Special education: Too much, too late
6:02 PM 6/30/04

Madison really is not a place that ought to have trouble paying for public schools. The city continues to boom. New construction and fast-rising property values mean more tax money for schools every year. <

Yet school officials are talking about holding referendums - three in one year - to receive even more tax money. They say the money is needed to keep pace with all that community growth, but there are other factors as well. <

In particular, some families - those whose children need special help, or have disabilities that require special types of education - have heard through the grapevine that Madison is where their kids will get the best help and education. Many families with special needs children also are drawn to Madison because of top-notch medical and community services. <

The result? Skyrocketing special education costs. Madison Superintendent Art Rainwater expects to spend $55.4 million of next year's $308 million budget on special education. <

Complicating matters, educating some disabled students costs three or more times the average expense per student. The average per-student cost in the state is about $10,000, but the 24,900-student Madison district had 76 special education students in 2002-03 who cost more than $40,000 each to educate. <

Madison doesn't bear the costs alone. The district will get almost one-fourth of $2 million in additional money that the state is setting aside to help schools educate students who have exceptionally high-cost disabilities. <

But Madison's new money comes from discretionary federal funds that otherwise would be used to develop more innovative special education programs. This stopgap measure could do more harm than help over the long run. <

And overall, as special education numbers rise, this type of aid always will fall short. The federal and state governments have promised more money but don't deliver, leaving local taxpayers to pick up a bigger share of the tab. <

The Wisconsin Alliance for Excellent Schools figures that pumping more than $100 million into special education - double the amount recommended by a state task force - still would cover only 40 percent of schools' actual costs throughout the next two years. So even under this unacceptably expensive scenario, school officials would continue to raid regular education for money to cover mandated special-needs programs. <

And of course, this problem isn't confined to Madison. Special education costs are rocketing around the state and country. What's wrong? Why can't our kids learn? <

No one answer suffices. Advances in medicine, which allow more premature and significantly disabled babies to survive, is a factor. But most children in special education have learning disabilities that some critics contend can be traced to failures in schooling or parenting. One clear contributor is a child's lag in learning to read; problems multiply from there. Heeding this problem, Madison has tried to raise elementary student reading levels using volunteer tutoring and other measures. <

All said, children with special needs deserve the same educational opportunity as everyone else. But to cut costs, we need to figure out why such children have special needs in the first place. Environmental factors - such as poor or no preschool and bad or absent parents - might have as much to do with learning disabilities as anything else. <

Exposed in that light, special education in many cases is an expensive solution applied too late to help a child succeed in school and life. <

Friday: Target money toward early childhood