Quote of the Day
July 6, 2010Tee Shirt of the Day
July 7, 2010Special Ed Segregation
Today’s Star-Ledger looks at the increasing cost of educating children with special needs in out-of-district placements, and districts’ efforts to create in-district classrooms. Fact from the article: Bedminster’s Somerset Hills Learning Institute for autistic children costs more than $116,000 per student this year.
Here’s another fact (not from the article): New Jersey classifies children as eligible for special education services at a higher rate than any other state in the country. In fact 18%, almost 1 in 5, of our children are diagnosed with either learning disabilities or other handicaps. To round out the picture, we classify minority children at a much higher rate than white kids. From a 2007 report from the Harvard School of Education:
In Florida, Alabama, Delaware, New Jersey, and Colorado, the number of African-American students identified as mentally retarded was more than three times that of white students.
From Jay P. Greene, Head of the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas:
One of the reasons we know that reported disability rates lack credibility is that they vary dramatically from state to state. In New Jersey, for example, 18 percent of all students are classified as disabled, but in California the rate is only 10.5 percent. There is no medical reason why students in New Jersey should be 71 percent more likely to be placed into special education than students in California.
From the NJ Center for Developmental Disabilities’ study, “Where Are We Now? Still Segregated in New Jersey:”
Almost one in four male African-American students in New Jersey is identified as having a disability. Although progress has been made in several areas, an alarming pattern of segregation continues among students receiving special education services in New Jersey.
Either there’s something in the water (hmm…we’re pondering “Jersey Shore” and “Housewives of New Jersey”) or we hand out special education labels like peppermint sticks at Christmas time, especially to our Black kids. According to the NJ DOE data base, 33.2% of kids at the almost-all-Black Camden High are labeled as eligible for special education services. At Cherry Hill High West (mostly White kids), also in Camden County, 13.8% of kids are labeled as eligible for special education services.
So we classify far more kids in NJ than in other states, and among those kids are a disparate number of minority kids. New Jersey, due to its home rule mania, also tends to support far more private special education schools; 591 mostly small districts can’t drum up a large enough cohort of, say, autistic kids, to justify the costs of an entire classroom, so it’s easier and, in the short term, cheaper to pay that high tuition. The result is a whole other kind of segregation, the kind that excludes all children with disabilities from their home communities and, more specifically, excludes minority kids, who may or may not be disabled, from typical peers.
We’re the victims of our municipal madness and our funding mechanism for special education, which provides more money to the district if the child has “extraordinary needs,” i.e., is eligible for services that cost a lot — like out-of-district placements — although those placements are sometimes entirely appropriate.
The disproportionate number of minority kids classified here is far more troubling. Is it the funding? The advantages to excluding struggling kids from standardized tests or rambunctious ones from inclusive classroom? Amidst all of NJ’s educational woes, this one flies under the radar. It shouldn’t.
4 Comments
As Chairperson of the New Jersey Coalition for Special Education Funding Reform, I wanted to correct a statement you made in your blog. You indicate that Coaltion “argues that out-of-district placements are better and cheaper than in-district programs.” You provide a link to testimony delivered in March of 2009.
That testimony does not suggest that out-of-district programs are better or cheaper. In fact, we argue the opposite. We ask the legislature to STOP favoring costly out-of-district programs, and instead, invest in building local capacity so kids can be served at home, at a lower cost to taxpayers.We did not comment at all on the quality of the education.
I invite you to learn more about the Coalition and our work: http://www.specialedfundingnj.org/
Thanks for the correction. The perils of blogging…
I would like to comment on the “fact” regarding Somerset Hills Learning Institute in Bedminster. It was a misprint and Star Ledger failed to print a retraction. I have been told this number was not verified with the school. It costs approx. $74,000 of which school districts pay only 75% of that. The remainder is raised through fundraising efforts. There is no increase in tuition costs for the 2010-2011 school year, although the article also cited double-digit increases year over year for many schools. As a journalist I know that not everything that appears in print is correct and it is often best to verify primary sources.
In addition, you have cited J. Greene in one context–referring to the credibility of disability rates. But Jay Greene has also repeated debunked the special education myth, citing that out of district placements are not the prevailing issue in our public school's financial crises. That critical counterpoint did not appear in your article.
Lastly, your “exclusion” claim shows a limited understanding of children with autism (not autistic children as you can them). For some children, inclusion is beneficial and productive, for many others with ASD it is an inappropriate setting that disrupts mainstream classrooms and hinders a child with autism's abilities to learn key social, academic and functional life skills. Merely being in the presence of typical peers does not make it purposeful. A child needs to have the innate ability to interact, behave appropriately, maintain academics and participate in play and group activities. Sitting alone ostracized by others is not the purpose of inclusion. These skills may be best learned in a smaller, more controlled and possibly even segregated environment where children receive individualized services based on their distinct learning style, as found in many out of district placements.
A public school would classify my cat as LD. Know why? Money!! parents want their kids to get classified so they have advantages over other students on standardized tests; and so they can get SSI money for the rest of their life!!. Gov Christie should start right here in the Spec Ed. Dept!! & clean up all the fraud & waste!!