We live in a very small, high performance district in terms of state wide testing.
My wife teaches kids in a neighboring low income, low performing district. She teaches kids that are identified as being well under grade level in reading and writing. They are not identified as special needs per se. They spend most the day in their regular classroom. These are kids the district is trying to get up to grade level and depend on grants for paying people like my wife (non union, 1/5 of the all-in cost of tenured teachers.) No grant, no program. If there were magic funding for just designating kids ADD or something, the schools would be milking it. It isn’t happening and the author’s explanation makes some sense.
My wife has taught kids with much more severe, categorized disabilities in more affluent districts. She quit doing this due to the constant conflict between parents pushing for “mainstreaming” in impossible situations that left entire classrooms of kids falling behind or being disrupted. The majority of funding for formally categorized disabilities was provided by the district so the financial pressure was to mainstream if possible.
I think some of the confusion about “incentives” for designation of some sort comes from anecdotal evidence many people come across or hear from their kids and other parents. In our district, the number of kids that are allowed to have minders and special testing accommodation has exploded in the past several years. If there is evidence of true need, no case has been presented and instead there is an assumption that there is a good deal of abuse originating with parents pushing for unwarranted help for their children. Unless a district addresses situations like this with facts and more open discussion, the suspicions grow and rumors spread.
