"Growing identification rates, explosion in the complexity of student needs"

May 28, 2026, The crisis in special education: IDEA's unfulfilled promise

Ashley White is an assistant professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison with the Department of Rehabilitation Psychology and Special Education.

When Congress passed what was then the Education for All Handicapped Children Act in 1975, it made a historic commitment: every child with a disability would receive a free appropriate public education. In exchange for federal funding, states ​agreed to ​guarantee procedural protections, individualized programming, and access to the general education ​in the​ least restrictive environment.

Historically, the Individuals with Disabilities Education or IDEA Act has been a bipartisan priority. Yet​ today,​ this covenant is being tested in ways that would have been unimaginable even a decade ago. 

Since its last reauthorization in 2004, IDEA has operated in a state of legislative limbo. Congress has continued to appropriate funds under its existing framework, but the law has not been meaningfully updated to reflect the realities of a post-pandemic educational landscape — one marked by increased staffing shortages, growing identification rates, and an explosion in the complexity of student needs.

Unlike the Science of Reading movement, which has generated bipartisan enthusiasm and forward momentum, special education finds itself on the other side of the policy ledger: vulnerable, underfunded and increasingly exposed. 

The federal government has never fulfilled its original funding promise under IDEA. When the law was enacted, Congress pledged to cover 40 percent of the excess cost of educating students with disabilities. It has never come close. For decades, federal contributions have hovered, by some accounts, near 18 percent, leaving states and local districts to absorb costs that continue to climb. Now, with sweeping federal budget proposals targeting education spending and the ongoing restructuring of the U.S. Department of Education, the gap between promise and practice threatens to widen further. . . .