The Boston Globe headline we’ve all been dreading…

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“Rising Costs for Special Education are Impeding Pay Raises for Teachers, Districts Say.”[1]

While this headline is very concerning, sadly, it was predictable and is not surprising. What is surprising is this: The long-building crisis it describes is finally out in the open. Rising special education costs impede school programs and opportunities for every public-school student. There, I said it.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m a passionate supporter of public education for all students, including students with disabilities, and worked in that arena since 1964 — as a teacher, hearing officer (administrative law judge) adjudicating special education disputes, school attorney, and author; and I’m a parent and grandparent of children who were or are in public schools and a citizen of our great nation who wants it to thrive. I’ve seen it all and have written several books about public education. We do have huge challenges.

If we actually believe (I do not) that more than 20% of our students are disabled — that is one out of every five students![2] — then the current situation — funding shortages for general education because the funds are spent for special education — will only get worse, much worse.

Why so? For the same reason that this headline was predictable. Let’s think this through. US public education has many programs that target various student groups with different needs and requirements, but only one program has the privileged status of being an individual “entitlement” — the right to benefits and services granted by law. Under the federal law, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), first enacted in 1975, students with disabilities and their parents have this status.

Today, the law is implemented at the federal, state, and local levels throughout our nation. Under various names, the IDEA has existed for 49 years. Its purpose is to ensure that all students with disabilities (SWD) have access to a free appropriate public education. The law is enforced both through the expansive bureaucracy that’s been built and through the mandatory due process dispute resolution system. Under this law, parents of SWD have the right to dispute any education program that the district offers to their child. They can seek an administrative hearing and ultimately, judicial review. Alas, lawyers have taken over. Special education has grown a costly mansion industry of specialists, educators, consultants, advocates, lawyers, hearing officers, judges, bureaucrats, and paper pushers at all levels of government. This individual entitlement is unique in US public schools.

No other group of students has such a right — not minority students, not immigrants, not low-income students, not English learners, not advanced students, not average students. No one.[3]

Special education is the ultimate example of mission creep — the gradual broadening of the law’s purpose and mission. It is also an example of how good intentions can go awry. In 1975, the IDEA was enacted because, at the time, many SWD were routinely barred from school or ended up in the back of classrooms without services. During that 1970’s civil rights era, Congress enacted this adversarial due process, entitlement approach to assure enforcement its new law. But times have changed.

Now we face the opposite challenge. The law succeeded! All SWD have access to school programs. To educate them, we have created a huge infrastructure of rights, procedures, endless box-checking and red tape, meetings, paperwork for teachers, and, too often, long Individualized Education Programs (IEPs), some more than 30 pages long. Unfortunately, much of today’s special education effort goes to implementing procedures and mindless compliance, which, too often, are unrelated to helping students learn well.

Yet, even with the new reality built over these 49 years, the law has not fundamentally changed — except to grow ever bigger and more adversarial. Together — the services, bureaucracy, and due process — continue to raise school costs. Thus, this worrisome headline.

Let’s be honest. What did we expect if we ever thought of the long-range consequences of this law? If we create one program within our nation’s public school system of 16,800 districts and 49.6 million students which offers an entitlement for one group of students and their parents — that program will expand incrementally and increasingly. So here we are.[4]

It gets worse. Fairness issues arise as more general education programs get cut or reduced (no more music; no more advanced math, larger classes, etc.) for lack of funding. This leads more parents to view their children as possibly needing special education supports, especially as the stigma for requesting services has worn off over the years. In short, this crotchety old system is unsustainable. The numbers bear this out.

Nationally, in the 2022–23 school year, 7.5 million students ages 3–21 received special education and related services under the IDEA. This is a doubling of special education student enrollment from 1976–77 (8 % vs. 15%).[5]

It gets even worse. While special education enrollment continues to rise, the general education population enrollment has declined or remained flat. Between 2012 and 2022 (during COVID), while special education enrollment increased from 6.4 million students to 7.5 million (its highest number to date), public school enrollment, which was at its highest in 2019 at 50.8 million, declined by almost 4%. In 2024, it was at 49.6 million. [6]

Clearly, this situation is not sustainable. We need a fix. Now. What to do? We have students to educate. We have students with disabilities (SWD) to educate. We need to educate all students in order for them and for our nation to thrive. It’s a big challenge.

Here are three suggestions.

1. Consider other paths to support students. The two largest groups of students now served by this law are those who have specific learning disabilities (SLD) at 32% and students with speech and language impairments at 19% of all SWD. Taken together, these two groups make up more than half of all SWD.

Tragically, a large percentage of students with SLD are so-labeled because they didn’t learn to read or do basic math in the K-3 grades. There are many reasons for this, including the fact that the US is still bound up in methodology disputes: the “reading wars” –endless battles between the phonics and “whole language” approaches and the “math wars”. For the sake of our little children, these “wars” need to end.

Since speech and language impairment is the second largest category of SWD, let’s encourage all adults to focus on early language acquisition in families and the community, including preschools, by speaking endlessly to and with very young children. Recall the 1995 landmark study about the “30 million-word gap” that highlighted the reality that many poor children hear or use fewer words than other children and enter kindergarten already behind. Schools then have to play catch up.

In short, prevention — getting little children to read, do basic math, and speak more before third grade is a far better national approach than trying to play catchup later. We need to reduce the number of SWD by teaching these important life skills to very young children.

2. Consider whether the entitlement is needed any longer. Do we still need it now that all SWD have school access and programming? If so, what purpose does it now have? Even asking such questions is super challenging since our government is very bad at retracting rights or entitlements. In fact, I can’t think of an example when that was done successfully. If only Congress had included a sunset provision in this law back in 1975 — assuring the law’s end once it achieved its purpose — to be replaced, perhaps, by a new law. Instead, 49 years of this system has created a huge industry of special interest groups and inertia with damaging mission creep, waste, and misguided policies. Yes, it’s a huge step to even ask these questions — but perhaps we’re in luck.

3. Timing is everything. Consider whether now is the time to press for change. Today, we have two encouraging reasons to do just that.

First, the recent election opens the opportunity for us to rethink and redo many government programs — including this one.

Second, we’re on the cusp of the 50th anniversary of this law, signed on December 2, 1975 by President Gerald Ford. Besides celebrating its success in providing access to education for all SWD, let’s dare to dream big and open a debate about the way forward — how to teach students, including students with disabilities, in a system that is sustainable and fair for all.

Let’s give ourselves permission to ask big questions: How might we rethink the system? Do we still need this entitlement law? If so, what is its purpose now? Is there a better way forward? Can we tweak/amend it? How do we return schools to the leadership and authority of educators, instead of bureaucrats and lawyers? Can we focus on best practices for children — not for procedures, box-filler uppers, or prevailing in due process hearings?

As we embark on today’s promising political opportunity and celebrate the law’s 50th anniversary, I hope we can transform the worrisome headline into a wake-up call going forward. Let’s create a system for our 21st century reality and work together for a bright, successful, learning-based US public school system for all students.

[1] November 17, 2024. This headline ran while teachers in three Massachusetts school districts were on strike.

[2] As they do in Massachusetts and several other states.

[3] There may be a reader or more who thinks the solution is to set up entitlements for more groups. In my view, that would be disaster for public schools — though it would be good for lawyers.

[4] https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=372

[5] https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/the-number-of-students-in-special-education-has-doubled-in-the-past-45-years/2023/07

The percentage of public school students served under IDEA varies by state. Here are some examples:

Pennsylvania, New York, and Maine: 21%

Idaho and Hawaii: 12%

Puerto Rico: 37%

Northern Mariana Islands: 11%

U.S. Virgin Islands: 9%

[6] I found numbers hard to compare over time. For one source, please visit https://nces.ed.gov › fast facts › display.

This was originally posted on Medium

Elon Musk and Vernon Jones asked for advice. Here goes!

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Elon Musk and Vernon Jones asked for advice. Here goes!

Dear Mr. Musk and Mr. Jones,

Amazingly — as I’ve been watching and reading the news, it turns out that both of you have asked for similar advice! So, I hope it’s alright that I’m addressing you together. You want to know how to spend money and promote ideas and policies that will move the needle forward and make a real positive difference for our nation. Thank you for that question and invitation, Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, and Vernon Jones, Georgia state representative.

For half a century, I’ve focused on education — first as a teacher, then as a school attorney, and now as a reformer and writer. I’ve learned a few things that I’d like to share — most pivotally, that education is the vital key to maintaining our nation and democracy and that we are failing so many of our students and our nation. As an immigrant English-language learner in 4th grade, I experienced how wonderful public schools can be — they were for me. But now, so many of our students are failing and losing out on the opportunities our nation holds for them — especially students in poverty, minority students, English language learners, many students with disabilities, and many other vulnerable groups. Gaps between those students and others are widening. The pandemic has made the situation worse — even dire.

Yet, in our centers of power in Washington and elsewhere, responses to crises generally involve creating new programs or funding current (often failing) ones.

My solution? Let’s look at the research before we jump in. It tells us to work with families at home. Work with moms, dads, grandparents, and other caretakers with children aged 0 to 5. Our solution to school failures and widening gaps among students lies in helping children before they get to kindergarten. Because many children come to school unprepared to learn, let’s do the right thing. Let’s be guided by efficacy and research before we create new programs or throw more good money after bad.

Research supports the benefits of a more direct (and undoubtedly less costly) approach. In the field of education, it makes sense to pay attention to a child’s home situation when he or she comes to school unprepared. Home is where the child’s first teachers live and is the most practical place to start preparing children for the social and educational experiences they will have in school. Home is where children’s educations begin with their parents and caregivers — especially in the vital area of language acquisition. From there, their education can branch out to daycare centers, preschools, or schools. As I see it, education does not start with an institution — other than the institution of home with family.

I suggest that we start in the home because powerful research supports the efficacy of this approach. In 1995, Professors Betty Hart and Todd R. Risley turned early-childhood education on its head with their report, Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experiences of Young American Children. Frustrated by their experience with programs that had no lasting effect on children’s language and growth, they sought a different route. Hart and Risley tracked verbal interactions in forty-two “well-functioning” families of infants and their parents in different socioeconomic situations — children whose parents were middle class/ professional, or lower/working class, or on welfare. Once every month until the children in the study reached age three, the researchers visited their homes, counting the number of words the children experienced.

They discovered that the numbers in the different groups varied widely, creating the now famous “30-million-word gap.” That is, children whose parents were on welfare heard and processed a reported 30 million fewer words in the first three years of life than did children of professional parents. I remember President Obama referring to this research in his speeches.

Even if that oft-cited number is too high, and even if other researchers have questioned this study (as they have), the essential message was astounding back in 1995 and still resonates today: education begins with children’s first teachers at home! The early life experiences of many children from lower-class or welfare families often does not prepare them to be “ready to learn.” Once in school, many of these children fall further and further behind. We know that if a child does not read by third grade, that child is more likely not to complete K-12 education. Some of these children enter the special-education system as students with disabilities, especially children in the categories of students with learning, speech or language disabilities (which comprise close to 60 percent of all students with disabilities served by the law). The bottom line: The importance of early-language acquisition at home cannot be overstated, especially as we know that early gaps continue into the school years. See, for example, Jessica Lahey, “Poor Kids and the Word Gap,” The Atlantic, October 16, 2014, http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/10/american-kids-are-starving-for-words/381552/

Given this reality, I am troubled that too often the push for early-childhood education circles back to the earlier, often disappointing institutional programs outside the home! Please help us here! Please use your creativity and clout to lead us to better ways.

Where is evidence that creating new programs will be effective on a large scale? See the long history of inconclusive evidence for the effectiveness of Head Start, a federally funded program, and similar programs. Of course, there are gems of schools — public and private, regular and charter, but they are not scaled to large systems.

The Economist’s “In the Beginning Was the Word” echoes this caution:

In January (2014), Barack Obama urged Congress and state governments to make high-quality pre-schools available to every four-year-old…That is a good thing. Pre-school programmes are known to develop children’s numeracy, social skills and (as the term “pre-school” suggests) readiness for school. But they do not deal with the [language] gap in much earlier development that [research has] identified. And it is this gap, more than a year’s pre-schooling at the age of four, which seems to determine a child’s chances for the rest of his life.”

Feb. 22, 2014, http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21596923-how-babbling-babies-can-boost-their-brains-beginning-was-word

Why do we not, instead, follow the research and good practices on language development and pursue the direct avenue at home? Why do we not proactively work with parents and children in the first place? If parents do not realize how important their role can be, let us take this opportunity — and duty — to share with them the value of talking with, reading to, playing and singing with their babies. The key is to talk, read, and sing!

Pockets of promising efforts are currently under way. We need far more. Here are some samples of programs for families of children up to five years of age.

· A program in Providence, Rhode Island, called “Providence Talks” sends trained visitors into homes to do what is described above. Home — Providence Talks.

· Too Small to Fail’s “Talking is Teaching: Talk, Read, Sing.” Too Small To Fail

· California’s “First 5,” a state initiative enrolling parents and caregivers in research-supported practices; First 5 California — State Site.

· Zero to Three. Home • ZERO TO THREE.

· Start Early, formerly An Ounce of Prevention; Homepage | Start Early.

An ounce of prevention, indeed! In order to ensure equity for young children, we need to scale these in-home efforts toward national policy to help parents be as good at teaching as they can be. They can then send their children to school ready to learn, often without a need for any disability label.

Mr. Musk and Jones. You are both amazingly creative. Help us help our children and our nation! Let’s talk! Perhaps you/we can create prizes for parents and caregivers who are “doing the right thing” for their children. We need to be positive and encouraging. We need to find heroes at home! Prizes? Perhaps a ride in a space ship or in a Tesla?! Let’s honor and reward and encourage people. Together, we need to end the “opportunity gaps” that now thwart the lives of so many little kids — before they even start!

Mr. Musk and Mr. Jones, please help us here! I for one — and many others — stand ready to work with you on this vital crucial effort.

Thanks for reading,

All the best,

Miriam Kurtzig Freedman, JD, MA

This was originally posted on Medium

The IMPOSSIBLE Special Ed Fix!

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The IMPOSSIBLE Special Ed Fix!

We’ve heard about the “IMPOSSIBLE burger” — making burgers from vegetables, not beef. Some people think it’s actually yummy!

So how about the IMPOSSIBLE Fix for special education!

It’s time and it’s not complicated: focus on teaching and learning for all students, general and special education, not procedures, rights, due process, litigation, and the ever-present anxiety-laden fear of litigation that so wrenches today’s schools, teachers, students, and parents.

For the 80–90% of students with disabilities who have mild and moderate needs and are educated mostly in general education classrooms, and their general education peers, focus on learning in schoolrooms — not their parents’ fights in courtrooms.

Notably, in 2017, the Supreme Court, in Endrew F. v. Douglas County, acknowledged the existence of two student groups who receive special education. We know that 10–20% of them have severe or profound needs, and often require complex and costly services. For these students, I believe it’s time to convene a summit to plan a new way forward.

The IMPOSSIBLE Fix focuses on the 80–90% of students with disabilities who have mild or moderate needs and are mostly in general education classrooms. It’s time to substitute the entitlement and due process rights they have had since 1975 when the law was enacted to ensure that all students with disabilities receive education services. That goal was achieved long ago. We now educate more than 6 million students under this law — 13–14% of all students! The entitlement, the only one in our schools, is no longer needed, in my view. Uncapped, it is costly and has become dysfunctional, damaging, and often impedes good education practice.

Really? End the entitlement and due process? That sure is radical! Yes, and probably IMPOSSIBLE. But, let’s at least consider this path. I see it as the only way to fix the mess we’re in. And, if we can’t end it — let’s limit and cap it.

Imagine a 2nd grade teacher with 24 students — five of whom receive special education services. She knows she has to take care of those students first — lest a dispute or hearing arise! How does that help all students learn? How is that fair to those children and the other 19 in the classroom? How is that best practice?

I’ve been writing and speaking about reform at least since 1995. It seems like forever! My writings and presentations are usually well-received, and I often hear: “You’re doing important work. Keep at it.” “Good luck with that!” And the most poignant, “You’re saying exactly what I’ve been thinking and have been afraid to say….”

Yet, nothing really changes until, hopefully, now. Over the last 5–10 years I’ve sensed as new feeling… that more and more people are willing to consider real change. Here’s how we can get to where we need to be to focus on schooling and learning for all students, including the 80–90% of students with disabilities and their general education peers.

1. That table. Invite the right people — all stakeholders people to the table. Since special education students make up around 13–14% of all students, have them be that percent at the table. Fill the table with general education teachers, administrators, parents who work with and love -average students, advanced and gifted students, English language learners, students in poverty, students in wealth. You get the idea. All students. No more trying to fix special education by inviting only those in the “biz” with a sprinkling of others. Instead, invite 13–14% of stakeholders who work with and represent special education — teachers, administrators, parents.

Then, seek honest input from those at the table. Ask open ended questions. Build a summary that everyone takes back to their lives, shares, and revises, until you repeat that meeting at that table. And repeat until we fix the mess we are in.

2. The options. Create attractive options that will substitute for the cumbersome and burdensome system that, after all the paperwork, meetings, and other procedures leaves special education teachers with just 27% of their time for — you guessed it — teaching! Many leave the field as a result, creating a special education teacher shortage.

Creative attractive options already exist. Here are but a few examples.

Check out Vermont’s sweeping education reform. https://info.dmgroupk12.com/

And see excellent work in competency-based education in Westminster, Colorado. https://www.westminsterpublicschools.org/cbswps

I’m also eager to learn more about Karen L Mapp’s program for parent and family engagement at Harvard.

Oh, there are so many other examples of schools and others doing effective work for all students. It’s time to open the floodgates!

Instead of the time and money spent on nonsense –paperwork, compliance, litigation — nonsense because these do not improve student outcomes and, often, get in the way —

Instead of due process and litigation, seek the “the IMPOSSIBLE Fix” of dispute resolution options that are relationship and trust-building and do not involve litigation.

Instead of labeling students as gatekeepers to services, through the failed “wait to fail” model, provide early and steady interventions for all students — from the most needy to the most advanced.

Instead of endless focus on student weaknesses — what they can’t do — focus on their strengths and passions — what they can and love to do!

Instead of training parents to become mini lawyers to fight against the very schools that educate their children, train parents to help their children learn and benefit from all the gifts that schools offer.

3. The benefits. Treasure benefits that will result from implementing the IMPOSSIBLE Fix. These include more time for teaching and learning, better partnerships and more trust between schools and parents, fewer teachers abandoning the field, moneys spent on best practices in classrooms, not winning strategies in court rooms, and the best news of all: better outcomes for all students, as teachers will have more than a mere 27% of time for teaching.

It’s time to roll up our sleeves and get to work to make the IMPOSSIBLE — actually POSSIBLE! Let’s create the Impossible Special Ed Fix!

This was originally posted on Medium