Districts Can and Should Use Special Education Funds for MTSS

Senior Education Value Director, PowerSchool

October 12, 2026

Special education is a significant part of the work of public schools, with more than 8 million eligible children served in 2024 (approximately 15% of students). Accordingly, special education costs represent a significant piece of the district budget puzzle: specialized staff, contracted services, transportation, and increasingly intensive supports.

Per several recent statewide studies, the additional per-pupil costs of special education services are thousands of dollars each year. While significant, these costs are necessary. Students with disabilities deserve every opportunity to participate in and make meaningful progress in public education.

At the same time, there is a fair and important question for districts to ask themselves: How else can we invest our special education resources to support students before providing our most intensive, and costly, services?

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), the longstanding federal law that guarantees and funds a portion of special education services, gives districts an answer to this question.

IDEA funds can support early intervention for all students

Under IDEA Part B, districts can use up to 15% of their annual allocation to provide Coordinated Early Intervening Services, or CEIS. These services can support any student who needs additional academic or behavioral support, not just those eligible for special education.

The logic behind CEIS is simple: identify needs earlier, intervene earlier, and address challenges before they become more intensive and costly. This approach is not rooted in a desire to reduce services for students eligible for special education but rather in the fundamental (and research-supported) understanding that meeting a student’s needs earlier typically yields better results using fewer resources.

MTSS is an investment in what happens before costs escalate

A consistent multi-tiered system of supports, or MTSS, gives schools a way to identify needs sooner, provide targeted support, and determine whether that support is working before problems become more intensive.

Doing that well takes more than a few intervention programs. Teams need consistent processes for identifying students, documenting supports, monitoring progress, and adjusting approaches. They need good data, as academic, behavior, attendance, and other indicators often need to be considered together to truly understand a student’s needs.

• A study of Tennessee’s statewide academic intervention implementation found a 61 percent average decrease in the odds of first-time specific learning disability identification by third grade. Researchers also found improvements in disproportionate special education eligibility, with larger declines in students from historically marginalized groups.
• A 2024 Oregon study found an 11 percent reduction in overall special education identification and a 15 percent reduction in specific learning disability identification after adopting responsive intervention processes. Those reductions were not accompanied by lower overall achievement.

Now, fewer students identified for special education should not be the primary goal. Many students require special education services, and early intervention should help schools identify them accurately and sooner.

The opportunity created by applying CEIS to intervention service for all is to reduce the number of students whose needs become more intensive because earlier support was inconsistent, delayed, or difficult to monitor. This is good for students, and it’s also good resource management.

If your district isn’t currently leveraging allowable CEIS flexibility in how it’s spending its IDEA Part B funds, it might make sense to explore.

References

Ainsworth, N., Cleveland, C., & Penner, A. (2024). The effects of Response to Intervention on disability identification and achievement. EdWorkingPaper No. 24-1010, Annenberg Institute at Brown University.

Gilmour, A. F., Harper, J., Lloyd, B., & Van Camp, A. (2024). Response to Intervention and specific learning disability identification: Evidence from Tennessee. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 57(3), 168–180.

U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs. Coordinated Early Intervening Services (CEIS) under Part B of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

U.S. Department of Education. 34 C.F.R. § 300.226: Early intervening services and 34 C.F.R. § 300.646: Disproportionality.