How Much Are Students Told About Special Education?

Updated: December 13, 2025. Reviewer: Dr. Rose Sebastian, Ed.D.

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Empowering, But Not Overwhelming Students

The answer is, it depends. Most students with disabilities know something is different for them– that things which are easy for other students are hard for them. Because of how the referral process works, many have experienced repeated failure prior to qualifying for special education. By age nine, many students will tell you that they are stupid. By age 14, many will say that school is just not their thing. Students are not actually stupid. They know that things are hard for them.

Talking to students openly about their IEP, including them meaningfully at meetings, and having them review their own IEP can be a way to empower even young students. In the world of parent-teacher conferences, the ideal has moved from just the adults to student-led conferences. There is empowerment and ownership there.

But parents and schools worry about overwhelming students. Parents will often ask that their child not be at the IEP. And IEPs are not written– nor meetings structured– to be easily intelligible to most people, much less younger children.

So, the answer is it depends. Students know they are pulled for services or that someone comes into their class to work with them. They know when they are pulled for testing. But some, at younger ages, might not know much more.

By high school, the law shifts from it being okay to invite students to meetings to mandating that students be there.

Summary: Informing students about their IEPs and services

By the age 15, students have to be at IEP meetings (See 34 C.F.R. § 300.321(b)). Until then, IDEA says to include “whenever appropriate, the child with a disability” (34 C.F.R. § 300.321(a)(7)). That leaves it, until high school, entirely up to IEP teams to decide what students are told and how much they are included on their teams.

Talking to Students About Special Education

How do you talk to a young child about disability?

There is no right way to talk to younger children about their disabilities or services. There are many ways to do it wrong. I once had a student who had a physical condition that caused him to look different. Other students would ask about it and he would freeze up. We wrote an IEP goal that his specialist would help him think of ways to respond. We were thinking that she would tell him it was okay to tell people to F$## off (in polite language) if he wanted to. Instead, she shared the prognosis for his condition with him– which was a bad one. He was seven.

You can bungle this for sure. At the same time, even by age seven, students know they are different. The goal is to empower them and to help them understand that they might be different– but they are not in any way less than. Because, without conversations, that is what too many students see themselves as.

It is easiest to have the conversation about disability when the student initiates it– and to reframe it as difference, not deficit.

It is also REALLY easy to include young children at meetings. I have had second graders set the purpose for the meeting, share how they think things are going, and what they want to work on. There were parts of the meeting that the parents or I asked the student to play on their computer for– but there are almost always parts that are better for the team and the child to have them at.

How do you help students read their IEPs?

IEPs are deliberately dense and opaque documents. I have, however, had tenth graders who were mesmerized and read theirs line by line, finding seeing how others saw them an incredible experience. Another ninth grader line edited her IEP for typos and had a lot of thoughts on how her disability was explained in the IEP.

With most students, however, I start with the most concrete and easy to understand parts of the IEP– the accommodations. Because all students have opinions about what they want. It tends to lead to a lot of request for walks and music– but it gets them engaged in the paperwork and knowing their own rights.

From there I go to goals. What do they think they want to work on? Do they want a goal on X or would they rather Y?

With a lot of students, that’s where I stop– but over time, I build in more of these conversations and more time to look at the paperwork together.