Rethinking the Way Special Education Is Managed to Improve Outcomes—and Lower Costs
This post is the second of a three-part series, “Improving Special Education While Moderating Costs IS Possible. Here’s How,” which shares how school districts can effectively narrow the special education achievement gap even in times of tightening budgets using research-backed cost effective best practice approaches to delivering special education services and managing staff time more proactively.
Other posts in this series:
Perhaps the most overlooked aspect of effectively and cost-effectively serving students with disabilities is how special education is managed. Effectiveness and cost-effectiveness do not just happen. They are managed day in and day out. To successfully shift from past practices to best practices for improving special education, districts must rethink how special education is managed and who is part of the leadership team.
Too often, managing special education is siloed in ways that are not good for kids, teachers, or the budget. Most commonly, one special education director is in charge of almost everything, including academics, finance, staffing, and compliance. In most school districts with which I have worked, the chief business officer receives the special education budget instead of partnering with the special education director to develop it. Special education staff in most districts also get limited help, direction, feedback, and guidance; they are merely assigned to a specific school and asked to make everything work out and schedule all services to keep in compliance. This typical approach is a recipe for special educator burnout and has not been shown to be effective in closing the achievement gap.
One thing is clear: to close the achievement gap and better serve increasing numbers of students with special needs, districts need different approach to managing special education. Best practices for improving special education cannot be effectively implemented via the old organizational structure. Two changes to how special education is managed will smooth the path toward more effective and cost-effective services: helping manage staff time actively and integrating special education leadership.
Guiding Staff Use of Time for Greater Impact
Special educators are dedicated professionals with a lot on their plate, and they deserve more support and guidance than they often receive in many districts. In hundreds of focus groups I have led, special educators report feeling stretched thin and not adequately supported, contributing to high rates of burnout.
Most often, special educators are handed a caseload and asked to make it all work. Rather than leaving it to each person to balance IEP meetings, evaluating IEP eligibility, providing services to students, and handling myriad other tasks, districts should set guidelines for how special educators can best use the time available. Frontline staff should be part of the conversation in designing these guidelines.
District guidelines need to address how many hours a day special educators should work directly with students, how many hours a week a school psychologist should provide counseling, and how many students should be in a “small group,” as stated in an IEP. In the hundreds of school districts I have studied, fewer than a handful of leaders have set such guidelines for the staff they manage. Without a collective answer, staff members are left to figure it out for themselves on their own. This is not cost-effective or good for kids, and it is stressful for staff.
It is very hard to implement thoughtful guidelines for the use of staff time if scheduling is not treated as strategically important. The schedule is where guidelines become reality. Creating the schedule should not be delegated to each individual special educator. Building schedules in partnership with a manager and with the help of an expert scheduler is a key ingredient in managing special education cost effectively.
Integrating Special Education Leadership
Leading a special education department is an incredibly tough, stressful job. A director might have 40 to 60 direct reports. Most unhappy parents eventually land in their office. The state department of education monitors compliance like a hawk. The staff is burning out. Then, during budget season, lots of people blame the director for cuts elsewhere in the district. Students are still struggling academically, socially, emotionally, and behaviorally. Everyone wants the director to fix this, but few see it as their job to help in that effort. It is a no-win situation.
Here’s the reality: special education will be more effective, and more cost effective, when management of it is integrated and collaborative with general education, measurement, accountability, and financial management.
General education leadership will be critical to increasing the cost-effectiveness of serving students with disabilities. Chief academic officers, assistant superintendents for teaching and learning, and their ilk are experts in academics and should drive this important work. Special education leaders are the copilots. And in elementary schools, general-education leaders, namely, principals, assistant principals, and reading coaches, must also lead the effort to ensure that all kids can read and understand what they read.
So, too, do other departments need to integrate more closely with special education to support better outcomes. This includes the measurement, accountability, and business offices. If we want special education to focus on what works, it seems reasonable that folks trained in collecting and analyzing data and program effectiveness should do this for all programs, including those that serve students with special needs. In the same spirit, the business office should be an active partner that adds value in allocating special education staffing and helping track and manage spending. This might seem like common sense, but it is not currently common practice. Making special education more cost-effective is no easy task, and it requires a team effort. Formally tasking these departments with helping to manage special education is key to managing it well.
Rethinking Special Education Management for a New Era
The world has changed. The kids coming to school today have more needs, but schools have fewer resources. A focus on improving the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of special education is the only path forward that does not lead to worse outcomes, fewer services, and higher teacher turnover.
By providing district-level guidance on how staff should use their valuable time and by integrating special education management with other departments, school districts can position themselves to deliver better outcomes for all students who struggle without increasing costs. This increased guidance, support, and collaboration can be good for kids, staff, and taxpayers, all at the same time.
Other posts in this series:
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).