Federal and state laws mandate special services for students with disabilities. The costs of these services have grown much faster than the funding the state and federal government provide.
The result: Local school districts are picking up the bill and paying more and more special education costs.
State-wide data shows the local school district share of these special education costs grew dramatically from 8 percent in 2004–05 to 61 percent in 2018–19.
Even with declining enrollment, more and more children are found eligible for special education, particularly children with more severe and costly disabilities.
In 2023–24 in San Francisco, the school district paid $196,336,787, or a whopping 74.45 percent, of total mandated special education costs.
Here is the real kicker: These increased special education costs result in less services for all the other students.
That’s right. The less money in the general fund, the less money left for services for all the other students. Not only does the increased cost of special education create a budget imbalance, it denies other children the education services they need.
FACT: The combined special education state and federal financial funding is insufficient to pay for even the most efficient special education programs. This is a statewide problem. All school districts struggle to pay for these higher special education costs. Blaming school districts for these rising costs is a total distraction.
Federal government shortchanges kids
When the federal government created special education laws, there was a pledge by the feds to pay 40 percent of the excess costs. It never came close.
According to the Congressional Research Service, current funding is less than 12 percent, and the shortfall in the 2024–25 school year nationwide was $38.66 billion.
Bellevue (WA) recently saw a bump in student achievement. However in the years prior, the district argued that the public school enrollment losses it was seeing (>10%) were the result of high local living costs. Maybe, but poor folk are exiting public ed, the students that remain are likely those of richer families. And if there's one thing that's well studied in education, it's that family income is one of the best predictors of education attainment. As the low income families are exiting the local public system, praise is given for the boost in achievement. That blows.
I wonder (and expect) that the difference in the number of SF SPED kids (vs the state) is also consequence of selection bias ... school choice. And in particular, the choice to choose private school, and the choice for private schools to reject, select out, and otherwise not cater to SPED kids. Why in SF? Many SF families can afford the private choice AND that's likely correlating with the level of education of their parents, another predictor of student success.
I think I disagree on selection bias. Private schools in SF are disproportionately white but white students are the one group whose SPED enrollment is lower in SF than across the state. Meanwhile, there are relatively few Latino and Black students in private schools but they have very high rates of SPED enrollment in SF compared with their state averages.
It's often alleged that there is selection bias in charter schools but I didn't think to run the data to check that one. It's certainly true that there are a small number of children with severe disabilities who can probably only be catered to properly by public schools.
Federal and state laws mandate special services for students with disabilities. The costs of these services have grown much faster than the funding the state and federal government provide.
The result: Local school districts are picking up the bill and paying more and more special education costs.
State-wide data shows the local school district share of these special education costs grew dramatically from 8 percent in 2004–05 to 61 percent in 2018–19.
Even with declining enrollment, more and more children are found eligible for special education, particularly children with more severe and costly disabilities.
In 2023–24 in San Francisco, the school district paid $196,336,787, or a whopping 74.45 percent, of total mandated special education costs.
Here is the real kicker: These increased special education costs result in less services for all the other students.
That’s right. The less money in the general fund, the less money left for services for all the other students. Not only does the increased cost of special education create a budget imbalance, it denies other children the education services they need.
FACT: The combined special education state and federal financial funding is insufficient to pay for even the most efficient special education programs. This is a statewide problem. All school districts struggle to pay for these higher special education costs. Blaming school districts for these rising costs is a total distraction.
Federal government shortchanges kids
When the federal government created special education laws, there was a pledge by the feds to pay 40 percent of the excess costs. It never came close.
According to the Congressional Research Service, current funding is less than 12 percent, and the shortfall in the 2024–25 school year nationwide was $38.66 billion.
San Francisco flubbed an opportunity to fix this when it adopted the student success fund. Read this to find out why: https://thevoicesf.org/san-francisco-can-do-a-better-job-of-helping-the-school-district/
Bellevue (WA) recently saw a bump in student achievement. However in the years prior, the district argued that the public school enrollment losses it was seeing (>10%) were the result of high local living costs. Maybe, but poor folk are exiting public ed, the students that remain are likely those of richer families. And if there's one thing that's well studied in education, it's that family income is one of the best predictors of education attainment. As the low income families are exiting the local public system, praise is given for the boost in achievement. That blows.
I wonder (and expect) that the difference in the number of SF SPED kids (vs the state) is also consequence of selection bias ... school choice. And in particular, the choice to choose private school, and the choice for private schools to reject, select out, and otherwise not cater to SPED kids. Why in SF? Many SF families can afford the private choice AND that's likely correlating with the level of education of their parents, another predictor of student success.
I think I disagree on selection bias. Private schools in SF are disproportionately white but white students are the one group whose SPED enrollment is lower in SF than across the state. Meanwhile, there are relatively few Latino and Black students in private schools but they have very high rates of SPED enrollment in SF compared with their state averages.
It's often alleged that there is selection bias in charter schools but I didn't think to run the data to check that one. It's certainly true that there are a small number of children with severe disabilities who can probably only be catered to properly by public schools.