[Rebelgecko]

In practice, students don't cost the same. eg a special ed student will cost 10x more than a student in a general ed or gifted program.

So I think in practice they end up subsidizing the cheap-to-educate kid's private school education, while expensive students stay in public schools (which makes the private school voucher amount go up while decreasing the quality of public school instruction for the majority of students). Kind of a vicious cycle.

[alephnerd]

> special ed student will cost 10x more than a student in a general ed or gifted program

Special Ed students and the staff supporting them are subsidized and paid for by the US Dept of Education.

When you have an Autism Specialist or a Special Education teacher, the school district will go to the US DoE to get the SpED staff's salary comped.

This makes sense because of how expensive special education is, yet how critical of a social function it has.

My mom is a Special Education Teacher and she's always been funded by the Federal DoE.

The issue is "tracking" is very expensive and a bit of a political landline, so plenty of less academically included students end up in AVID track or Low Severity Special Education classes - neither of which are subsidized by the DoE.

School Boards don't want to deal with the expensive and politically suidical option of saying some kids are dumber than others, so this is the backdoor solution they use. Also, by tracking that means you have to hire 2x the number of teachers, while still having the same budget, and local voters don't want to see a 2x increase in Sales Tax and/or property taxes.

[Rebelgecko]

The Individuals with Disability Education Act requires the federal government to cover up to 40% of the cost of educating students with special needs.

If you've ever had a an internet plan that promises you speeds of "up to" $FOO, you can probably guess how IDEA goes down in practice. In my state (California), the Feds reimburse about 10% of the cost, which leaves the state and local governments on the hook for the rest. In practice the allocation is also weird for the federal money, since it doesn't take into account that students have different needs with drastically different costs (e.g. an IEP for a kid with shitty handwriting vs a kid on Home & Hospital who has personalized 1:1 instruction+care all day)

[alephnerd]

My mom is a special educator here in the Bay Area, and has done this at both low income districts as well as high income districts here. The funding is well prioritized.

[gowld]

Subsidized, not fully paid for.