Cameron Park
EDUCATION
The Dark Underbelly of Your American School District, part 3: Funding
There are several key issues that are leading to children with learning disabilities not getting the education they need. Today, we’ll talk about funding. The federal government mandated special education services for kids in K-12 in 1975, with the Education For All Handicapped Children Act. At the same time, legislators promised the federal government would help states with funding special education. The promise was to provide 40 percent of the cost for each child. A special education student was found to cost the state about 150 percent of a non-special education student. Therefore, with federal help, the states would only have to come up with an additional 10 percent to meet the additional needs of a special education student. Unfortunately, the federal government has never come close to meeting that promise. Thus, states have a huge burden of new costs, which neither state nor federal funding has managed to meet.
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