BOULDER, CO (January 22, 2026) — While special education in the United States has advanced civil rights and educational equity, persistent concerns about inequity, labeling, and segregation remain. A recent Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) report proposes a dramatic restructuring of special education, arguing that rising identification rates and persistent achievement gaps stem from a general education system built for uniformity rather than diversity.

However, in his review of Outmatched: Special Education Can’t Solve Problems Rooted in the Education Delivery System, University of Illinois Chicago professor Federico Waitoller warns that the report moves prematurely toward solutions without establishing a sufficiently evidence-based understanding of the underlying problems—or those proposed solutions.

The report argues that because general education is insufficiently responsive to diverse student needs, special education has become a default solution for unmet instructional challenges. It therefore calls for replacing the dual general–special education structure with a unified, needs-based system.

The analysis, however, has significant weaknesses. Its claims rest on broad assertions about systemic design flaws, supported by only limited descriptive data and selective use of research. Although the report identifies real and well-documented problems, such as reliance on psychological evaluations and inequitable access to services, it provides no empirical evidence linking these features to rising identification rates or widening achievement gaps.

The report also overlooks decades of scholarship on disability identification, disproportionality, and system design, and it does not engage with counterarguments that defend special education as a necessary specialized system.

While the recommendations are ambitious, they are not empirically grounded. Key questions about legal protections, expertise, accountability, and instructional quality for students with disabilities remain unanswered. As such, Prof. Waitoller concludes, policymakers are left with little direct guidance for reforms that would reliably safeguard the rights and learning needs of students with disabilities.

Find the review, written by Federico R. Waitoller, at:
https://nepc.colorado.edu/review/outmatched

Find Outmatched: Special Education Can’t Solve Problems Rooted in the Education Delivery System, authored by Ashley Jochim and Alexander Kurz and published by the Center on Reinventing Public Education, at: https://crpe.org/outmatched-special-education-cant-solve-problems-rooted-in-the-education-delivery-system/