Disabilities that affect learning are common. About one student out of eight in the US formally qualifies for some form of help to support their learning needs. A larger fraction of us have milder needs.

The public education system is designed to serve all students, without exception. Both federal and state laws define and protect this mission. This lesson of Ed100 summarizes the people, policies, processes and programs that are involved in getting students the education they need, especially when it's different from what other kids need.

There's a lot to this topic, so let's start with the students before turning to the schools and systems that serve them.

How are student disabilities identified?

Some forms of disability are easy to describe, like deafness, blindness or mobility issues. But the bulk of disabilities, which are the focus of this lesson, are subtle. The most common challenges, including dyslexia, dyscalculia, and autism, require time and expertise to diagnose.

Parents: You are your child's most important advocate.

Parents: it is your job to figure out if your child needs help, and the earlier the better. The education system is not well set up to identify learning issues and take appropriate steps for each student over time. You are your child's most important advocate, and it can be a complex role.

Many people are very smart and also have a learning disability. For example, Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, is known for his deep command of budget details. He is also famously candid about the fact that he has dyslexia, a common disability that makes reading difficult. As much as a fifth of humanity has some form of dyslexia, mostly undiagnosed. Like many people, Governor Newsom didn't discover that he has dyslexia until he was an adult.

The state of California took an important step in 2023 by committing to routinely screen all students in grades K-2 for risks of dyslexia and other reading issues so that teachers can help students address it. Compared to other states, California was a latecomer to this policy, which is for implementation in 2025-26. It is particularly challenging to screen for risks of dyslexia accurately in students who are learning English. California hopes to address this through the design of a new screening tool.

For decades, students were taught to read using a whole language approach that was demonstrably disastrous, particularly for students with dyslexia. Legislation to address the problem is scheduled to take effect in 2024.

A growing number of children, disproportionately boys, have a disability in a broad category known as Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), which affects behavior, communication, and interaction with others. Some people with severe autism struggle to function without considerable support. Others who are "on the spectrum" can be very high-functioning or brilliant. Elon Musk famously revealed that he has Asperger's Syndrome in his opening monologue for Saturday Night Live.

Kids on the ASD spectrum usually have difficulty "reading" others. They are disproportionately involved in bullying incidents, usually but not always as the victim.

Less than a tenth of children have Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), which interferes with a child's capacity to consciously choose and control where they direct their attention. The hyperactive flavor of ADHD tends to particularly concern educators because students can distract others and complicate efforts at classroom control, especially in large classes.

Many other disorders and challenges can interfere with education, from anxiety to depression to trauma. But for now let's move to the next step: When a parent or educator suspects that a student has a disability that interferes with their education, how are schools meant to respond?

What is Special Education?

Schools are obligated under law to provide special support for students who are identified as needing it. In education lingo, the word for this kind of help is accommodations. In California in 2022-23, special education services were provided to over 800,000 individuals, newborn through twenty-two years of age. Services are available in a variety of settings, including day-care, preschool, regular classrooms, classrooms that emphasize specially designed instruction, the community, and the work environment.

Early identification and support for struggling students is essential, but how does that actually happen?

In practice, most learning disabilities are first spotted by parents or by elementary school teachers in regular classrooms. In schools fortunate enough to have them, counselors can help enormously. With the permission of parents, psychologists assess a student to help determine if the child is eligible for special education. After that, the psychologist works with the classroom teacher and other professionals to determine what services the child needs. Sometimes the level of help required can be provided by teachers, such as allowing a student extra time to complete work. In other cases, the help required calls for more expertise. A necessary early step is an evaluation to determine whether the student is eligible for Special Education or a 504 plan.

Each of these laws has separate eligibility requirements. A student who is not eligible for special education may be eligible for a 504 plan. (Yes, this is part of the reason why parents of students that need extra support sometimes become education policy nerds.) Check this useful summary that lays out the differences.

Partly in recognition of the challenges that special education inflicts on families and educators, a task force of California leaders made efforts to reform processes into One System, with some success.

Practical advice

If your son or daughter needs special education services, it can be very helpful to keep good records including things like contact information, notes from meetings with teachers, and report cards. For guidance about what good notes look like for a parent of a student with a disability or disorder, watch this video from Understood.org.

In order to evaluate learning progress for all students, students with disabilities are included in annual state testing. Students can be given extra time or other accommodations (such as having the test read to them) in order to enable them to participate in and complete the test. A small fraction of disabled students is given a different test, the California Alternate Assessment (CAA). (See Lesson 9.3 for more.)

What does Least Restrictive Environment mean?

Under special education law, all students are general education pupils first, including those with disabilities. Inclusion in general education classrooms should be considered the first setting for all pupils. This idea is commonly referred to as placing a student in the least restrictive environment. A majority of students with disabilities (almost 57 percent) are taught in general education classrooms for at least 80 per cent of the school day.

Special classes, separate schooling, or other removal of a student with exceptional needs from the regular educational classroom should only occur if education in the regular classes with supplementary aids and services cannot be achieved satisfactorily.

In 2022, research confirmed that the best way to serve students with disabilities is in general ed — not siloed in special education classrooms. “Students with disabilities spending 80% more time in inclusive classrooms did better in reading and math than peers spending more time in special education classrooms.”

What is Universal Design for Learning (UDL)

A related but less legally-loaded idea about how to meet the classroom learning needs of kids is known Universal Design for Education (UDL).

Everyone learns a little differently. For some, learning a melody is easy, but mastering a math concept is hard. For some, math is easy but names are hard to remember. Some teachers use the term learning differences rather than disability in order to soften the distinction and include everyone in discussion of how students might need support in flexible ways.

Great teachers get students involved in their own learning, permitting them to show their understanding in different ways. The 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) mentions this approach using the term Universal Design for Learning (UDL). The big idea is that UDL, executed well, can enable teachers to support students with varying needs in the same classroom. ESSA did not attach new funds or incentives to the UDL approach, but its use of the term raised its profile. Critics of UDL argue that there is little evidence to support it.

A cloud of evolving terminology surrounds the overlapping ideas about how to address students' learning needs. Some of this imprecision is intentional. If the goal is to support students across a blurry boundary of special needs, terms that become too rigidly defined can defeat the purpose and become isolating. Inclusive Learning is a term that attempts to get the idea across, explicitly including students with formally-defined special learning needs in "mainstream" classes.

The costs of Special Education

Students with special education needs have a legally-enforceable right to accomodations. School districts and charter schools are obligated under law to provide a "free appropriate public education" to all students. If students don't receive the help they are due, they can sue for damages. It happens.

The cost of providing special education accommodations has risen over time, driven in significant part by increasing rates of severe autism. In late 2019, the California Legislative Analyst Office delivered an overview of special education systems to provide lawmakers with high-level policy guidance. It's a really important report, rather overlooked because it arrived at about the same time as a certain virus.

Among other findings, the report documents an important pattern about the grade in which schools identify student disabilities. By discovering issues earlier, the state can hope that districts will address them earlier and more effectively in the future.

Source: California Legislative Office (LAO)

States use varying processes to identify students that qualify for accommodations, and the percentage of students identified varies, too. Nationally, about 15% of students have an IEP. California districts identify fewer special education students, about 13% of enrollment as of 2020, according to KidsData.org.

According to the LAO report, the average annual cost of educating a student with disabilities is almost triple the cost to educate a student without disabilities.

Both the federal and state government commit funds specifically for special education, in recognition of the mandate placed on school districts to serve students. These funds don't fully cover the costs, and the portion of the cost of special education that is locally funded grew from 49 percent of the cost in 2007-08 to 61 percent in 2017-18. The unreimbursed portion is sometimes insensitively called encroachment or encumbrance, terms that irritate families whose children have special needs.

Federal and state funds specifically for special education don't fully cover the costs. Local funds contribute, too.

The state budget for 2022-23 mitigated this issue somewhat, adding about $150 per student for special education.

Special education is funded as a block, not per student

The state funding model (LCFF) doesn't include special education.

In California, money is allocated to school districts based on some student attributes, but disability status is not among them. In effect, this policy assumes that students with special needs are evenly distributed among the general population. The logic of this policy is to avoid creating incentives to label kids, but it’s a flawed assumption with an unequal impact.

Additionally, the policy creates a bittersweet problem for schools that do a great job of educating students with disabilities. If their success becomes well known, eventually they will attract more families that want a great program for their kids. Money does not follow the student. A school can become a victim of its own success.

What's a SELPA?

To help mitigate these financial impacts, and also to create some economies of scale for uncommon and high-cost disabilities (such as blindness), the state distributes disability funding through a regional network of Special Education Local Planning Areas (SELPAs.) State law requires that every school district, county office of education, and charter school belong to a SELPA. Most of the state's largest school districts have their own SELPA; smaller districts join together and negotiate the use of funds for students.

The SELPA system has many critics. A steady parade of reports has called for changes, so far without result, but the direction seems serious. For information about policy changes as they come (or don't), subscribe to EdSource. It's free.

The mysterious role of counselors, allegedly

Once upon a time, most schools had counselors.

Today, most California schools probably don't have any counselors at all. Access to school psychologists is likely even more scarce. This partly explains the state's relatively low rate of identification of students qualified to receive special education services. If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it qualify for special education?

Why "probably" and "allegedly"? Because data collection about staffing in California schools is appalling. It's a tragic example of California's Alpha Centauri data system. As of October 2023, the freshest available count of school counselors was four years out of date, like a time capsule from Alpha Centauri. For what it's worth, the latest news from Alpha Centauri indicates that in 2018-19, well before COVID-19 was a thing, districts reportedly employed just 10,416 counselors in the entire state, but maybe that number wasn't much good, either. Someone in Sacramento might have more current and convincing data, but if they do they aren't talking.

What about gifted students?

The special learning needs of gifted students are frequently overlooked. Some school districts set aside money to create programs or services for them, but there is no special funding in California to do so. Learn more about gifted students in the Ed100 blog.

This lesson was last updated in November 2023.