A note on the use of earning functions and human capital theory in assessing special education

Assessment concerns for school accountability and improvement have been increasing in special education. Unfortunately, little attention has been given to whether (or how) we might "get our money's worth" from such educational effort. In the context of this latter concern, this paper uses data from a related larger study to examine the cost-effectiveness of school based special education. Reliable estimates were given when post-school earnings for individual respondents were functionally related to their hours of special education, among other student characteristics, and the slope coefficient for hours of instruction was then compared with costs per instructional hour.