One in Seven Kansas Students Now Receives Special Education

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 12:00:00 GMT

In this series: Kansas 2025-26 Enrollment.

In 2005, roughly one in nine Kansas public school students received special education services. By 2025-26, that ratio has narrowed to one in 6.8. The state added 18,416 special education students over two decades, a 38.8% increase, during a period when total enrollment barely moved. Kansas now has 65,849 students with disabilities on its rolls, 14.7% of all enrollment, and the share has risen every year since 2016.

The growth has not been gradual. From 2005 to 2015, the special education rate crept from 10.7% to 10.9%, effectively flat for a decade. Then it accelerated: 0.3 percentage points per year from 2015 to 2020, then 0.38 per year from 2020 to 2026. The post-COVID pace is more than triple the pre-COVID rate of change. Something shifted in how Kansas identifies, serves, or retains students with disabilities, and the fiscal architecture of the state's school system has not caught up.

The scissors pattern

The clearest way to see the structural shift is to index both special education and total enrollment to 2005. Total enrollment is up 1.5% over 22 years, essentially flat. Special education enrollment is up 38.8%. The two lines ran parallel through 2010, began to separate around 2015, and opened into a widening gap after 2020. By 2026, the special education index stands at 138.8 while total enrollment sits at 101.5.

This divergence means districts face a compounding squeeze: the denominator of their enrollment (which drives base state aid) is stagnant or shrinking, while the share of students whose instructional programs carry higher per-pupil costs keeps rising. Kansas's BASE per-pupil amount for 2025-26 is $5,615, but special education services often cost two to three times that.

The year-over-year pattern tells its own story. Before 2016, Kansas typically added 400 to 800 special education students per year. From 2017 to 2020, annual additions climbed to 1,400-2,400. After a brief COVID-year dip in 2021 (the only decline since 2008), the state added 2,611 in 2022, 2,753 in 2023, and nearly 1,000 per year in 2024 and 2025. The 2026 gain of 360 is the smallest in a decade, which could mark the beginning of a plateau or simply a pause.

What identification, not arrival, looks like

The growth in special education is almost certainly driven more by expanded identification of existing students than by an influx of students with new disabilities. Three lines of evidence point in this direction.

First, total enrollment is essentially flat. Kansas enrolled 441,255 students in 2005 and 447,803 in 2026. If the special education increase reflected a genuine increase in prevalence among new arrivals, total enrollment would need to be growing proportionally. It is not.

Second, the acceleration coincides with expanded awareness and evaluation capacity, not demographic change. JaKyta Lawrie, executive director of special education at Kansas City, Kansas Public Schools, attributed the increase to "earlier identification of students who need extra attention, increasing complexity of student needs and improved awareness with families and teachers." Post-COVID behavioral referrals appear to be a significant factor: the same reporting noted increasing requests from parents for evaluations and from teachers for referrals related to emotional and behavioral difficulties.

Third, national research supports the pattern. A study from Michigan found that special education identifications fell 19% and 12% during the first two pandemic school years, then returned to trend and continued growing. Kansas's data matches this sequence exactly: the state lost 499 special education students in 2021, then added 2,611 and 2,753 in the two years that followed, consistent with a backlog of evaluations clearing.

A competing explanation is that the growth reflects genuinely increasing need rather than just better detection. Post-pandemic mental health challenges among children are well-documented nationally, and the emotional-behavioral category is one of the fastest-growing eligibility categories. Both mechanisms, better identification and higher actual need, likely operate simultaneously.

Where rates concentrate

The statewide average of 14.7% obscures enormous variation across districts. Among districts with at least 500 students, Hiawatha leads at 29.9%, meaning nearly one in three students receives special education services. Wellington follows at 27.4%, Winfield at 26.8%, and Arkansas City at 25.3%.

At the other end, Silver Lake reports 1.5%, Scott County 1.7%, and Cimarron-Ensign 2.0%. The gap between the highest and lowest rates is more than fourfold.

The pattern is not random. Many of the highest-rate districts are small to mid-sized communities in south-central and southeast Kansas, areas that have experienced sustained enrollment decline and economic contraction. Twenty-nine districts with at least 200 students now have special education rates above 20%. That includes Topeka Public Schools at 21.8% (2,677 students), Auburn-Washburn at 21.2% (1,223 students), and Hutchinson at 21.2% (859 students).

In Topeka, Superintendent Tiffany Anderson described the elevated rate as a product of overlapping structural factors. The district's 75% poverty rate and a 17% district-wide mobility rate, with some schools as high as 50%, compound the picture, along with what Anderson called the community's legacy as a "nexus of mental health services: The Topeka State Hospital, Menninger and the VA. Some of the families treated by these services have remained in Topeka while the services are no longer available."

A second, less visible driver is the rising share of students who arrive already identified. Anderson said 525 students who transferred into Topeka Public Schools this year were enrolled as special education students, up from between 407 and 435 before COVID, 467 in 2022-23, and 502 in 2023-24. "Topeka Public Schools provides an inclusive setting that attracts families from rural areas in particular who need access to the broad range of specialized services," she said.

The largest districts show more moderate but still substantial rates. Wichita is at 16.9% with 7,557 special education students, up from 14.1% in 2005. Olathe stands at 15.4% with 4,261, and Maize at 17.5% with 1,385.

Whether high rates in smaller districts reflect genuine higher need, more aggressive identification practices, differences in how cooperatives classify students, or some districts serving as regional special education centers is not determinable from enrollment data alone.

The funding gap

Kansas law requires the state to reimburse districts for 92% of the "excess costs" of providing special education services, those costs above and beyond what a general education student would generate. The state has never met this obligation. Current reimbursement runs around 74-80% of excess costs, leaving districts to absorb the remainder from their general funds and local option budgets.

"We are feeling that as a district. I do think burnout is a thing with our teachers." -- Ryan Alliman, Executive Director of Student Support Services, Wichita Public Schools, The 74

During the 2024 legislative session, House Sub. for SB 387 set a floor of $601 million for special education state aid beginning in FY 2025, with $528 million distributed through four reimbursement categories. But with 65,849 students and growing, that floor was based on enrollment levels that are already outdated.

The staffing pressure compounds the fiscal one. Since 2001, Kansas districts have added roughly 8,000 positions, a 12.3% increase, with the largest growth in special education paraprofessionals and classroom aides. Licensed teacher positions grew only 8.0% over the same period. Emporia State University's Sara Schwerdtfeger told The 74 the university fields "a lot of requests from across the state for special education teachers," noting the required additional credentialing takes about two years on average.

Anderson offered a concrete illustration of the gap between state reimbursement and actual staffing costs. The 2025-26 state reimbursement rate for a certified teacher or related service provider is $29,600, she said. "One occupational therapist with a Master's degree would cost us $80,632.56 after FICA and health insurance." Because of a shortage of special education professionals, many districts including Topeka pay higher contracted-service rates that the reimbursement formula does not account for. "Every additional mandated special education service reduces funding and services away from general education funding to cover it," she said.

What to watch next

The 2026 gain of 360 special education students is the smallest since 2015. If the rate of growth is genuinely decelerating, the state may be approaching a natural ceiling as the post-COVID evaluation backlog clears. If it is not, Kansas will cross the 15% threshold by 2027 and could reach one in six students by 2030.

In Hiawatha, where nearly one in three students receives special education services, the coordinator manages caseloads that would be split across three staff members in a larger district. In Wellington, the share is 27.4% and climbing. These are communities where the general fund already stretches thin, where every IEP meeting pulls a teacher from a classroom that cannot spare one. The state promised 92% reimbursement of excess costs. It delivers 75 to 80%. The 65,849 students on the special education rolls did not ask for a funding gap. They just need the services their IEPs require.