special education teacher evaluation sample

Because differences are our greatest strength

Download: Sample letters for requesting evaluations and reports

By Amanda Morin

Expert reviewed by Kristen L. Hodnett, MSEd

What you’ll learn

Letter template: request an evaluation, letter template: accept the evaluation plan with conditions, letter template: reject the evaluation plan, letter template: request the evaluation report, letter template: request an independent educational evaluation at public expense.

Putting your evaluation requests in writing can help protect your rights. Choose from the templates below based on where you are in the evaluation process. Copy and paste the text into an email or letter. Then use the notes in the template to add details about your child.

The sample letters were adapted from  The Everything Parent’s Guide to Special Education  (Adams Media, 2014). 

Once you’ve decided to ask the school to evaluate your child for special education , it’s time to write your request. Use this letter template to help you include key details:

Describe your concerns about your child.

Mention what you and the school have done to try to help.

Include the date that you are making this request. (By law, the school district must respond to your request within a certain number of days. This time frame varies from state to state.)

Request to begin the evaluation process PDF - 32.6 KB

6 steps to request a free school evaluation

Evaluation rights: What you need to know

After you request an evaluation, the next step is for your child’s school to approve or deny the request. If it’s approved, you’ll receive an evaluation plan. The school team can’t move forward until you give your consent.

If you like the plan, sign it. If you think the plan doesn’t cover all of your concerns, use this letter template to ask the school team to add more testing.

Accept the Evaluation Plan With Conditions PDF - 29.4 KB

The school evaluation process: What to expect

Informed consent: What you need to know

By law, the school evaluation has to be comprehensive. It also has to be multidisciplinary. This means it must look at more than one aspect of your child, and it must include a variety of tests and data.

Use this letter template if you want to reject the school evaluation plan. This template can help you raise concerns about key areas, like types of testing or an evaluator’s credentials.

Reject the Evaluation Plan PDF - 29.0 KB

Different types of evaluations

After the evaluation, the school team will meet to decide if your child is eligible for special education. You have the right to receive your child’s evaluation report before this meeting.

Use this letter template to ask for a copy of the evaluation report at least a few days before the meeting. Reading the report in advance can give you time to process the information and think about what you want to ask.

Request the Evaluation Report PDF - 26.6 KB

What evaluation testing results mean

What to expect at an IEP eligibility meeting

Do you disagree with the result of your child’s school evaluation? Or are you worried that it wasn’t thorough enough? You have the right to pay for a private evaluation, and the school must consider those results. But you also have the right to ask the school district to pay for an independent educational evaluation (IEE).

Use this letter to request an IEE at public expense. The school district can approve or deny your request. If your request is denied, the school district has to explain why.

Request an Independent Educational Evaluation at Public Expense PDF - 32.8 KB

Independent educational evaluations (IEEs): What you need to know

I disagree with the school evaluation results. Now what?

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Evaluating Teaching in Special Education Classrooms

No matter the setting that school leaders evaluate teaching – no matter the grade level, the content area, the instructional model – typically, you’ll hear us say “good teaching is good teaching.” The Network for Educator Effectiveness indicators of effective teaching practice generally can be applied to any classroom.

However, some school districts have desired a more careful and complete way to evaluate special education classrooms. And recent research has emphasized the need for such nuance in the evaluation of special education teachers. In a 2022 Boston University study , researchers found that special education teachers consistently scored lower when evaluated through the Danielson Group’s Framework for Teaching classroom observation instrument. The researchers determined the reason for the lower scores was based on the evaluation tool, which emphasized indirect instruction, and not on the teaching, which requires more explicit, teacher-directed instruction in special education.

While NEE recommends that the NEE Teacher Standards and Indicators are used for all teachers, there are opportunities to incorporate additional indicators for special education teachers to recognize their varied, unique responsibilities and more clearly define expectations for their work. The following NEE indicators may be considered as part of a special education teacher’s evaluation.

Section 1: Observable Indicators (Classroom Observations)

Indicators 2.1 and 6.2 are observable in classroom observations.

NEE Indicator 2.1: The teacher supports cognitive development of all students.

Indicator 2.1 focuses on teachers supporting the cognitive development of all students. The instructional support that teachers provide in this indicator is most likely viewed through the instructional activities that are planned and used and the scaffolding the teacher provides as the activity takes place.

Instructional strategies in cross-categorical classrooms may include grouping students with similar needs and using a few instructional strategies for different groups, such as teacher-led instruction, pair-share, self-reflection, flash cards, or provision of additional challenges. Instructional activities should focus on the supports that students need either from the goals developed and monitored in their IEP or through course content.

Instructional activities that support cognitive development in a special education classroom must provide the student with multiple opportunities to:

• Engage with new material.
• Connect new material to prior knowledge and/or experience.
• Use organizational structures or tools to process ideas.
• Find relevant patterns or principles.
• Apply the new material in a real-world context.

The instructional activities should be provided multiple times during a ten-minute observation with guided practice that leads to mastery of a skill. Activities should use repetition with teacher guidance and feedback to ensure students are completing the proper steps and applying the skills in an accurate manner.

In a co-teaching environment, the special education teacher may support the cognitive development of all students by scaffolding the learning of the processes and content covered with appropriate modifications and accommodations. These modifications and accommodations can come directly from the IEP of each student, or be based on the cognitive development needs of students within the lesson or unit.

In some cases, supporting the cognitive development of students may also be evident by the teacher’s implementation of a plan that s/he creates to help individual students connect learning across the content or in life skill situations. The training plan may focus on one key measureable skill, isolated to one setting, that a student can master with repetitive practice. It may then measure that skill being mastered in other prominent settings, before being measured across all settings or content areas.

NEE Indicator 6.2: The teacher’s communications with students are sensitive to cultural, gender, intellectual, and physical differences.

Indicator 6.2 focuses on how a teacher communicates with diverse students. In special education, communication strategies may include accommodating visual, hearing, or mobility disabilities, or communicating in different ways so students with different intellectual abilities may understand. While verbal communication may be the first thought with this indicator, all communication should meet the level of cognitive development of the students and be behaviorally and professionally appropriate.

This indicator does include non-verbal communication, such as cues used in the classroom to make the environment structured and predictable. These cues may include posting clear and accessible daily schedules, using visual or auditory cues that provide students with needed and repetitive information, modeling and developing hands-on demonstrations on how to complete a task, and replacing words with objects or pictures to further understanding.

Also, Indicator 6.2 can include patience that a teacher exhibits when communicating with students with special needs. Because these students may need repeated communication techniques and cues, a teacher’s patience in communicating with students is indicative of sensitivity to students.

Section 2: Documented Indicators (Written Comments)

Indicators 7.2, 7.5, and 8.3 are not observable but can be used to document when a special education teacher serves in the role of student case manager. Evaluators can add formative comments on a classroom observation report or summative comments on a summative evaluation report.

NEE Indicator 7.2: The teacher uses assessment data to improve learning.

A sample comment for teachers meeting or exceeding their responsibilities may be:

[Teacher] has a caseload of [number] students. [Teacher] uses assessment data to improve learning by collecting assessment data and then using that data to help inform recommendations for students’ programming needs. [Teacher] shares assessment data with the IEP team to assist in making decisions intended to improve student learning

NEE Indicator 7.5: The teacher communicates student progress and maintains records.

[Teacher] has a caseload of [number] students. [Teacher] communicates progress and maintains records for each student. [Teacher] effectively conducts IEP meetings, writes IEPs, and communicates student progress toward reaching IEP goals. [Teacher] engages in timely communication with parents, and others who need to know, regarding meeting times and dates, and documents that communication in student files. [Teacher] maintains each student’s IEP file in accordance with legal and procedural requirements. [Teacher] meets all expectations in this area.

NEE Indicator 8.3: The teacher observes, promotes, and supports professional rights, responsibilities, and ethical practices.

[Teacher] has a caseload of [number] students. [Teacher] observes, promotes, and supports professional rights, responsibilities, and ethical practices. [Teacher] complies with all legal and procedural requirements. [Teacher] maintains appropriate confidentiality regarding student information. [Teacher] is ethical in interactions with students, parents, administrators, and staff. [Teacher] complies with requests in a timely manner and works diligently to support students.

For an all-in-one resource on evaluating teachers in special education classrooms, download NEE Teacher Indicators for Special Education , available to member schools in the NEE Data Tool (login required). The document provides additional sample formative and summative comments for teachers not meeting their responsibilibies.

The Network for Educator Effectiveness (NEE) is a simple yet powerful comprehensive system for educator evaluation that helps educators grow, students learn, and schools improve. Developed by preK-12 practitioners and experts at the University of Missouri, NEE brings together classroom observation, student feedback, teacher curriculum planning, and professional development as measures of effectiveness in a secure online portal designed to promote educator growth and development.

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Using Classroom Observations in the Evaluation of Special Education Teachers

Authors: Nathan D. Jones, Courtney A. Bell, Mary Brownell, Yi Qi, David Peyton, Daisy Pua, Melissa Fowler, Steven Holtzman

Project Summary

Key Findings

To address this question, the authors examined more than 200 video lessons from a sample of 51 elementary and middle school special education teachers in Rhode Island. Lessons were then evaluated by expert raters and scored using two observation systems—the FFT and the Quality of Classroom Instruction (QCI), the latter of which is believed to more closely reflect the kinds of instructional practices valued by the special education community.  Overall, the authors find that FFT has only limited use in assessing the quality of instructional practices most valued in special education.

Implications and Recommendations

These findings provide the first comprehensive empirical evidence of a how a popular observation system functions for special education teaching. There are critical implications for school, district, and state leaders as they consider the impact of these observation systems on students and teachers. In addition to the often high-stakes decision-making associated with evaluation ratings, these findings suggest  that special education teachers may not be receiving the type of evidence-based feedback that they need to improve their practice; and, in fact, they may instead be encouraged to implement instructional strategies counter to best practices for serving students with disabilities.This is also important for general education teachers, as they may be steered away from the explicit, systematic instructional practices shown to be particularly beneficial both to students with disabilities as well as all students, for instance, learning how to read. 

Project Resources

• Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis (January 2022)
• Working Paper

Supporting Resource – Observing Special Education Toolkit: A companion set of resources to help principals and other administrators effectively observe special education teachers and provide meaningful, evidence-aligned feedback

Policy Brief

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Welcome to NASET's Assessment in Special Education Series . This is an  education resource that focuses on  the process used to determine a child’s specific learning strengths and needs, and to determine whether or not a child is eligible for special education services.  Assessment in special education is a process that involves collecting information about a student for the purpose of making decisions. Assessment, also known as evaluation, can be seen as a problem-solving process.

LATEST ISSUE of NASET's ASSESSMENT IN SPECIAL EDUCATION SERIES

Required responsibilities in screening and assessment of students.

As part of the role of special educator, you may be called upon with other staff members to test students lacking intellectual or academic information in their files, or high-risk students for a suspected disability. These forms of testing require several different procedures and may range from the gathering of basic academic, behavioral, and intellectual levels to a more comprehensive assessment for participation in special education. You will also need to be aware that these procedures involve tests that may require a parent’s permission so check with the district policy. There are three procedural forms of testing that you will need to understand. In these cases, the special education teacher would be used as the educational evaluator (educational diagnostician). This role may require assessment in a variety of settings:

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PAST ISSUE OF Assessment in Special Education Series

Available issues in this series:, introduction to assessment and overview, part i -identification of high risk students, part ii -referral to the child study team, part iii -obtaining parental informed consent for assessment, part iv -understand the requirements of an evaluation for a suspected disability, part v -the multidisciplinary team and the comprehensive assessment, part vi - understand the various methods of assessment options available to the multidisciplinary team, part vii - basic statistics and scoring terminology used in assessment, part viii - understanding a students behavior during the assessment, part ix - understand the components of a professional report, part x - understand what is required for a presentation to the iep committee, part xi - what is curriculum-based measurement and what does it mean to a child, part xii - assessment and accommodations, part xiii -  the common core standards, part xiv - accommodations in assessment, part xv - special education anacronyms, part xvi - comprehensive tests of academic achievement, part xvii - special education interpreting: challenges and legal aspects, part xviii - sharing information about state assessments with families of children with disabilities, part xix - understanding screening.

An assessment in special education is the process used to determine a child’s specific learning strengths and needs, and to determine whether or not a child is eligible for special education services. Assessment in special education is a process that involves collecting information about a student for the purpose of making decisions. Assessment, also known as evaluation, can be seen as a problem-solving process (Swanson & Watson, 1989) that involves many ways of collecting information about the student. According to Gearheart and Gearheart (1990; cited in Pierangelo and Giuliani, 2006), assessment is “a process that involves the systematic collection and interpretation of a wide variety of information on which to base instructional/intervention decisions and, when appropriate, classification and placement decisions. Assessment is primarily a problem-solving process”.

Importance of Assessment

The importance of assessment should never be underestimated. In special education, you will work with many professionals from different fields. You are part of a team, often referred to as a multidisciplinary team, that tries to determine what, if any, disability is present in a student. The team’s role is crucial because it helps determine the extent and direction of a child’s personal journey through the special education experience (Pierangelo and Giuliani, 2006). Consequently, the skills you must possess in order to offer a child the most global, accurate, and practical evaluation should be fully understood. The development of these skills should include a good working knowledge of the following components of the assessment process in order to determine the presence of a suspected disability:

• Collection: The process of tracing and gathering information from the many sources of background information on a child such as school records, observation, parent intakes, and teacher reports
• Analysis: The processing and understanding of patterns in a child’s educational, social, developmental, environmental, medical, and emotional history
• Evaluation: The evaluation of a child’s academic, intellectual, psychological, emotional, perceptual, language, cognitive, and medical development in order to determine areas of strength and weakness
• Determination: The determination of the presence of a suspected disability and the knowledge of the criteria that constitute each category
• Recommendation: The recommendations concerning educational placement and program that need to be made to the school, teachers, and parents

Purpose of Assessment

Assessment in educational settings serves five primary purposes:

• screening and identification: to screen children and identify those who may be experiencing delays or learning problems
• eligibility and diagnosis: to determine whether a child has a disability and is eligible for special education services, and to diagnose the specific nature of the student's problems or disability
• IEP development and placement: to provide detailed information so that an Individualized Education Program (IEP) may be developed and appropriate decisions may be made about the child's educational placement
• instructional planning: to develop and plan instruction appropriate to the child's special needs
• evaluation: to evaluate student progress. (Pierangelo and Giuliani, 2006)

The Difference Between Testing and Assessment

There is sometimes confusion regarding the terms "assessment" and "testing." While they are related, they are not synonymous. Testing is the administration of specifically designed and often standardized educational and psychological measures of behavior and is a part of the assessment process. Testing is just one piece of the assessment process.  Assessment encompasses many different methods of evaluation, one of which is using tests. 

Role of the Education Professional in the Special Education Process

The professional involved in special education in today’s schools plays a very critical role in the overall education of students with all types of disabilities. The special educator’s position is unique in that he or she can play many different roles in the educational environment. Whatever their role, special educators encounter a variety of situations that require practical decisions and relevant suggestions. No matter which type of professional you become in the field of special education, it is always necessary to fully understand the assessment process and to be able to clearly communicate vital information to professionals, parents, and students (Pierangelo and Giuliani, 2006).

Assessment and Federal Law

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), Public Law 105-476, lists 13 separate categories of disabilities under which children may be eligible for special education and related services. These are:

• autism: a developmental disability significantly affecting verbal and nonverbal communication and social interaction, generally evident before age 3
• deafness: a hearing impairment that is so severe that the child is impaired in processing linguistic information, with or without amplification
• deaf-blindness: simultaneous hearing and visual impairments
• hearing impairment: an impairment in hearing, whether permanent or fluctuating
• mental retardation: significantly subaverage general intellectual functioning existing concurrently with deficits in adaptive behavior
• multiple disabilities: the manifestation of two or more disabilities (such as mental retardation-blindness), the combination of which requires special accommodation for maximal learning
• orthopedic impairment: physical disabilities, including congenital impairments, impairments caused by disease, and impairments from other causes
• other health impairment: having limited strength, vitality, or alertness due to chronic or acute health problems
• serious emotional disturbance: a disability where a child of typical intelligence has difficulty, over time and to a marked degree, building satisfactory interpersonal relationships; responds inappropriately behaviorally or emotionally under normal circumstances; demonstrates a pervasive mood of unhappiness; or has a tendency to develop physical symptoms or fears
• specific learning disability: a disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in understanding or in using language, spoken or written, which may manifest itself in an imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell, or do mathematical calculations
• speech or language impairment: a communication disorder such as stuttering, impaired articulation, a language impairment, or a voice impairment
• traumatic brain injury: an acquired injury to the brain caused by an external physical force, resulting in total or partial functional disability or psychosocial impairment, or both
• visual impairment: a visual difficulty (including blindness) that, even with correction, adversely affects a child educational performance

Conclusi on

To determine if a child is eligible for classification under one of the 13 areas of exceptionality, an individualized evaluation, or assessment, of the child must be conducted. The focus of this series is to take you, the educator, step-by-step through the assessment process in special education. The following is a list of the latest and upcoming issues of this series.

Download a PDF Version of this Issue

Introduction to Assessment and Overview   - CLICK HERE

Publications

• Part I - Identification of High Risk Students
• Part 2 - Referral to the Child Study Team
• Part 3 - Obtaining Parental Informed Consent for Assessment
• Part 4 - Understand the Requirements of an Evaluation for a Suspected Disability
• Part 5 - The Multidisciplinary Team and the Comprehensive Assessment
• Part 6 - Understand the Various Methods of Assessment Options Available to the Multidisciplinary Team
• Part 7 - Basic Statistics and Scoring Terminology Used in Assessment
• Part 8 - Understanding a Students Behavior During the Assessment Process
• Part 9 - Understand the Components of a Professional Report
• Part 10 - Understand What is Required for a Presentation to the IEP Committee
• Part 11 - What is Curriculum-Based Measurement and What Does It Mean to a Child?
• Part 12 - Assessment and Accommodations
• Part 13 - The Common Core Standards
• Part 14 - Accommodations in Assessment
• Part 15 - Special Education Acronyms
• Part 16 - Comprehensive Tests of Academic Achievement
• Part 17 - Special Education Interpreting: Challenges and Legal Aspects By. Silvia Gonzalez Koch
• Part 18 - Sharing Information about State Assessments with Families of Children with Disabilities
• Part 19 - Understanding Screening
• Part 20 - Required Responsibilities in Screening and Assessment of Students

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Table of Specifications

What is a table of specifications.

A Table of Specifications is a two-way chart which describes the topics to be covered by a test and the number of items or points which will be associated with each topic. Sometimes the types of items are described, as well. A simple table might look like this: 

Quiz 2: The Great Gatsby

Facts About the Book (e.g. Author, Influence)

Characters and Events

Thematic Elements

Number of Questions

A more detailed table might look like this (adapted from Chase, 1999): 

Unit 1 Exam: Amoeba

Bloom's Taxonomy Cognitive Level

Application

Analysis or Synthesis

Classification

Reproduction

The purpose of a Table of Specifications is to identify the achievement domains being measured and to ensure that a fair and representative sample of questions appear on the test. Teachers cannot measure every topic or objective and cannot ask every question they might wish to ask. A Table of Specifications allows the teacher to construct a test which focuses on the key areas and weights those different areas based on their importance. A Table of Specifications provides the teacher with evidence that a test has content validity, that it covers what should be covered.

Designing a Table of Specifications 

Tables of Specification typically are designed based on the list of course objectives, the topics covered in class, the amount of time spent on those topics, textbook chapter topics, and the emphasis and space provided in the text. In some cases a great weight will be assigned to a concept that is extremely important, even if relatively little class time was spent on the topic. Three steps are involved in creating a Table of Specifications: 1) choosing the measurement goals and domain to be covered, 2) breaking the domain into key or fairly independent parts- concepts, terms, procedures, applications, and 3) constructing the table. Teachers have already made decisions (or the district has decided for them) about the broad areas that should be taught, so the choice of what broad domains a test should cover has usually already been made. A bit trickier is to outline the subject matter into smaller components, but most teachers have already had to design teaching plans, strategies, and schedules based on an outline of content. Lists of classroom objectives, district curriculum guidelines, and textbook sections, and keywords are other commonly used sources for identifying categories for Tables of Specification. When actually constructing the table, teachers may only wish to use a simple structure, as with the first example above, or they may be interested in greater detail about the types of items, the cognitive levels for items, the best mix of objectively scored items, open-ended and constructed-response items, and so on, with even more guidance than is provided in the second example.

How can the use of a Table of Specifications benefit your students, including those with special needs?

A Table of Specifications benefits students in two ways. First, it improves the validity of teacher-made tests. Second, it can improve student learning as well.

A Table of Specifications helps to ensure that there is a match between what is taught and what is tested. Classroom assessment should be driven by classroom teaching which itself is driven by course goals and objectives. In the chain below, Tables of Specifications provide the link between teaching and testing.

Objectives  Teaching  Testing 

Tables of Specifications can help students at all ability levels learn better. By providing the table to students during instruction, students can recognize the main ideas, key skills, and the relationships among concepts more easily. The Table of Specifications can act in the same way as a concept map to analyze content areas. Teachers can even collaborate with students on the construction of the Table of Specifications- what are the main ideas and topics, what emphasis should be placed on each topic, what should be on the test? Open discussion and negotiation of these issues can encourage higher levels of understanding while also modeling good learning and study skills.

References: 

Research Articles

Impact of Missed Special Ed. Evaluations Could Echo for Years

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The rocky onset of remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic halted special education evaluations in most schools. Four years later, a new study hints at the massive scale of the impact.

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 new 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.

The practical consequences for individual students are significant: students with undiagnosed dyslexia lacked needed supports during the crucial years of early literacy instruction, while students with unrecognized emotional disability went without interventions to help them constructively respond to challenges. And while schools are working to provide compensatory education for gaps in special education services for students who had been identified before the pandemic, their obligations to those who missed identification altogether are far less clear.

The estimate, which builds on similar research from other states, echoes the concerns of advocates who’ve sounded alarms about the pandemic’s effects on students with disabilities. Such students, they say, missed precious opportunities for earlier interventions because of stalled evaluations.

“Given prior evidence on the substantial negative impacts of previous restrictions to special education access on student outcomes, these students—who otherwise may have been identified for specialized services—may face negative, long-term outcomes or increase the demand on school districts for identification and assessment in the future,” the CALDER researchers wrote.

Were special education evaluations delayed or denied?

Researchers may never be able to fully account for students who would have received more timely special education evaluations in the absence of a pandemic, said Roddy Theobold, the deputy director of CALDER and co-author of the study.

It will take a few years to see if there are spikes in evaluations, which could suggest schools have cleared backlogs, he said. But factors like declining public school enrollment will complicate efforts to fully account for the pandemic’s effects on students seeking special education services.

“You could imagine that perhaps the state is catching up on identification, in which case, those students have missed a couple years of special education services they probably should have gotten,” Theobold said. “Or maybe there are students who just aren’t being identified at all who historically would have. If that’s the case, we just don’t know that.”

Previous research suggests backlogs are a problem around the country. A May 2023 working paper on Michigan schools published by the National Bureau of Economic Research documented a steep drop in special education identification rates in 2019–20 , followed by lower-than-typical rates in 2020-21 and a return to pre-pandemic levels by the 2021–22 school year.

CALDER researchers expanded on that study’s methodology by analyzing month-by-month Washington state data going back to 2010 to identify trends in K-5 special education determinations, and using it to more accurately model how those trends were disrupted when schools abruptly closed in March 2020.

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

The data show that 2019-20 special education identification rates stayed close to previous year’s trends until March, when they fell dramatically. Rates improved slightly in 2020-2021, when many schools remained closed for in-person learning. By 2021-22, rates returned to pre-pandemic levels, but it would take rates of identification above pre-pandemic levels to suggest schools had fully addressed any delays.

Schools faced challenges with special education during the pandemic

Schools faced unprecedented challenges in delivering special education services at the onset of the pandemic. Support staff like physical therapists couldn’t meet with students in person, educators were stretched thin trying to adapt in-person learning materials for a remote environment, and some students lacked internet access.

On top of those practical challenges, teachers missed chances to notice patterns in children’s in-person behavior and classroom discussions that might suggest an undiagnosed disability, school leaders told Education Week at the time.

In response to those challenges, some groups like AASA, the School Superintendents Association, pressed then-U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos to waive some requirements of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, the nation’s primary special education law.

But DeVos and her successor, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, instead repeatedly emphasized that schools must meet requirements in IDEA and in Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 to provide all students a free appropriate public education, or FAPE, regardless of disability status. The laws include an array of specific requirements for identifying, supporting, and equitably educating children with disabilities.

Even as schools reopened to a “new normal,” they lacked adequate support staff like psychologists and social workers, who are often involved in the identification process. The existing support staff reported challenges keeping up with students’ emotional and behavioral needs.

Federal officials have insisted schools work urgently to address gaps in services and lags in evaluations.The Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation’s second largest, agreed to a list of changes after a 2022 investigation by the U.S. Department of Education’s office of civil rights found it failed to provide services required by students’ individualized education programs during remote learning, failed to adequately track special education services, and provided inadequate compensatory services to repair those gaps.

That agreement served as a wake-up call for other districts. But most discussions have focused on compensatory services for students who had been previously identified for special education, rather than those who who missed evaluations altogether.

Educators and policymakers have reason to be concerned about those missed opportunities for intervention, the CALDER study said.

It cites a 2021 study published in the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy that explored the effects of a 2005 Texas policy that impermissibly denied many students access to special education services. Those denied services, the research found, were about 50 percent less likely to graduate from high school.

“There’s really good evidence that each additional year of special education services you receive has positive impacts on student outcomes,” Theobold said. “This shows really profound downstream negative consequences on outcomes for kids who probably should have been receiving services.”

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