An editorial in the Houston Chronicle brings up to date the story of Texas’ failure to pay the cost of educating students with disabilities.
“Imagine being a teacher and told not to bother trying to help a child who is having difficulty learning. That was happening routinely in Texas public schools before the legislature was shamed into eliminating an 8.5 percent cap the state had placed on special education enrollment.
“The federal Department of Education in January told the Texas Education Agency that the “target” it first imposed in 2004 violated federal laws requiring schools to serve all students. The cap wasn’t just illegal, it was morally reprehensible and shortsighted.
“The cap limited the aspirations of students with learning disabilities who didn’t get the help they needed, and shortchanged the state’s future by inadequately educating thousands of its children.
“The cap’s impact was reported last year in the Chronicle’s investigative series “Denied,” which pointed out that Houston had imposed an even more draconian 8 percent target for special education enrollment. “It became a nightmare,” said Attucks Middle School teacher Thomas Iocca.
“It’s a nightmare that won’t end any time soon for students who lost precious years of federally mandated assistance and interventions that could have helped them learn.”
Meanwhile, lawmakers are left with a fiscal headache as they try to find an additional $3.2 billion to spend on special education over the next three years to serve students previously denied assistance. Removing the cap is expected to add 189,000 special education students to public school rolls statewide.
Maybe the state should tap the nearly $11 billion Rainy Day Fund it’s been sitting on. Other issues need more cash too, including unpaid bills from Hurricane Harvey, Medicaid and an underfunded employee pension fund. But special education must be a top priority.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Thank you so much for this tweet Ms. Ravitch. As a Texan with 2 special needs children, the nightmare is real, and there doesn’t seem to be any real plan that’s being implemented as of yet…just talk. Please continue to keep us in the front of your mind.
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Texas would have a lot more money for all students if it didn’t send public money to charter schools in the cities. It would also have a lot more money if it required the many companies and industries to pay their fair share of the property taxes.
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Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education and commented:
When this began in 2004 it was tied to the Performance-Based Monitoring Analysis System (PBMAS). The system collects data from all the schools in Texas and then puts it in a blender and spits out numerous reports. Reports on Special Education, LEP, and CTE. Within each group, there is a component regarding discipline (In-School Suspension, Out-of-school Suspension). These are then compared by subpopulations. Were there a disproportionate number of a subpopulation disciplined compared to the percentage in the school. If the percentage exceeds the allowed variance, then the district is required to write a corrective action plan.
So districts would send out directives to their principals that they were to limit the number of students sent to ISS or OSS in order to not trigger the need to write a monitoring plan.
The whole PBMAS system needs to be scrapped so schools will begin handling disciple as it is needed not avoiding it so they don’t have to write a monitoring plan.
It is a mess.
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This is true nationwide. It is also true that TFAs are often “certified” to teach special education students, except for those with major learning problems. As you note, he discipline policies in more than one state are designed to limit IEPs.
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I just read an article in the Chicago Tribune about the hurricane homeless who are still “underwater” after last year’s storm. They featured a couple who are living in their bedroom, the only habitable room in their house. FEMA has ended all support. Texas does not sound like a state that can afford an $11B rainy day fund. What are they waiting for? The apocalypse?
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Special Ed must be funded fully! Teachers are working under difficult circumstances and more funds must be allocated in order to provide the best education for ALL students!
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Not all publicly-operated schools have the resources or staff to properly assist special-needs children, in meeting their full potential. The Supreme Court ruled in Endrew F. V. Douglas County School Board (2017), that when a public school cannot deliver the appropriate education, that the child must be placed in a privately-operated facility, and the public system has to pay the costs. see
https://www.oyez.org/cases/2016/15-827
The case was decided unanimously.
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In the case you cite, the Douglas County voucher (which was never realized) would have been worth $5,000 a year. The parents sent their child with special needs to a school that cost $70,000 a year.
The parents gave an interview and said that they did not want to be “Betsy DeVos’s” poster child for vouchers.
https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/co/2017/11/15/parents-of-colorado-student-to-betsy-devos-we-are-not-a-poster-child-for-your-school-choice-agenda/
In 2017, the board of Douglas County was swept by anti-voucher parents. The new board’s first act was to cancel its voucher plan.
As of this moment, there are no vouchers in Douglas County.
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Good to hear. Democracy in action. If the citizens of the county choose to reject vouchers, that is their right. I am just glad that the child who was not getting proper instruction, etc. from the public school, is getting it now.
Too often, we forget about the children.
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Isn’t it great that the county now pays $70,000 a year for one child.
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The child who is the center of the case, needs additional schooling and services. The Supreme Court ruled this unanimously, and I am glad that they did.
Too often, special-needs children are “swept under the rug”.
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I am sure you would be happy to double or triple your school taxes, wouldn’t you, Charles, so that every child with special needs gets the $70,000 a year education they need and deserve.
How about doubling the taxes you pay to make sure every child gets the quality of education they need and deserve?
I hope you applaud that idea. I do.
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You applaud the idea of doubling income taxes to increase special education funding?
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I favor higher taxes to increase education funding.
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Taxes are the bill we pay, for what we euphemistically call “civilization”. I support providing additional public resources (including my own contributions), for special-needs children.
The federal income tax, provides a double exemption for blind people. Most people have no problem with reducing the tax burden for blind people. That means that the rest of us, will have to make up the difference.
One measure of a society, is how they treat and provide for the poor, the lame, the halt, the mentally-retarded,etc.
I am supportive of spending additional public resources on gifted/talented children, as well.
I strongly support providing additional public resources, to assure a quality education for all children. This is both a moral imperative, and it is cost-effective. It is more economically sound, to provide children with a quality education, than to have them go on welfare or go to prison.
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Bloomberg ran a long feature on this disgrace last week. In the course of reporting the story, the reporter noted that all 50 states are reporting shortages of special education teachers. Since I am a special education teacher with what I think is a sound practice (the administrators at my school really don’t know much about teaching and learning, and even less about what I do, so they’ve been less than no help in assisting me to grow as a teacher), and 28 years of experience working with struggling adolescents in a variety of settings, and I’m looking to leave the employ of the New York City Department of Education (I’ve just had enough!), I was glad to hear this news. That said, I realize my employment picture means kids are being inadequately served, making my good fortune, such as it is, a sad and regrettable piece of news.
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Maybe Houston oil tycoons should pay some taxes and give back — a little, at least.
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I will never understand why education is not federally funded from start to finish. Education impacts every aspect of our lives. It shapes our futures. It ensures or damages our national economic health. It is, in my opinion, the key part of “national security.”
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Reblogged this on Network Schools – Wayne Gersen and commented:
This underfunding is unconscionable and will only be solved by increasing taxes.
In her closing paragraph, Diane Ravitch suggests tapping into a rainy day fund to help underwrite this gap in services, noting in the same paragraph other problems Texas faces. I do not think the rainy day fund should be used to solve this problem, and, given the impact of climate change on the Texas coast I can understand why the legislature might want to leave $11,000,000,000 untouched. But here’s the bottom line: Texans need to increase their taxes year-in-and-year-out if they want to ensure that all children get the education they deserve, all citizens get the health care they need, and retirees receive the pensions they worked to earn. As many commenters indicate, there’s plenty of money in the coffers of oil companies and billionaires in the state. It’s past time for some of that money to trickle down into the state budget.
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Here is something positive. When I taught 4th grade about 8 years ago, I had two fraternal twins from the Sudan. I only taught them math, as their homeroom teacher had a lot of challenged students, and so they changed math class to give her a break. I ended up with the low math students. The brothers from Sudan had problems. One had an extreme stutter and the other could not do 1st grade math. I asked their regular teacher about it, and she said the speech teachers said the one stuttered due to learning English. I was told by the principal to do more math manipulatives with the other. I knew something was problematic for both. Long story short, I went to a friend who helps the Sudanese children and is a lawyer. She got permission from their grandmother to represent them in school. The district jumped through hoops when they thought they might get sued. The one received speech and the other was tested and was determined to be special ed. He got an IEP and was moved to special ed classes. I was asked to go to another school. They both graduated from high school in May. The one with the stutter hardly ever stutters and is going to ASU. The other is following in his brother’s footsteps and is becoming a citizen today. I am going. I went to their graduation party in May. The one young man went around telling everyone I had been his 4th grade teacher and was part of the reason he had been successful. He also told everyone I am is and his brother’s Godmother. It was worth being moved to another school. I am retired and have no regrets that I was a troublemaker. I regret that our children are still not receiving the services they should be receiving in many states including Arizona.
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