State evaluators: Despite billions in funding, special education students are struggling more now than 10 years ago

Special education enrollment is lower than it was three fiscal years ago, yet funding for those students has only grown and is the most it’s been in 10 years.

But close to $6.6 billion later, New Mexico special education students are academically worse off than they were a decade ago, Legislative Finance Committee program evaluators told lawmakers last week.

“Although much has changed over the past 10 years, many of the same issues in special education remain today,” LFC program evaluator Clayton Lobaugh said. “Increased state funding for special education has not corresponded to improved student outcomes.”

Amid a particularly harsh impact from the COVID-19 pandemic, fourth- and eighth-grade students with disabilities performed worse in 2022 than in 2013, declining 2 to 5 percentage points in math and 1 percentage point in reading, according to The Nation’s Report Card.

The pandemic notwithstanding, the proficiency rates of New Mexico fourth- and eighth-graders with disabilities haven’t been in the double digits since 2013, according to The Nation’s Report Card, and in 2022 were at 3% and 4% in reading and at 6% and 2% in math for fourth- and eighth-graders, respectively.

“We definitely had some gains and some progress in some areas over the last two years. But we still have a lot of work to do,” said Margaret Cage, New Mexico Public Education Department director of special education.

New Mexico public schools will receive an estimated $835 million in state and federal funding in fiscal year 2024, according to LFC staff — 38% more than they did in 2021 and 68% more than they received 10 years ago, not accounting for inflation.

But schools and districts have been failing to use those dollars for their intended purposes, researchers say.

Districts are underspending state special education dollars by an average of $105 million since fiscal year 2018, program evaluators said. As funding for special education has grown, so have districts’ end-of-year cash balances, according to the LFC's report.

“The findings are clear — public schools are not fully leveraging their available funding for special education,” LFC program evaluator Sarah Rovang said.

However, perhaps the most underused special education resource across New Mexico, Rovang said, “is our pool of highly qualified and licensed special education teachers.” She referenced a count of about 1,260 such educators who instead were teaching general education classes.

“The current special education teacher shortage is less about the lack of licensed teachers and more about the inability to attract teachers with multiple licenses to teach in special education,” Rovang said.

According to a snapshot report produced by New Mexico State University’s Southwest Outreach Academic Research Evaluation and Policy Center, compiling job postings from across the state’s districts, special education teachers this year accounted for 36% of all teacher vacancies — the largest proportion of any single class of teacher.

Whitney Holland, president of American Federation of Teachers New Mexico, said that as a former special education teacher, that job was “the hardest work I've ever done,” and that in unison with a difficult-to-navigate certification system, many potential special education teachers in New Mexico shy away from the work.

One potential solution to that problem, Rovang said, could be providing annual $10,000 stipends for special education teachers, a measure that would cost the state about $20 million.

Judging from a similar evaluation delivered by the LFC in 2013, evaluators said New Mexico has made little progress in addressing the committee’s recommendations since then, noting though that not all of those recommendations are still relevant today.

One recommendation on which the state has made no progress, evaluators said, is implementing a statewide Individualized Educational Plan, or IEP, to boost consistency in developing plans for providing specialized instruction and services for students with disabilities.

During last week's meeting, Cage said the Education Department is planning to roll out a “unified … IEP” template in the spring, along with professional development to make sure the template is properly used.

Funding is one thing. But the reasons for the stagnation of special education in New Mexico, said Gail Stewart, a lawyer for students with disabilities, run deeper than throwing money at the problem.

“I wouldn't tie it to the funding. I would tie it to the failure of leadership and mandates in terms of ensuring compliance with federal law and ensuring best practice in the classroom for students with disabilities,” she said.

For example, she argued that while the state’s ongoing rollout of teaching the science of reading to New Mexico teachers is a good step, it doesn’t necessarily qualify teachers to instruct students with varying degrees of dyslexia.

While there “is no current tracking of dyslexia as an identified disability,” as the PED told the Journal in August, 10,876 first-graders were identified as “high risk” for dyslexia across the state last school year, according to department data obtained through an Inspection of Public Records Act request.

During the meeting, Sen. George Muñoz, D-Gallup, the chair of the LFC, lambasted the state’s progress in special education — or lack thereof.

“A billion dollars just for special ed. And we can't get it done?” he said. “It's not for a lack of money. It might be for a lack of try, or a lack of knowledge or lack of training.”

“We need to give you a hammer and an ax and say you're going to do this and get it done,” he added.