Summary: One of Choice Media's best Ed Reform Minute Podcasts of 2013.Should local school boards, superintendents and principals have control over Special Education? Or should the matter be controlled by legislators and state mandates? A proposal in Illinois would lift state restrictions on special education class sizes, as well as regulations on the number of special needs students who get mainstreamed into a general education class. The issue is a metaphor for a variety of education decisions that can be decided at the top, through state laws, or by individual schools and districts. In other words, how much flexibility versus how many rules, is an age-old dilemma in management philosophy.Illinois is one of only seven states to impose regulations on special education class size, which varies by disability. Supporters of the current state rules say they ensure special needs kids get enough attention, and that education budget cuts won't leave them adrift in a sprawling, oversized classroom. On the other side, the argument for getting rid of the state rules is that top down regulations can never account for the unique challenges at a particular school, and forcing these highly expensive student teacher ratios on just slightly impaired learners, may not be the best use of limited resources. They say a school or district should be measured by its output -- how much are kids learning – rather than micromanaging the inputs of one-size-fits-all statewide regulations.Mary Fergus with the Illinois State Board of Education believes in this change to the state law, meaning there should be more local district autonomy.I think it’s about looking at what’s best for students with disabilities and giving that decision to the local districts, allowing them to look at their resources, looking at all facets of the decisions and allowing them to make the call.Roger Eddy, Executive Director of the Illinois Association of School Boards also agrees with getting rid of the policy. He says the state's 70-30 rule, which allows for 30 percent of a classroom enrollment to be special needs kids, creates unintended consequences.I think it makes perfect sense to allow a very arbitrary standard to be replaced with a very thoughtful deliberation by special education group of individuals to determine what’s best for a student, and I think there are a lot of unintended consequences with the arbitrary 70-30 rule. Consequences that result in concerns about students not being able to be placed in certain classrooms because of restrictions.On the other side, Rodney Estvan, an education policy analyst with Access Living, said this measure is not about improving classrooms, it’s merely about saving money.Our experience is the districts are in such dire shape financially that they’re going to have to try to create an array of classroom sizes and fit kids into those arrays as best they can because they have to reduce the number of overall special education staff and expenses.Mary Kay Betz, Executive Director of the Autism Society of Illinois, also defended the state rules, suggesting that if local districts and principals were left unchecked, they would make bad decisions.You don’t want to have 20 kids with autism in the one classroom. It’s just not going to work because they all have different needs. Usually when schools are planning how they’re going to placing students into different classrooms they look at what teacher is best going to suit the child’s needs.It's worth noting that the entire charter school movement was based on the idea that schools can be more innovative and creative if they're allowed to be free from the choking bureaucracy and thousands of regulations that plague traditional public education. It's also worth nothing that about 50,000 Chicago kids are in charter schools and about up to 19,000 are on waiting lists. In other words, parents are lining up for the schools that are based on more autonomy,
