The public education system is designed to serve all students, without exception. Both federal and state laws define and protect this mission.

In This Lesson

Who notices disabilities?

How do schools teach kids with dyslexia?

How do schools teach kids with autism?

How do schools teach kids with attention issues?

How can learning disabilities be evaluated?

What do school counselors do?

What is Section 504?

How does IDEA relate to special education?

What's the difference between an IEP and a 504 plan?

What is Least Restrictive Environment?

How costly is it to teach students with disabilities?

Who pays for the cost of special education?

How does LCFF address special education?

What are SELPAs and how do they work?

Do gifted students get special education?

What tests do special education students take?

---

▶ Watch the video summary

★ Discussion Guide.

Disabilities that affect learning are common. About one student out of six in the US formally qualifies for some form of help to support their learning needs. This ratio has increased over time.

This lesson of Ed100 explains why special education services are needed, who receives help, who provides it, and who pays for it. This lesson also explores the rights of students and families, and how parents can support their kids with special needs. Special education is a big part of the education system, and there’s a lot to know!

How are student disabilities identified?

Some forms of disability are easy to describe, like deafness, blindness or mobility issues. But most common challenges, including dyslexia, dyscalculia, and autism, require time and expertise to diagnose. The majority of students who qualify for special education services either have a speech impairment such as stuttering or a learning disorder such as dyslexia.

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

Parents: you should think of it as your job to figure out if your child needs help, and the earlier the better. Let your teacher know as soon as possible if your child is struggling or you suspect a disability. You are your child's most important advocate, and it can be a complex role. Learning disabilities can be very specific, so they can be easy to miss. Unfortunately, many students are not identified quickly enough for early intervention.

Probably the most common learning disability is dyslexia, “a specific learning disability characterized by difficulties in word reading and/or spelling that involve accuracy, speed, or both.” As much as a fifth of humanity has some form of dyslexia, mostly undiagnosed. Specific disabilities aren’t necessarily associated with general intelligence. For example, Gavin Newsom, the governor of California (2019-27), is known for his deep command of budget details. He is famously candid about the fact that he has dyslexia, which was undiagnosed until early adulthood. He co-wrote a children’s book for families facing similar challenges.

Because reading challenges often go unnoticed, 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 them. Compared to other states, California was a latecomer to this policy, which was implemented in 2025-26. Screening tools were developed for both English-speaking and non-English-speaking students.

In the Ed100 blog
How parents changed reading instruction in California

For decades, students were taught to read using a whole language approach. It was demonstrably disastrous, particularly for students with dyslexia. Change is hard, even when policies shift and the evidence is clear. California has struggled to help teachers shift to approaches that work better, including foundational reading skills such as phonological awareness, phonics, word recognition, and fluency.

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 require 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, a form of ASD, in his opening monologue for Saturday Night Live in 2021.

Many students on the ASD spectrum have difficulty “reading” others. They are disproportionately involved in bullying incidents, usually but not always as the victim.

About a tenth of children aged 3-17 years have a current diagnosis of 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. Boys are nearly twice as likely to have this diagnosis as girls. Roughly half of students diagnosed with ADHD take prescription medication to manage symptoms.

Many other disorders and challenges can interfere with education, such as anxiety, depression, and 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 term for this kind of help is accommodations and modifications. In California in the 2025-26 school year, special education services were provided to 883,862 students in K-12. Services are available in a variety of settings, including regular classrooms, classrooms that emphasize specially designed instruction, day-care, preschool, 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. Establishing whether a child is eligible for special education services requires a process. School counselors can help enormously in schools fortunate enough to have them. 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 required help can be provided by teachers, such as allowing a student extra time to complete work. In other cases, the student needs more expertise, such as help from a psychiatrist. 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 some parents become education policy nerds. Check this useful summary that lays out the differences.

The special education system in California is notoriously complex, and in 2015 a task force set out to reform it with a vision of One System to serve all students. The report is of historical interest as evidence of how difficult it is to change a big system.

Practical advice

If your child 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, read this post from Understood.org.

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, so they can participate in and complete the test. Some students take 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, and a student with exceptional needs should be removed from the regular classroom only if education in the regular classes with supplementary aids and services cannot be achieved satisfactorily. This idea is commonly referred to as placing a student in the least restrictive environment. Of students with disabilities, about two-thirds are taught in general education classrooms for at least 80 percent of the school day.

In 2022, research at Indiana University confirmed that the best way to serve students with disabilities is in general education — not siloed in special education classrooms:

What is Universal Design for Learning (UDL)?

The term Universal Design originated in architecture, with the idea that everyone benefits from well-designed buildings that can provide access to all. In education, the concept is extended to learning: design instruction in ways that work for all students, and permit students 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 to shift the focus from fixing the student to fixing the curriculum, proactively removing barriers so that teachers can 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. Everyone learns a little differently. For some, learning a melody is easy, but mastering a math concept is hard. For some, math clicks but names are hard to remember. Some teachers use the term learning differences in order to include everyone in discussion of how students might need support in flexible ways.

Enforcement of the right to special education

School districts and charter schools are obligated under federal law to provide a Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE) to all students. In 1979 Congress created the U.S. Department of Education, abbreviated either as DOE or ED, partly to enforce this obligation through an Office for Civil Rights (OCR). This office collected data and used litigation as a strategy to enforce laws against discrimination in access to education.

In his 1980 campaign for president, Ronald Reagan opposed the formation of the DOE and the extension of civil rights to education partly on the basis that it created “reverse racism.” In 2026, the Trump Administration moved toward disbanding the DOE administratively by transferring its responsibilities to other agencies and cutting funding for them. Enforcement of civil rights in education became a function of the Department of Justice (DOJ), alongside the FBI and DEA.

If students don't receive the help they are due, they can file a complaint and sue their school district for damages. It happens, and the fact that it happens is part of what makes the complaint system effective.

How many students receive special education?

As of 2026, about one student out of six in public education receives some kind of special education accommodation. The major categories of special education services provided vary by age:

How much does special education cost?

Overall, about one-fifth of California’s current K–12 operating spending goes to special education according to a prominent study in 2026. The amount spent on special education in California is not based on a formula. Students who need special education services have a right to them, and districts must provide them. The state and the federal government provide support to districts for this purpose, as we will discuss. But there is not a formula.

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’s Office (LAO) delivered an overview of special education systems to provide lawmakers with high-level policy guidance. Ed100 extended the LAO findings in 2026:

According to an analysis by the LAO, the average annual cost of educating a student with disabilities is almost triple the cost to educate a student without disabilities, with enormous variation:

School districts have a mandate under federal and state law to serve all of their students, including those who require special education. In recognition of this mandate, both the federal and state governments commit funds each year specifically for special education.

These federal and state funds don't fully cover the costs, and school districts pay the remaining portion locally. The unreimbursed portion is sometimes called encroachment, a term that irritates families whose children have special needs. The accounting term encumbrance is somewhat better.

In the 2026-27 budget, California increased special education funding by $2.4 billion to reduce this encumbrance. Not adjusted for inflation, it was a 43% increase from the 2025 Budget Act. The new funds were substantially marked for distribution through SELPAs (see below), which should expedite getting the funds where they are needed efficiently.

Special education funding is outside the state’s main system

California’s 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, California’s system 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 for special education does not follow the student, so 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, or 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. In 2026, the system was a focus of study for the Getting Down to Facts III project and the state legislature considered a bill to create an independent council that would craft recommendations by 2030, probably drawing on the study. For information about policy changes as they come, or don't, subscribe to EdSource. It's free.

The mysterious role of counselors

Counselors play essential roles in Special Education. School counselors are trained to recognize developmental concerns and mental health risk factors and to provide counseling. They also help identify students who should be assessed to determine if they are eligible for special education support. Teachers or counselors acting alone cannot qualify a student for special education services; eligibility is determined through a formal evaluation and team process. It can get complicated.

Once upon a time, most schools in California had counselors.

Today, California schools make do with some of the worst levels of counseling support in the nation. The state’s data system for transparency about staffing in schools, DataQuest, conceals counselor data under a combined count of pupil services personnel, a mishmash category that includes counselors, social workers, nurses, occupational therapists, and many other professions.

Luckily, the federal government obligates most school districts to disclose some details about student/counselor ratios. Based on this source, it’s possible to estimate that something north of a third of pupil services employees in the state are counselors. An analysis by Ed100 in 2026 suggested that student/counselor ratios have probably improved over the past decade, both in California and in the country as a whole:

Even with this improvement, California students still have very poor access to counselors. Few states have invested in school counselors sufficiently to reach the average caseload ratio of 250:1 recommended by the American School Counselor Association.

California’s scarcity of school counselors may play a part in 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?

What about gifted students?

“Gifted” does not fall into one of the 13 classifications of special education. However, being gifted does not disqualify a student from special education or 504 services. These children are referred to as twice exceptional.

Unfortunately, a child's giftedness may mask a disability, or, in reverse, the child’s disability may mask the child’s giftedness. Because of a disability, a gifted student may be thought of as lazy or struggling. More on this subject in the Ed100 blog.

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 July 2026.