Cover story from CommonWealth magazine (registration required). An excerpt:

The cost of special education in Massachusetts is approaching $2 billion a year, but there is little evidence that the state’s huge investment is paying off as hoped.

… A three-month investigation by CommonWealth found what few in 2000 anticipated: The number of special education students, after dropping sharply in 2001, rebounded to near its previous level even as overall school enrollment was shrinking.

Special education children, as a group, are falling further behind their regular education peers every year, and an achievement gap of large proportions has opened between special education students in wealthy and in poor communities.

Comments begin here.

The magazine has posted a ‘correction and clarification’ of the story here.

President’s budget proposal shows no sign of IDEA campaign pledge

Alyson Klein writes in Education Week (subscription required) that President Barack Obama’s first budget proposal would boost U.S. Department of Education spending by 2.8 percent. “But — not counting massive one-time increases in the recent economic-stimulus legislation-the plan also provides no more than level-funding for special education,” she writes.

While on the campaign trail last year, presidential candidate Obama declared his support for “fully funding” the federal government’s commitment to special education under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).

That promise seemed to waver when Obama took office, with the White House website edging away from the commitment to “full funding” and replacing it with a promise to seek unspecified “funding” for IDEA.

And yesterday, the Obama administration appeared to dismiss the campaign promise altogether in the budget proposal by maintaining special education funding at historic levels. Yet, the disability “issues” page currently displayed on the White House website still carries a pledge to “expand funding for programs like the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act (IDEA) that ensure all Americans have access to the tools to succeed.”

The dispute over special education funding is a heated one that has been going on almost since the IDEA was signed into law in 1975. (more…)

From the San Jose Mercury News:

A new study by California researchers says the state is providing services to twelve times more people with autism than it did two decades earlier.

Between 1987 and 2007, the number of children and adults with autism served by state regional centers rose almost 1200 percent, from 2,701 to 34,656, according to a study by the state’s Department of Developmental Services. Over the same time period, the state’s general population grew by just 27 percent.

The study projects that more than 4,000 California teenagers with autism will reach adulthood over the next five years, pushing the state’s rolls to an estimated 10,000 autistic adults by 2014. Researchers expect the number of adults with autism in the state to exceed 19,000 by 2018.

The dramatic rise in autism has broad implications for California families, taxpayers and social service agencies.

As the Supreme Court prepares to hear arguments about funding for special education, editorial writers at the Baltimore Sun say the case highlights the need for improving the quality of public education for all children. An excerpt:

Whatever the court decides in this case, funding special education will remain a problem until some form of comprehensive education reform is enacted. Private institutions will never be able to make up for the failures of large numbers of public school special-ed programs that don’t work. What’s needed are across-the-board improvements in public education that also include raising the quality of instruction and services offered to children with special needs.

See also: Why deny D.C. children what students with disabilities get? Editorial in the Washington Post. An excerpt:

Public schools should be pressed to do a better job for students with disabilities and students without. But there are schools in Washington where statistics show that failure is almost guaranteed. If a school system can’t educate a child — whether because of acute special needs or its own historical failings — why should that child not have options for a “free appropriate public education”?

From the New York Times:

The extraordinary cost of educating students with autism has become a point of contention in the New York City school system, as the number of students with the diagnosis keeps increasing.

A growing number of students with autism are being educated at district expense in private schools that cost between $30,800 and $48,100 per year, and school officials say the cost of private school for special education students is becoming increasingly burdensome. The department spent $88.9 million for the private school tuition of all special education students last year, compared with $57.6 million in 2007.

Advocates maintain that an investment now means lower costs for state services in the future.

… “The crux of the matter is that we need to have a public debate about how much are we willing to invest in making individuals who are disabled, and sometimes profoundly disabled, have a meaningful level of membership in society,” said Gil Eyal, a sociologist at Columbia University who has done research on autism.

(New York Times photo)

Linda H. Davis writes in the Washington Post that a tidal wave of autistic children entering adulthood over the next 15 years threatens to swamp social service networks. By 2023, she says, it’ll cost $27 billion annually to take care of them all.

Yet the challenges of adult autism are overlooked, she says, as we continue to focus on whether vaccines cause autism, the need for a cure, and how best to educate children with autism. All we get from the White House, Davis says, is a “worryingly broad, detail-free promise.”

An excerpt:

… In 15 years, the cost of care just for the autistic children entering adulthood over that time will be about equal to the current state budget of Tennessee. Meanwhile, services are dangerously strained, and the influx of autistic adults is underway. This country urgently needs to focus on adult autism, new models of care and new sources of funding. Before the looming tidal wave delivers another crushing blow to our economy, we should have a national discussion. It should begin today.

Linda H. Davis is the mother of a 22-year-old son with autism and the author of “Charles Addams: A Cartoonist’s Life.”

Education Week reporter Christina A. Samuels says the federal stimulus special education boost, providing an extra $6.1 billion now and another $6.1 billion to come later this year, comes with restrictions that limit the ways local districts can use the money.

Since the additional funds will only be available for two years, and a provision of the IDEA legislation requires districts to avoid making large cuts in programs from year to year, Samuels says “it’s unwise for districts to use the added funding to start new programs or hire new teachers.”

The stimulus funds will more than double the federal contribution of $11 billion previously appropriated for special education this year.

(more…)