Our View: Special Education Spending Merits Second Look
July 2, 2009
As cities and towns continue to struggle with the question of how to pay for their schools, a look at the explosion in spending on special education might be instructive.
Legally and morally, children with disabilities are entitled to a "free, appropriate public education," and it’s a given that in some cases the cost of providing such is going to be expensive.
But while the cost of special education services approaches $2 billion a year in Massachusetts, the results have been mixed. Meanwhile the list of conditions requiring special services which now can include being disorganized or being unable to deal with authority figures, continues to expand.
Indeed, a recent investigation by CommonWealth magazine, published by the Massachusetts Institute for a New Commonwealth (MassINC), found that a 2000 law aimed at limiting special-education costs by focusing services on those most in need has had little practical effect.
The first year after passage of the law — which modified the former promise of "maximum feasible" benefits to "free" and "appropriate," in line with federal standards, the number of students enrolled in special education program fell by 10,000 or about 8 percent.
"Paradoxically," the magazine reports, "the cost of the program rose by 8 percent, or roughly $100 million." And "over the next eight years, the cost continued to climb, and the number of special needs students returned to more than 164,000."
Meanwhile, the article states, "Special education children, as a group, are falling further behind their r egular education peers every year, and an achievement gap of large proportions has opened between special education students in wealthy and in poor communities."
No one wants to pit the parents of special education students against the community at large. But some of the findings of the CommonWealth investigation bear further review.
Why, for instance, does Massachusetts spend $436 million a year — third highest amount in the country — sending some students to private schools? Why has the cost of these out-of-district placements gone up 126 percent since 1998, while overall school spending has increased only by 52 percent over the same period?
Why have the federal and state governments been allowed to push the major share of these costs on municipalities?
When Chapter 766 became law in the early 1970s, the state was supposed to pick up the entire tab; when the federal law was passed in 1975, it called for Washington to pay 40 percent. Instead, according to CommonWealth, "In fiscal 2007, 55 percent of Massachusetts special education funds came from local communities, 35 percent from the state, and just 10 percent from the federal government."
As a result, having even a single family with children who have significant needs move into a community can lead to fiscal catastrophe. The reporters interviewed Annemarie Cesa of the Beverly School Committee, who told them of a family that moved into the city, one of whose children ended up attending a residential school in Connecticut and the other of whom went to Landmark in Beverly, at a total cost to the city of $150,000 a year.
Finally, where is the accountability for all the money being spent on these programs?

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"According to federal data from 2000," CommonWealth reports, "Massachusetts ranked fifth nationally in graduating special education students and had one of the lowest dropout rates in the country."
But billions of dollars later and with the advent of the MCAS test as a graduation requirement in 2003, the most recent data "show Massachusetts ranking 32nd in graduating special education students, and its dropout rate is the sixth worst in the nation."
Congratulations to MassINC and CommonWealth for bringing these problems to light. Now it’s incumbent on state and local education officials to fix them.