01-02-2017, 01:49 PM
(01-02-2017, 11:20 AM)The Wonkette Wrote: One of the issues with public schools is that they have to educate everyone -- the disruptive child, the child with autism, the deaf child, the child with Down's syndrome, the child who doesn't speak English. Warren, when you and I were growing up, it was not mandatory. The need for education for all these children is one area which I suspect is responsible for public school expenditures outpacing inflation + population growth. Another factor might be more kids graduating from high school, which equals more kids in school.
Public schools have always been required to educate everyone. Sufficiently disruptive students can still be suspended from school, as has always been the case. What has changed is that children with learning disabilities - of your list, autism, deafness, and Down's, but not English language learners - are federally required to be given accommodations for their disabilities.
In practice, there's no evidence this has generally helped the kids in question. The school system normally fights for interventions with minimal costs, which are normally also the ones with minimal effectiveness. It's true that if you hire a lawyer, you may be able to get effective interventions out of the school system, but it's questionable whether that's actually cost effective. But fighting this battle takes time, during which your kid is caught in the middle. Mainstreaming with teachers flexible enough to adjust to the needs of individual students, as was done when I was a kid, is likely at least as effective.
Special treatment of English language learners is not federally required, and is probably counterproductive. It used to be that second generation immigrants were expected to learn English in school if not before, preventing the issues that can arise with multicultural societies with language barriers. For English language learners, mainstreaming is probably a better policy all around.
The federally mandated special education requirements might explain part of the increase in per student cost, but given how the rise in cost has been continual, before and after those requirements came into force, it's not likely to be the primary explanation. More kids in school is not the explanation, since that is controlled for in the graph I provided: it's the cost per kid that has been rising rapidly, not just the overall cost.
Quote:Under a voucher system, those children, who need more attention than the typical child, will be shortchanged, because a voucher, designed to meet the needs of the "average" child, won't cover special needs. That could be remedied if the voucher was larger for special needs.
I don't think it's necessarily the case that those children would be shortchanged; moving them to an appropriately specialized school could be a big benefit, even if no more is spent per student. If they really did need more funding, a larger voucher value could do it, as you suggest.