Recently, The Atlantic published a piece about New York City's education budget. The statistics cited have been widely reported: the city spends $102,000 per year on special education students in private schools, versus $40,000 for general education students. The Atlantic writer, Marc Novicoff, writes that that special education cost—$1.5 billion in 2025—is driven largely by wealthy families exploiting legal loopholes.
In other words, it’s the rich who are pushing the city toward fiscal crisis.
The argument follows a February report by Manhattan Institute fellow Jennifer Weber, who framed Carter cases — the law that enables parents to sue the city for private school tuition when the city fails to provide an appropriate placement — as a billion-dollar budget crisis driven by policy failures and families that have "locked in" private placements beyond their children's actual needs.
The Atlantic article generated hundreds of comments.
Some were thoughtful. Many were angry. A few said the quiet part loud — things said every day in teachers' lounges and across IEP tables, but rarely this plainly in public.
Here are the ones that stopped me. And my response.
"Well-off disabled kids are driving up the budget"
This from the writer himself:
"Although poor students are disproportionately likely to receive special education in New York City, well-off disabled kids are the ones most acutely driving up the budget." — Marc Novicoff, The Atlantic
Most families in private special education placements didn't choose private school over a public option. There was no public option. The DOE couldn't offer a placement that could meet their child's needs.
Under federal law, IDEA—the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act—requires that when a school district fails to provide an appropriate education, parents can place their child in a private school and seek reimbursement. These are called Carter cases — named after a 1993 Supreme Court ruling. They are not a loophole. They are the law's enforcement mechanism.
Carter cases are available to every family on paper. In practice, you need an attorney most families can't afford. The wealth disparity isn't evidence of gaming. It's evidence of who has the resources to fight a system that — according to a 2015 peer-reviewed paper by special education attorney Michele Kule-Korgood — actively encourages families to sue: the city pushes parents into filing due process year after year for the same child, over the same unmet needs.
The budget isn't being driven up by wealthy parents. It's being driven up by a system that won't provide what it's legally required to provide.
Novicoff's own reporting acknowledges that under Mayor de Blasio, the city adopted a policy of "rarely contesting such claims" — meaning, in his words, "all a family had to do to get reimbursed...was hire a lawyer." He treats that as a policy failure. But de Blasio's reasoning was more straightforward: the city kept losing because it kept failing to provide appropriate placements. As Maggie Moroff of Advocates for Children told Chalkbeat at the time, the settlement policy reflected "what we knew — which is there aren't appropriate public school placements for those kids."
"Parents just want more than their kids need"
"The price of education is driven by parents and the educational system that mandates we must provide EVERY service to EVERY child if they're deemed eligible... When a parent doesn't get what they want, say an IEP or a 504 Plan, many will run to an attorney." — Educator, commenting in The Atlantic
An IEP is not what a parent wants. It is a legal document, created by a team that includes the school's own evaluators, specifying what a child requires to access an education. The mandate comes from the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act — passed in 1975 because states were literally refusing to educate disabled children at all.
The NYC Comptroller documented that in 2021-22, 13,800 IEP service recommendations went unfulfilled. These weren't extras parents demanded. They were services the DOE's own evaluators recommended, written into legal documents the DOE signed, and then not provided.
When parents hire attorneys, it is almost always because they have exhausted every other option. I know this firsthand. We didn't file due process because we wanted a fight. We filed because the DOE didn't make a placement offer for our son.
"Students with 'outrageous behavior' are the real cost driver"
"Furthermore, because there are students with outrageous behavior, which necessitates behavior specialists, counselors and more social workers..." — Same commenter
Sharon is an LCSW and autistic autism educator. She's worked with children described exactly this way. Our own child has been described this way.
From Sharon: “Behavior is communication. When a child is dysregulated, it's a sign of an unmet need — fatigue, pain, sensory discomfort, feeling overwhelmed, or any number of other possibilities. My question isn't ‘How do we stop this behavior?’ It's ‘What is this child trying to tell us?’”
Denise Marshall, CEO of COPAA, described her grandson in a recent webinar: sent home 40 days in the first half of a school year for behaviors that were a direct manifestation of his disability. The district refused to conduct a functional behavior assessment. They didn't ask what he needed. They sent him home.
That is what happens when adults decide the behavior is the child's problem rather than a symptom that the system isn't working.
"Parents are gaming the system for test accommodations"
"It's a strict advantage having your child get the extra care and allowances a 'special needs' student gets (unlimited time to take a STANDARDIZED TEST being one of them) so there is a lot of incentive to game the system." — Atlantic commenter
Extended time is not an advantage. It is the removal of a disadvantage. A child with dyslexia who processes written language more slowly than their peers isn't being helped by extended time — they are being given the same opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge that neurotypical peers have automatically.
I have never met a parent who thought getting their child classified as disabled was an advantage. What I have met are parents who cried reading their child's evaluation report — because it described, in clinical language designed to justify services, everything their child cannot do.
"We're over-diagnosing disability"
"The higher the percent goes in the U.S., the more it means that we likely have this changing social definition of disability relative to biological definitions of disability." — Christopher Cleveland, Brown University professor, quoted in The Atlantic
From Sharon: As an autistic person and a clinician: autism, ADHD, dyslexia, and other disabilities were systematically underidentified for generations — particularly in girls, in Black and brown children, and in children from low-income families. The increase in identification isn't evidence of over-diagnosis. It's a long-overdue catching up, as better tools and awareness finally reach the populations that were previously being failed.
"Accommodations set kids up for failure"
"This goes along with the problem of giving kids with ADHD and high functioning autism 'accommodations' instead of teaching them how to work effectively with their limitations..." — Atlantic commenter
From Sharon: If someone suggested denying braille and screen readers to students with visual impairments so they could learn to work effectively with their limitations, we would recognize it immediately as absurd. The same logic applies here. When a child has an invisible disability, accommodations are just as necessary — they're what allow disabled people to function sustainably in the world. Accommodations aren't a "nice to have." They are a genuine necessity.”
And the research is clear: early identification and appropriate support leads to better outcomes. The idea that accommodations set kids up for failure has no empirical basis. It is a values statement dressed up as concern.
What the data shows
These comments are not fringe views. They shape what happens in IEP meetings every day — and the consequences are documented.
In 2021-22, 13,800 IEP service recommendations went unfulfilled in NYC. In predominantly Black and Hispanic districts, the rate was even higher. A federal judge ordered 51 reforms in 2023. Two years later, 30 remain unimplemented. Service orders are fulfilled on time in 9.5% of cases.
NYC spent $1.5 billion last year on special education due process. Were parents gaming the system? Or was it a system that refused to provide what it was legally required to provide — and forced parents to sue to get it?
That is not a budget problem. That is a civil rights problem.
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These attitudes have a history
The idea that disabled children are a budget problem — that accommodating them is a drain on public resources — is not new. It was the explicit argument of the American eugenics movement in the 1920s, which had a flagship operation in Cold Spring Harbor on Long Island. The idea was not to help the disabled, but to isolate them and prevent them from reproducing and committing crimes.
The movement was fueled in part by anxiety about immigration — the fear that newcomers were changing the country and producing more "unfit" children.
The language has changed. But the underlying anxiety about who belongs, and who costs too much, hasn't. We'll be exploring that history — and New York's specific role in it — in a future piece.
What to know
If you are a parent of a disabled child in NYC, you have probably encountered these attitudes. In the meeting where the district representative couldn't recommend what your child needed. In the evaluation report that read like a verdict. In the attorney fees you paid to enforce a legal document the DOE signed and then ignored.
You are not imagining it. It is documented. It is systemic. And it is not your fault — or your child's — that the system was designed this way.
IDEA was passed in 1975 because parents were told their children were too expensive, too difficult, too much to deal with. Parents refused to accept that verdict. They filed lawsuits in 34 states. They changed federal law.
The comments in The Atlantic, and the Trump administration's efforts to defang IDEA, are a reminder that the fight is not over.
Events
Outdoors for Autism: INCLUDEnyc celebrates 10 years with its 2026 Outdoors for Autism event. free, family-friendly afternoon designed especially for children and teens ages 0–18. Featuring arts and crafts, sports activities, live performances, sensory-friendly experiences, and a quiet area for those who need a break. With programming in English and Spanish, it’s a welcoming space for families to connect, play, and enjoy the day together.
When & Where: Sunday, May 31 from 11:00 am to 2:30 pm at Rev. T. Wendell Foster Park in the Bronx, Register here: https://includenyc.org/events/2026-outdoors-for-autism/
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