Press Articles Spur Special-Ed Task Force Bill (NJ)

January 7, 2011

A new bill, if passed, would set up a task force to study ways to make the state’s $3 billion-a-year special-education system more effective and accountable, according to the measure’s sponsor.

"The state needs to take a more proactive role in ensuring that the special-education programs and services in New Jersey are both efficient and cost-effective," Assemblyman David P. Rible, R-Monmouth, the sponsor, said in a prepared release. The 15-member task force would include teachers and parents of disabled children.

Rible authored the bill in response to a November series in the Asbury Park Press, "Special Care, Unknown Costs." The series questioned the cost and effectiveness of the state’s various special education programs.

Under the current system, little data exists to gauge the performance of such programs. The state Department of Education doesn’t keep track of the costs associated with educating some 200,000 students in the state with wide-ranging disabilities, the Press found.

In some cases, parents frustrated by the quality or lack of services can exhaust their life savings fighting school districts that aren’t held accountable when disabled students fall through the cracks, the series found.

"It is important to have members on the task force who represent all aspects of special education," Rible said. &a mp;quot;These members will work together to improve the special-education system in New Jersey for public school students and their families."

Any recommendations from the task force would have to be implemented by new laws or through administrative action from the executive branch. The bill would have to pass the Legislature and be signed by the governor before the task force is created.