Find the Latest Resources in Education Today
Study: The one change districts should make to save $10 billion
A study released Wednesday by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute has found that if high-spending public school districts reduced their special education staffing levels to align with the national median, the country could save $10 billion annually, the Huffington Post reports. The study, authored by Managing Director at the District Management Council and former school superintendent Nathan Levenson, analyzed information — including staffing patterns and spending — from 1,411 public school districts representing 30 percent of the nation’s K-12 schoolchildren. From there, Levenson’s team reduced the sample into 10 pairs of comparable districts in five states — Florida, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Ohio and Texas. In each pair, one district spent less on special education but boasted higher achievement levels, as measured by scores on the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). On average, the higher-achieving districts within the pairs placed 25 percent more special education pupils at the proficient level, while their lower-achieving counterparts spent 22 percent more on special ed, when adjusted for total student enrollment…
One Response to Study: The one change districts should make to save $10 billion
You must be logged in to post a comment Login
michaelmflood
September 6, 2012 at 5:21 pm
This study is full of flawed methodologies. There was intense pre-selection criteria eliminating 90% of the districts in the US from the study. They spend most of the study looking at 10 “pairs” (20 districts) specifically chosen to illustrate their point. They even state in the study:
“(We do not imply that these relationships are causal. And we’re mindful that the district pairs were chosen to illustrate the inverse relationship between special education inputs (spending) and outcomes (achievement)—so it’s not surprising that they did, in fact, illustrate that relationship.)”
They took a small response, narrowed it farther, then picked 20 to show a point they decided in advance to make. That isn’t science, but I suppose we could save money by not teaching science or statistics either…
In their general data analysis, they compare SPED spending & staffing levels to TOTAL ENROLLMENT, not to the # of SPED students. They assume any two districts with the same total enrollment will have the same needs in their population. That is crazy. A district with a world-leading center on the study of autism will have a higher SPED rate than a district without it.
This study is written with the “outcome” as a “goal”, not in the spirit of discovery or scientific / statistical analysis. It is loaded with sampling flaws and mthodology that is highly suspect.