5 thoughts on “Special Ed Wars”

  1. Yikes Laura. I had to go away after the second comment. And I have my own mixed feelings about our current system of diagnosing/funding/serving special needs. You are made of sterner stuff than I to post at PM. I really do think you should run for president.

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  3. The study is here, bj, if you would enjoy the sport in taking apart methodology sections. I just skimmed it. I was curious if either Foster or Greene had medical licenses, since they seemed so sure that all those kids with ADHD really don’t have ADHD. Nope.
    4 have IEPs for sure. Genetics, multiple births were certainly issues. 2, I know are receiving extra help, but I’m not absolutely sure if they have formal IEPs.

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  4. Your article is being discussed chez Joanne Jacobs., with good comments by Margo/Mom
    One anonymous commenter claims Nonsense. Most students classified as LD meet no legal or research criteria for the disorder. We have published three studies with postsecondary students classified as LD and found that almost 60% in each study do not meet even the minimum criteria for LD.
    Anon hasn’t come back to give citations for the alleged studies.

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  5. I read the article. I don’t think they provide enough information for a deconstruction, because the data is not well reported enough (for example, a cite to regression analysis, without reporting the r values or the p values, or even the regression methodology. Might be somewhere in the cites, but I didn’t find it easily).
    Skimming the figures, what I can uncover is a plausible argument that states in which each sped students results in an increased payment/student (“bounty” system, as they term it) result in an increase of about 1% of SPED students (this is assuming their methodology, and based on their figure comparing the projected SPED students v the actual SPED students in “bounty” states). I could be convinced that the mechanism of SPED funding could have an effect on identification. But, even if they were perfectly correct, I don’t see an increase in identifying 1% of SPED students as being significant. All identification, of anything has a false positive rate, it’s an inevitable consequence of identification.
    And, I’m totally confused by the argument that vouchers would help. If we had vouchers, presumably the vouchers would have to be higher for SPED kids? If they were, than we’d create a real incentive for parents to id their kids as SPED. If vouchers weren’t higher for SPED kids, we get back to what the whole problem was in the first place. Why would anyone want to take on a kid who costs more to educate, without having those costs reimbursed?

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