Special Education: Improved Allocation of Resources Could Help DOD Education Activity Better Meet Students' Needs
Fast Facts
Military families can find it hard to get special education services for their children with disabilities—especially in overseas locations.
Students' individualized education programs outline how many minutes of specialized instruction they are legally required to receive. But Department of Defense schools don't consider this information for special education staffing. This may contribute to not having staff available to deliver enough specialized instruction, or to delays in services.
Our recommendations address this and other issues we found.
Highlights
What GAO Found
The Department of Defense Education Activity (DODEA) operates DOD's school system and provides special education and related services for about 15 percent of its students worldwide. However, GAO found that related services provided by the military branches for students in overseas locations—such as physical therapy—were often limited or unavailable, resulting in service delays or disruptions. These services are required by students' individualized education programs—legally binding written plans describing the services students are to receive. GAO found delays in service delivery for students in 44 of DODEA's 114 overseas schools for 2022–2023 (see figure). Further, from school years 2018–2019 through 2022–2023, at least six cases took more than a year to resolve. Service delays and disruptions can negatively affect students' academic progress, according to related service providers and parents GAO interviewed.
Days Taken to Resolve Services Delays for DODEA Students' Physical and Occupational Services, School Year 2022–2023
GAO also found that DODEA's staffing formulas for special education teachers are based on student headcounts and do not consider the required service minutes (i.e., minutes of specialized instruction) specified in students' individualized education programs. Because required service minutes can vary widely among students, allocating staff without considering them may contribute to staffing shortages and to delays in delivering required services.
DODEA school staff and parents at the schools GAO visited identified several key obstacles to providing special education, including insufficient training and guidance. First, at 12 of 14 schools, paraeducators (staff providing extra help to students) reported receiving little to no onboarding training for special education. For example, paraeducators across all three DODEA regions told GAO they had not received DODEA-required crisis training, despite working with students with behaviors needing crisis response. Further, all regional officials and DODEA staff in 13 of 14 schools described insufficient procedural guidance on how to implement DOD's special education policies. School staff at seven schools said that without clear guidance, service delivery is inconsistent across schools. DODEA officials said they will update procedural guidance by school year 2025–2026, and staff should refer to DOD policy in the interim. Communicating which resources staff should currently use to interpret DOD policy—consistent with DODEA's goals for internal communication—would help promote a shared understanding of how to comply with DOD special education policy.
Why GAO Did This Study
Meeting the educational needs of children with disabilities attending DODEA schools poses unique challenges. For example, children in military families often relocate frequently, which requires finding appropriate special education and related services each time.
Senate Report 118-58 includes provisions for GAO to examine special education and related services at DODEA schools. GAO examined (1) the extent to which DOD makes these resources available to meet the needs of DODEA students and (2) key obstacles to providing these resources to DODEA students that were reported by DOD staff and families.
GAO analyzed DODEA data on student enrollment, staffing, and service provision. GAO also visited 14 DODEA schools in seven military communities worldwide, selected for variation in number of students with disabilities and location. Across the visits, GAO held 98 group interviews with DODEA teachers, principals, and other stakeholders. GAO also reviewed relevant federal laws and policies and interviewed DOD and DODEA officials.
Recommendations
GAO is making five recommendations to DOD, including to (1) incorporate students' required service minutes into special education staffing formulas, (2) ensure paraeducators receive required crisis training, and (3) communicate the resources staff should currently use to interpret DOD special education policy. DOD partially agreed with all five recommendations, as discussed in the report.
Recommendations for Executive Action
| Agency Affected | Recommendation | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Department of Defense | The Secretary of Defense should ensure that the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness directs the DODEA Director to revise its special education staffing formulas to incorporate students' service minute requirements specified in IEPs among the factors it considers. (Recommendation 1) |
DOD partially concurred with this recommendation. The agency acknowledged the importance of aligning staffing practices with the diverse needs of students with IEPs, and that service minutes can provide valuable insights into students' needs. DOD also stated that it will reassess its staffing formulas and employ a data-informed approach in doing so. However, DOD said that aligning staffing to service minutes may lead to various challenges-including overstaffing-as service minutes may not always accurately reflect the actual needs of students and may fail to account for the individualized nature of each student's educational requirements. We agree that staffing practices should take students' needs into account. Further, the purpose of an IEP is to lay out the special education and related services tailored to an individual student's needs and the anticipated frequency, location, and duration of those services. We continue to believe that required service minutes are one of the factors the agency should consider in its staffing formulas. Further, considering this information would support DOD's efforts to use a data-informed approach in its staffing practices.
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| Department of Defense | The Secretary of Defense should ensure that the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness directs the DODEA Director to ensure that any special education paraeducators who work with students who may need behavioral supports receive crisis training. (Recommendation 2) |
DOD partially concurred with this recommendation and noted ongoing efforts to expand its crisis training contract. DOD also stated that crisis training is not applicable to every paraeducator role within DOD schools; it also acknowledged the necessity of providing access to crisis training to paraeducators and other key personnel serving students with significant behavioral challenges. We will monitor the agency's efforts to target crisis training to those who need it.
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| Department of Defense | The Secretary of Defense should ensure that the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness directs the DODEA Director to provide supplemental instructional materials to special education teachers agencywide to help them adapt the general education curriculum for students with IEPs. (Recommendation 3) |
DOD partially concurred with this recommendation. DOD stated that relying solely on supplemental instructional materials would not fully ensure that it exposes students to core standards alongside their nondisabled peers, adequately prepares students for general education assessments, or meets the individualized needs of students. We agree that teachers should not solely rely on supplemental materials: this recommendation does not state that teachers should do so. We also acknowledge that DOD faces unique requirements regarding the procurement of educational resources and agree that it needs a strategic approach to ensure that it acquires resources that effectively address students' needs moving forward. As such, we continue to believe that agencywide access to supplemental instructional materials would expand the resources available to DODEA teachers to support their students and would continue to allow teachers to tailor instructional materials based onstudents' unique needs.
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| Department of Defense | The Secretary of Defense should ensure that the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness directs the DODEA Director to make more specialized reading interventions accessible across all DODEA locations to students with specific learning disabilities, including dyslexia, that impact their ability to read. (Recommendation 4) |
DOD partially concurred with this recommendation. DOD said that the agency already systemically provides students with reading interventions. While DODEA provides some reading interventions that all schools can access, DODEA district and regional officials told us that it is difficult to obtain more specialized reading interventions for students receiving special education overseas, and that some schools and districts have access to more specialized interventions while others do not. We therefore continue to believe that implementing this recommendation would help ensure that students receiving special education and related services develop to their fullest potential, regardless of their location.
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| Department of Defense | The Secretary of Defense should ensure that the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness directs the DODEA Director to communicate its timeframes for its new procedural guidance on special education and what resources staff should use to interpret the DOD policy while that guidance is being developed. (Recommendation 5) |
DOD partially concurred with this recommendation and stated that it is committed to issuing updated guidance beginning in the 2025-2026 school year. DOD said it will take a phased approach to update and implement the guidance, including communicating with staff about prior guidance that should not be used. DOD also said that existing agency policy provides guidance on special education. However, we reported that all school staff we spoke with said that DOD policy is not clear or detailed enough to help them implement it without guidance. We agree with DOD's plan to phase in new guidance, and maintain that it is important for DOD to communicate which resources staff should use to interpret DOD policy in the interim.
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