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Special Education Funding Reform: A Review of Impact Studies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 March 2012

Jeff Sigafoos*
Affiliation:
School of Educational Psychology and Pedagogy, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. jeff.sigafoos@vuw.ac.nz
Dennis Moore
Affiliation:
Faculty of Education, Monash University, Australia.
Don Brown
Affiliation:
School of Educational Psychology and Pedagogy, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.
Vanessa A. Green
Affiliation:
School of Educational Psychology and Pedagogy, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.
Mark F. O'Reilly
Affiliation:
Department of Special Education, The University of Texas at Austin, United States of America.
Giulio E. Lancioni
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Bari, Italy.
*
*Address for correspondence: Jeff Sigafoos, School of Educational Psychology and Pedagogy, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.

Abstract

Various models for funding special education services have been described in the literature. This paper aims at moving the debate concerning special education funding reform beyond the descriptive level by reviewing studies that investigated the impact of various models for funding special education. Systematic searches were conducted of ERIC and PsycINFO to identify studies that investigated the impact, implications, or outcome of one or more special education funding models. Ten studies were identified covering five major funding models. The results showed that the funding reforms investigated in these studies each had associated benefits, but also potential detriments. However, these studies mainly involved indirect outcome measures, often failed to fully assess impact on academic achievement or cost-effectiveness. Results highlight the need for additional research on the impact of special education funding reform.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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