New Hampshire Lawmakers Seek More Special Ed Funding
WASHINGTON, Nov. 4 – Three decades ago, Congress approved landmark legislation aimed at improving the educational opportunities for children with disabilities. But the law has never been funded to the level originally promised.
Now, the members of New Hampshire’s congressional delegation are pushing for Congress to finally fully fund the program.
The 1975 Individuals with Disabilities Education Act promised that 40 percent of the additional cost of educating these students would come from federal funding. However the federal government has never funded more than 18 percent of those additional costs in the 30 years since the act was passed. And from 1975 until 1995 the funding level actually hovered under six percent.
“There is no program that impacts local school districts more than the cost of special education,” said Congressman Charles Bass (R-N.H.), a long-time advocate of increased federal funding for special education. “This authorization mandate, passed so many years ago in Congress, is still valid and needs to be met — the promise needs to be kept. If there ever was an unfunded mandate that has not been met it is this one in terms of both its cost as well as its importance.”
Under the leadership of Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), who then chaired the Senate education committee, Congress in 2004 reauthorized the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, overhauling it and promising full funding by 2011. But even with the 2004 legislation, Bass believes that additional measures will be necessary to get full funding by the date promised.
Bass introduced a bill on June 30 to fully fund special education and ensure that the federal government would be paying the full 40 percent by 2011. The bill would mandate annual increases in the funding so that the federal government would have to meet its promise to local school districts.
“That would certainly have a significant impact on every school district in the state,” Bass said.
Currently there are concerns among both Republicans and Democrats about the federal deficit and the increases in federal spending for both Iraq and for hurricane relief.
“This was why the bill that Mr. Bass has introduced lays out a plan to provide full funding over time,” said Alissa Southworth, spokesperson for Bass. “It sets us on the path to full funding by 2011 with spending increasing incrementally.”
Jamie Hopkins, the president-elect of Council for Exceptional Children, an international organization focused on improving education for students with disabilities, recently met with members of the House to discuss her concerns over the current low levels of federal funding for special education.
“It continues to put a great burden on school districts that end up having to take funds away from students in general education in order to pay for special education and that’s very frustrating,” Hopkins said. “Some children are missing out on what they need. It’s really becoming very stressful to get the money in order to educate our kids.”
New Hampshire Senators John Sununu and Gregg have both supported funding for the program in New Hampshire. Sununu, who served three terms in the House before being elected to the Senate, has played an integral role in funding increases from $2 billion in Fiscal Year 1997 to approximately $10.5 billion in Fiscal Year 2005 for the Individuals with Disabilities Education program.
Because of the continually increasing cost of special education the burden on New Hampshire’s tax payers has consistently risen since the law was first passed. Since it was first enacted, the percentage of those enrolled in special education, served by Part B of the law and identified as having learning disabilities, increased, the Department of Education reported to Congress in 1994.
Part B is the section of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act that funds the services for children ages three to 21. Under Part B, data is collected concerning children educated between those ages.
The report noted that between 1976 and 1994, those identified as having learning disabilities under Part B of IDEA has increased from 23.8 percent to 51.1 percent of all students with disabilities. Since 1994, that number has continued to grow. The cause for these increases continues to be debated.
“There are medical procedures and diagnoses and assessments in medicine that are more efficient and effective in identifying the incidence of a disability or a disease so that over a period of time it’s higher — not necessarily because the incidence is higher, but because of their being better at diagnosing what is there,” said Robert Wells, education consultant in the Bureau for Special Education in New Hampshire.
Medical advances and the increase in the ability to identify learning disabilities are two of the most frequently mentioned reasons for increases in the percentage of students identified as having learning disabilities. However, there is some speculation that the extra funding given to special education may have affected the increase as well.
“Where there is not money to provide appropriate education for everybody, kids get identified as having special needs,” said Wells. “If there was more money for just good education, certified teachers, qualified people, a lot of the kids that get identified as having learning disabilities wouldn’t even pop up on the radar screen.
Bruce Thielen, the director of special education for SAU 29 in New Hampshire, has been following the percentage increase since he began working there in 1989.
“In 1988-89, 8.9 percent of our students were classified as disabled and now it is close to 17 percent,” Thielen said. “That’s a huge increase.”
Thielen also recognizes that there are a variety of factors affecting the increase, including more thorough medical assessments and a greater awareness in the average population of individual learning disabilities. He too has seen the increase affected by those interested in the additional funding provided in special education programs.
“There is some influence of entitlement, feelings of entitlement, like if special ed has the money and if my kid is classified – it could be a mild disability– but if he was classified as disabled, then he could tap in to some of those services,” Thielen said.
As the percentage of special education students, and consequently the increase in funding for those students, continues to rise, New Hampshire’s lawmakers understand the burden the law, also called IDEA, has placed on local school districts in their state.
“There is no greater priority for New Hampshire’s schools than to fully fund the federal share of IDEA, and I will continue the fight to ensure Congress fulfills the commitment it made nearly 30 years ago,” Sununu said in a press release. “When full federal funding of IDEA is achieved, local communities will once again be in the position to utilize critical local resources on important initiatives such as structural improvements to schools, technology upgrades, or to hire new teachers, rather than paying for the federal government’s share of special education costs.”
While there has been significant improvement, it is currently projected that the federal funding for special education for next year will not be more than 18.6 percent, not even half of what was promised in 1975.
“I know there are a lot of needs right now and Congress is really being pulled in many different directions as far as even helping pay for the victims of the hurricanes, but at the same time we’re not talking about legislation that was passed just a couple of years ago,” the Council for Exceptional Children’s Hopkins said . “We’ve been going on for 30 years like this.”
