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The Pediatrician Next Door - Simple Advice on Parenting and Family Health
The Real Reason to Care About Special Education
00:23:42
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As a pediatrician, I talk to parents about how to keep their kids healthy and what do I tell parents all the time? Your health matters too. When parents feel better in their bodies, they have more energy and are more able to take care of their families. If weight loss is one of your 2026 goals and you're ready to make real progress, weight loss by hers may be a good option to explore. What I appreciate about HERS is that it's science based, personalized care. Through hers, you connect with a licensed medical provider who looks at your full picture and determines if treatment is right for you. Your plan may include options like oral medications or GLP1 injectables along with support, nutrition guidance and tools to track things like sleep, movement and hydration. For busy parents especially, I like that hers offers 100% online care with real providers, no hidden membership fees and options that fit your real life. Taking care of yourself isn't selfish, it's part of taking care of your family. Feel like your best self again? Visit forhers.comdrwendy to get a personalized, affordable plan that gets you that's F O-R-H-E-R-S.com-R W E N- dash y fourhers.com Dr. Wendy Weight loss by hers is not available everywhere. Compounded drug products are not approved or evaluated for safety, effectiveness or quality by the fda. Prescription required. See website for full details, important safety information and restrictions. Actual price depends on product and plan purchased. We heard you. Nine years of bring back the snack wrap and you've won. But maybe you should have asked for more. Say hello to the Hot Honey Snack wrap. Now you've really won. Go to McDonald's and get it while you can. Hey there. Welcome to the show. I know this shouldn't be embarrassing, but I want to share that I am embarrassed that I always confuse the difference between an IEP and and a 504 plan. And I guess the term special ed too. And maybe you don't even know what I'm talking about when I say IEP and 504 plans. I mean, I'm not in education, so I don't really think I need to know the difference. But just so we're all educated adults here, let's figure this out and then we can be the smartest parents on the block. Why does this matter though? Because special education is in the news a lot right now. There is talk about closing the Department of Education and moving the Office of Special Education Programs into another department. And I was very surprised to learn that our federal government only provides about 12 to 15% of the cost of special education programs in any given state, and that support comes in the form of grants. So honestly, our government has plans to dismantle the Department of Education, but it, like, barely financially supports states right now anyway. So really, should we care? What's the big deal? Is this going to affect our kids in any way? And again, what's an IEP? I'm Dr. Wendy Hunter and I'm the pediatrician next door. I'm that doctor friend you call for practical advice about your kid's health. I mix the science of medicine with the reality of parenting. What do you picture when you think of special education? It probably depends on your age. You know, I think of, like, a short bus and kids with a lot of problems and very significant needs. But I grew up in a time when we actually had buses. The reality is that special education is not a place. It is a set of services that are designed for a specific child to make learning easier for them. And it's probably more common than you think. About seven and a half million children receive special education services. That's almost one out of every seven public school students. In other words, in almost every classroom, there are several kids who qualify for special education supports, whether you are aware of it or not. And obviously those kids are not the same. In fact, special education law recognizes a huge range of needs. And yes, there are researchers who study this stuff. And I found one. Here is Dr. Kimber Wilkerson, professor of special education at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, to explain.
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There are 13 categories of disability that are identified under the special education law, which is the Individuals with Disabilities Education act, which we often refer to as IDEA. So IDEA stipulates 13 categories of disability. Those range. The largest category of disability is learning disabilities. So students can have specific learning disabilities related to reading or math or language even. There are speech and language impairments. There are intellectual disabilities. Students can receive special ed services for autism spectrum disorder, as well as things like mobility impairments or deafness or blindness.
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Most students who receive special education services spend the majority of their day the regular classroom. So why does special education even exist in the first place? Before this law came into being just over 50 years ago, many children with disabilities didn't go to school. So special education law was created to correct that. Basically, it was to say, as a society, we want to try to include all children. So if a school says to you, as a parent, we think your child may qualify for special education, what they're really saying is we think there is a barrier here that classroom lectures alone are not solving, and we have ability to address it. And kids go in and out of special education all the time, depending on what they need at their stage of development. This is an education issue. It's not really a health issue, obviously, but it comes up with my patients all the time. And I think a lot of parents worry that if their child does need help because they have a reading disability or a hearing problem or whatever the issue is, parents worry that the school's decisions might be arbitrary, like the parent's going to have to convince the school to help or prove something, and that it depends on which state or district or even which school principal they happen to have. Apparently, this is exactly why there is a national law and why the federal government's rule matters. Special education isn't a school policy. It's a federal law, specifically the Individuals with Disabilities Education act, or idea, and that law is administered through an office within the U.S. department of Education.
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The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. IDEA is administered by the Office of Special Education Programs, which is housed in the US Department of Education. So that law is administered, and it's that office that ensures that all states kind of adhere to similar kind of baseline definitions for disability categories and set some sort of floor in terms of what services students and their families can expect to receive regardless of where they live. So the U.S. department of Ed essentially oversees that administration. They also provide some funding. I think Nationwide, it's about 14% of the funding for special education comes from the federal government, so it's only a small fraction. Again, they ensure that the federal special education law is implemented evenly across states, and they set benchmarks for qualifications for special educators, etc.
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This means there are protections in place so that a child in one state isn't treated differently than a child in another state just because of where they live. Okay, so yes, the federal government does provide some funding. But this is where things get confusing. Federal funding makes up, like I said before, 12 to 15% of the total cost of special education nationwide. That's it. The vast majority of funding comes from the state or your local school district, meaning your taxes. So if you've ever wondered why special education services can feel stretched or why schools talk so much about resources and staffing, this is a big part of the reason your school is legally required to provide services, whether or not they have the funding. When IDEA was passed, Congress made a very explicit commitment that the federal government said it would cover up to 40% of the excess cost of Educating students with disabilities. That's 40% of the additional cost required to provide these services. Educating students with disabilities does cost more. They have smaller class sizes. You need specialists and therapies and evaluations and individualized planning. And all of that is appropriate, and all of it costs money. But here's the problem. That 40% promise has never been met, not once. If you've ever asked your local school to evaluate your child or heard about long waiting lists or rejections for services, this is why schools aren't ignoring kids needs on purpose. So what do these services actually look like day to day and how are they individualized for your child? Through what is called an iep. An IEP stands for Individualized Education Program. It's a written plan that explains how a public school will support support a child whose disability is getting in the way of learning in the typical classroom. What surprises a lot of parents is how simple the first step actually is. Okay, if you're worried that your school isn't working for your child, all you have to do is ask. You don't need a medical diagnosis and you don't need a doctor's note. Although I do write them. You don't even need to wait for a teacher to raise concerns. You can just say to any school administrator, I'm concerned about my child's learning and I'd like to request an evaluation. And it's best if you do it in writing. Once you make that request in writing, something important happens. A clock starts. Schools are legally required to respond within a specific time frame, and that exact time frame varies by which state you're in. But the structure is the same everywhere. The school has to respond within a set number of days, complete the evaluation, and then meet with you to go over the results. If the evaluation shows your child qualifies for services, that's when an IEP is created. It spells out what's hard for your child, what supports are going to be put in place, what goals everyone is working toward, and how you're going to measure progress over time. One of the biggest fears parents tell me about is that an IEP might mean that the school is lowering their expectations for their child. And my experience is that the opposite is usually true. Most kids who end up with an IEP are capable, great kids whose brains just don't match the way the school is structured. And the school helps them to meet those expectations. Another thing I want parents to hear is IEPs aren't permanent. I think I said this already, but I've seen many children who needed an IEP at one point and then didn't need it later. Nobody really even knows ever that they had one. The other thing I want to share from my experience is that if at any point you feel really stuck or you don't feel like anybody's listening to you or you're confused by this process. There are educational advocates and educational lawyers who specialize in this. Their role isn't necessarily to fight the school. Often they just help families understand their rights, navigate the meetings, make sure timelines are being followed. Most families never need this level of support, of course, but just know that it exists. And I've seen it be very helpful to some families. So if you're listening to this and thinking, I've had a feeling for a while that school just isn't working for my child, trust that instinct and ask for an evaluation. You're not overreacting. Next we're going to talk about something that gets confused with IEPs all the time. As I admitted before 504 plans I've most often seen these created for kids who miss a lot of school because of an illness, or needing to go to a lot of doctor's appointments, or even missing school because of anxiety. You know how you get harassed by the school for excuse notes. A 504 plan can excuse you from that and I'll explain after this break. I always tell parents to read the label before drinking anything packaged. 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You can grab Cure on Amazon or find a store near you@curehydration.com drwendy that's-r w e n d y Real ingredients, real hydration, ready for the whole family. One of the most powerful things parents do, often without realizing it, is model health for their kids. As a pediatrician, I talk a lot about how children learn from what they see, not just what we say, and that includes how we take care of our own bodies. With so many weight loss options out there, it can be hard to know who to trust or what's appropriate. That's why weight loss by HERS stands out. HERS offers access to doctor developed personalized treatment plans so you're not guessing or going it alone. If treatment is appropriate, your plan may include medication options like oral treatments or GLP1 injectables, plus ongoing medical support, dosage adjustments and lifestyle guidance. I appreciate that this approach focuses on steady, sustainable progress rather than a quick fix. HERS also offers fully online care with licensed providers who get to know your story, which is especially helpful for parents juggling a lot. Feel like your best self again? Visit forhers.comdrwindy to get a personalized, affordable plan that gets you. That's F O R h e r s.coM-R-W e n d y forhers.com Dr. Wendy Weight loss by hers is not available everywhere. Compounded drug products are not approved or evaluated for safety, effectiveness or quality by the fda. Prescription required. See website for full details, important safety information and restrictions. Actual price depends on product and plan purchased. This episode is brought to you by Peloton Break through the busiest time of year with the brand new Peloton Cross Training Tread plus. Powered by Peloton iq. With real time guidance and endless ways to move, you can personalize your workout workouts and train with confidence, helping you reach your goals in less time. Let yourself run, lift, sculpt, push and go explore the new peloton cross training tread +@1peloton.com. All right, we are sorting out special ed programs. Why are there two names for basically the same thing? It's definitely to confuse us. So here's the simple way that I keep this straight in my head. An IEP is for kids who need specialized instruction and a 504 plan is for kids who need accommodations. That's the difference. If a child needs to be taught differently. For example, they need reading instruction, speech therapy, or structured support for social or functional skills. That is an iep. If a child can learn the same material as everyone else, but they need a little adjustment in how they access things, that's a 504. So let me give you some examples. A child with dyslexia who needs targeted reading instruction several times a week. That's an iep. A child with ADHD who understands the material but needs extra time on tests or needs breaks to move around or a quieter testing environment. That would be a 504 plan. A child with diabetes if they need access to snacks, medication or bathroom breaks. That's a classic 504 situation. If your child falls into one of these categories, ask your school for accommodations. It's so much easier to get them set up and have them follow them into higher grades than to try to ask when your child's in like high school. Just trust me on this. Getting accommodations in high school and even middle school can be really hard. Sometimes a school will suggest a 504 plan when a child actually needs specialized instructions. And sometimes parents push for an IEP when accommodations alone would be sufficient. So this can be hard to sort out. Another important thing to know is that kids can move between these plans. A child might start with a 504 plan and then need an IEP, or a child might have an IEP and then transition to a 504 anyway. But here is the million dollar question. Do these plans actually help kids in the long run? Does this actually work? And this is where I want to bring Dr. Wilkerson back into the conversation. One of the things I appreciate about her perspective is that she's not just talking about special education as a policy. She studies what happens to kids over time. Not just whether services exist, but whether they actually change outcomes in meaningful ways. So I asked her to talk about what we've learned over the past several decades.
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So as we have kind of learned to provide better services and also held ourselves to higher accountability standards, students with disabilities now access more general education content. They are more likely to graduate from high school. There are more students with disabilities attending post secondary school than there were decades ago. So we've made a lot of progress. There's still a lot of progress to go. Certainly there are students with disabilities whose outcomes are not what we would hope for them to be, but overall, as a group of people, they exist. Of IDEA and its administration by the U.S. department of Ed has resulted in a lot of improvements and a much greater amount of access for students with disabilities.
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It's interesting to me that she says research shows progress, but I also want to be clear here that we don't have long term data that says because of special education, kids lives are better or their futures are better. We have evidence of more kids attending More school. And that kind of access probably matters, but there does not really exist any research about improvement in outcomes. It just hasn't been done. Again, I assume because there's no money and the government hasn't collected this data. So, yes, kids are more likely to be educated alongside their peers, to graduate, to go on to college or training. But are they better off? We don't know. Which is why the next part of this conversation matters. If you've been paying even a little bit of attention to the news, you may have heard the headlines lately about lawsuits, funding, staffing shortages. And you may be wondering what any of that actually means for our kids. And one of the big questions. It's probably not on your radar, but it's about Section 504 of the Rehabilitation act of 1973, because 17 states are currently suing to overturn it. And that sounds abstract until you realize how many kids actually rely on this section 504. It's a civil rights law, and it exists to protect people with disabilities from discrimination in any setting that receives federal funding, which includes public schools. So for students, this means that schools are legally required to make reasonable accommodations so that kids with disabilities can can access education on an equal footing with their peers. This is where 504 plans come from. And about 1.6 million students in the US rely on these plans. But do kids actually need these plans? Are they helpful? Again, we don't really know. If you have a child on a 504 plan, you may be able to tell me firsthand that your child is definitely doing better. They're less stressed, they're learning more. But we don't have any data to prove it, so that makes it even harder to protect it from going away. On top of this are the very real, very practical issues that parents feel every day. There aren't enough special education teachers, and this is something that Dr. Wilkerson has spent years researching.
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I've thought a lot about the shortages of special educators. It feels acute in the most recent, I'd say five years. Not just in our state where I'm located in Wisconsin, but nationwide. It's true across states and districts. It's often the area of education that has the greatest shortages and also the area where there is the most attrition, meaning teachers leave the field more quickly than they do in other avenues of education. There's a lot of research that looks at what causes burnout or attrition, why people leave, and that includes things like their feelings about the additional paperwork demands. Sometimes they feel overwhelmed overworked sometimes they feel isolated or unappreciated. But on the flip side of that, when you ask people why they stay, because certainly there are lots of teachers who stay more than three to five years, there are studies investigating when people stay, what are the reasons that they give for why they want to stay. And they often focus on the relationships they have with their students, with families, with other educators. And they also report feeling supported by administration. And so just the knowledge of those two things, the kind of importance of relationships and the importance of other people knowing what the job is and being able to kind of support, know the rules and be able to at least appreciate what they're doing. Because of that, I have done over the last five years been working on a research project that's funded by IES under the Department of Ed. We developed professional development system for early career special educators in rural settings to help them feel less isolated, to help them feel more connected and supported. And part of that is creating communities of practice where they can talk to each other, where they can talk to more teachers with more experience, but it also provides direct coaching. I do think that special educators, their job is complex. So it's not just delivering instruction, but it's delivering instruction to kids with a wide, wide range of needs, sometimes very basic functional skills, sometimes reading. It's usually across grade levels. And they can be sometimes the only person in their grade level who's doing that work. So we do find that that extra coaching helps people who have go into the profession and it helps prevent them from feeling overwhelmed and hopefully keeps them in the profession for more years.
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Special educators aren't leaving because they don't care. They're leaving because the job is complex, it's emotionally demanding, and they often aren't really supported. So when we talk about threats to special education, they're numerous. None of this means special education is going away. IDEA is still a law. Kids are still entitled to these services. But understanding these pressures helps explain why things feel so strained and why advocacy, awareness and your support of educators matters a lot right now. But back to the elephant in the room. Does special education improve kids lives in the long run? The answer is complicated and we don't really know. But what I can attest to is this doing nothing doesn't work. Special education is underfunded, it is strained, but it's still the best framework we have for recognizing that children learn differently and that being fair sometimes means giving different kinds of support to different kids. And if you take nothing else from this episode, take this your job is to notice when something's not working and to advocate for help when it's needed. And that matters a lot if you know a child who is struggling in school for whatever reason, share this episode with their family. And please, please, if you wouldn't mind, leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It really helps me to help other families find this show. For more from the Pediatrician Next Door, find me on the web@ pediatriciannextdoorpodcast.com if you've got a question about the weird things kids do, send an email to hellopediatriciannextdoorpodcast.com for a chance to hear your voice on the show. I'm Dr. Wendy Hunter and I'm the Pediatrician Next Door. This show is produced by Red Rock Music. Make sure to subscribe and leave a review wherever it is you're listening. I'll be back next time with more.