Fisheye Camera lens - like HAL from 2001
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Paranoid perhaps?

Trump is back. And some of his allies seem to be targeting the US Department of Education in general and special education in particular. I felt the need to preserve some special education data. Paranoid? Perhaps. Let me know what you think.

Paranoid?

President Trump signed an Executive Order explicitly targeting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion… and Accessibility. Project 2025 has also targeted the US Department of Education and Special Education (my commentary in the works).

What I am immediately concerned about is the loss of important data if the US Department of Education website is removed or special education is “de-prioritized”.. further. 

As I see it, the following data is key to understanding and potentially improving education for disabled students in the US, no matter what happens in the short term:

  • The annual IDEA reports to Congress (The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act requires an annual report).
  • The annual letters to the US states on their compliance with IDEA.
  • The “618 data” that drives the report to Congress.

I’m a bit of a rusty programmer, so I got some help from Microsoft’s Co-Pilot AI tool to put together some Python scripts to download all of this data… just in case (AI is not perfect, but it did help me get this done more quickly).

Mission Accomplished

(I think)

I had always intended to pull the disability data (special education) from the US Department of Education as well as elsewhere and set up a system to keep up-to-date as new information is posted. So, I had a “plan for a plan” ;) .. that I got busy with this week.

Based on what I’ve seen, I’m not sure many people (anyone?) really look at this data, which is somewhat disheartening, but inspired me to make sure and get this done. 

If you know of someone that is interested in this material, I am happy to share – it is public information after all!

Other disability data is either harder to extract or is at less immediate risk or has a lot of other eyes on it:

  • Disability Data (especially seclusion and restraint information for schools) at the Department of Justice
  • Healthcare data (multiple locations)
  • Employment / Demographic Data (Department of Labor and Census)

If there is something you think should be archived outside of the US Government or want to help connect this effort up with others, let me know!

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