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Title: What We Don't Know Can't Hurt Us? Equity Consequences of Finanacing Special Education on the Untested Assumption of Uniform Needs
Citation Type: Journal Article
Publication Year: 2010
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Abstract: Over the past few decades, a handful of states have chosen to provide statefinancing of special education programs through a method referred to as Census-Based fundingan approach which involves allocated block-grant funding onan assumed basis of uniform distribution of children with disabilities acrossschool districts. The approach has been argued to eliminate financial incentivesfor classification of marginallow severity, higher incidencedisabilities. Weexplain herein that despite some evidence linking headcount-based financingschemes to increased classification rates (a) no evidence exists whether theincentivized rates are more or less indicative of true prevalence of disabilities,and (b) where attempts have been made to discern whether certain populationsof children with disabilities are in fact uniformly distributed, researchers havefound that they are not. We use U.S. Census data on families of children withdisabilities to evaluate the geographic and demographic distribution of thosefamilies in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, finding high degrees of geographicclustering, relationships between census disability rates, census poverty rates,geographic locations and school district classification rates. In short, we findfamilies of children with disabilities to be non-randomly and non-uniformlydistributed across geographic spaces in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Weconclude by evaluating the equity consequences of assuming falsely that thesechildren are distributed uniformly.
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Authors: Baker, Bruce D.; Ramsey, Matthew J.
Periodical (Full): Journal of Education Finance
Issue: 3
Volume: 35
Pages: 245-275
Data Collections: IPUMS USA
Topics: Education
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