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bobbert's avatar

Even without looking at any numbers, it's simply a definition to say that any additional spending on <i>any</i> specific category of students (special ed, gifted students, teen moms, those with musical talent, and so on) is "disproportionate". There are important questions that can be asked about any such special programs, such as "how well does it work?", "how big is the clientele?", "are the needed resources available?", "is public school the right place to be providing this service?"

But a discussion of the "Special Education Burden" has to consider <i>how big</i> the disproportion is. Using your example, if you have a school with 13 general and 2 special ed students, then special ed is 50% of the budget. If the population is, say, 1300 general and 40 special ed, then special ed gets 17%. Now, that's still a substantial number, but my point, such as it is, is that the amount of "disproportion" is the same in both cases -- each special ed student gets 6.5x the staff resources that a general student does.

The overall impact on the school depends on the make-up of the served population

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Fartknocker's avatar

We also have a hard time treating people of various medical issues who use Hoverrounds but we fund their treatment by spending public dollars for Medicare and Medicaid. What a douche. But I'm not surprised since in he lives in the same hell hole as Joan of Wasilla.

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