Oral Dissertation Defense: Meg Jalilevand

Join us for Meg Jalilevand’s oral dissertation defense of: “Financing Special Education: Spending, Incentives and Cross-subsidization in Michigan’s Public and Charter Schools.”

Special education services are expensive and consume a significant portion of school district budgets (Harr, Parish, and Chambers, 2008; Chambers, J., Shkolnik, J., and Perez, M., 2002). Empirical work suggests that financial and other incentives embedded in state financing systems can play a significant role in the administration of special education services (Dhuey and Lipscomb, 2011; Mahitvanichcha and Parish, 2005). Michigan provides a unique opportunity to study special education financing in detail, through the state’s collection of district-level special education cost data used for state reimbursement. This dissertation consists of three papers that explore the special education financing system in Michigan utilizing a unique panel dataset that consists of annual special education enrollment and financial information from 2004 through 2010. All three papers highlight the inequities in Michigan’s special education finance system. Special needs students in the property poor areas of the state are disadvantaged in terms of spending per pupil, cross-subsidization and possibly in their identification as eligible for an IEP. These inequities arise in the funding system because of the relatively low level of state reimbursement and the dependence of the system on property tax revenues. These inequities could be addressed by policy changes that direct state resources towards districts and areas with the greatest needs. One conclusion shared by all papers in the series is the observation that the composition of special education students varies across social districts and charter schools. These compositional differences may obscure inequities in the system and introduce some uncertainty in the results, since it is difficult to determine the extent to which financial incentives and the composition of students each contribute to the differences in the delivery of special education.

Audiences: College of Education Faculty, Staff, and Students