Schools Lag in IDing Kids Who Need Special Education. Are They Catching Up?

States Begin to Tackle Backlog in Spec Ed. Identification

Schools fell far behind in identifying students for special education services during the pandemic. Buta recent analysis of one state’s data shows they are working at a fast pace to address the backlog.

What researchers can’t yet answer: whether schools around the country are making the same progress demonstrated by the data from Washington state, and how those delayed identifications may affect the educational trajectories of students who missed multiple years of services because of the unprecedented interruption.

In Washington state, about 8,000 elementary school-aged students missed identification for special education services between March 2020 and March 2022, according to a study from researchers affiliated with the Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research at the American Institutes for Research. That’s about a 20 percent drop over what would be expected given previous years’ trends, researchers found earlier this year.

But new data added in a November update found a significant increase in identifications in the time since, suggesting Washington state schools have addressed about two-thirds of the students they may have missed during the early years of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Our basic question is, are these missed identifications permanent? Are students going to miss 12 grades of special education that they probably should have been receiving, or are those services just delayed a year or two?” said Roddy Theobald, the deputy director of CALDER and co-author of the study. “The new data shows a substantial rebound.”

The pandemic caused significant interruptions to special education services, especially in the earliest months of sudden school closures, when occupational therapists, speech pathologists, and other staff couldn’t meet with students face to face to address their educational needs.

Schools faced challenges identifying students for special education services

Much less discussed is how the interruptions affected students who missed out on the chance to be evaluated for special education services.

In remote learning, classroom teachers may have missed the chance to recognize the warning signs of disabilities that are more noticeable in face-to-face environments, administrators told Education Week at the time. Districts also faced a torrent of logistical challenges, staffing shortages, and few clear guidelines about how to meet their special education obligations during the upheaval.

For individual students whose disabilities went unrecognized, the gaps could have lingering effects, even after they are finally identified for services, advocates have said. For students with specific learning disabilities, like dyslexia, a few years without needed supports could have a snowballing effect on their mastery of foundational learning skills, like reading.

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act requires schools to provide compensatory services to students with disabilities to make up for any gaps in services. But students with delayed evaluations have no guarantee that schools will make up for the additional services they might have received had their disabilities been identified earlier.

Washington schools enrolled 1.15 million students in the 2019-20 school year, the first year of the pandemic, about 506,000 of them in kindergarten through 5th grade. About 90 percent of the state’s special education identifications occur during elementary school, CALDER researchers found.

To track schools’ progress in addressing the backlog, the researchers studied rates of special education identification for Washington state elementary school students dating back to 2010, which allowed them to estimate what rates may have been in 2019-20 if not for the pandemic interruption. Identification rates plummeted when schools closed in March 2020, the analysis found.

In a promising sign, the newly updated data show Washington schools identified students well above expected rates in the 2022-23 school year, suggesting they are catching up on missed evaluations.

After the state’s schools identified just 7,700 students in the 2019-20 school year and 8,025 students in 2020-21, they identified 11,048 in 2021-22 and 12,665 in 2022-23—figures above projected levels given historic trend lines, Theobald said.

Rebounds in special education identification are more pronounced for some students

After breaking down the data further, researchers found students with speech/language impairments had higher rates of identification than their peers.

Students with specific learning disabilities, like dyslexia and dyscalculia, which affects math learning, saw lower rates of rebound, the analysis found. That may be because the tiered interventions schools adopted to address learning recovery for all students—which provide greater levels of support according to students’ needs—have echoed the kinds of targeted help that would be provided through special education programs, Theobald said.

A representative from Washington’s state education department did not respond to a request for comment on the rebounding identification rates, but Theobald said the state had made it a priority to help schools catch up.

Because states’ special education programs, policies, and resources vary, it will take more research to determine if schools in other states are recovering at similar rates, researchers said.

In a separate study using similar methodology, Michigan State University researchers found rebounding rates of identifications for Michigan elementary schools in the 2022-23 school year.

“This suggests some ‘catch-up’ accounting for delayed or missed identifications, but likely not enough at this point to overcome the pandemic induced deficit,” the researchers wrote in the study, published in October in the journal Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis.

It may be difficult for schools to continue the recovery momentum. Districts had to obligate their remaining federal COVID-19 recovery funding by Sept. 30, and many had used that money to cover staff salaries and the cost of additional services. Plus, districts face a perennial unfilled need for special education teachers and support personnel, which may grow more severe as they face budget cuts, inflation, and declining enrollment.

“This is just such a clear example of where the pandemic had such a tangible impact on something really important schools,” Theobald said. “We’ve got to keep studying it and learning from it.”