The Hidden Crisis in Special Education: Underfunded, Understaffed, and Running Out of Options

The classroom where Smith works is located in a typical Toronto school, complete with a slightly sticky coat closet and scuffed linoleum, but what takes place there is anything but typical. A room designed for a more tranquil era is filled with twelve children, all of whom have mild intellectual disabilities and are in grades one through three.

Most of the time, one kid is running for the door while another is hiding under a desk with their ears covered, waiting for someone to sneeze. Smith has been doing this work for 25 years as a seasoned educational assistant who uses a pseudonym because she is not permitted to speak in public. It’s no longer what she signed up for, she claims.

It was a calm afternoon when she was undone. Sitting next to her, she explained that “E” stood for elephant to a nonverbal boy she had worked with for a full year. Using a pencil, he wrote the word. envelope. power. He spelled it out clearly and methodically each time. “He was absolutely brilliant, and we didn’t even know it,” she replied. That sentence is difficult to ignore. A year-long invisible child who was fluent on paper was unintentionally found during a rare unclaimed minute.

Speaking with educators like Smith gives me the impression that the system has subtly abandoned what it once promised. The professionals who are meant to assist the students in her class—speech-language pathologists, physiotherapists, and occupational therapists—rarely, if at all, show up. The students in her class now require far more assistance than they did ten years ago. When they do show up, they usually observe instead of treating. Recommendations are a courteous way of saying that they leave more work behind.

The physical surroundings have a narrative of their own. There are no changing stations or even a gym mat, but more students are wearing diapers these days. Smith stands by a bathroom sink, changing kids. Once a minor act of integration, going to the mainstream gym or taking music lessons has been quietly abandoned. There are too many variables. There is always an urgent need.

The picture is only made clearer by the larger numbers. In addition to 45,000 open positions, the Learning Policy Institute estimated that by mid-2025, 48 states and the District of Columbia employed about 366,000 teachers who were not fully certified for their positions—more than one in eight teaching positions in the nation were either unfilled or patched over. Unsurprisingly, special education is at the top of the list of persistent shortages, followed by elementary education, math, and science. About 90% of yearly demand is driven by attrition rather than retirement, which raises some unsettling questions about why people continue to leave.

Parents are also aware. According to Alison Attanasio, a parent organizer in Toronto whose child has ADHD, people in their 30s and 40s still remember school as they did as children, with the small accommodations and safety nets. Silently and without warning, those nets have frayed.

Advocates for disability rights contend that staffing is not the only issue. They claim that no amount of money can correct a design flaw and that the system was created with the treatment of students with disabilities as an afterthought. Money, according to others, is the key. Who is correct is still up for debate. It’s evident that kids like the boy who spelled elephant are waiting for someone to have a moment of free time every day while sitting in classrooms.