In 1999, two-thirds (65%) of superintendents reported that the revenue caps have resulted in cuts in programs and services that are extensive enough to be causing conflicts or disagreements between regular and special education teachers over the use of resources. In their written comments, many superintendents criticized the state and national governments for failing to adequately fund special needs programs.

The 1999 paper also noted that without changes in funding for special education or changes in the revenue caps themselves the level of "conflict" or tension between special needs and regular education teachers/programs is likely to increase.

In the current study, superintendents were asked two questions about ESL, at-risk, and students with special needs. The first question asked them to indicate if they are serving a greater, a smaller, or about the same number of ESL, at-risk, or special needs students as was true four or five years before. The results are shown in Table 7.

Table 7
Responses to the Question, "Is the percent of special needs, ESL and at-risk students served by your district today greater, smaller, or about the same compared with 4-5 years ago?"

	Greater	Smaller	The same	Not sure
Special needs students	80.1%	3.0%	16.2%	.7%
ESL students	43.5%	3.0%	48.3%	5.1%
At risk, including free & reduced lunch students	57.0%	1.9%	38.5%	2.6%

The responses to this question are dramatic. Eighty percent of superintendents say that compared with four or five years ago, they are serving a greater proportion of special needs students. Fifty-seven percent of superintendents said the same for at-risk students, while the figure for ESL students is 43.5%. Only a handful of superintendents marked "smaller" for any of the student groups.

On average, ESL, at-risk, and special needs students cost more to educate than regular education students. Research published in 1994 by Parrish, Chambers, and Matsumoto provides relative cost ratios for three categories of K-12 students: (1) special education, (2) compensatory (at-risk) education, and Limited English Proficient. They estimate that on average it costs 2.3 times as much to educate a student with special needs, compared with a regular education student. The ratios for at-risk and Limited English Proficient students are 1.4 and 1.35, respectively.

These figures help explain answers to a related question, "Compared with 4-5 years ago, is the percent of your budget for ESL, special needs, and at-risk students greater, less or about the same?"

Table 8
Responses to the Question, "Compared with 4-5 years ago, is the percent of your budget for ESL, special needs, and at-risk students greater, less, or about the same?"

Choice	Percent
Greater	81.2%
Smaller	1.8%
About the same	16.2%
Not sure	.7%

Eighty-one percent of superintendents say that costs have increased for ESL, at-risk, and special needs students. Less than two percent say that costs have declined, while 16% say they have remained about the same (Table 8).