Per-student special education costs fall with enrollment up to an ideal size, then rise as diseconomies of scale set in¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · associational r2 · q2
Currency · newest study 2021 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person · recheck by 2026: baselines and conditions change

Subclaims¶

q2 i? Increased enrollment correlated with economies of scale reducing per-student cost up to an ideal size of approximately 40,000 students for a multi-LEA SELPA or COE, beyond which costs grew. → Doutre 2021 q2 i? In 2018/19, 60 percent of California's 94 multi-LEA SELPAs were below the ideal enrollment threshold. → Doutre 2021

Evidence¶

Doutre 2021¶

Doutre, S. M., Willis, J., Barrett, T., Ripma, T., Caparas, R., & Krausen, K. (2021). California State Special Education Funding System Study, Part 2: Findings, Implications, and Considerations for Improving Special Education Funding in California. WestEd. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED616106

q2 · i? · associational · r2

The cost function analysis found that as entity size increased "up to an ideal point, the per-student cost decreased," but past it, per-student costs grew, creating diseconomies of scale. Ideal LEA sizes were approximately 30,000 for elementary/unified and 20,000 for high school LEAs.

"The ideal total enrollment in a multi-LEA Special Education Local Plan Area (SELPA) or a county office of education (COE) to produce the lowest per-student cost is approximately 40,000 students."

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Strict class size caps raise per-student staffing costs as enrollment shrinks—a worked example shows a 44 percent cost increase when 1st grade enrollment falls from 75 to 52 students — related
• Estimated economic costs for English Learner program personnel range from $1,670 to $5,000 per English Learner student annually across interviewed LEAs — related
• Census funding is viewed as a cost-containment approach for special education finance — related
• As total enrollment shrinks, the shares of English Learners, students with disabilities, and low-income students are growing, concentrating higher-need populations in districts with less funding — related
• California serves more than 725,000 K-12 students with disabilities and invests roughly $12 billion annually in special education, with LEA unrestricted funds covering the majority of spending — related
• Federal IDEA funding has provided only about 15 percent of the national average per-pupil expenditure, versus the 40 percent originally promised — related
• Multidistrict SELPAs without a large district received higher per pupil special education funding and had higher preK and K–12 inclusion rates than those with a large district — related