WALL ST JRNL: Don't worry about the increase in special education students
We can explain everything
The Wall Street Journal recently covered the increase in special education in what appeared to be a pretty thorough piece.
June 20, 2024, Wall Street Journal: A Record Number of Kids Are in Special Education—and It’s Getting Harder to Help Them All
The subheading immediately told the public there’s nothing to worry about here.
What’s driving a rise in special education: pandemic disruptions, a shrinking stigma.
So it can all be explained. It’s the effects of COVID and the lockdown, plus it’s because more parents actively seek support for their disabled children.
(The entire article is available online only by subscription, but it is scanned here below)
More American children than ever are qualifying for special education, but schools are struggling to find enough teachers to meet their needs.
The official US special education rate is 15 percent of children. The WSJ admits a small increase over ten years.
A record 7.5 million students accessed special-education services in U.S. schools as of 2022-2023, including children with autism, speech impairments and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. That is 15.2% of the public-school student population, up from less than 13% a decade earlier, the most recent federal data shows.
There’s nothing to see here.
The WSJ easily explains any real increase. The effects of COVID sounds plausible and perhaps parents are demanding more services.
Several factors are driving the increase.
Pandemic disruptions left kids with lingering learning and behavioral challenges. Parents have become more assertive about asking for services, as the stigma around special education has lessened.
Autism diagnoses have also risen in recent decades, and the state of Texas has seen a boom in special education after changing an approach that had limited access.
That was all that was said about autism in the entire article. DIAGNOSES HAVE ALSO RISEN. (That’s code for: better diagnosing/greater awareness/no real increase.)
It’s amazing that autism received only a brief mention in one sentence when multiple sources describe it as “the fastest growing serious development disorder in the US.”
Saying autism number “have also risen in recent decades” doesn’t come close to what we’ve seen, and maybe that’s why the WSJ doesn’t give us any of the actual numbers.
These are the official increases is autism in the US: One in 166 (2004), one in 150 (2007), one in 110 (2009), one in 88 (2012), one in 68 (2014), one in 59 (2018), one in 54 (2020), one in 44 (2021), one in 36 (2023).
The one in 36 children with autism doesn’t come close to the numbers in many places in the US.
CALIFORNIA: ONE IN EVERY 22 FOUR YEAR OLDS HAS AN AUTISM DIAGNOSIS.
May 28, 2024, Ed Source: Rising autism rates in California elementary schools demand evidence-based practices
Recent data from the Centers for Disease Control reveals that 1 in 22 four-year-old children in California are on the autism spectrum, significantly surpassing the national average. This increase, attributed in part to early diagnosis in California, underscores the pressing need for effective interventions in our schools.
The WSJ mentioned an increase in ADHD without revealing the fact that now, one in every nine students has a diagnosis of ADHD.
The WSJ continued.
Students with disabilities benefit from services like speech therapy, specialized reading lessons or personal classroom aides. Yet many schools report being understaffed in special education. And now, districts face growing pressure on their budgets as federal Covid relief aid is set to expire this fall.
“We are in a situation right now that is not sustainable,” said Kevin Rubenstein, who oversees special education for an 8,000-student suburban Chicago district. “We continue to struggle to make sure that we have enough teachers in place.”
Georgia parent Joshua Caines appreciated the special-education services his local public elementary school provided for his now 12-year-old son, whose autism and ADHD affect his attention and ability to hand-write, among other things.
Caines worried, though, about middle school, and whether a larger campus and class sizes would overwhelm his son, who learns better around people he’s familiar with. So he moved him to a Christian private school for sixth grade, where he’s in classes with less than 10 students.
“It wasn’t a decision that we took lightly,” said Caines, who works as a pastor. “IfI felt my child could get the resources he needed in public school, we would have kept him there.”
Growing needs, reduced stigma
Under federal law, children in public schools qualify for special education if they are identified as having certain disabilities that hinder their educational performance. School staff work with families to create an individualized education program, or IEP, which details a student’s goals and supports. Parents who disagree with what’s being offered can legally challenge school districts.
Virtual learning during the pandemic initially made it more difficult for students with disabilities to receive services and to get identified for special education. Some parents helping their children at home, however, became more aware of challenges they faced, which expanded while school buildings were closed.
Since students returned to school, special-education teachers say they are seeing more mental-health issues and extreme behaviors, including students hitting staff, making lewd remarks and throwing furniture. Having the right support, like an aide to help a student calm down when they get stressed, can alleviate the behaviors. Lisa Honas, an elementary school principal in Idaho, and her 6-year-old daughter, Ryan, who has Down syndrome.
“Traditionally there have been a lot of kids who were able to skate by and maintain at a level where they didn’t get flagged,” said Katy Chaffin, a special-education teacher in San Diego. “When you take years of school closure, for those kids, they’ve fallen so much farther behind.”
Decades ago, special-education students were often isolated from the rest of the school community. Now, students with disabilities are increasingly integrated into general-education classrooms. This has led parents to be more open to utilizing special education.
Staff and funding
“That is where kids belong—together and seeing that everybody is different,” said Lisa Honas, an elementary school principal in Idaho whose 6-year-old daughter has Down syndrome and is nonverbal.
Budget strain
As more students qualify for services, persistent recruiting challenges for special-education teachers and aides and federal funding shortfalls have challenged school districts.
In the fall of 2023, one in five public schools reported not being fully staffed in special education, a higher rate than any other teaching position, according to a federal survey.
School budgets have been flush of late and have risen over time. But money is expected to be tighter as temporary Covid aid winds down.
The 1970s-era federal law that created the special education system authorizes federal funding for up to 40% of the costs to provide the services, but the federal contribution has always fallen far short of that. Adjusted for inflation, regular federal funding for the law has fallen since 2010, according to figures compiled by the U.S. Department of Education.
A separate legal avenue for children with disabilities is a 504 plan, which guarantees school accommodations like extra time on tests. The share of students receiving a 504 has risen from 1% in school year 2009-2010 to 3.3% in2020-2021, according to an analysis of federal data by Perry Zirkel, an education law researcher.
Implementing these plans is “all at the cost of the local district’s budget,” said Zirkel, because there is no additional funding provided by states or the federal government like there is for students on IEPs.
Texas is not a typical example because they illegally capped special education numbers at 8.5 percent for years. That was ended in 2018. Special ed numbers immediately soared.
Special-education numbers have grown at an especially fast clip in Texas—from under half a million students in 2015-2016 to over 700,000 in 2022-2023. In 2018, following a Houston Chronicle investigation, the U.S. Department of Education found the state pressured school districts to keep disability figures low.
“Kids were being under identified for years and years and years,” said Alyssa Potasznik, a special-education teacher in Texas until 2022. Potasznik left the state because she said the challenges of getting back on track after the Education Department investigation—with limited staffing and funding—were too great.
Now teaching special education at a high school in Portland, Ore., she feels a different kind of pressure. “You have such a short time to be able to help these kids,” she said. “It can be demoralizing when you don’t feel you can give them the support needed for them to live the lives they want to lead.”
So there is really nothing to see here. According to the WSJ, there has been this statistically small increase in the percent of children qualifying for special education services, but it’s all due to societal changes like the COVID lockdown and parents’ attitude.
The WSJ may be convinced that only 15% of students have special needs, but there are lots of places well beyond that average.
BREVARD, FL: MORE THAN 25% OF STUDENTS HAVE SPECIAL NEEDS.
FLORIDA: 20.5% OF STUDENTS HAVE SPECIAL NEEDS
June 12, 2024. Florida Today: IEPs help disabled Brevard students thrive. But the process to get one can be lengthy
In Florida, 599,273 students were classified as "exceptional students" during the 2023-2024 school year, according to the Florida Department of Education. That's about 20.48% of the 2,872,309 students enrolled in public school during the 2023-2024 school year. During the same year, Brevard had 18,541 exceptional students, which was a little over 25% of all students enrolled in public school on the Space Coast. . .
In Florida, autism affects almost 5% of kids.
“Nearly 5% of children in Florida have autism. . .”
The WSJ did a real disservice to readers. Instead of admitting that students with autism and ADHD, along with social emotional issues are flooding schools in never before seen numbers across the US, the WSJ does its best to downplay what’s happening. They omitted all the details like the ones I mentioned.
We’ve had IDEA for almost 50 years, so these children would have been somewhere in the education system. They simply weren’t here.
Lost in the middle of this piece, was the comment from Kevin Rubenstein, a special ed administrator for a suburban Chicago district. He said,
“We are in a situation right now that is not sustainable.”
All the numbers, especially the autism and ADHD rates, will only continue to increase and it won’t be because of any lockdown or parental activism. Something is fundamentally wrong with the health of children today and the WSJ is merely trying to explain it all away.
TV is their best friend and most trusted advisor.