7 ms·

There's a finite amount of tax money available, so disproportionately allotment to a few special children effectively robs the other children of resources.

spoils19 4y ago
Agreed. We also have to consider the comparative ROI.
- meetingthrower 4y ago
  This data is REALLY hard to get. For me to do it, I had to go line by line through the budget. For example, all the classroom aids are typically assigned as teaching costs. But the reality is that they are assigned to individual students with IEPs (individual education plans), ergo, they should be categorized as special ed. Same thing in pulling out transportation. Or tuition to other districts. Admin dealing with special ed grants and recordkeeping. It goes on and on...
  - Cupertino95014 4y ago
    It IS hard to get, and that's why the former school board member's estimate is valuable.
- bena 4y ago
  Education and social services are one of the areas where we really shouldn't be leaning that hard on ROI. The return is a well taken care of populace. Yes, it may cost, but we pay that cost because we're not assholes.
  - Cupertino95014 4y ago
    Are you saying "whatever it costs, it doesn't matter"? Because I can't agree with that. Nor is it good public policy to just be "not assholes." The absolute dollar amount does matter, and it has nothing to do with being assholes or not. There are different ways to meet children's needs and spending an infinite amount of money is just not sustainable.
  - scarmig 4y ago
    Those are still returns, just not monetary ones. You can get plenty of buy in that educational outcomes are good in themselves, but schools fail at that basic metric. On the other hand, as a way to provide social services to underprivileged children they are pretty decent. But that's not what they're advertised as (school isn't known as an acronym for Social Care and Health Out Of a Location), and people end up pissed.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - zuminator 4y ago
    I would argue that ROI is extremely important in education. It's just that the "return" on our investment is not purely financial. Producing students who will be competent to effectively participate in and wisely run the society of tomorrow is a large part of the return that we seek. So, to that extent it may be that high special needs costs are worth it if they demonstrably help students become self-sufficient instead of dependent wards of the state. I can't say for sure that they are worth it, I'm saying that the mere fact that they're expensive doesn't mean they aren't cost-effective in the greater sense.
- kube-system 4y ago
  The benefits to disability accommodation are primarily non-monetary, which is why market forces do an awful job of providing them.
varjag 4y ago
It's not just the money. The attitude to special needs children (and disabilities in general) was a lot worse.
Cupertino95014 4y ago
Number that would be interesting to have: In Finland and Singapore (two countries with education systems among the top in the world): 1) What's the percentage of education spending that goes to special ed? Looking at Finland, we can find their total spending: https://www.statista.com/statistics/538122/general-government-expenditure-on-education-in-finland/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/538122/general-governmen... and we can find ample evidence that they care just as much about special needs kids as the US does, if not more: https://www.heischools.com/blog/finlands-approach-to-special-needs-inclusion https://www.heischools.com/blog/finlands-approach-to-special... What I'm having a harder time finding is: what percent of the education budget goes to special ed?
kube-system 4y ago
Yes, disabilities are expensive to accommodate. That’s why we have laws like the ADA. Because when given the option to disregard the disabled, many will choose do so. This in turn leads to building a society in which the disabled are discarded as an inconvenience to society, rather than as people with equal rights to public accommodation.
- Cupertino95014 4y ago
  "expensive" but everything has a limit. Even losing a limb or an eye has a dollar cost associated with it, if you look in the right tables. Pretending that there is no limit, or that the choice is a binary "no limit" vs. "don't give a shit" is just not responsible.
  - kube-system 4y ago
    I agree. The standard is not infinite accommodation but reasonable accommodations.
- notch656a 4y ago
  >discarded If I give Johnny, Jimmy, and Karen an equal investment of $20 and 20 hours of labor each for their education, I haven't "discarded" Karen, even if she needs more money and more time to get the same equality of outcome. In the same vein, I don't at all want to "discard" special ed children, I just want any public funds provided to the other children to be a nearly equal monetary investment. >That’s why we have laws like the ADA The period after passing of the ADA was associated with sharp drops in employment inclusion of the disabled [0]. The ADA may have actually been one of the biggest drivers of the discarding of the disabled. Not only that, the ADA encouraged racketeering against business owners for disingenuous accommodation complaints (someone off the street runs up, asked to use your bathroom, you allow the public to use it just this once and bam ADA complaint as they were secretly working for a lawyer checking for the "right" kind of grab bar) where businesses sometimes end up closing accommodations to the public. Personally I am heavily against the ADA as I believe eliminating these "protections" helps protect the disabled's inclusion within society. [0] https://economics.mit.edu/files/17 https://economics.mit.edu/files/17

spoils19 4y ago

Agreed. We also have to consider the comparative ROI.

meetingthrower 4y ago
This data is REALLY hard to get. For me to do it, I had to go line by line through the budget. For example, all the classroom aids are typically assigned as teaching costs. But the reality is that they are assigned to individual students with IEPs (individual education plans), ergo, they should be categorized as special ed. Same thing in pulling out transportation. Or tuition to other districts. Admin dealing with special ed grants and recordkeeping. It goes on and on...
- Cupertino95014 4y ago
  It IS hard to get, and that's why the former school board member's estimate is valuable.
bena 4y ago
Education and social services are one of the areas where we really shouldn't be leaning that hard on ROI. The return is a well taken care of populace. Yes, it may cost, but we pay that cost because we're not assholes.
- Cupertino95014 4y ago
  Are you saying "whatever it costs, it doesn't matter"? Because I can't agree with that. Nor is it good public policy to just be "not assholes." The absolute dollar amount does matter, and it has nothing to do with being assholes or not. There are different ways to meet children's needs and spending an infinite amount of money is just not sustainable.
- scarmig 4y ago
  Those are still returns, just not monetary ones. You can get plenty of buy in that educational outcomes are good in themselves, but schools fail at that basic metric. On the other hand, as a way to provide social services to underprivileged children they are pretty decent. But that's not what they're advertised as (school isn't known as an acronym for Social Care and Health Out Of a Location), and people end up pissed.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- zuminator 4y ago
  I would argue that ROI is extremely important in education. It's just that the "return" on our investment is not purely financial. Producing students who will be competent to effectively participate in and wisely run the society of tomorrow is a large part of the return that we seek. So, to that extent it may be that high special needs costs are worth it if they demonstrably help students become self-sufficient instead of dependent wards of the state. I can't say for sure that they are worth it, I'm saying that the mere fact that they're expensive doesn't mean they aren't cost-effective in the greater sense.
kube-system 4y ago
The benefits to disability accommodation are primarily non-monetary, which is why market forces do an awful job of providing them.

varjag 4y ago

It's not just the money. The attitude to special needs children (and disabilities in general) was a lot worse.

Cupertino95014 4y ago

Number that would be interesting to have: In Finland and Singapore (two countries with education systems among the top in the world): 1) What's the percentage of education spending that goes to special ed? Looking at Finland, we can find their total spending: https://www.statista.com/statistics/538122/general-government-expenditure-on-education-in-finland/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/538122/general-governmen... and we can find ample evidence that they care just as much about special needs kids as the US does, if not more: https://www.heischools.com/blog/finlands-approach-to-special-needs-inclusion https://www.heischools.com/blog/finlands-approach-to-special... What I'm having a harder time finding is: what percent of the education budget goes to special ed?

kube-system 4y ago

Yes, disabilities are expensive to accommodate. That’s why we have laws like the ADA. Because when given the option to disregard the disabled, many will choose do so. This in turn leads to building a society in which the disabled are discarded as an inconvenience to society, rather than as people with equal rights to public accommodation.

Cupertino95014 4y ago
"expensive" but everything has a limit. Even losing a limb or an eye has a dollar cost associated with it, if you look in the right tables. Pretending that there is no limit, or that the choice is a binary "no limit" vs. "don't give a shit" is just not responsible.
- kube-system 4y ago
  I agree. The standard is not infinite accommodation but reasonable accommodations.
notch656a 4y ago
>discarded If I give Johnny, Jimmy, and Karen an equal investment of $20 and 20 hours of labor each for their education, I haven't "discarded" Karen, even if she needs more money and more time to get the same equality of outcome. In the same vein, I don't at all want to "discard" special ed children, I just want any public funds provided to the other children to be a nearly equal monetary investment. >That’s why we have laws like the ADA The period after passing of the ADA was associated with sharp drops in employment inclusion of the disabled [0]. The ADA may have actually been one of the biggest drivers of the discarding of the disabled. Not only that, the ADA encouraged racketeering against business owners for disingenuous accommodation complaints (someone off the street runs up, asked to use your bathroom, you allow the public to use it just this once and bam ADA complaint as they were secretly working for a lawyer checking for the "right" kind of grab bar) where businesses sometimes end up closing accommodations to the public. Personally I am heavily against the ADA as I believe eliminating these "protections" helps protect the disabled's inclusion within society. [0] https://economics.mit.edu/files/17 https://economics.mit.edu/files/17