What to Do When the School Is Not Serving Your Child: A Q&A with Dr. Kristan Rodriguez

What to Do When the School Is Not Serving Your Child: A Q&A with Dr Kristan Rodriguez

Special education in America has some of the strongest disability protections in the world. And yet, for millions of families, navigating the system still feels like a fight. The evaluations take too long. The meetings feel adversarial. The language is confusing. And children who need support often wait far too long to get it.

Dr. Kristan Rodriguez has spent her career inside that tension. She has worked with schools across the country and internationally to build the systems that actually serve students. We sat down with her to talk about what is broken, what is working, and what families can do about it right now.

A lot of families with special needs kids feel like the school system is designed against them. From your experience inside districts, is that perception fair?

In many places, yes. Not because educators are intentionally working against families, but because the systems that govern special education are often structured in ways that create delay, inconsistency, and defensiveness.

From a systems perspective, special education is frequently organized around eligibility, compliance, and resource protection rather than around proactive access to appropriate services. That shows up in very real ways for families: long evaluation timelines, unclear communication, fragmented data, and programming decisions that feel more tied to staffing or placement constraints than to a student's actual needs.

In too many districts, the process becomes reactive instead of responsive. Students are expected to demonstrate significant difficulty before services intensify, and families are often left navigating complex procedural language just to understand what their child is entitled to. When systems are not designed for clarity and responsiveness, families experience them as gatekeeping, even when that is not the intent.

What I have seen in stronger systems is very different. Special education is treated as an integrated service model, not a separate track. Evaluation, programming, and service delivery are aligned and transparent. Teams are expected to connect data directly to decisions. And families are brought into the process as informed partners, not as outsiders trying to gain access. A parent should never feel like they need legal expertise to access appropriate support. When that happens, it is not a family problem. It is a systems design problem.

Where does UDL actually help students with disabilities, and where does it fall short?

UDL helps enormously when it is used the way it was intended, to remove predictable barriers in the design of instruction. It helps schools stop treating learner variability like an exception and start planning for it from the beginning. That matters for students with disabilities because better design improves access, engagement, and expression for many students before failure compounds.

But UDL is not a substitute for disability-specific instruction, intervention, therapy, accommodations, or specially designed instruction. If a student needs explicit phonological intervention, assistive technology, or instruction tightly aligned to IEP goals, UDL alone is not enough. It is a powerful framework, but it is still a framework. Students with disabilities often need both universally designed environments and targeted, individualized support.

MTSS is supposed to identify struggling students early. Why are so many kids still slipping through?

MTSS is supposed to identify students early, but in too many schools it functions as a process for discussion rather than a system for action. That delay costs children real time.

The breakdown is predictable: inconsistent screening, weak progress monitoring, unclear tier definitions, and confusion about how MTSS connects to special education. In some cases, MTSS gets used as a gatekeeping mechanism where students are expected to move through tiers before an evaluation is even considered. That is not aligned with IDEA or Section 504.

I often see a student receiving multiple rounds of loosely defined interventions over several months, with limited data showing whether those supports are actually working, while teams continue to "try one more thing" instead of initiating an evaluation. The student is discussed frequently but not served appropriately.

This is why I developed MTSS², to address the disconnect between general education, intervention, and special education by creating a system where instruction, data, intervention, and evaluation are aligned and happen together. When those systems are integrated, schools can respond more quickly, reduce delays, and ensure students access the services they need without unnecessary barriers.

Parents of kids with IEPs often feel like they're fighting the school at every meeting. What is going wrong in those rooms?

Usually, the room is organized around compliance instead of problem-solving. People come in defensive, overly procedural, or underprepared to talk concretely about the child. Sometimes the wrong people are in the room. Sometimes the data are fragmented. Sometimes nobody has connected evaluation findings, daily performance, classroom barriers, and IEP goals into one coherent picture.

And too often, the family's knowledge is treated like emotion rather than evidence.

A good meeting should feel collaborative, specific, and honest. Families should hear: here is what we see, here is what we tried, here is what worked, here is what did not, and here is what we are going to do next. When that is missing, meetings feel adversarial because families are left trying to force clarity into a process that should already have it.

You have been inside schools across multiple continents. How does the US compare in actually serving students with disabilities?

The US has some of the strongest legal protections and a well-developed infrastructure for supporting students with disabilities. There is a clear framework for evaluation, individualized programming, and access to services, and in many schools, that translates into high-quality, coordinated support for students and families.

Where the opportunity lies is in consistency of implementation. In some other settings, there may be less formal process but more flexibility and quicker alignment between student needs and services. In the US, the structure is there, but execution varies widely from district to district. Many students are very well served. But the experience is not consistent.

AI is coming into classrooms fast. What should parents of special needs kids be asking their schools right now?

Parents should ask very practical questions. How is AI being used, and for what? Is it helping educators analyze data, differentiate instruction, and communicate more effectively? Or is it being used in vague ways without guardrails?

They should also ask how the school is protecting student privacy, how AI use aligns with their child's IEP, and whether technology is being used to increase access rather than lower expectations. For students with disabilities, AI can be helpful when it supports planning, feedback, communication, and accessibility. It is not helpful when it becomes a shortcut that replaces expert judgment or individualized support.

What does a school that genuinely serves special needs students well actually look like?

It looks coherent.

The adults share ownership. A student is not handed off between general education, intervention, and special education but supported through a connected team that plans and adjusts together. Core instruction is strong, with teachers using clear routines, accessible materials, and intentional supports. When additional help is needed, intervention is timely and clearly defined, with specific goals, progress monitoring, and adjustments based on real evidence.

Special education is not treated like a separate island. Services, accommodations, and IEP goals connect directly to what is happening in the classroom. Teams use multiple sources of data. Families are informed early and consistently. Related service providers are integrated into planning, not added on after the fact. Students have voice. They understand their goals and can reflect on their progress.

And the school does not force families to choose between access to grade-level learning and access to support. Students get both at the same time.

If a parent came to you and said their child is not being served, what do you tell them to do?

The first thing I ask is: what specifically is not working? Is it access to grade-level content, lack of progress, behavior, communication, or something else? Clarity on the concern matters because it shapes the entire conversation.

Once that is clear, I tell parents to ground everything in evidence. Ask the school to share current data, recent work samples, and what progress has or has not been made over time. Then ask very specific questions: What is the current instructional plan? What supports are being provided right now? Who is responsible for delivering them, and how often? How is progress being monitored, and when will the team review whether the plan is working?

If the answers are vague, that is usually where the problem is.

Parents should also know that evaluation is a separate process and cannot be delayed by requiring a student to move through multiple layers of support first. The goal is to shift the conversation from general concern to a clear, shared understanding of the problem and a concrete plan to address it. When parents ask focused, evidence-based questions, it moves the conversation from opinion to accountability.

You turned around a school fast. Were students with disabilities part of that improvement?

They have to be, or it is not real improvement. Too many turnaround efforts chase broad averages and celebrate gains that are not experienced by the students with the greatest needs.

My view is the opposite. If your systems are not improving outcomes for students with disabilities, multilingual learners, and other historically underserved groups, your model is not actually working. Strong improvement work should show up in access, instruction, intervention quality, progress monitoring, and cohort outcomes. Otherwise, it is just optics.

What is the one thing the education system could change tomorrow that would have the biggest impact on students with special needs?

Stop separating general education, intervention, and special education into disconnected systems. That single shift would change almost everything.

When those systems operate separately, students fall between them, families get mixed messages, and schools waste time arguing about ownership. When they are integrated, schools can design strong core instruction, respond earlier, align IEPs to real instructional decisions, and make meetings more productive.

The biggest immediate win would be moving from fragmented service delivery to a truly shared model of responsibility. In my experience, that is where the most meaningful change begins.

About Dr. Kristan Rodriguez

Kristan Rodriguez, Ph.D., is an internationally recognized leader in Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS) and inclusive practice, and the creator of the MTSS² Framework™. She is the best-selling author of In Support of Student Data: A Data Workbook for MTSS Teams (Wiley, 2025). A sought-after keynote speaker, she has presented for national organizations including NASSP and NCTM, with her work featured in WMC-TV Action News 5, DisrupTV, and leading education podcasts including Leading Equity, Shifting Schools, and the NAESP Principal Podcast. More info can be found on her website here: https://www.cca-pr.com/

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