Can spiraling special education costs explain why educational achievement remained stagnant over the past three decades while real education spending more than doubled? Policy makers, education researchers, and school district officials often make this claim. Special education students--goes the argument--are draining resources away from regular education students. A popular riff on the idea that special education students are bleeding public school budgets blames private placements. A large number of mostly undeserving disabled students and their clever parents, critics allege, have managed to get public schools to pay for attendance at expensive private schools. Tales of the "greedy needy"--disabled students who receive unreasonably expensive services--appear regularly in the media. However, the evidence contradicts the private placement myth. Only a very small fraction of disabled students are placed in private schools at public expense. Contrary to claims that this is increasingly common, the likelihood that disabled students will be placed in a private school has not grown in the last 15 years. While some of those private placements are indeed expensive, the overall cost of private placement nationwide constitutes a tiny portion of public school spending. (Contains 1 table and 1 figure.)