Students with disabilities cost 50.5 percent more to educate to comparable academic growth than peers without disabilities¶
Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · associationalr2·q2
Currency · newest study 2021 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person · recheck by 2026: baselines and conditions change
Subclaims¶
Reading the evidence codes
q is the design tier, i the impact, n the sample, and the kind with its r
the rigour judged within that kind: what each code means.
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q2 i? Ensuring students with disabilities achieve the same academic growth as peers without disabilities required, on average, 50.5 percent more funding on top of the general education base. → 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
Estimates from the study's education cost function model of California statewide data (2016/17–2018/19) found "50.5 percent more" spending was needed for comparable growth. The authors note this excludes nonacademic IEP goals, school-size variation, regional cost differences, and NPS placements.
"It cost, on average, 50.5 percent more to ensure that students with disabilities achieved the same academic growth as their peers without disabilities."
Discussion¶
Related Claims¶
- Differentiating special education funding by disability, disability category, or student need can lead to improved outcomes for students with disabilities, and IEP-progress metrics offer a new adequacy-study measure — related
- Nonpublic school placements cost 24 percent more and yielded 5 to 6 percentage points less academic growth than public placements — related
- Educating a student with disabilities costs approximately twice as much, on average, as educating a student without a disability — related
- Cost function analysis indicates substantially higher spending is needed for equal opportunity: weights of 2.49 for first-generation and 2.63 for students older than 24 — related
- Additional special education costs vary substantially by primary disability category — related
- Students with disabilities in grades K-4 grow as much or more academically during some school years than peers without disabilities — related
Page metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
type |
claim |
id |
special-education-supplemental-cost-50-percent |
title |
Students with disabilities cost 50.5 percent more to educate to comparable academic growth than peers without disabilities |
description |
Students with disabilities cost 50.5 percent more to educate to comparable academic growth than peers without disabilities |
status |
review |
evidence_strength |
moderate |
newest_evidence |
2021 |
recheck_by |
2026 |
generated |
by process:wiki-ingest on 2026-10-09 |
trust |
unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content |
sources |
1 — doutre-2021 |
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