Today Rick Hess takes up the issue of special education spending on his blog, and gives Arne Duncan a fair bit of grief for delivering a pandering speech on the 35th anniversary of IDEA last week.
The major challenge for special education today is not access, but quality. As we try to better serve children with special needs, it's vital to recognize that we don't have endless resources?and that open-ended promises to some mean stripping resources away from others.
By some estimates, special ed spending already accounts for more than one-quarter of k-12 outlays, and is heading toward one-third. And as a colleague remarked to me the other day, if the overall pie grows smaller (thanks to impending budget cuts) but the special ed piece of the pie stays the same, the special ed proportion will grow larger still. Will we spend 40 percent of our education dollars on special education? Half? On 11 percent of the kids? When will enough be too much?
To be fair to Arne Duncan, he did mention, in his fantastic ?New Normal? speech last week, the need to rein in special ed spending. And on this front, the Secretary can actually do something. Oregon, among other states, has managed to trim its special education budget this year (maybe by intervening earlier when kids are struggling to read?). And yet doing so violates federal ?maintenance of efforts? requirements. (Yes, Uncle Sam has actually made it illegal for states to handle sped more efficiently and thus lower spending.) So Oregon needs a waiver from the Secretary or else could lose millions in federal dollars; he should grant it, and send along a ?thank-you? note to boot. We should celebrate states and districts that stretch their special ed dollars?not criminalize them.
-Mike Petrilli
