ERIC Number: EJ874080
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2010
Pages: 31
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0098-9495
EISSN: N/A
What We Don't Know Can't Hurt Us? Equity Consequences of Financing Special Education on the Untested Assumption of Uniform Needs
Baker, Bruce D.; Ramsey, Matthew J.
Journal of Education Finance, v35 n3 p245-275 Win 2010
Over the past few decades, a handful of states have chosen to provide state financing of special education programs through a method referred to as "Census-Based" funding--an approach which involves allocated block-grant funding on an assumed basis of uniform distribution of children with disabilities across school districts. The approach has been argued to eliminate financial incentives for classification of marginal--low severity, higher incidence--disabilities. We explain herein that despite some evidence linking headcount-based financing schemes to increased classification rates (a) no evidence exists whether the incentivized rates are more or less indicative of true prevalence of disabilities, and (b) where attempts have been made to discern whether certain populations of children with disabilities are in fact uniformly distributed, researchers have found that they are not. We use U.S. Census data on families of children with disabilities to evaluate the geographic and demographic distribution of those families in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, finding high degrees of geographic clustering, relationships between census disability rates, census poverty rates, geographic locations and school district classification rates. In short, we find families of children with disabilities to be non-randomly and non-uniformly distributed across geographic spaces in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. We conclude by evaluating the equity consequences of assuming falsely that these children are distributed uniformly. (Contains 8 footnotes, 3 tables, and 16 figures.)
Descriptors: Educational Finance, Financial Support, Special Education, Census Figures, Data Analysis, Geographic Distribution, Population Distribution, Family (Sociological Unit), Disabilities, Educational Equity (Finance), Poverty, Incentives, Classification
University of Illinois Press. 1325 South Oak Street, Champaign, IL 61820-6903. Tel: 217-244-0626; Fax: 217-244-8082; e-mail: journals@uillinois.edu; Web site: http://www.press.uillinois.edu/journals/main.html
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: Elementary Secondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: New Jersey; Pennsylvania
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A