Copyright The Associated Press
Marisa Brizzolara and Arlyssa Heard are both raising sons with disabilities, but their experience getting Michigan public schools to provide legally mandated services couldn’t be more different. Brizzolara’s son got an in-home assessment when her son was a toddler and for years has received the services he needs to help him thrive with autism in a Kent County public school. But 150 miles away in Detroit, Heard’s son faced dismissals of early concerns that anything was wrong, large classrooms and six different schools so he could succeed with ADHD. The quality of special education services in Michigan can depend on where the student lives, according to a long-awaited report presented to lawmakers Thursday. It found that Michigan needs to reform the way it funds special education, saying the current model is inadequate, inequitable and fails to meet students’ needs. Without reform, the report says, the state will continue to leave students behind academically and socially and unprepared for the future. State leaders put $500,000 in the 2024-25 state budget to pay for research into what it would take to fully fund special education. The Autism Alliance of Michigan and Clinton County RESA worked together on the report. According to the report, systemic problems with special education are directly tied to the state’s reimbursement funding model, which is used only by a handful of other states. The model is based on local property wealth, which means it may not adequately serve students with the greatest needs, according to the report, called the Michigan Special Education Finance Reform Blueprint (MI Blueprint). Michigan needs a weighted financing model that is needs-based and “student-centered,” says the report, which is being hailed as the state’s first comprehensive, data-driven roadmap to overhaul how the state funds special education. The plan would boost spending on special education operations to $4.55 billion, an increase of $1.28 billion, or 39%, from fiscal 2024. The report recommends phasing in the additional costs over six years. ‘Depends on where you live’ Advocates, and especially parents, say a new model is needed to make funding more equitable to communities with less wealth and reverse the state’s failure to live up to its promise for generations of students with disabilities. “This is not anything that’s a secret: special education is a problem,” said Heard, whose son graduated from the Detroit Lions Academy in 2024. “However it also depends on where you live. So change is definitely needed.” Brizzolara, who also was among the parents who gave input for the blueprint, agrees, calling her family “lucky” that her son gets services in a more privileged Kent County school district that receives enough funding to meet his needs. “My child is not more deserving of an accommodation than another student with comparable support needs based on his address and that is essentially what is happening right now,” said Brizzolara. “There is just not a defense for allowing that to continue.” Heather Eckner, director of statewide education at the Autism Alliance of Michigan, said that reform of special education finance in Michigan is a “moral imperative.” “Michigan has long promised opportunity for all students, but for hundreds of thousands of students with disabilities, those promises remain unfulfilled,” said Eckner, who was one of the MI Blueprint project leads. “This blueprint turns those promises into action by creating a system that finally funds services based on student needs, not ZIP codes.” Who pays for special ed For decades, Michigan has funded special education operations through a reimbursement model, used by only a handful of states, where the state reimburses local districts for a percentage of the cost of providing special education services and transportation. Michigan has one of the lowest reimbursement rates, 28.6% for special ed services. That’s in addition to a per-pupil foundation allowance from the state’s School Aid Fund. Michigan also reimburses districts 70% of the cost of transportation for special education. Special education funding also comes from federal and local sources. The federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act covers approximately 12% to 13% of costs, which is significantly below the 40% intended by Congress when the law was enacted, according to the MI Blueprint. Millage revenue from local intermediate school districts also funds special education. The model leads to funding inequities across communities for the 217,000 Michigan students with disabilities. For example, the Kent and Charlevoix-Emmet intermediate school districts educate a similar population of students with disabilities but spending is vastly different, the report says. “Kent ISD has a tax rate 1.67 times higher than Charlevoix-Emmet,” the report says. “Yet, due to its immense property wealth, Charlevoix-Emmet was able to spend an additional $3,500 per student with disabilities in 2024. This shows that wealth, not student need, is the driving force behind spending differences.” Every year, Michigan’s special education system faces a shortfall of hundreds of millions of dollars, the report says. Since school districts are required by law to provide services to students with disabilities, the shortfall leads to funds taken from general operating budgets. “That ultimately disadvantages every student,” the report says. Meanwhile, Michigan has one of the lowest graduation rates for students with disabilities — consistently less than 60% — and one of the nation’s highest rates of dropouts, 13.9% in 2022-23 compared to 8.1% for all students, according to the MI Blueprint. Students with disabilities also have low performance scores on state and national assessment exams. On the M-STEP, the annual statewide assessment test of students, students with disabilities perform three times below their nondisabled peers. Their performance is also low when compared to their peers in other states: On the National Assessment of Educational Progress, Michigan students with disabilities have performed below the national average in fourth and eighth grading reading and math over the past two decades, according to the report. “Something in the state is amiss,” said Max Marchitello, an independent consultant who led technical development of the MI Blueprint. “We can’t even match the national average over decades.” MI Blueprint recommends a four-tiered “weighted” funding model based on disability and student need. It would include funds ranging from $11,000 for students with lower needs to $39,000 for students with higher needs, in addition to the state’s annual foundation allowance per student. It also recommends a “high-cost fund” to cover 80% of expenses that exceed $57,615 per student. ISDs with lower property wealth would receive increased funding to mitigate inequities. Annual inflation adjustments and review cycles would be built in to ensure sufficient funding and in line with best practices, the report says. “The multi-tier weighted student funding structure is the most widely used model in the country and provides the best opportunity for funding to align with student needs,” the report says. Mississippi, Ohio and Tennessee are among the states that use a multi-tier weighted model. Having an impact on outcomes for Michigan’s students with disabilities after a new funding model is implemented involves a lot of factors but at the very least it would take time, said Marchitello. Under Michigan’s reimbursement model, each student is tracked and funding requests are submitted, whereas in a weighted model a formula is run for the entire district, funding is generated based on the districts’ student profile then the money is used for all special education services, Marchitello said. “The way we’ve designed (the model) is the best evidence of what it costs to implement best practice that any parent would want and some parents have access to in Michigan but most don’t,” said Marchitello. “A statewide system should be such that students with disabilities have access to high-quality, robust, comprehensive suite of services aligned to their needs whether they live anywhere. And right now that is not the case.” A new model The 150+-page reform plan comes after years of attempts to reform special education. Reforming Michigan’s system has been a challenge because special education finance is wedged within a web of federal, state and local laws and regulations and court rulings that make change “very complex,” David Arsen, a Michigan State University professor emeritus of education policy, wrote in the beginning of the report. Additionally, Arsen wrote, the issue is sensitive, politically fraught and one of the most complicated areas of finance. “As an economist who has studied Michigan’s school finance system for decades, I can say without hesitation that special education funding is among the most important and pressing areas in need of reform,” Arsen wrote. “Our current system is inadequate, inequitable, and too often creates disincentives for schools to provide needed services to students with disabilities.” But the new approach provides hope for the future, Alexandra Stamm, education policy analyst for the Michigan League for Public Policy, said in the report. “This new model extends beyond just numbers on a spreadsheet,” Stamm said. “It directly influences classroom experiences. Whether a student requires a few hours of speech therapy or daily intensive support, the approach guarantees that schools have the necessary resources to provide what students need. The connection between funding and real-world impact is what makes the model both compelling and meaningful.” ___
