Special Education Funds

For my blog this week I wanted to focus on public policy... more specifically Special Education Funding (or lack thereof) 

Students who require special education will always be a part of public schools system, they  won't one day just not be a part of public schools. 

Therefore Students with special needs are ensured their rights to education by the law passed called "Education for all Handicapped Children Act"

Please see a brief overview of he act below from Wikipedia.com  

"The law was passed to meet four huge goals:

1. To ensure that special education services are available to children who need them
2. To guarantee that decisions about services to disabled students are fair and appropriate
3. To establish specific management and auditing requirements for special education
4. To provide federal funds to help the states educate disabled students"

              Now this is great, that students with disabilities and special needs are entitled to their rights...but the issue still stands: funds for their programs are not where they should be. Did you know it is up to the school or the school districts to find the funding for these programs? The federal government supports the schools, but it is up to the schools to fund these crucial programs to their students. Yet it is legally mandated that the states provide these programs. So the government is saying "you must have these programs" BUT "YOU have to fund them"


Because schools have to find he funding for these programs and fit them into their budget some specific and special areas lag. It is known that autism is much more diagnosed now than it was in history, so that means there are more autistic children attending school. Their needs are not being met though. Many of these students require a speech therapist and schools are at a shortage for them and schools cannot afford private ones. This is just one example I found while researching the shortage of funds toward special education programs. (Understanding Special Education Funding)

While researching I also found this quote to help my argument from examiner.com 

"If you sample a school district's budget, you will find for example [PVPUSD] it receives $5,049M from the state [AB 602] in addition to the federal IDEA grant which is approximately $2M. However, the actual costs for the special education programs in this district total approximately $22M. This district has reported a deficit spending for special education in the sum of $12.5M which is almost double the amount it receives in funding from the federal government and state, combined. This school district has to find and fund $12.5M in excess of the sum provided by the government funding."


States are only ranted 40% for the total cost of special education programs. Which means they have to cut corners with the budget to either come up with the additional 60% in costs of cut corners in the special education program itself. Overall in my research I found the the rights of special education students are accounted for and they o have their rights to education, but are these rights being met? If schools can't fund these programs how do we know if these students re getting an equal opportunity the rest of the students are getting?Is this a violation of rights?