Pennsylvania Ponders Changes to Special Education Funding Formula

By Christina Samuels from On Special Education

After trying more than once to do so, Pennsylvania is poised to make a change in its 22-year-old funding formula for special education.

Last week the state House passed, on a 193-0 vote, a bill that would create a 15-member commission to study the issue and develop a recommendation that would take into account the severity of a student's disability when it comes to funding districts. Enrollment and district wealth would also play a factor in determining how much special education money a district would get. The Patriot-News in central Pennsylvania described the current funding landscape and recent political moves in an editorial that spoke in favor of the changes.

Currently, Pennsylvania distributes state special education dollars to its 501 districts using a simple formula known as "census-based" funding: The state assumes that 16 percent of a district's student population requires special services, and distributes a share of money based solely on that percentage.

The benefit of such a formula, some say, is that districts have no incentive to inflate their special education population in order to get more money. But one downside comes from the fact that special education students are not evenly distributed across a state—some districts with high numbers of students in special education could end up without enough money, while districts with low numbers could be overfunded.

Read more HERE.

IDEA Sequester Cuts, By The Numbers

By Christina Samuels from On Special Education

The blog IDEA Money Watch compiled information released by the U.S. Department of Education and created a nice chart that spells out how much each state stands to lose in federal funding for special education, should the sequester cuts stay in place.

States received about $11.5 billion in Part B funds for fiscal year 2012—Part B refers to the special education dollars that are used to educate students ages 5 to 21. The numbers in this chart assume a 5 percent reduction in funding for fiscal 2013. As explained in my colleague Alyson Klein's excellent piece on frequently asked sequester questions, the sequester doesn't mean that states will immediately start to feel the pinch, because the money has been "forward-funded." Any budget impact would start to be felt more in the 2013-14 school year.

But in special education, states are obligated to provide a free, appropriate public education to their students. So, if funding is cut at the federal level, it would have to be made up with state or local dollars.

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has gotten in hot water from some who say he is exaggerating the impact of these cuts. But in a visit to a preschool today, he told the media that he stands firm on the numbers.

Article HERE.

Autism Research, Parent-Training Centers Get Cash Infusion

From Nirvi Shah from On Special Education

Nine sets of researchers will split $100 million in grant money from the National Institutes of Health to research different aspects of autism.

The awards, spread out over the next five years, are part of the Autism Centers of Excellence research program. This year, the research will expand to look into children and adults who have limited or no speech, links between autism spectrum disorders and other genetic syndromes, potential treatments, and the reasons why these disorders are more common among boys than girls, said Alice Kau, Ph.D., of the Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Branch at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. That's one of the five National Institutes of Health entities funding the Autism Centers of Excellence Program.

Read more HERE.

Were Special Education, Title I, Other Programs Cut by Mistake?

By Nirvi Shah from On Special Education

When Congress passed a short-term budget bill that expires Nov. 18, lawmakers may not have realized what some of the bill's potential long-term effects might be on education spending—although states and school districts noticed their action right away.

Spending for four programs—special education, Title I, teacher quality, and career and technical education—for the current school year was cut, presumably well after most states and school districts had spending plans for the year in place.

"The states have had the rug pulled out from under them," said Lindsay Jones, the senior director of policy and advocacy services for the Washington-based Council for Exceptional Children. (See page 8 in this document for how the cuts break down in special education.)

Because of the way the current continuing resolution was written, only federal programs that get advance appropriations were affected, so spending on other education programs wasn't cut, at least not by this bill, and not right now.

The cuts total $329 million, the largest chunks of which are $163 million for Title I and $129 million for special education.

The impression special education advocates, including Ms. Jones, have is that Congress' action was inadvertent. They point to the U.S. Senate's spending proposal for the 2012 fiscal year, which would keep special education spending level, and the House proposal that boosts spending by $1.2 billion, albeit by cutting other education programs.

In all, the cuts represent a 1.5 percent decrease for each of the four programs. But if spending isn't returned to the level it was before the decrease, the percentage could grow significantly if funding is kept level for the 2012 fiscal year, since "level" will be a reduction. In a letter to House and Senate education committee leaders, the Committee for Education Funding pressed Congress to take action on both fronts.

"We urge you ... to provide funds to restore this $329 million cut," the letters read. "Schools had been anticipating the use of these funds as they had been included in an earlier allocation notification. We also urge that in the unfortunate event that this cut is not restored, that it not result in the reduction in the level of advanced appropriations provided in the FY 2012 bill... to avoid permanently lowering the baseline level of funding."

Article HERE.