Education like health care in the U.S. is significantly overpriced on a per pupil and per patient basis compared to comparable countries in the developed world. And test results for U.S. students and health outcomes for U.S. patients (life expectancy has gone down in the U.S.) are significantly worse than similar results for comparable countries around the world. The public in the U.S. looks at these costs and results and understandably asks: How can we spend this much and get these woeful results for both education and health care. These facts are the motivation for this book.
Throughout the book I point out that the extra per pupil costs in high-cost, strong teacher union states includes a “union premium” that is built into the cost mechanisms faced by school systems across our country. This “union premium” also changes teacher recruitment, class sizes, teacher benefit costs and a host of other issues.
In health care when doctors found out a different treatment would improve patient results, we expect them to inform the public and change their treatment efforts to match their new findings. In fact, we would be incensed if the doctors didn’t change their treatment protocols to match their new data. Special education, for educators, presents the same data as a new treatment does for doctors.
Special education as it is presently practiced in the U.S. is a high cost, low return education strategy across the country in both union premium and weak teacher union states. A number of academic studies and the data compiled by the New York State Education Department on 792 school districts for over 40 years (which I worked with extensively) showed clearly that both pull out and push in Special Education classes did not improve student achievement on standardized tests. In fact, school districts that spent more per pupil on special education had substantially weaker test scores than comparable districts with the same resources per pupil and same levels of poverty students. These students would score better on the tests with outside the school day tutoring of 1-5 hours per week (by certified teachers with a grasp of the curriculum) and the costs of outside the classroom tutoring are comparable to the costs of the during the school day special education program now in place in our schools that produces poor results.
Why wouldn’t we shift to a new approach for special education students if we found through data that we could produce better results with a different approach? Would we fail to change because it would offend the teachers who have provided special education services to learning disabled students for the past 40 years? What would we expect doctors to do in the same circumstance if the medical data suggested a change in treatment would improve patient results? Are educators any less professional than the doctors who treat our health issues? I think not.
Lastly, my background in physics helped me in my 45-year career in education. It helped me to identify, acquire and inspect relevant data, analyze causes and costs and challenge assumptions. Everyone trained in the scientific method does these things. All educators are capable of doing what I have done but my physics training probably helped me in ways that traditional education training would not. As educators we train our students to approach new ideas with an open, inquisitive and properly skeptical mind. I assume you want to exhibit the same characteristics in your analysis of this book.
We don’t ever want to return to the dismal state of special education we had before the IDEA (PL-94-142), but it’s important that we put our money into things that improve student achievement.[i]
The pendulum has swung too far in the other direction, especially given the fact that special education services don’t have a positive impact on student achievement. In fact, quite the opposite. The data shows the more districts spend on special education the worse the results.[ii]
And as we put more and more resources into special education it becomes self-perpetuating; the “solution” for students who can’t read becomes – “put them in special ed.” It’s become an academic crutch for students and teachers.
While I have a Bachelor’s degree and Master’s degree in physics, I also have a Master’s degree is in school administration. I taught high school physics, AP Physics, chemistry, algebra, geometry, trigonometry and pre-calculus and later was an assistant principal, principal (during which time I also taught math and science when necessary) an assistant superintendent and superintendent of schools in urban, suburban and rural districts and eventually as a school district turnaround specialist in New York, North Carolina and Massachusetts.
[i] Ann M.Hocutt, “Effectiveness of Special Education: Is Placement the Critical Factor?, Future Child, 1996 Spring, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8689263
[ii] Dan Lips, Shanea Watkins, Ph.D. and John Fleming, “Does Spending More on Education Improve Academic Achievement?,” The Heritage Foundation, September 8, 2008, http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2008/09/does-spending-more-on-education-improve-academic-achievement