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A new report out Thursday calls for a huge shift in the way Michigan funds special education, including introducing a tiered system that funds students with disabilities based on how much support they need, with amounts ranging from $11,000 to $39,000 per student.
The recommendation is the work of a team that was created after the Michigan Legislature ordered a report in 2024 that designed a new way of funding special education in the state. More than a year of work went into the study, and more than 1,000 people, including parents, educators, advocates, and others provided feedback.
Advocates said there is an urgent need to reform the system, with the report citing low graduation rates for students with disabilities, low academic achievement, and growing needs as the population increases. Students with disabilities make up 15% of the school population in Michigan.
“For decades, our special education system has been stretched thin,” Heather Eckner, director of statewide education for the Autism Alliance of Michigan, said during a virtual news conference Thursday. “It’s underfunded, overly complex, and deeply unfair in how resources are distributed on special education funding in the state.
The recommended system would put the focus on the students’ specific educational needs. Schools would receive about $11,000, for instance, for students with “lower-intensity needs,” such as those with a speech or language disability or a specific learning disability.
Schools would receive about $39,000 for students who require full-time or intensive daily support. That includes students who have autism, a traumatic brain injury, an early childhood developmental delay, a visual disability, or an emotional disability.
Those per-pupil amounts would be on top of the $10,421 minimum amount the state provides to schools on a per student basis.
The report also calls for the creation of a high-cost fund that would reimburse 80% of any expenses schools spend above $57,615 per student. A news release accompanying the report said this fund would safeguard “districts that serve students with exceptionally high or complex needs.”
If the legislature adopts the recommendations, it would represent a huge shift in how students with disabilities are funded. Currently, districts must use general fund dollars if the cost of educating a student with a disability is higher than the $10,421 per-pupil grant. The state reimburses schools at a rate of just 28.6%.
That’s one of the lowest reimbursement rates in the country, Eckner said.
“It’s a question of fairness and opportunity. It means a child’s access to appropriate supports depends far too much on where they live and the wealth of their local tax base, and it means educators are constantly asked to do more with less, while families are asked to fight harder for services that should never be in question.”
The legislature didn’t ask the team to identify how the recommended funding structure for special education should be rolled out. But the report recommends phasing it in over six years, with full implementation estimated at $4.55 billion. The report offers two approaches, one in which the state assumes the full cost of eliminating inequities and the second being a shared model between the state and local districts.
Funding students based on their needs isn’t a new idea in Michigan. For the last few years, the state has used what it calls an opportunity index to provide additional funding for schools based on how many at-risk students they educate. A student is considered at risk based on multiple factors, including if they come from low-income homes.
Former Michigan Lt. Gov. Brian Calley, a parent of a child with autism and a longtime advocate for students with disabilities, called Michigan’s current system “broken.”
“When you have a funding system that doesn’t recognize the differences between what students need, it requires that parents fight for their services and puts them in kind of a defensive or an adversarial relationship with their school, which is exactly the opposite of what we would want,” said Calley, who currently is the president and CEO of the Small Business Association of Michigan.
Adequate funding for students with disabilities would be a boon for classroom teachers, said Alexandra Stamm, the education policy analyst for the Michigan League for Public Policy. Stamm and Eckner are former teachers. Stamm said she always had students with disabilities integrated within her general education classroom.
“I always felt like, ‘I wish that there was more of me. I wish that I could split myself into four so that my kids could get the services that are required and that they need per their IEPs (individualized education program).’ “
She said this amount of additional funding would mean “more supports for kids in terms of more paraprofessionals, more special education teachers, more speech and language pathologists, more help providing resources to the kids.”
Michigan schools have faced challenges in hiring enough special education teachers and related staff who provide critical services to students. That can cause delays in ensuring students are evaluated and receive the services they need. Whether additional funding would address those problems isn’t known, but Calley said Thursday that the money could help schools attract the staff they need by paying them more than they are now.
Lori Higgins is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Detroit. You can reach her at lhiggins@chalkbeat.org.
