Edunomics Lab Takes a Critical Look at Special Education Funding

On Thursday, Director Marguerite Roza delivered a 30-minute Special Education Spending session for the Edunomics Lab (Lab) at Georgetown University. Through analysis of the data gathered, the Lab researchers questioned whether special education funding is being guided by what’s working. Data presented indicate that, on average, schools are identifying more students with disabilities, although rates vary from state to state. This leads to increasing shares of the total school budget being assigned to special education. Maintenance of effort (MoE), litigation, and state education authorities (SEAs) that strictly comply with federal regulations make it difficult to reduce special education funding regardless of the number of students in need. The Lab researchers assert that identifying more students as having a learning disability does not lead to better outcomes or staff increases. In fact, according to their data, states like Florida have relatively few special educators, but their students with disabilities outperform those in most other states. Roza’s presentation ended with five suggestions: scrutinize special education budgets, compare costs and outcomes to comparable schools, choose quality over quantity of staff, improve basic reading instruction for everyone because of associated gains for students with disabilities, and avoid having a compliance mindset without examining the effectiveness of outcomes for students with disabilities. 

Access slides and audio recording here.