Cost-Effective Special Education: Better for Kids, Staff, AND the Budget Is Possible
This post is the first in a five-part series, “Cost-Effective Special Education: Better for Students, Better for Budgets.” School districts are under growing pressure to meet increasingly complex student needs while managing limited resources—but improving special education services and controlling costs don't have to be competing goals. In this series, Nate Levenson shares practical strategies districts can use to improve outcomes for students with disabilities while managing costs in ways that are good for the budget and fair to staff.
Stay tuned for upcoming posts in this series:
Part II: Managing Special Educators’ Schedules for Greater Impact and Cost Effectiveness
Part III: Rethinking Staffing of Specialized Programs for Students with Significant Needs
Part IV: Expanding Student Mental Health Support Without Expanding District Budgets
Part V: Knowing What You Spend: Understanding Cost Per Student Served
For many school district leaders, thinking about “cost-effective special education” can be uncomfortable.
While rising special education costs are putting increasing pressure on already-tight budgets, when leaders consider trying to contain these costs, they understandably worry about what that could mean for students. No one wants to balance the budget by reducing much-needed services for some of our most vulnerable learners.
The good news is that we don't have to choose—delivering better and more cost-effective special education is possible.
After working with hundreds of school districts, I have seen again and again that some of the most effective strategies for students with disabilities are also more cost-effective than common practices. The goal isn't to spend less because we must. It is to use the dollars and staff we have in ways that produce even better benefits for students at a lower cost, all while being fair and responsible for hardworking staff.
Sometimes that means spending more in one area and less in another. Sometimes it means changing how staff use their time. And sometimes it means letting go of a long-standing practice when a better one is available. The important point is that improving outcomes for students and improving cost effectiveness can happen at the same time.
What Does Better AND More Cost-Effective Look Like?
There are a number of ways districts can redesign special education services so that students receive more impactful support while stretching existing resources further. Two examples illustrate how shifting from familiar practices to more effective ones can benefit both students and the budget.
Smaller Groups Aren’t Always Better: Rethinking Group Size
Group size is a huge driver of special education staffing and costs. In the most basic analysis, for example, if the average speech therapy group moved from 2 students to 3, or the average academic support group moved from 4 to 6 students, the amount of staff time required to provide these important services drops by one-third.
But aren’t smaller groups better? When it comes to special education group size, there's an understandable assumption that smaller groups are always better. If three students in a group is good, two must be better. And one-on-one must be best. Therefore, the thinking goes, moving in the other direction must be bad for kids.
But the research doesn't support such a simple conclusion. Group size matters, but how the students are grouped can matter even more. This creates an opportunity to think differently about how we use our most skilled educators.
Imagine three students receiving specially designed instruction from a special educator. One struggles with phonics, another with decoding, and the third needs help with math. Now compare that with a group of five students who all need help with phonics. Which group will lead to more learning? Counterintuitively, it's the larger one!
Grouping students around similar learning needs allows a special educator to provide much more targeted instruction. Instead of trying to address three different challenges in a group of three, the teacher can focus deeply on one challenge with a group of five. The students receive instruction better matched to what they need, while the teacher's expertise reaches more students.
And that has significant implications for both access and cost. A teacher providing five daily groups of three students serves 15 students. The same teacher working with groups of five serves 25—a 67% increase in students reached without adding another FTE.
While we shouldn’t aim to increase all group sizes, we also shouldn't assume that the smallest possible group produces the best results. How students are grouped and who is teaching them, and what happens during that instructional time matter enormously.
Thoughtfully increasing group size while grouping students around similar needs can create exactly the kind of opportunity districts should be looking for: better instruction for more students at a lower cost per student served.
More Adults or More Time? Rethinking Co-Teaching
Co-teaching has grown in popularity over the last decade. In this common model in which a special education teacher partners with a general education classroom teacher to jointly lead the class. In theory, co-teaching is compelling: it increases access to general education for students with disabilities, which is definitely a best practice. Students benefit from core instruction and get the additional support they need.
Co-teachers across the country provide a mixed review of how it plays out in real life. When mutual respect and ample co-planning are in place, co-teaching gets good marks from both general educators and special educators alike. Based on thousands of interviews with teachers across hundreds of districts, fewer than half of co-teachers report that these conditions are in place. They often get relegated to minor roles in the classroom, not taking advantage of their skills.
In some districts, a full quarter of the special education budget is spent on co-teaching pairs who self-report, “It's not working well”. On average, co-teaching costs between $5,000 and $6,500 per student. This is a big investment without much benefit to students.
When the reality of ineffective co-teaching is raised, some assume that the only alternative to co-teaching is less inclusion and less learning. This needn’t be the case. Two teachers providing instruction during the same block of time isn’t the only path to more inclusion and more learning. Research shows that students who struggle academically benefit from “core plus more.” This provides 100% of core general education instruction plus additional instructional time. Instead of doubling the number of adults during one period, give students a second dose of instruction by providing 2 periods of instruction with one teacher at a time. This provides inclusion, access to the core and time to teach prior-year skills that are needed to master current-year content. Districts that have embraced this model have seen best in the nation growth in outcomes, in some cases cutting the achievement gap in half or more.
Inclusion remains, learning increases and seemingly all at no added cost, because the co-teaching pair is simply split up, each providing a period of instruction.
When the core-plus-more approach is paired with the grouping-by-similar-area-of-need strategy already discussed, the cost per student served drops to about $1,500 per student at the secondary level. More learning at a lower cost.
But Doesn't Maintenance of Effort Prevent Savings?
Whenever I raise this topic, Maintenance of Effort quickly enters the conversation. A common misconception is that federal or state laws prevent districts from reducing special education spending and staffing from year to year.
This is not the case. Maintenance of Effort is more flexible than many leaders realize. Districts have multiple ways to demonstrate compliance, and federal rules recognize several circumstances in which special education spending can legally decline, such as declining enrollment, high-cost students moving away from the district or graduating, even when special educators leave voluntarily. Many districts can reduce spending by about 5% a year given normal levels of staff turnover and student mobility.
And don't underestimate the power of simply containing growth. If special education spending has historically risen 5% annually, holding spending flat (which is obviously allowed by Maintenance of Effort) can represent substantial benefit to future budgets.
Start With the Belief That It's Possible to Help Kids and the Budget
Cost-effective special education is not about finding the least expensive services. It is about asking a better question: For every dollar we're spending, are we creating as much benefit for students as we reasonably can in a way that’s fair to staff?
Over the next four posts in this series, I'll explore some very practical places to look: how we manage special educators' schedules, how outside mental health providers can expand services without expanding district budgets, how we staff specialized programs, and why every district should understand what its services actually cost per student served.
The starting point, though, is believing that the goal is possible.
We can help kids and reduce pressure on tight budgets.
Other posts in this series:
Part II: Managing Special Educators’ Schedules for Greater Impact and Cost Effectiveness
Part III: Rethinking Staffing of Specialized Programs for Students with Significant Needs
Part IV: Expanding Student Mental Health Support Without Expanding District Budgets
Part V: Knowing What You Spend: Understanding Cost Per Student Served
Nathan Levenson has spent the last 25 years working to improve the effectiveness and cost effectiveness of K-12 education and brings a unique perspective to this passion, having served as a school superintendent, school board member, researcher, and consultant to over 300 districts in more than 30 states and around the world. He is widely recognized as an expert on improving special education and has authored numerous books, including Six Shifts to Improve Special Education and Other Interventions: A Commonsense Approach for School Leaders (Harvard Education Press).