Texas' low special ed rate raises questions
Published 09:41 a.m., Thursday, July 5, 2012
HOUSTON (AP) — The percentage of special education students in Texas public schools has
declined to the lowest of any state, and teachers and parents say they don't know why.
Texas listed 8.8 percent of students as having special needs last year. That's down from 12 percent
in 2000. Houston reported 7.9 percent, and Dallas reported 7.7 percent, the Houston Chronicle
reported (http://bit.ly/LVFOoK ). Even with a rising population, Texas reported about 103,000
fewer special education students.
The national figure has remained around 13 percent.
Jack Fletcher, a University of Houston professor on the executive committee of the Texas Center for
Learning Disabilities, calls the trend "very encouraging."
"I don't think people fully understand why, but it does seem to coincide with the state and federal
initiatives for beginning reading instruction," Fletcher said. He also credited teachers for working
harder to teach reading and limit the number of students who need special education.
Others are skeptical that schools have improved. "They are doing an atrocious job of
teaching kids to read," said Houston special needs advocate Louis Geigerman. Some worry that
schools might be listing fewer students to keep costs down. One parent, Barbara Knighton of
Conroe, suggested that parents of special needs children are being forced to try private or home
schooling.
"From being in the system, you hear the complaints. You hear the doors being locked and shut and
closed," said Knighton, founder of the Parents Supporting Parents, a group for parents of children
with disabilities. "The school district is not giving them what they need. They're just sitting
there in class. They're bullied, they're ignored."
Gene Lenz, director of federal and state education policy for the Texas Education Agency, said the
state may once have sent too many children into special education. Districts now "make sure that's
100 percent true before they place a label on a child," he said. "While we're proud of the work
that's happened here, we're not naive," Lenz said. "We're always worried about whether
everyone has access to special education services that needs it. But nothing seems more
inappropriate to me than to place a child into special education when they don't have a
disability."
More parents of special-needs children opt out of public
schools
By Jennifer Radcliffe
Updated 10:52 p.m., Saturday, August 25, 2012
For thousands of Texas parents, the start of the school year has taken on a new meaning: an end to
the conflicts, struggles and disappointment with the public school system.
A growing number of parents of special-needs children are opting out of public schools,
deciding instead to home school or to pay for pricey private schools.
The number of secondary students who left public schools to home school increased 50 percent from
2003 to 2010, reaching 2,040 7th- through 12th-graders, according to the Texas Education Agency.
The number of middle- and high-school special education students who withdrew for private school
increased 75 percent, reaching 772 in 2010.
That's not to mention thousands of younger students whose reasons for leaving public schools aren't
recorded, or the countless families who give up on public school before their child receives a needed
"special education" classification. With Texas' diagnosis rate falling to an all-time low of 8.8
percent in recent years - the lowest in the nation - the label and its accompanying services are
harder than ever to come by.
"It's the free market at work. People are voting with their feet," said Tim Lambert, president of the
Texas Home School Coalition. "Parents just get frustrated with the bureaucracy of the public school."
A record 300,000 Texas children are being home-schooled, and an increasing number of them have
special needs, prompting the creation of support groups and specialized curriculum. Some families
who don't feel equipped to handle home-schooling a child with special needs search out one of the
dozens of specialty private schools, often paying the equivalent of Ivy League tuition.
Leslie Phillips pulled her son out of a Katy school when he was in second grade, opting to pay a
$30,000-a-year tuition bill rather than continue fighting for the services she felt he needed. The family
viewed tuition as a better investment than a legal battle they were unlikely to win. To add urgency, her
son, who has an autism disorder, was coming home with bruises that no one could explain.
Lack of resources
"They just didn't or couldn't respond quickly enough to get us in a situation that was safe for him,"
said Phillips, whose son, now 12, is thriving at a private school. "I have probably more sympathy for
school districts than many parents. ... They're left with this explosion of children with a high level of
need and they can't scramble fast enough to get the resources and training."
Considering the autism and attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder epidemics, Texas' shrinking
number of special education children seems questionable, she added.
Some education officials, however, argue the decline is a positive sign that public schools are
identifying and remediating learning disabilities faster, reducing the need for special education.
Cynthia Singleton home-schooled her son, who has autism, for several years before enrolling him in
Johnston Middle School in the Houston ISD, where he's an eighth-grader in advanced classes. It's
the lack of attention to the social needs of special education students that will likely leave her
scrambling for alternatives for high school.
"They don't have even half of the resources they need to handle the kid with disabilities," she
said. "They turn a blind eye to the social needs."
A niche group of lawyers defends school districts against parents' special-education legal claims,
making it difficult for parents to prevail without spending considerable time and money.
'Find an alternative'
"When you get into a fight with a school, it's like a divorce," Singleton said. "I'd rather take my energy
and money and find an alternative."
Claudia Wanczyk pulled her son out of Katy ISD when he was rezoned to a different school with a
new teacher at the start of fourth grade. The family has spent thousands of dollars on therapy in
addition to home-schooling the 12-year-old.
"He's made more progress" at home, she said.
Rebecca Rex's son is starting Lone Star College this month after being home-schooled throughout K12. She showed up for kindergarten registration 15 years ago intending to enroll him in public school,
but she had immediate concerns about administrators' reaction to her son, who was born with lead
poisoning.
Rex's son is now an avid photographer and a skilled swimmer. He's well traveled and a talented artist.
"It just became a way of life for us," she said. "I guess I'm happy the school system ran me off, to be
honest."
Academic success in special education not
linked to spending, study finds
By Lyndsey Layton, Published: September 5, 2012
The amount of money spent by school districts on special education varies greatly around the country,
and some districts that spend less than others are getting better academic results from students,
according to a study released Wednesday.
The study, sponsored by the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute, suggests that some districts
are overspending on special education, which has become a growing segment of school budgets
around the country.
If all districts spent the median amount on special education, it would save $10 billion a year,
according to the study, which was written by Nathan Levenson, a consultant and former school
superintendent.
Levenson gathered data from 1,400 districts representing more than one-third of K-12 students in the
United States, making it the largest and most detailed collection of special education staffing and cost
data available.
“There’s not a lot of research around spending in special education because I think it’s a topic that
makes lots of people uncomfortable,” Levenson said. “No one wants to balance budgets on the backs
of very needy children.”
Levenson focused on 10 pairs of school districts in five states — Florida, Massachusetts, Minnesota,
Ohio and Texas. The districts that made up each pair were roughly the same size, with equal
numbers of special education students and similar demographic characteristics.
In each pair, one district had higher achievement among its special education students while
spending as much or less than the other district.
“People think intuitively that more spending must mean better outcomes,” Levenson said. “This paper
shows that is just not true.”
The study did not explain why some districts spend less than the median but get better results.
Levenson said that it boiled down to great teaching.
The single largest cost driver in special education is staffing, he said. In the study, the higherspending, lower-achieving districts had 25 percent more teachers and paraprofessionals on their
payrolls, Levenson found. A better plan would be to hire fewer but more effective teachers, he said.
Chester E. Finn Jr., president of the Fordham Institute, said school districts have been overly focused
on spending for special education without enough concern about outcomes. “By and large, the
districts in the study that spend less get better results for those kids,” Finn said. “That’s potentially a
big deal.”
Special education is consuming an increasing share of school budgets nationwide. According to
Levenson, special education represented about 21 percent of all education spending across
the nation in 2005, or $110 billion, compared with 18 percent in 1996.
Locally, the District of Columbia has struggled to educate children with disabilities. A series of federal
judges have found serious deficiencies in the District’s efforts, flagging problems with everything from
transportation to the city’s ability to provide services to children in a timely manner.
The Fordham study recommends, among other things, that the federal government end the
requirement that spending by states and localities on special education cannot fall below that of the
prior year, except in certain cases.
Advocates for children with disabilities said they also support cost-effective budgets and want better
academic results. But they said that special education historically has been underfunded.
“Repeatedly, every year, teachers, administrators, everyone says there isn’t enough funding to deliver
the kind of services that are needed,” said Lindsay Jones, senior director for policy and advocacy at
the Council for Exceptional Children, which represents special education teachers.
Jones said the study’s recommendation that the federal government stop requiring states and
localities to maintain the previous year’s funding for special education is part of a campaign that
began earlier this year with House Republicans. “Many attacks on maintenance of effort are coming
about right now because of the fiscal crisis we’re in,” she said.
Study: Reducing Special Ed to Save Money
article by James Dugan | September 07, 2012
A new study sponsored by The Thomas B. Fordham Institute has suggested that if higher-spending
public schools bring their special education staffing levels closer to the national median and reduce
spending, they can potentially save the country $10 billion in funding each year.
“There’s not a lot of research around spending in special education because I think it’s a topic that
makes lots of people uncomfortable,” Managing Director at the District Management Council and
author of the study Nathan Levenson said to The Washington Post. “No one wants to balance
budgets on the backs of very needy children.”
Gathering data from 1,411 districts representing more than one-third of K-12 students in the United
States, Levenson examined and analyzed spending patterns. He then reduced the sample to ten
pairs of comparable districts from five states—Florida, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Ohio and Texas.
In those samples, he found that in each pair at least one of the districts spent less money while
having higher achievement.
“People think intuitively that more spending must mean better outcomes,” Levenson said to The
Washington Post. “This paper shows that is just not true.”
While Levenson did not explain why some districts spent less than others and got better results, he
felt that it boiled down to teacher effectiveness. In the study, he explained that the single largest cost
driver in special education is staffing.
The study makes the following recommendations to improve efficiency in special education programs:
• Employ more effective general-education and special-education teachers at the district level—not
just more of them or more non-teachers (i.e., aides).
• Carefully manage pupil loads for special-education teachers.
• End federal “maintenance of effort” requirements that prohibit states and districts from reducing
spending on special education.
• Preserve the Elementary and Secondary Education Act’s (ESEA) subgroup accountability and
reporting requirements, including those that pertain to students with special needs.
• Permit greater flexibility in the use of federal special-education (IDEA) funds.
Special education advocates have praised the study, but still note that special education is
traditionally underfunded.
“Repeatedly, every year, teachers, administrators, everyone says there isn’t enough funding to deliver
the kind of services that are needed,” Lindsay Jones, senior director for policy and advocacy at the
Council for Exceptional Children said to The Washington Post.
Chester E. Finn Jr., president of the Fordham Institute, explained that the study shows that school
districts need to be more mindful of the correlation between spending in special education.
“Special-education spending can’t be exempt from efforts to improve educational outcomes and
efficiency,” Fordham Institute President Chester E. Finn, Jr. said in a statement. “Kids with special
needs deserve better and districts literally can’t afford not to do better.”