By Betsy Hill and Roger Stark
Across the United States, roughly 13 percent of students are formally identified as receiving special education services. In some schools that rate is dramatically higher—administrators have reported proportions of 30 percent or more. In certain high-poverty settings where cognitive screening has been conducted, assessments have shown that 70 percent or more of students display measurable cognitive deficits. While some specialized schools are designed to serve high concentrations of students with disabilities, the very high prevalence of classifications in mainstream schools raises an important question: are too many students being placed into special education rather than being offered interventions that address underlying cognitive skills?
Rethinking Special Education: Cognitive Skills and Remediation
We believe that many schools currently place far more students into special education than necessary. One major reason for this overrepresentation is that deficits in cognitive skills—working memory, attention, processing speed, visual perception and sequencing—often underlie academic struggles. These weaknesses can stem from many causes, including poverty, trauma, or limited early experiences, and they do not always require formal classification to be addressed effectively.
Rather than defaulting to classification and the lengthy, expensive processes that accompany it, schools could focus more on developing students’ underlying cognitive skills. Strengthening core cognitive functions would reduce the need for labels, lower classroom conflicts over eligibility, and free up special education resources for students with the most significant and persistent needs.
Specific Learning Disabilities and Underlying Cognitive Processes
Approximately 40 percent of students in special education are diagnosed with a specific learning disability. A specific learning disability is defined as a disorder in one or more of the basic psychological or cognitive processes involved in learning that impairs a student’s ability to read, write, or do mathematics. Many students placed in other IDEA categories—autism, speech or language impairment, traumatic brain injury—also show weaknesses in the same underlying cognitive processes. Taken together, this suggests that a majority of students served by special education have cognitive processing challenges at the root of their academic difficulties.
When a student is formally recognized as having a disability that involves cognitive processing weaknesses, educators typically implement a range of supports organized into three broad approaches: accommodations, curriculum modifications, and compensatory strategies. Each approach aims to reduce the impact of processing deficits so the student can access grade-level learning more successfully.
Accommodations (examples)
- Extended time for assignments and tests
- Note-taking assistance or provision of teacher notes
- Verbal instructions instead of written, or vice versa
Curriculum Modifications (examples)
- Extra, targeted instruction on prerequisite skills
- Short, simplified directions broken into steps
- More explicit connections to prior knowledge and context
- Grade-level materials adjusted for readability
- Reduced workload (for example, fewer items to complete)
Compensatory Strategies (examples)
- Teaching categorization and chunking to organize information
- Use of graphic organizers to visualize relationships
- Mnemonics to support memory for facts and sequences
- Multi-sensory instruction and repeated practice
These strategies are valuable because they bypass or compensate for weak cognitive processes, enabling students to participate in learning without being overwhelmed by the demands that exceed their current cognitive capacity. For example, a teacher who breaks directions into single steps is reducing the working memory load for a student who struggles to hold and act on multi-step instructions.
The Case for Remediation: Neuroplasticity and Cognitive Training
Compensation reduces barriers to learning, but it does not necessarily change the underlying cognitive skills. Over the past few decades, research on neuroplasticity has shown that the brain remains capable of change well beyond early childhood. When interventions are designed to target specific cognitive processes—working memory, attention control, processing speed, visual sequencing—those processes can become more efficient and accurate.
Evidence from school-based implementations of cognitive training supports this approach. In one study of elementary students diagnosed with specific learning disabilities, students who completed 12 weeks of targeted cognitive training showed an average gain in measured cognitive functioning equivalent to 2.8 years, compared with an average gain of two months for a control group. In proficiency terms, the treatment group’s overall cognitive proficiency rose from 64 percent to 89 percent over the 12-week period, while the control group changed only from 63 percent to 64 percent. Students who received training also made measurable academic gains—approximately 0.8 grade equivalent in reading and 1.0 grade equivalent in mathematics during the same period.
These findings imply a clear educational implication: remediation of underlying cognitive processes should be recognized as a fourth pillar of instructional support alongside accommodations, curriculum modifications, and compensatory strategies. When remediation is added to the toolkit, educators can both support access to the curriculum and improve the cognitive foundations that make learning more automatic and sustainable.
Implications for Schools and Decision Makers
Adopting cognitive remediation as a standard option would enable schools to:
- Reduce unnecessary special education classification by addressing root causes of academic difficulty
- Deliver more equitable support to students affected by poverty-related cognitive delays
- Target scarce special education resources to those with the most severe or persistent disabilities
- Improve long-term academic outcomes by strengthening the cognitive skills that support learning across subjects
Implementation requires reliable assessment to identify specific cognitive weaknesses, evidence-based training programs that leverage principles of neuroplasticity, and consistent progress monitoring. With these components in place, schools can expand their capacity to help students close gaps in learning without immediately resorting to formal classification where other interventions might suffice.
About the Authors
Betsy Hill is President of BrainWare Learning Company, an organization focused on building learning capacity through the practical application of neuroscience. An experienced educator, she has studied connections between neuroscience and education and has served on university governance boards and as an instructor in graduate programs. She holds a Master of Arts in Teaching and an MBA from Northwestern University.
Roger Stark is Co-founder and CEO of BrainWare Learning Company. He has led efforts to make comprehensive cognitive literacy skills training and assessment more accessible. Roger guided the development of a widely researched, integrated online cognitive training tool designed to build cognitive skills that underlie academic learning.
Note: This article was originally published by The Learning Counsel, a research institute and news media hub focused on the transition to digital curriculum in education.