Pennsylvania Spends More on Special Ed While Proven Reading Methods Stay Underfunded

Last updated: July 14, 2026

Pennsylvania signed one of its largest education budgets in state history on July 13, with a $55 million boost to special education that brings the state total to $1.58 billion. The headlines called it historic. But a decade of spending data tells a more complicated story. Pennsylvania education funding has grown 68 percent over the last ten years. Elementary reading proficiency fell from 60 percent to below 40 percent in the same period. For children who learn differently, the number is starker: only 8 percent of students with disabilities in Pennsylvania read at grade level today, unchanged from last year. More money is not the problem. Where it goes is.

TL;DR

Pennsylvania signed a $50.8 billion 2026-27 budget on July 13, 2026, with a $55 million special education increase (total: $1.58 billion).
PA education spending has grown 68 percent over the last decade; elementary reading proficiency dropped from 60 percent (2015) to below 40 percent today.
Only 8 percent of Pennsylvania students with disabilities read proficiently on the 2024-25 PSSA, unchanged year-over-year.
Act 47 (2025) mandates evidence-based reading instruction and universal K-3 literacy screening by 2027-28; this budget allocated $10 million of the $50 million advocates sought.
The PA Literacy Coalition's May 2026 Proof Points report documents four districts achieving strong reading growth and argues the model requires full implementation funding to scale.

Pennsylvania’s new budget directs $55 million more toward special education. The spending data on what that money has produced so far raises questions worth asking.

Common questions

What does Pennsylvania’s Act 47 require for reading instruction?

Act 47, passed in 2025, requires Pennsylvania schools to use evidence-based reading curricula grounded in the Science of Reading for grades K-3, screen every student three times per year for reading competency, and provide teachers with structured literacy training. Full implementation is required by the 2027-28 school year. The law is in effect; the funding for implementation is partially allocated ($10 million of $50 million sought).

Why is reading proficiency so low for students with disabilities despite increased funding?

The proficiency gap reflects years of reading instruction that did not match what the research says works. Structured literacy approaches, which directly teach phonological awareness, decoding, and fluency, are what the science has supported for decades. Spending increases alone do not change instructional methods; that requires funded training, new materials, and coaching tied to evidence-based practice.

How does special education funding actually reach my child’s classroom?

Pennsylvania distributes special education funding to districts through a formula based on student counts and poverty levels. How individual districts deploy the money varies, and it is worth asking your district directly: does it fund reading specialists, evaluations, staffing ratios, or specific services your child uses? A record appropriation helps most when it translates to a specific person or program in your child’s building.

My child struggles with reading. Should I wait for the school to screen them, or act now?

Pennsylvania’s Act 47 requires universal K-3 literacy screening three times per year, but that screening is a starting point, not a diagnosis. It tells the school which students need closer attention — it does not replace a professional evaluation if your child might qualify for formal accommodations (IEP or 504 plan), or if you suspect a vision, hearing, or medical cause. A professional evaluation is the route to those supports. You do not need to wait for the school to screen your child to ask for a referral if you have concerns today.

PA raised special ed funding to $1.58B. 8% of students with learning differences still read at grade level, same as last year. Act 47 mandates proven reading instruction. This budget funds a fifth of what it takes to implement it. Tweet Now Follow Learning Success

What Pennsylvania’s budget actually includes

Governor Shapiro signed the $50.8 billion 2026-27 budget with bipartisan support after months of negotiation in the state’s divided legislature. The plan directs $58 million more to basic education and $55 million more to special education, raising total special ed appropriations to $1,581,815,000. An additional $565 million flows toward historically underfunded school districts as part of the state’s response to a 2023 constitutional equity ruling, which identified a $4.5 billion adequacy gap. With this year’s allocation, Pennsylvania has directed $1.9 billion toward closing that gap.

Spotlight PA, covering the budget’s passage, noted it sends more money to the poorest schools and “skips difficult policy questions.” That framing is worth holding onto.

What the coverage gets wrong

Most coverage of Pennsylvania's budget framed the $55 million special education increase as unambiguous good news. The harder story is in the numbers the coverage didn't run. Pennsylvania education spending has grown 68 percent over the last decade. Elementary reading proficiency dropped from 60 percent to below 40 percent in the same period. Only 8 percent of students with disabilities read proficiently on last year's PSSA, unchanged from 2023-24. Act 47 mandated evidence-based reading instruction for grades K-3 in 2025; this budget funded its implementation at $10 million against the $50 million advocates called necessary. More spending is not the same as better instruction, and the research on what actually moves reading outcomes has been settled for decades.

The question the spending numbers don’t answer

In 2025, Pennsylvania passed Act 47 — a law requiring evidence-based reading curricula grounded in the Science of Reading for grades K-3, universal literacy screening three times per year, and mandatory structured literacy teacher training. The mandate takes full effect in 2027-28. It is the kind of law reading scientists have called for since the research was settled decades ago: the corrective for a guessing-based approach to reading instruction that, as cognitive scientist Mark Seidenberg documented, taught struggling readers to look like they were reading instead of actually reading.

This budget funded Act 47 implementation at $10 million. Advocates with the Pennsylvania Literacy Coalition asked for $50 million. Four Pennsylvania school districts, highlighted in the Coalition’s May 2026 Proof Points report, are already demonstrating that strong reading growth is achievable in high-poverty settings when the right instruction is in place. The Coalition’s case is direct: find out what those four districts are doing and fund every district to do the same.

The spending-outcomes gap in Pennsylvania is not a mystery. Education spending grew 68 percent over a decade; fewer than 4 in 10 elementary students now read at grade level, down from 6 in 10 in 2015. The pattern is familiar. Researchers documented the failure of guessing-based reading instruction long before Emily Hanford’s 2019 investigation made it a national story. States started passing corrective laws. Pennsylvania is one of them. The science was never the problem. The system that funds its implementation is. Learn more about the multi-system picture of reading difficulty that the instruction debate often misses.

Key Takeaways:

Spending is up, proficiency is down: Pennsylvania education funding grew 68 percent over ten years while elementary reading proficiency fell from 60 percent to below 40 percent.

Only 8 percent of students with disabilities read at grade level on last year's PSSA, unchanged from the prior year despite record special education appropriations.

Act 47's evidence-based reading mandate received $10 million of the $50 million needed: the law requiring proven reading instruction is on the books; full implementation funding is not.

What parents of children who learn differently should do now

The $55 million increase is real money that funds real services. The right question for parents is not whether the money exists, but whether it reaches effective instruction. Act 47’s structured literacy requirements kick in by 2027-28 for most districts, but that deadline is closer than it sounds, and $10 million in implementation funding is already moving. Parents do not need to wait for the mandate deadline to ask whether their child’s school is already moving toward structured literacy practice.

The PA Literacy Coalition’s Proof Points report names the four districts leading the way. Ask your principal what they know about those examples and whether your district is on the same path. Ask how the special education increase is deployed in your building: whether it funds reading specialists, evaluations, or services your child actually uses. Spending approved at the state level helps most when it turns into a specific person or program in your child’s classroom.

A diagnosis or a label tells you where your child is today. The research on neuroplasticity is clear that it does not predict where they will be after a year of the right kind of practice. The brain rewires with the right approach, and finding out exactly which systems need support is the step the spending debate skips entirely.

The science of reading has been settled for decades. Pennsylvania finally wrote it into law. Now it has to fund it, and that fight is far from over. The system defaults to spending more on what it already does; changing what happens inside the classroom takes a different kind of pressure. Nobody will advocate for your child as hard as you will, and the most useful thing you can do right now is find out which specific systems are holding your child back, not the label, but the actual processing gaps underneath it. The Learning Success All Access program gives you the multi-system, strengths-first tools to act on that, with a free trial and a personalized Action Plan you keep regardless.