Podcasts · What Fresh Hell: Parenting, Relationships, and Making Life Better, with Two Funny Moms

You Might Also Like: Zero Reject from Understood.org

21 Oct 2026 · 32 min · Bonus

Beth Gellman-Beer spent her whole career fighting for kids with disabilities — first as a student written off as “lazy,” then as a federal civil rights attorney who found her dream job protecting students like her younger self. But on one ordinary night, a phone call changed everything: Her entire office had been eliminated.

In the premiere of Zero Reject, reporter Anya Kamenetz traces Beth’s journey from an unfair fourth-grade classroom to the front lines of a sweeping overhaul at the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights — the agency families turn to when a school isn’t meeting their child’s needs. Anya breaks down the reduction in force that gutted OCR’s staff, what it means for the 25,000 families still waiting for a response to their complaints, and the plan to dismantle the Department of Education altogether. With fewer people to enforce the law, what happens to the students the system was built to protect?

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