Corrupted intentions: reforming special education

National Review, March 11, 1996 by Chester E. Finn

As for the putative beneficiaries, there's scant evidence that special education does them much good. A University of Pittsburgh team, for example, found that 'general education settings produce achievement outcomes for students with learning disabilities that are neither desirable nor acceptable.' The federal Education Department admits that '[A]chievement for students with disabilities remains less than satisfactory. . . . Results for students with learning disabilities and emotional disabilities are particularly poor.'

There are five solid reasons why Congress ought to place the overhaul of special education high among its priorities:

-- It's a burdensome, costly, and growing unfunded mandate-cum-entitlement.

-- It establishes a class of people who are entitled to benefits that others do not receive while creating incentives to expand that class.

-- It impedes other promising reforms. Because the special-education empire is threatened by anything that cuts red tape, its lobbyists oppose charter-school bills, standards-based accountability, and vouchers.

-- Its cost-benefit ratio is dubious. This is a sensitive topic, as only a churl would skimp on disabled children. Yet in weighing society's overall human capital investment, it's appropriate to ask whether the next million dollars are better spent on more services for a few handicapped youngsters or on physics and math for a large number of kids who are apt in the future to be mainstays of the country's economic strength.

-- It fans the flames of victimhood and Washington-knows-best while making it easier for educators and parents to avoid responsibility for their students' achievements.

Even the education establishment is no longer of one mind. The American Federation of Teachers is troubled by the burdens that special education places on teachers. School boards are aggrieved by its soaring costs. Principals find school safety threatened by its double standards.

Desirable reforms are easy to sketch. Distribute federal block-grants via a formula that doesn't create perverse incentives. Permit states to close the program's open-ended entitlement and weigh special-education services against competing priorities. Roll back the rules (and bureaucracies) that substitute Washington's judgments for those of teachers, parents, and school boards. Eliminate the double disciplinary standard. Restore the civil-rights protections to prohibitions against individual discrimination, not group benefits. Exempt innovative programs like charter schools. Quit paying lawyers' fees. Experiment with vouchers for parents.

Easily described, yes, but not easily done as long as the entire topic is avoided on Capitol Hill. Not even the intrepid House freshmen, in their bill to abolish the Education Department, were willing to touch special education. No presidential candidate has gone near it.

As for the Clinton team, its special-education bureau is headed by a long-time activist, and its civil-rights office by a litigious and enterprising enforcer. Between them, the Education Department grows ever more intrusive. A recent 'monitoring report' on South Carolina's program faulted the state for not screening prison inmates to see if they need special-education services. They held an Alabama district to be discriminatory because resource classes for L.D. youngsters were held in a trailer.