Special Education Identification Throughout the COVID-19 Pandemic

We analyze student-level data on elementary special education identification in Washington state to explore how identification rates changed during the COVID-19 pandemic. We find that special education identification rates dropped dramatically in March 2020 through the end of the 2019-20 school year and remained below historical norms throughout the 2020-21 school year. In the 2021-22 and 2022-23 school years, however, identification rates surpassed pre-pandemic levels, suggesting that school districts were catching up with the identification of students who might have been missed during the pandemic.