Education today has a way of exposing how slippery equality can be. Research from The Annenberg Institute at Brown University uncovered something hard to ignore: in the U.S., students from wealthier families are much more likely to receive disability accommodations than their low-income peers.
Looking at about a decade of student records alongside IRS data from Oregon, the study found that higher-income students were nearly twice as likely to get accommodations through 504 plans. A 504 plan can provide accommodations and supports—extra time on tests is a common example—without placing a student under a special education label.
In practice, that can separate these students from those who have IEPs, which low-income students are more likely to end up with. The bigger picture is uncomfortable: access may depend less on the disability itself and more on whether a family can work its way through a complicated system.
Wealthier families can often pay for private evaluations, and they may have legal support when they need to push for services. Lower-income families usually don’t have access to these resources. And since many schools aren’t equipped to identify students who are struggling, the responsibility often shifts to parents—meaning the families with the least time and fewest resources are asked to do the most.
This conversation also isn’t limited to K–12 anymore. On college campuses, accommodations have become a regular point of debate. Some highly selective universities, including Harvard and Brown, have said roughly one in five students receives accommodations. Nicholas Wolfinger, a sociology professor at the University of Utah, has described watching the shift in real time: when he started teaching in 1998, accommodations were rare; now he estimates around one in ten of his students uses them.
There’s tension here. Some people worry that students from wealthier backgrounds are using accommodations to gain an edge. At the same time, advocates point out that many “invisible disabilities”—ADHD and anxiety are often mentioned—can go undiagnosed, and for those students, accommodations aren’t a bonus; they’re what makes participation possible.
All of that leads to a question: are our support systems, inadvertently making existing inequalities worse? Wealthier students already benefit from better-funded schools and private resources. If accommodations are easier to receive when you can pay for evaluations or navigate bureaucracy, that gap can grow—especially when low-income families face barriers like limited access to healthcare and understaffed schools.
At the same time, rising demand may reflect greater awareness of invisible disabilities such as ADHD and shifting diagnostic practices. The risk is that policies created to promote equality may end up reinforcing the very inequality they’re supposed to reduce.
In the end, disability accommodations matter. Unfortunately, when a system depends heavily on money, time, and advocacy, it can widen the achievement gaps it is meant to address. That’s why it feels necessary to take a hard look at how these accommodations work—and how to improve them so students, regardless of their background, can actually get the help they need.
Sources:
Ainsworth, Nicholas, et al. School-Based Disability Identification Varies by Student Family Income. EdWorkingPaper no. 26-1374, 2026, Annenberg Institute at Brown University, https://doi.org/10.26300/dpwm-2673.
Mahnken, Kevin. “Wealthy Students More Likely to Get Disability Accommodations, Study Finds.” The 74, The 74 Media, 11 May 2026, https://www.the74million.org/article/wealthy-students-more-likely-to-get-disability-accommodations-study-finds/.
Schultz, Sharon. “Differences between a 504 Plan and an Individualized Education Program (IEP).” National Education Association, Dec. 2022, https://www.nea.org/professional-excellence/student-engagement/tools-tips/differences-between-504-plan-and-individualized-education-program-iep.
Vierstra, Gretchen. “What Is a 504 Plan?” Understood, Understood for All, Inc., 12 Mar. 2026, https://www.understood.org/en/articles/what-is-a-504-plan.