What’s the Big IDEA?
By Kim Forrest
WASHINGTON–When teachers, school administrators and parents talk about special education, they complain about excessive paperwork, gripe about under-qualified teachers and debate the pros and cons of the curriculum. But there’s one subject on which there seems to be no debate.
Money.
Everyone involved with special education agrees there just isn’t enough of it.
Most fingers point to the federal government. When Congress mandated local school districts provide special education nearly three decades ago, it agreed the federal government would pay 40 percent of the cost. It has never come close.
Washington’s contribution to special education has increased in the last decade, but not nearly enough to meet Congress’ commitment. Federal spending, which amounted to $1 billion to $2 billion in the 1980s and early 1990s, has reached a high point of nearly $9 billion annually in recent years. Still, that is a far cry from the money Congress said it hoped the federal government would pay when it agreed to help states pay for special education in 1975.
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which dictates how the federal government doles out special-education money to the states and eventually local school districts, is up for reauthorization this year.
New Hampshire is slated to receive nearly $36 million in federal special-education grants this year, up from slightly more than $10 million in 1996. But the state would receive much more – one estimate sets the rate at about $70 million — if the spending target set by Congress 28 years ago were actually met.
But as members of Congress started to debate potential changes to the law this year, it became clear it wouldn’t be easy to allocate more money for special education. .
WHAT’S THE IDEA?
When it was enacted in 1975, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act guaranteed a “free, appropriate public education” to students with disabilities and to help states meet their legal and financial obligations to those students.
Much of the debate with IDEA funding stems from the promise Congress made when IDEA was enacted: that it would provide the states with 40 percent of their special-education expenses. Currently, more than 6 million students nationwide are served by IDEA funds.
But almost three decades later, the federal government pays only 18 percent. That’s almost triple the 7 percent Washington contributed in 1996, but still less than half of what Congress promised.
“We’re far from what was promised in 1975,” said Lynda Van Kuren, a spokeswoman for the Council for Exceptional Children, a special-education advocacy group in Arlington, Va. “I would say while we’re grateful for the increases, we’re very disappointed that the [federal government] has not done more to live up to its promise of the full funding.”
Many efforts have been made in recent months to bring IDEA spending closer to the 40 percent target.
In March, New Hampshire Sen. Judd Gregg, a Republican, sponsored an amendment to the budget resolution for fiscal 2004 that would increase IDEA funds by $3.29 billion over the next six years. The amendment passed; if it becomes law, it would bring the total federal contribution to more than $11 billion next year and more than $13.5 billion in 2005. Though this would increase the federal share of special-education costs to only 26 percent, it would put the government on what Gregg called a “direct glide path” toward the promised 40 percent by 2009.
Gregg voted against an amendment offered by Sen. Mark Dayton (D-MN) to provide the full 40 percent by next year and pay for it by delaying President Bush’s proposed tax cut. Dayton’s amendment was rejected, and Gregg called it unrealistic and merely “put[ting] forward a show.”
At least one large group agreed with Dayton that Bush’s proposed tax cuts could eat up money that might otherwise go to special education.
“If we keep going willy-nilly towards these enormous tax cuts, there’s not going to be enough money for anything,” said Charlotte Fraas, director of legislation for the American Federation of Teachers.
New Hampshire Rep. Charles Bass, a Republican, has authored legislation in the House that would provide the promised 40 percent by 2010, with $70 million going to New Hampshire that year.
A LOCAL PERSPECTIVE
Local special-education directors in New Hampshire insist they need more federal money to adequately teach the more than 30,000 students – representing more than 14 percent of all public-school students in the state – in their programs.
“Why can’t we fund these kids in need with federal money?” asked David Beauchamp, special-education director for school administrative unit 47, which serves Jaffrey and Rindge.
School administrative unit 29, which serves Keene and its surrounding towns, has about 905 students with special needs. Bruce Thielen, the unit’s special-education director, said schooling for a special-education student normally costs twice as much as for a student without learning disabilities. On average, it costs about $12,000 a year to teach a special-education student, he said.
However, Tamara Drozin, special education director for the Conval school district, which serves Greater Peterborough’s 474 special-education students, said that costs for some students with special needs could go as high as $200,000.
“Usually they have multiple disabilities that include severe mental retardation, sometimes vision or hearing problems,” she said.
New Hampshire supplements the federal aid to help those students.
Under its catastrophic aid program, the state will reimburse a school district for 80 percent of a special-education student’s costs that exceed 3.5 times the state average per student and all of the costs that exceed 10 times the state average, Drozin said.
Schools also receive money from Medicaid for some students, said Dick Cohen of New Hampshire’s Disabilities Rights Center.
“Schools can pull down Medicaid money for things like speech, occupational therapy, evaluations, for a number of things, and they only have to come up with 50 percent of that cost,” he said.
For the Conval district, federal funds pay for a preschool program, a school psychologist, a speech and language pathologist, an occupational therapist, a life-skills teacher and training for teachers and staff.
MORE STUDENTS WITH SPECIAL NEEDS
One reason the money falls short is that more students are being placed in special-education classes than in the past. There has been a steady increase over the past ten years, which Beauchamp said is “rocking the system.”
The U.S. Department of Education reported that the number of students served by IDEA funds rose from 5,081,023 during the 1992-93 school year to 6,487,429 during the 2001-02 school year, an increase of nearly 28 percent.
Many experts say because of medical improvements, children who might have died years ago are living, but with special-education needs.
“We have medical advances that we did not have even five years ago, so students who would not be in our schools are not only surviving through elementary schools, but through our middle schools and our high schools,” said Van Kuren, of the Council’s for Exceptional Children. “That’s a good thing, but that also takes more dollars and special services to educate these children.”
Van Kuren added that with the rising poverty rate in America, more children are coming to school without the early exposure to language that children from higher-income households receive. Students from low-income families may be behind and classified as special-needs pupils.
Furthermore, Thielen said, more children are being classified as autistic than were in the past, which adds to the special-education rosters.
Cohen, of the Disabilities Rights Center, said some schools may “over-identify kids who could be served by the regular education system,” adding that some schools under-identify children with special needs as well.
Drozin said more parents than in the past want their children to be classified as special-needs students so that they can receive extra help in school.
“I think for a long time there was a stigma attached to special education, where people did not want their children identified and receiving special-education services,” she said. “And now I think it’s come around to that’s the way to get extra attention, extra help, individualized support for your child. [Parents] feel like their children are being left out if they’re not identified and all the attention is going to the identified students.”
Drozin added that about 15 percent of the students in her district are special-education students but that in some districts the number can be as high as 20 or 25 percent.
PARENTS AS ADVOCATES
Many experts say parents who know how to work the system often are able to get their child more services.
“Parents who are the most savvy often get more for their children, while parents with little access, parents who don’t speak up, may not,” the Cato Institute’s Gryphon said.
Carole Armstrong, a Windham resident who is the secretary of the Autism Society of New Hampshire and the parent of three children with special needs, said that she has trained herself to advocate for her children.
“I went through the advocacy programs that they have…. It takes years to get that education,” she said. A lot of kids, because the parents don’t know how to advocate, don’t get what they need.”
Armstrong added that she has to be a strong advocate for her son, who is autistic and in seventh grade, because the aide who works with him “doesn’t have the proper training” and is punishing him for behavior that is part of his disorder. During the 2001-02 school year, according to the U.S. Department of Education, 17 percent of teachers who worked with special-education students were not fully certified to do so.
“I’m practically in school with him every two weeks,” Armstrong said. “But I’m in a position that I’ve been doing this for so long, I bring in the information that [the school] needs and give it to them. A lot of parents aren’t in the same position.”
Drozin said some students get more help not because they need it, but because their parents demand it.
“In many instances we go beyond equal access and we go beyond free, appropriate public education, and that bothers me, because I think sometimes it’s whoever has the most resources, the strongest advocacy, the most skilled parents, who can advocate for more,” she said.
AN IDEA FOR THE FUTURE
The Bush administration has proposed spending $9.5 billion on special education in the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. That’s $1 billion more than it sought for the current fiscal year and $2 billion more than Congress appropriated last year.
In 2001, Bush established a Commission on Excellence in Special Education, which published its report last July. The commission said the current special-education law has too many requirements and too much paperwork. It said children are not properly identified for special-education programs and that districts are not held accountable for students’ performance.
Gregg, who is chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, which will vote on the IDEA reauthorization, said that the Bush administration has significantly increased special-education spending.
On the other side of the aisle, Jim Manley, a spokesman for Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA), the senior Democrat on the education committee, said the current administration has “failed to adequately fund the Individuals With Disabilities Act.”
Manley said that Kennedy is working with Gregg and others to draft a bipartisan bill that would move toward that 40 percent federal-spending promise. Still, many are still doubtful about the program’s future.
“I guess I have to say that I’m not too optimistic about the reauthorization,” Drozin said. “What would help us in the schools would be a reduction of paperwork…and increased funding…. I don’t know that either one of those things is going to happen any time soon.”
Fraas, of the American Federation of Teachers, said those concerned about special education must look closely at what the government is doing.
“We can’t just be Pollyanna-ish about the future of the funding and the way its going,” she said.
Published in The Keene Sentinel, in New Hampshire.
