We often hear that special education has grown too large. But much of that growth may reflect a shift of general education’s responsibility onto a system that was never designed to carry it. What happens when students require special education because they didn’t receive the foundational instruction they needed in general education?
When Congress passed IDEA in 1975, the assumption was that general education would successfully teach most children to read. Special education was designed to provide specialized instruction for students whose disabilities prevent them from learning through typical instruction, not to serve as the default provider of basic reading skills.
Kindergarten from about the 1950s into the 1980s was seen as a transitional time to work on developmental skills. Starting in the 1990s, it transformed into a full school day focused on academics, reducing time available for play, oral language, executive functioning and social development.
To meet these rising academic expectations, many districts adopted balanced literacy in the late 1990s. In practice most students were encouraged to guess words based on pictures, context clues or the first letter, rather than sound out the word. This “three cueing era” continued, and reached a peak in the 2010s.
During this same time period, special education expanded significantly. Reading disabilities became one of the largest disability identification categories. Because students often needed to demonstrate years of academic failure before receiving the appropriate evaluations, this practice became known as the “wait to fail” model. By the time specialized instruction begins, many children have experienced repeated failure and a widening achievement gap.
If general education stops reliably teaching children to read, special education becomes the safety net. When special education becomes the primary intervention system, academic help is often accessed later, through a more expensive and bureaucratic process. Special education teachers spend increasing amounts of time delivering foundational academic instruction instead of specialized instruction, while students continue advancing through grade level content without mastering prerequisite skills.
The “wait to fail” system also widens existing inequities. Families with financial resources can pay for private neuropsychological evaluations and evidence-based tutoring without waiting for the school’s response. Students from lower income families, English language learners and students of color are more likely to depend entirely on the public school district to identify and address learning needs.
Educational outcomes are shaped by more than curriculum. Economic conditions, federal policy, accountability systems, disability law, teacher preparation, scientific understanding and the opinions of the general public all interact. Schools are good at measuring success by their own rules, but are slow to recognize and respond when those rules are producing avoidable failure. For students with disabilities, like all students, those delays have lifelong consequences.
As more students enter special education, it becomes more visible, more costly, as well as more politically contentious. Staff, families and students may face increased scrutiny or resentment, even though the pressures stem from the broader instructional challenges rather than disability itself.
Students with disabilities deserve appropriate services. The goal isn’t fewer students receiving special education. The goal is ensuring that every student receives the instruction and support they need, when they need it. General education should own foundational learning, including literacy, mathematics and behavioral skills, at every grade level. That means timely and appropriate interventions when students fall behind.
In Northampton, our district has begun adopting evidence based reading instruction and many teachers and specialists are working hard to support students within a challenging educational landscape. Compared to larger districts facing tens of millions of dollars in structural deficits, our financial challenges are relatively modest. We have an opportunity to prevent more students from falling behind.
Strengthening general education, by investing in literacy, mathematics and student support, for all ages, is essential to reducing the inequity in student outcomes. We can advocate for state legislation requiring structured interventions for struggling students at every grade level. Let’s build a school system where no child is left to wait to fail.
Karen Kauschen lives in Florence.