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Opinion | Michigan special education built on old expectations, not reality
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Bridge Michigan’s recent reporting on the surge of special education complaints in our state puts words to what educators experience every day: a system strained by impossible expectations, a lack of resources and parents left feeling like the odds are stacked against them.
At the heart of the issue is a disconnect between what federal and state legislatures require schools to provide, the funding those same legislatures allocate to make it possible and the expectations parents rightly hold for their children. In the middle is the student. And too often, the school district is unfairly cast as the problem.
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), the federal law that governs special education, was written with the best of intentions. But it is a law shaped by circumstances of yesteryear. Meanwhile, the realities and expectations of 2025 look very different. Students present more complex medical and cognitive disabilities, greater mental health needs and social-emotional challenges that have only been magnified by technology, trauma and the pace of modern life. Yet, the law has not meaningfully adapted to reflect these realities.
Even more troubling, IDEA has never been funded at the levels promised. When IDEA was enacted in 1975, the federal government pledged to cover 40% of the “excess cost” of educating students with disabilities. That promise has never been kept. Today, federal funding lingers around 15% nationally. In Michigan, the gap is widened by state-level shortfalls, leaving schools to absorb hundreds of millions of dollars annually in unfunded mandates. Despite this, educators routinely step in to fill the gaps by creating individualized support plans, coordinating resources, and creating inclusive environments so that students can thrive.
This is the paradox: lawmakers set the requirements, fail to fund them and then leave schools to navigate the frustration of families whose expectations go beyond what the law or the budget currently supports. As we often remind our colleagues, we should not expect a change we are unwilling to adequately resource.
The Bridge article highlighted one family who filed more than 20 complaints with the state over their children’s education. In every instance, investigators found that the district had, in fact, provided the free and appropriate public education (FAPE) required by law. One could conclude the parent was unreasonable. Or one could conclude the parent was advocating for the modern-day supports their children truly need, supports that our system is not designed or funded to provide. What’s also missing from that story, however, is the dedication of the educators behind the scenes — case managers, teachers, paraprofessionals, and ancillary staff who are working tirelessly to meet both the requirements of the law and the needs of the child.
This raises difficult questions. Should a parent stop advocating? Absolutely not. Parents must push for what they believe their child needs. Should schools continue to be portrayed as resistant or uncaring when, in fact, they are operating within the limits of an outdated and underfunded system? That hardly seems fair. Should the scope of supports evolve to meet the realities of today’s expectations? Perhaps. But doing so requires a new social contract – one that aligns expectations with funding.
Something has to give. Now, schools are the ones absorbing the tension. Districts are left scrambling to stretch inadequate dollars, teachers are left to improvise with insufficient tools, and parents are left to navigate a system that too often feels adversarial. And all the while, students — the very people the law was designed to protect — sit in the middle of the struggle.
The solution isn’t to pit parents against schools. It is to update the law, at both the federal and state level, to reflect modern-day circumstances, and to fund it in a way that honors the original promise. Until then, this cycle will continue: parents demanding more, schools exhausting every possible strategy despite scarce resources, and students bearing the consequences of a system that simply wasn’t built for 2025.
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