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Advocates who have fought hard battles to preserve the right of children with disabilities to attend public schools have never faced a fight like this one. Last month鈥檚 cuts to the Office for Special Education Programs, which all but eliminated the agency charged with enforcing schools鈥� civil rights obligations, fly in the face of decades of bipartisan support. It appears that no one 鈥� not even children with disabilities 鈥� will be spared in the current federal downsizing.

Yet these cuts are only the latest symptom of a deeper problem: The special education system is failing. Fifty years ago, the (IDEA) was a revolutionary step forward that mandated a free, appropriate public education for students with disabilities, tailored to their individual needs. It has since hardened into a compliance-driven exercise that leaves most of the students it serves without the educational support they need to succeed in school or life.

We understand these failures better than most, having watched our own children鈥檚 struggles compound due to their schools鈥� failures to provide the 鈥渂asics,鈥� such as a high-quality curriculum, evidence-based instruction, orderly classrooms and a little extra academic support. These are the same things millions of students without identified disabilities also need 鈥� but that neither the general nor special education system reliably delivers.

The result is a crisis that long predates the current funding fight, because special education was never designed to help students achieve grade-level expectations. It is a system that prioritizes sorting children into diagnostic categories over improving student learning. Every year, more students are labeled, more money is invested, and yet the results remain the same: Millions of children unable to read, write or calculate proficiently. The problem isn鈥檛 too little special education, it鈥檚 that special education as we know it does not work.

That鈥檚 why the Center on Reinventing Public Education has launched a new project, , that aims to generate conversation and solutions around meeting the needs of students who struggle in school 鈥� one grounded in evidence, transparency and a willingness to question the faulty assumptions that have shaped special education for a half-century.

Part of this initiative is the , the first-ever 50-state digital record of rates of students identified as needing services since 1976. The data document America鈥檚 increased reliance on special education to address learning and behavioral differences that are more common than those that originally inspired Congress to pass IDEA. But giving more students access hasn’t solved the core problem: Eligibility is based on subjective determinations of disability (something that can鈥檛 be measured) rather than demonstration of student need (something that can). As a result, students鈥� access to special education depends on the local policies and practices used in their schools, creating a huge disparity in services depending on where they happen to live.

While these findings illuminate longstanding inequities, they also open up new opportunities to act. To encourage deeper exploration, CRPE is inviting educators, researchers and advocates to , uncover new patterns and propose ideas for a better system. Selected participants will receive financial support to develop deeper analyses that can help policymakers and practitioners design a new generation of interventions.

Those new insights and fresh approaches could help reimagine the current system from the ground up. Instead of sorting students into rigid categories, schools could respond flexibly to their needs. Instead of disconnected experiences across general and special education, there could be a continuum of evidence-based supports. Instead of investing in gatekeeping, legislators could use analyses of this new dataset to justify allocating resources directly to the instruction and tools students need to succeed.

None of this can happen so long as advocates hunker down in defense of a program that is failing the students it was designed to serve. Instead, is an attempt to give advocates, families and educators the tools to see the system as it truly is and imagine what it could become. Invention can offer hope in the face of despair, abundance in place of scarcity and power to the powerless. Those are the resources disability advocates brought to Congress 50 years ago. They can be tapped again to advance the interests of children with disabilities in today鈥檚 challenging political climate.

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