Supplemental/Replacement: An Alternative Approach to Excess Costs

Abstract

Excess cost has been a prominent method of funding special education for many years and it is used by the federal government and by many states. The common approach is to calculate excess cost as the difference between special education cost per student and regular education cost per student. Despite its widespread use, there are both conceptual and practical difficulties in this approach. This article proposes a new operational definition of excess cost, which is based on programs and services rather than accounting calculations.