TEA wants to increase special ed funding

Corrective plan suggests nearly $127M more for fixes

As the state of Texas wrestles with how to shore up its special education practices in an austere budget environment, the Texas Education Agency has suggested spending $126.8 million more on a corrective action plan than first recommended in January, according to a new draft plan released Monday evening.

In a 42-page draft, TEA officials recommended spending $211.3 million over six years on monitoring school districts, identifying previously unidentified students who may be eligible for special education services, professional development for teachers and engaging special education parents.

The TEA in January had released a 13-page draft corrective action plan, which officials said would be updated once they received more feedback from school districts, parents and disability advocates. That plan was estimated to cost about $84.5 million over six years.

Major changes between the first action plan and the draft released Monday include a state allocation of $65 million that school districts can use to provide compensatory services to help students previously denied special education services to make up for lost instructional help. The previous plan did not allocate any money for local school districts.

The TEA issued the plans after the U.S. Department of Education in January found the state illegally set an 8.5 percent benchmark on the number of students receiving special education services, well below the national average of 13 percent. A 2016 Houston Chronicle investigation found the practice led school districts to deny access to special education services to tens of thousands of students with disabilities.

The state has since done away with the cap, although federal officials are requiring the state to evaluate students who were denied services and determine if students in special education need more academic support. While the federal government asked the TEA to report back with its plan, Gov. Greg Abbott told the agency to file an initial

draft plan a week after the U.S. Department of Education released the findings of its investigation.

The new draft contains the same elements of four corrective actions included in the original draft, but it consolidates two of the actions and adds two additional corrective steps. The TEA combined two actions into one relating to monitoring school districts’ efforts to identify special education students and to better serve them. It added a corrective step to better engage special education parents and stakeholders in state-level implementation of proposed changes.

Another new action would redesign the state’s networks that provide special education-related grants to select districts and resources for all districts in certain areas, including autism, special education identification practices, intervention practices, students with intensive needs and special education students in rural areas.

Actions that remain largely intact from the first draft include one to ensure the state’s dyslexia programs will no longer be used to delay or deny special education services. Another that remains similar in scope would assist districts in providing compensatory services to help make up for instruction districts failed to deliver to students who are

found to qualify for special education.

TEA officials said a final draft of their special education action plan will be sent to the U.S. Department of Education by April 18. Officials asked for more feedback on the current draft version of the plan, which can be provided by emailing texasSPED@tea.texas.gov.