Justin Bowen comments at EconTalk and points readers to an analysis of special education showing the power of incentives. Forster and Greene argue (see here, here and here) that in states where there is a per pupil subsidy to kids with disabilities, schools in such states find a lot more disabilities. I am not surprised.
Some of the findings:
- There is a statistically significant positive relationship between
bounty funding systems and growth in special education enrollment.
Bounty funding results in an additional enrollment increase of 1.24
percentage points over ten years. - The
effect of the bounty system accounts for 62% of the enrollment growth
experienced by bounty states during the study period. This represents
roughly 390,000 extra students in special education, resulting in
additional spending of over $2.3 billion per year.
