Overdiagnosed and Overwhelmed
How special education in New York City is failing the most vulnerable students
Often, when I get on my soapbox about the overdiagnosis of learning and attention disorders, my colleagues ask me why I’m so concerned. “What’s the harm?” they say. “Aren’t we simply helping kids and families access services that maximize academic success?”
While that sounds reasonable, in reality, it’s much more complicated. Overdiagnosis overwhelms the system, making it harder for children who truly need accommodations and interventions to access them.
Recently, this has become a major issue in New York City, where the Department of Education (DOE) is struggling mightily to meet the demand for special education services. Public and private school students alike seek DOE-provided services, and so many students have been classified as requiring support that the DOE can no longer accommodate them all. In response, they’ve started cutting off services for children who missed a deadline for paperwork submission—a deadline that, until now, was only loosely enforced.
City lawyers admit that they have become strict about deadline enforcement because special education services have become too expensive for the city to sustain. Two major causes of ballooning costs are questionable-bordering-on-fraudulent diagnoses and aggressive legal action taken by parents whose initial service requests are denied. It’s not a stretch to notice that it’s families with financial means who are overtaxing the system in these ways. Who, after all, can afford private evaluations and education lawyers to strongarm the city into covering therapy and tuition? And these actions often come at the expense of those with fewer resources. As the city’s finances are stretched thin, it’s the most vulnerable families—the ones who are most likely to miss a filing deadline—who suffer the most.
So I remind my colleagues that it’s not our job to simply rubber stamp every single request for documentation of a disability. We have to practice with ethics and integrity, taking into account issues of fairness and resource allocation, to ensure that the children who truly require support aren’t left behind in an overcrowded system.
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I knew about the strict deadlines this year since a lot of parents missed them but I had no idea on the background on why they were finally being enforced and it just makes sense now
My major concern is what you say… few seems to care about what happens to kids and young adults who most need help.
In Colorado HB 1260 passed in 2023 mandating schools allow privately financed medical services into the school with the child in need. The schools are VERY resistant to allowing these providers into the school. I imagine there are good reasons for this but from the parental perspective, it’s very frustrating. Now when I hear about how schools are under funded and special Ed sucks up a lot of those funds (even though it’s factually true) I roll my eyes out of frustration and despair.