On
October 19, 2015 a report was issued by the U.S. Government Accountability
Office (GAO) examining the functionality of the current “maintenance of effort”
provisions in IDEA. You can access the report here: http://www.gao.gov/assets/680/673183.pdf
There were many important takeaways from the report that
support the adoption of legislation such as HR 2965—the BOLD Flexibility in
IDEA Act. Here are a few we wanted to highlight:
- To promote innovation and efficiency
while safeguarding special education funding, GAO suggests that Congress
consider options for a more flexible local MOE, such as adopting a less
stringent maintenance requirement.
- GAO believes districts need more
exceptions for reducing MOE. GAO identified various circumstances related to
cost reductions—such as local actions to implement efficiencies—as key
challenges in meeting MOE.
- GAO found stringent MOE requirements can
have negative consequences for all students. Prioritizing special education
spending to meet MOE during a period of budget constraints can result in cuts
to general education spending that affect services for all students, including
the many students with disabilities who spend much of their days in general
education classrooms.
- The GAO report revealed that some
district officials found that MOE can discourage efforts to implement
innovations or expand services. For example, some leaders said that because of
MOE, they did not want to commit to a higher level of spending to implement
innovative services, despite other provisions in IDEA that are intended to
encourage innovation.
- The GAO investigation uncovered that
in the 2014-2015 school year, 9 states believe almost half of all districts in
the state will struggle to maintain special education funding levels, and 25
states acknowledged that some districts will face challenges in meeting the MOE
requirement in 14-15.
- The GAO found that at least some
districts faced challenges in meeting the requirement, despite exceptions
intended to help in such situations. Specifically, the current exceptions do
not address the key challenges that districts face, including factors that are
outside of their control and that do not affect the level of services provided
to students with disabilities. In these situations, it was unclear whether
funds spent on special education to comply with MOE resulted in enhanced
services for students with disabilities.
- In their survey, GAO found that districts
cited reductions in state funding of K-12 education and reductions in the state
contribution to funding for special education as a major factor in not meeting
MOE. State funding for elementary and secondary education has been slow to
recover from the 2008 recession and long-term budget challenges are likely to
persist.
- In addition, rural districts are
disproportionately struggling to keep up funding for special education. Of the
districts surveyed by GAO, 57.8 percent of districts that had anticipated
having trouble meeting MOE were rural.