Unlocking Potential

Rethinking What’s “Special” About Special Education

50 years after IDEA promised to deliver the help students with learning and behavioral differences need, millions are still being left behind. It’s time to understand why—and how to fix it.

A Diagnosis Epidemic

Special education was created in 1975 to close the gap between what students need and what the regular classroom provides. But no one anticipated just how many would need help. In the half century since, the number of students found eligible for special education has exploded.

Identification Rates Represent the Tip of an Iceberg

Identification rates are a function of eligibility criteria. They tell us how many students are found eligible, not how many students whose learning and behavioral differences affect their success in the classroom.

Moving the Goalposts Changes Who Gets Help

Changes to eligibility criteria have pushed identification rates higher even as more students in need of support are excluded.

Tap the iceberg to see how eligibility changes visibility

Same Struggles, Different Support

By design, special education is exclusionary: not everyone is entitled to support. But that entitlement isn’t based on objective need; it’s based on subjective determinations about the cause of students’ struggles and their untapped potential. Both of these students need the same evidence-based reading instruction, but only one of them is entitled to support.

The Geography of Subjectivity

This subjectivity produces variability. Whether students secure support depends more on where they happen to live than whether they have an objective need.

“We don’t have one special education system. We have fifty."

— Ashley Jochim

Identification Rates for All Disabilities Across U.s. States

~4%

~20%

More Labels, Same Inequities

Letting more students in hasn’t addressed the core problem: too many students are being left behind.

Students identified with a disability are no more likely to achieve literacy benchmarks today than they were in 1998. Nor does additional time in school–and the support of special education–seem to improve things.

In 2024, 67 percent of 8th graders tested below basic in reading on the National Assessments of Educational Progress Students compared to 72 percent of 4th graders.

Percentage of Students Identified with Disabilities Scoring Below Basic in Reading

Rethinking the system

These gaps are a function of today’s system: a regular classroom that was designed to provide everyone the same thing coupled with a special education system that fails to reliably make up for its shortcomings.

A different system could produce better results.

Instead Of…

Sorting students into categories

Investing in today’s diagnostic bureaucracy

Expecting teachers to do it all

Training educators in general & special education silos

Relying on one-size-fits-all instructional tools

Funding rigid programs

We Must…

Identify and act on students’ needs

Use assessments that position educators to act

Make teaching a team sport

Prepare all teachers for diverse classrooms

Invest in tools that support differentiation

Provide flexible, accountable resources

Explore the Data: CRPE’s Unlocking Potential Data Center tracks 50 years of state-by-state special education trends. Now, we’re inviting educators, researchers, and advocates to help explain the patterns.

Join the 2025 DataSprint: Submit your analysis of the data. Five participants will receive $10,000 stipends to continue their exploration.

Read the White Paper: Learn why special education has become the stopgap for a public education system that was never designed to address learner variability.

Join the Discussion: Get updates, provide feedback, and participate in a series of solution-focused virtual town halls.