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From Caseload to Workload

White paper · Eric Oxford, Ed.D. · October 2026

A response to the Council for Exceptional Children’s July 2026 position on caseload and workload, and a measurement model that says what a workload percentage is a share of.

Read the paper (PDF)

In July 2026 the Council for Exceptional Children endorsed moving special education staffing from a caseload approach, which counts students per educator, to a workload approach, which accounts for all the direct and indirect work educators perform. This paper argues that the position is correct in direction and incomplete in one decisive respect: it does not say how workload should be measured. Its own worked example reports two teachers at 106 percent and 58 percent of a capacity it never names.

The paper reviews the professional guidance that came before the position, the research linking workload manageability to burnout and attrition, and the federal and state rules that govern caseloads, including the absence of any federal caseload limit and the hybrid rules already in force in Illinois and Ohio. It then proposes a measurement model built on the provider week, in which mandated direct service, required indirect work and contracted capacity are each measured explicitly, missing inputs are reported rather than assumed, and ratio-based roles are priced separately from minutes-based roles.

It closes with implications for federal and state policy, district practice and research, and with the limitations of both the position and the proposed model. It has not been peer reviewed. The author co-founded The Inclusive Practice, LLC, which develops PULSE; the paper states that conflict in full, and the model is offered for adoption by any district, state, vendor or researcher without reference to any product.

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