Virginia places more students with disabilities outside their local public schools than 37 other states — a trend that has dramatically increased spending on specialized private schools over the past decade. Private day schools are specialized institutions for children that typically have an emotional disturbance, autism, or some other childhood mental disorder, and exhibit behaviors that public schools have difficulty managing. JLARC predicts that if spending trends continue, within the next several years, the majority of state special education expenditures will be for private day school services. To get to the core of this issue we must first look at the Children’s Services Act (CSA), which administers through the Office of Children’s Services (OCS) funding for the highest-need, most intensive special education services. 

The children CSA serves are identified using two broad categories: “mandated” and “non-mandated.” The CSA program must cover these “mandated” children at a “sum sufficient” level, meaning the program must pay for the entire cost of services even if it exceeds budget. The problem, however, lies in the fact that the CSA funding pool is limited to use only in private day schools. As such, instead of drawing from OCS funds, public school divisions are forced to rely on state and federal special education dollars, which have been on a steady decline. Divisions have little financial incentive to serve more at-risk special needs students in public schools, even if that is their least restrictive environment (LRE), because of the high cost burden. Virginia’s funding policies don’t encourage public schools to develop their own capacity to serve higher-need students and, instead, motivate them to place students out of public school into private day schools, exhausting CSA funding. In the past year, legislation has been created to have the CSA funding cover the additional services required for a successful transition from a private day school back to a public school for up to a year after the transition—ensuring students are staying in a more costlier, restrictive environment for only as long as necessary. 

In the HB 2117 workgroup, the issue of what CSA funding should cover is at the heart of conversation. Among many recommendations, the most agreed upon was this: a separate pool of funding should be created apart from CSA within OCS (or the VDOE if the funding pool transfers) for public schools to utilize for students with severe disabilities. This would enable students to remain in their least restrictive environment (LRE), which for most, is public school. The vessel by which this defined fund would be administered is yet to be determined, but the frontrunners are 1) expanding Students with Intensive Support Needs Application (SISNA), which currently serves children in six disability categories, to encompass additional categories of disabilities or 2) creating a whole new funding pool. What this additional appropraition will entail will be discussed in the next meeting.

With JLARC’s report on education funding coming out in December and our final workgroup meeting this Friday, I look forward to getting insight into where the optimal funding structure for special education lies.

In the U.S., most school districts use a single-salary pay schedule, setting compensation based on teachers’ years of experience and their highest academic degrees. This pay system was adopted at a time where labor-management strife and discriminatory practices made salary standardization preferable. But today, this pay schedule is incredibly outdated—and is exacerbating the most pressing problems in American K-12 education, a crucial one being the student achievement gap.

In short, the achievement gap can be defined as the persistent disparity in academic outcomes between minority and disadvantaged students and their white counterparts. A huge factor in this gap is teacher turnover in low-income, low-performing schools or “priority schools.” Research has established that racially isolated schools with high concentrations of low-income students disproportionately struggle to recruit and retain highly effective teachers, limiting disadvantaged students’ exposure to high-quality instruction and driving institutional and community instability. When teacher pay is equalized, there is less incentive for teachers to work in more challenging environments.

The subsequent sorting of teachers across schools helps fuel racial- and poverty-related achievement gaps. Schools enrolling children from the most disadvantaged backgrounds are more likely to be staffed by novice teachers, less-prepared teachers, and teachers instructing out-of-field. Children enrolled in schools with high concentrations of disadvantaged students are exposed to higher teacher turnover and, as a result, lower quality instruction. Teacher quality is thus dis-equalized by the current teacher compensation system.

To retain teachers deemed high-performing, we should look towards a differentiated pay plan. Specifically, selective retention bonuses (SRBs), incentives given to highly effective teachers working in a “priority school,” have been found to be a more beneficial compensation system for low-income schools looking to decrease teacher turnover. This follows the idea that retention of effective teachers reduces the likelihood of replacement by a teacher of decreased effectiveness, which translates to better instructional support and student outcomes.

In line with a UNC study by researcher Matthew Springer, financial incentives can marginally shift teachers’ decisions to persist in the challenging work environments of high-accountability, high-poverty, racially isolated schools, and promote higher levels of learning than would have occurred had they left. In fact, receiving a bonus increased the likelihood of retention of these high performing teachers by roughly 20 percent. Low-performing schools that offer retention bonuses to their best teachers tend to improve student learning by lessening reliance on replacement teachers, who are often less effective and less experienced than their peers. Because teachers who earn performance bonuses are significantly more effective than their likely replacements, students benefit in most scenarios.

To create a beneficial learning experience for disadvantaged learning communities, we must take every necessary step to ensure the instructional efficiency at priority schools remains high. Policymakers should look to mandate SRBs to appropriately compensate effective teachers in priority schools, which would enhance and stabilize the learning environment, facilitate greater test score gains, and work towards bridging the achievement gap between low income and non low income students.