Is Neurodiversity Breaking Public Education?

Public education was designed for a one-size-fits-all model, but today’s classrooms are filled with students who think, learn, and communicate in vastly different ways. With autism, ADHD, and other neurodivergent diagnoses skyrocketing, schools are struggling to keep up. The system isn’t just strained—it’s cracking at the seams.

People all over the world are scrambling to find mental reasons and explanations for the surge in neurodiversity, including but not limited to:

• Increased awareness, testing, diagnosis
• Older parents
• Vaccinations
• Plastics
• Pesticides and chemicals
• Genetic, psychological, environmental factors

We are seeing physical evolution in real time, and we can accept that we are not in charge of the way that life changes. The best we can do is work together to understand how we are changing so that we can serve our children in order to create a better future for everyone.

“The mutation is in gates 49 and 55. They share a codon called histidine, which is why we have had vast increases in autism and prostate cancer. All of these changes are related to the mutation that is taking place in the solar plexus.” – Ra Uru Hu

The Explosion of Diagnoses: What’s Really Happening?

• Autism rates have surged from 1 in 150 children (2000) to 1 in 34 (2025)
• ADHD diagnoses have risen by 42% over the past decade, with critics arguing that strict academic standards push schools to label restless kids as “disordered.”
• Special education needs now make up 15% of public school students, up from 10% in 2010.

More diagnoses mean more demand for services that schools simply do not have the ability to pay for. The average spending per special-needs student is $20,000+ (vs. $12,000 for general education), and many districts cannot keep up.

The U.S. federal government’s Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), mandates that all students with disabilities receive a free and appropriate public education, but it only partially funds this requirement, currently covering less than 15% of costs, leaving states and local school districts to cover the majority of expenses.

States and local school districts rely heavily on property taxes and other local resources to fund special education, which leads to disparities in funding based on the wealth of the community. The inequality gap only widens from this point, as wealthy districts are able to hire specialists, while poorer ones rely on overworked staff. Rural schools can face 12-month waits for evaluations, while urban districts (with more resources) can diagnose faster.

The Teacher Burnout Crisis

60% of special education teachers leave the field within five years, citing impossible workloads and lack of support. On the other hand, mainstream teachers often lack training in neurodiversity and they are feeling increasing pressure to continue their education. This creates frustration on both sides as neither camp feels supported in *attempting to support* neurodiverse children.

Special education also involves complex procedures and regulations, which can be burdensome for schools to navigate. Difficult administrative decisions and schedules need to be made and maintained, but no one feels qualified to make or maintain them.

We are basically being faced with the task of educating children that are changing in ways that we cannot comprehend. Who, if anyone, is qualified to make decisions for them? Policy makers, school admins, teachers, and parents are all scrambling to find the answer as the problem is endlessly passed to the next person.

The Fallout: Who’s Losing?

Areas lacking speech therapists, OTs, and behavioral specialists are creating ‘therapy deserts,’ forcing families to move, sue, or homeschool, and many cannot afford the cost that come with these monumental decisions.

Students are falling through the cracks, and without early intervention, many neurodivergent kids develop problems that schools aren’t equipped to handle, such as anxiety, depression, or behavioral issues. These problems often escalate into discipline issues as ADHD and autism students are 3x more likely to be suspended, feeding the school-to-prison pipeline.

Can Public Education Be Saved?

People everywhere are discussing solutions that might work:

• Fully fund IDEA – Stop passing the buck to states and local districts.
• Mandate neurodiversity training – Every teacher should understand ADHD, autism, and sensory needs.
• Expand telehealth & AI tools – Remote evaluations and adaptive learning tech can bridge gaps.
• Rethink standardized testing – Rigid benchmarks hurt neurodivergent students.

Or… is it time for a new model?

Let’s get real, kids need full-time care, whether at home or school. So, can we realistically continue collective education when it costs $20k per year per neurodivergent child? Homeschool rates are increasing (1.7% in 1999 vs. 6% today) as parents attempt to take responsibility for their children and their differences.

The rise in neurodiversity isn’t a problem. It is what is happening, and we have the ability to accept and respond to it. We have never needed to know ‘why,’ or create a ‘reason’ in order to assign blame. Instead of forcing kids to fit into a broken model, we can attempt to understand how their brains work so that we can build a new one.

The question isn’t if public education will change—it’s how much longer we’ll wait to fix it.

Sources: CDC 2025 data, National Center for Learning Disabilities, IDEA funding reports.