This document has been formatted for printing from your browser from the Web site of the Illinois Association of School Boards.

COPYRIGHT NOTICE -- This document is © copyrighted by the Illinois Association of School Boards. IASB hereby grants to school districts and other Internet users the right to download, print and reproduce this document provided that (a) the Illinois Association of School Boards is noted as publisher and copyright holder of the document and (b) any reproductions of this document are disseminated without charge and not used for any commercial purpose.

Illinois School Board Journal
November-December 1999

Special education: Finding a balance

by Jessica C. Billings

When Congress passed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1975 (IDEA), the lawmakers probably did not foresee the consequences. To this day, they don't seem interested in dealing with those consequences. School boards and administrators, on the other hand, deal daily with the consequences of the special education industry that has grown up around children with learning and physical problems, the myriad court cases that have expanded the special education mandate beyond all reason, and the refusal of federal lawmakers to fund this most burdensome of mandates.

Of all the issues that school leaders must address, special education may be the most difficult. No one wants to appear to be denying these children the help they need to receive an appropriate public education. Aggressive and politically savvy special education advocates have won court case after court case requiring local schools to provide an ever-expanding array of educational and medical support to children with disabilities, in some cases virtually turning schools into hospitals. Federal regulations and fear of lawsuits inspire truckloads of often ridiculous paperwork.

Given the breadth of the law, the power of the special education industry, and the emotional appeal of a child in need, it is nearly impossible to limit the money that can be spent on these children. These same factors make it easy for children to be routed into the special system who do not belong there. The all-purpose "learning disabled" category allows teachers and parents to obtain extensive special education services for children who may simply be discipline problems.

The well-intended special education law has thrown schooling in the United States seriously out of balance. Surely, no one ever intended for children with disabilities to be educated at the expense of children with no disabilities.

Special education funding is not the only under-funded mandate Congress and the General Assembly have laid upon local school districts, by a long shot, but it certainly has been one of the most troublesome. Since PL92-142 became law in 1974, guaranteeing a free and appropriate education for children with disabilities, special education costs have burgeoned out of control, often eating up a fourth or more of local school budgets.

Unfunded mandate

When Congress passed the first IDEA in 1975, it set a mandate requiring the federal government to cover 40 percent of the costs of educating students with disabilities. It has never come close. Today, the feds pay just under 12 percent. Meeting the mandate would increase the annual IDEA appropriation to nearly $20 billion from the current $4.3 billion, according to the National School Boards Association News Service. ("Rising Special Ed Costs Strain School District Budgets," Diane Brockett, NSBA News Service, May 25, 1999)

You know where the rest comes from: state and local education funds -- money that all too often is taken away from programs and services that benefit all children.

At a meeting with a U.S. Department of Education assistant secretary in Wisconsin, the president of the Madison school board, Carol Carstensen, said, "You're pitting student band against an occupational therapist, and the child needs both." A superintendent at that meeting called special education "educational cannibalism," according to the NSBA report.

An interesting example of special education funding problems arose when the Prairie Crossing Charter School in Grayslake opened this fall. Its backers appealed to the state and community for help in paying for the $60,000 it would cost to contract for private services for half a dozen special-needs students, reported the Chicago Tribune. (September 24, 1999) The cost was avoided, according to the newspaper, "only after parents of the children agreed to work with teachers in developing less-costly education plans."

The school was lucky. Many parents go to court to force schools to pay for special education plans that are mandated regardless of the cost to other students. (In this case, at least one parent maintained that the school districts from which the charter drew its students -- and their state funding -- should have paid for the services.)

Adequacy, equity

"The costs are definitely increasing faster than those for regular education," said Richard Kraft, of the Blackhawk Area Special Education District. Kraft is chairman of the special education personnel development committee for the Illinois Association of School Business Officials. Illinois has been progressive in terms of its criteria for services, Kraft said, but funding has not kept pace.

Various efforts are being made to address the cost of special education and special education personnel, Kraft said. But the heart of the problem is the lack of adequacy and equity in funding for schools -- an issue that the state can't seem to come to grips with, despite many attempts over many years.

Illinois schools are getting a break this year, with the state fully funding the excess cost of educating children with disabilities (as well as other categorical programs). Hopefully, this represents the beginning of a new era in state funding. But, of course, this is a notably free-spending year in Illinois, and the state's economy is in all-time great shape.

Illinois is far from alone in its special education woes. Special education is an enormous problem nationwide, and the frustration it has produced may be coming to a head. In the article on page 19, "Special Education Backlash Possible," the president of the American Association of School Administrators discusses why the unreasonable demands by the special education lobby may end up hurting the children they are seeking to help.

In Illinois, some long-term help may come with the writing of new rules and regulations by the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE). As this is being written, the state was winding up a round of hearings on a preliminary version of the rules. (You can read the draft on the State Board's home page, http://www.isbe.state.il.us/)

ISBE is not just tinkering with the rules, according to Gordon Riffel. Rather, a completely new set of rules will be issued. A major thrust of the project is to be sure the ISBE rules do not exceed the federal rules and regulations -- as they have for the past 20 years. Riffel is special assistant to the state superintendent for special education coordination.

For example, said Riffel, the way Illinois reports the amount of time and the way children receive special education services exceeds federal requirements. Due to a reporting snafu, Illinois looks a lot worse than it is, making it appear that fewer children are being served in regular classrooms than is the case. You may have seen figures showing Illinois ranking 46th of the 50 states in terms of mainstreaming special education children. Using the federal guidelines, the state rises to 38th -- not necessarily a number to be proud of, but a lot better than 46th.

New Illinois rules

One troublesome area is the category of the "developmentally delayed" child. Currently, children aged three to nine can be classified in this category. It is very hard to determine whether a three-year-old, for instance, is developmentally delayed or is just a slow starter. Yet, such a label can in effect route a child into the special education system for life. The federal guidelines permit, but do not require, states to use this category.

The federal guidelines are also more permissive in terms of class size, age range and teacher/student ratios -- and the state regulations will be brought into line,Riffel said.

At the federal level, in 1997, the Individuals with Disabilities Act underwent its first thorough revision since it was passed two decades earlier. Initially, the revision appeared to be a disaster, raising more questions than it answered. Now, the U.S. Office of Education has released its long-awaited rules interpreting the act, designed to answer some of the thorny questions.

One of the most problematic issues raised by IDEA was disciplining special education students. The law prohibits disciplining a child for behavior related to a disability, a provision that could cover almost any behavior. The Education Department's rules clarify that a child may be removed for up to ten school days for each separate act of misconduct "as long as the removals do not constitute a pattern." Schools don't need to provide services during the first ten days in a school year that a child is taken from school. (You can read the 1997 IDEA legislation through the NSBA Web site; go to www. nsba.org/cosa/idealetter.htm. For a summary of major changes made by IDEA 97, go to http:/www.ed.gov/ offices/OSERS/IDEA.)

Boondoggle?

Although the IDEA regulations may help schools deal with some issues, most school leaders will agree that they don't make a dent in the basic problems associated with special education. (See "Making Lemonade from Lemons" on page 21.)

To put it plainly: special education in the United States is a mess. A group of authors writing in The American School Board Journal studied special education in several other nations, and concluded "The United States is wasting tax dollars and paying for a multi-billion dollar boondoggle." ("Special Ed Boondoggle," by Richard Haynes, John Bernard, and Gudrun Johannesdottir, The American School Board Journal, February, 1999)

"No other developed nation makes it so hard to help kids," the authors assert, after studying special education in Canada, Iceland, England, Germany, the Netherlands, and several Asian nations.

The U.S. identifies a far larger percentage of students for special education services than other developed countries, they maintain: in 1991, some 11 percent of K-12 students in the U.S. were identified as special education students, compared to 9 percent in Israel, 4 percent in Germany, 1.2 percent in Britain, and less than one percent in Japan and Korea. (Figures from the International Encyclopedia of Education, 1994)

The largest-growing category, learning disabled students, has burgeoned from 800,000 identified in 1977 to 2.5 million today. It's no wonder -- the category is elastic enough to cover just about any child who is a problem for teachers or parents. Children who have learning or discipline problems that ought to be addressed by parents and the classroom teacher are shunted into special education. Not only do they add to the financial burden of special education, but they also carry a label that will haunt them throughout their lives.

Placing blame

The authors cite the willingness of parents and special education advocates to go to court, the enormous amount of paperwork that eats up the time of special educators (much of it driven by fear of lawsuits), and lax discipline.

"In Germany," according to the authors, "every student -- special education or not -- lives by the same rules or pays the same consequences. In the United States, we give special education students different rules -- which does not prepare them for a society that has just one set of rules." Indeed, it is ironic that special education advocates insist on educating students in the "least restrictive environment" so that they will be fully integrated into the mainstream -- and then set up special rules ensuring that they will be insulated from that mainstream.

Finally, the authors address the issue of student and parental responsibility. This issue may come as close as any to the heart of the matter. The efforts of parents of special education parents to turn over responsibility for their children to the schools parallel the attempts of other parents to make schools responsible not only for their children's learning -- but also for their values, their conduct, their health and their general well-being.

For a while, as you may recall, Japanese schools were being held up as models of success to which "inferior" American schools should aspire. In special education, as in "regular" education, the key to the comparison may lie in this observation by The American School Board Journal authors: "Typically, Asian families expect all students to be diligent. Japanese parents are most likely to cite a lack of student effort for failure in school. When a child has trouble in school, Japanese parents get upset just as Western parents do, and they demand to know, 'What is wrong with my child?'"