identifying and correcting these failures deprives students of educational opportunities they cannot recover. 

Students cannot afford confusion about who is responsible for protecting those rights. The Trump administration’s agreement to move responsibility for administering the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act from the U.S. Department of Education to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is based on the mistaken assumption that educational rights can simply be transferred between agencies as an operational function. In reality, doing so risks weakening the protections IDEA was designed to guarantee. 

Similarly, the administration鈥檚 agreement to transfer civil rights investigations and resolutions away from the Education Department鈥檚 Office for Civil Rights to the Department of Justice reflects another significant misconception: that students have time to wait for federal actors to develop the expertise necessary to understand and resolve civil rights concerns in schools quickly, fairly, and in ways that keep students learning. 

Children only get one third grade. One seventh grade. One senior year. Learning is cumulative, and childhood does not pause while governments reorganize. 

A last week to reflect disapproval of some but not all of the responsibility transfers reflected in these interagency agreements.  That vote reflects that these new 鈥渁greements鈥� deserve far more attention than a debate over federal bureaucracy. They raise a fundamental question: Do we still understand that students with disabilities are first and foremost students whose right to learn must be protected by both educational expertise and civil rights enforcement? 

For decades, the answer has been yes. 

IDEA, like Brown v. Board of Education and subsequent federal civil rights laws, affirmed that equal educational opportunity is a right. Its most important contribution was recognizing that in schools, disability is fundamentally an educational responsibility requiring skilled instruction, accommodations and schools prepared to help every student learn. 

Helping a child with dyslexia learn to read. Designing instruction that enables a student with autism to participate fully in class. Developing an individualized education program that balances high expectations and meaningful inclusion. These are not intuitive acts. They draw upon decades of scholarship and professional preparation in learning, child development, assessment, curriculum, instructional design, and educational leadership. 

Lawyers protect educational rights. Educators make those rights real. 

For decades, that partnership has shaped our nation鈥檚 approach to educational civil rights. Education鈥檚 Office for Civil Rights has helped schools understand their obligations, provided technical assistance, resolved complaints without resorting to litigation, monitored compliance and worked to ensure students receive equal educational opportunity. That work requires not only legal expertise but also an understanding of how schools operate, how students learn and how educational systems improve. 

The DOJ plays an essential role through litigation and enforcement, but those responsibilities are fundamentally different from the day-to-day work of helping schools prevent discrimination and resolve problems before students lose years of learning. 

Those functions are complementary, not interchangeable. 

Students learning in school do not experience government through organizational charts. They experience it when a disability evaluation happens on time, or doesn鈥檛; when an accommodation is implemented or postponed; or when a discrimination complaint is resolved before years of instructional time are lost. 

Reasonable people can disagree about the size and organization of the federal government. But educational rights cannot be separated from educational expertise without risking the very outcomes those rights were created to secure. Rights alone do not teach children to read, create inclusive classrooms, or prepare young people for college, careers, and civic life. Skilled educators do. 

And, as this nation learned in and after Brown v. Board of Education, the daily work of ensuring that educators, their administrators and campus counsel understand and apply the legal guarantees of our nation鈥檚 civil rights laws is equally essential to ensuring that every student has an equal opportunity to learn free from discrimination. 

We write from different professions. One of us leads a school of education dedicated to improving teaching, learning and the systems that support education. The other, a former assistant secretary of the Office for Civil Rights, leads a law school center committed to strengthening democracy and protecting civil rights. Our work reminds us every day that educational opportunity depends on both educational expertise and legal protections. 

Our nation did not spend half a century moving toward inclusion only to forget the lesson that made that progress possible: educational opportunity is a civil right, and educational rights are strongest when they remain rooted in the institutions whose mission is helping every child learn.

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