Teach Effectively!

Jay P. Greene and Marus A. Winters examined the prevalence and costs of placement of students with disabilities in private facilities, and they found that much of the rhetoric about this controversial expenditure of schools funds was exaggerated. Professors Greene and Winters examined data from the US Department of Education, aggregating those data across states. They reported that only 1.48 percent of the 6 million students with disabilities are placed in private facilities. Furthermore, the estimated total cost of such placements—just under $1 billion—is just 0.24% of the total budget for education.

I categorized US states according to how many students with disabilities, as a percentage of total students enrolled in the state, had been plaed in private facilities, using the data reported by Professors Greene and Winters in their Table 1. As the graph shows, more than half of the states in the US place fewer than 0.1% (that’s one-tenth of a percent) of students with disabilities in private special education facilities. To be sure, there is at least one outlier in these data; it is the District of Columbia, where 3.3% of students are placed in private facilities.

Professors Greene and Winters comment on DC as an outlier.

But Washington, D.C., is the exception, not the rule. No state has more than 1 percent of its students privately placed. Only four states (Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and New Jersey) have more than 0.5 percent of their students attending private schools at public expense. And to repeat, nationwide only 0.18 percent of all students are privately placed. Nor is D.C. typical for a large urban school district. According to the New York Times, New York City schools have 2,000 privately placed students at a cost of $24 million. That amounts to only 0.19 percent of student enrollment and only 0.17 percent of the budget.

As Professors Greene and Winters, note these findings are in marked contrast to the populal view that out-of-district placements for students with disabilities—and special education costs in general—are bankrupting education. Many articles have appeared in the popular press citing cases of great costs for individual students. However, as these authors note, if “the plural of anecdote were data,” then such case studies would be compelling; a more comprehensive examination reveals that the cases are extremes.

Professors Greene and Winters go on to argue in favor of the Florida (US) McKay Scholarship Program, a program of vouchers for students with disabilities. Although the McKay program has some attractive features, there are problems that long-time readers will remember.

The article, entitled “Debunking a Special Education Myth: Don’t blame private options for rising costs,” appeared in Education Next. The authors also published an op ed piece entitled “Freston as Scapegoat: No More Excuses” in the New York (NY, US) Sun; the “Freston” of the title refers to the recent US Supreme Court case in which New York schools were ordered to pay for Thomas Freston’s placement in a private facility (see SpedPro entry for more).