It has been readily apparent to me that special education has not been the drain on the school systems that administrators and the media claim. Finally there is a data-driven research paper from the conservative Hoover Institute that bears out the facts of the costs for special education. The results are startling only in that the data finally drives a stake in the heart of the anecdotal and fantastic claims that special education and parents of children with special needs are ruining the education system for "the rest of us." The bottom line conclusion that I draw from this report is that there is a core prejudice and bias against children with special needs that has not been overcome in the generation that IDEA has been in existence. The media and lobby groups for schools tend to perpetuate ugly myths to the detriment of students with special needs. Well, here is the data to fight the unfounded claims once and for all.
The main findings are as follows:
- Private placements account for slightly more than 1% of all placements and many of these placements were initated by the school district. If the totally dysfunctional D.C. school system were factored out the number would be much lower;
- Private placements are often a cost-effective means to educate children with special needs. [In my experience schools are sometimes willing to make a problem go away if that means funding a private placement instead of making an LRE in-district work];
- Total cost for special education represented roughly 8.3% of total education spending in 1977 and as the total spending for education generally has increased over the decades, the costs for special education adjusted for inflation is roughly the same in 2003;
- The majority of parents of children with special needs are unhappy with the services and placement that their children are receiving, but they rarely file complaints or fight with schools; so much for the cottage industry of special education attorneys making a mint from suing schools.
So the next time a school district complains about the cost of this service or that placement and how your child is ruining it for all the rest of the children, clobber them with this report. They will have no objective data of any kind to fire back at you and you will walk out smiling !