The Special Ed Bounty

From Dr. Helen - Do Schools Overdiagnose Kids because of Financial Incentives?:

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Jay P. Greene, author of the excellent book, Education Myths: What Special Interest Groups Want You to Believe About Our Schools--And Why It Isn't So has a column along with Greg Forster at Pajamas Media entitled "Yes, Virginia, There Is a Special Ed Bounty." It's an interesting piece pointing out that schools have a financial incentive to diagnose students as "disabled" and then not serve them.
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The column starts with:

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Recently, we wrote a column here on Pajamas Media drawing attention to the problem of financial incentives in special education. Laura McKenna responded with a column challenging a number of our assertions. Since her column raises far too many issues to be dealt with adequately in a comment thread, we’d like to thank PJM for giving us the opportunity to respond with yet another column.
Our original column went over the results of an empirical study we had conducted, showing that special education enrollments grew much faster in states that fund special education on a per-student basis. In most states, but not all of them, when a school places a student into special education that school gets an increase in funding. The empirical evidence establishes that growth in special education enrollments has been fueled by the presence of these financial incentives.
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I've heard several times about schools that diagnosis a child as learning disabled, and then the parent can never get the label lifted. The school would lose money. Sad.

The Greatest Management Principle Ever says out that which gets rewarded gets done. Government schools are rewarded for labling children Special Ed, they are not rewarded for helping children.


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