It’s a too familiar story to too many of us: Growing numbers of children diagnosed on the autism spectrum and school districts straining, and groaning, under the need (the onus) to provide appropriate services and educational placements, aides and speech therapists who know how to teach an autistic child and not only run articulation drills, and to educate students with widely varying needs and levels of skills. Inadequate funding for special ed and all the more so as districts facing rising costs and no change in state funding, so that districts have to seek support locally from taxpayers.
Does this sound …read more

Given what’s going on in the world right now—this thing called an “economic crisis“—reporting about what one celebrity said about what another actress said about vaccines seems, well, something to remark upon and move on from, in order to read about how the financial crisis might affect credit for school districts. From Education Week today:
With investment firms such as Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. going out of business, and others consolidating, there are fewer buyers for the bonds issued by districts to pay for such projects as new schools and major repairs, according to Susan Gaffney, the director of the federal-liaison …read more