New York City special education due process spending
What New York City pays when families challenge the special education their children are offered: private school tuition, related services, transportation and legal fees the Department of Education (DOE) pays through settlements, hearing orders and pendency. The budget line was long labeled "Carter cases," after the 1993 Supreme Court decision allowing tuition reimbursement when a district fails to offer a free appropriate public education (FAPE) under the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). It also pays for services to students whose parents enrolled them in private schools for other reasons, a right that comes from state law.1,7
$1.14B
Fiscal year (FY) 2025 spending at the Comptroller's closeout. About $1.42B on the accounting basis used before FY2025 (City Council estimate).1
$1.41B
FY2027 adopted budget, down from $1.55B budgeted for FY20263
$109,859
Average cost of a settlement, FY2026, up from $101,424 in FY2025 (Mayor's Management Report)5
62%
Share of special education due process complaints filed in the 50 states in 2020–21 that were filed in New York City (14,141 of 22,759)15,16
Annual spending, FY2013–FY2027
Spending charged to the due process budget line ("Carter cases"), millions of nominal dollars
Includes tuition, related services, transportation and legal fees. FY2013–FY2025 are year-end actuals. Starting in FY2025, costs are booked to the year a case is decided or settled instead of being charged back to earlier years, which makes FY2025 look lower than the prior trend; the lighter segment is the City Council's estimate of what the old practice would have added. FY2026 is spending through April 2026 only; the full-year figure comes with the Comptroller's annual financial report. FY2027 is the adopted budget. The axis starts at zero.
Sources: City Council Finance Division reports built on DOE and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) data;1,2,8,9,10,11,12 Comptroller (FY2027 budget).3 Year-by-year values and notes are in the table below.
On a consistent basis, spending grew from $234 million in FY2015 to $1.19 billion in FY2024, about 5.1 times. Adjusted for inflation with the consumer price index, the FY2015 figure is about $310 million in 2024 dollars, so the real increase was about 3.8 times.11,1,23 Going further back, the Independent Budget Office (IBO) put the cost at $47 million in FY2005; earlier years come from different sources that do not line up, so they are not charted.14
The city has budgeted far less than it ends up spending. In FY2022, for example, it initially budgeted $666 million and spent $918 million.13 The State Comptroller's office said in August 2026 that the city will likely need to add $277 million to the FY2027 budget for these cases.4
What's driving the growth
Related services vs. tuition and other costs, selected years, millions of nominal dollars
Only years with a published breakdown are shown, so the bars are not evenly spaced in time. "Related services" means services such as speech, occupational and physical therapy and special education teacher support services (SETSS) paid to private providers, for students with Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) and for private school students with Individualized Education Services Programs (IESPs). "Tuition and other" is mostly tuition; from 2010 to 2020, legal fees were 2.3 to 6.6 percent of the total and transportation typically under 1 percent. FY2025 is on the new accounting basis.
Sources: FY2012 and FY2022, Comptroller;7 FY2020, IBO;12 FY2024 and FY2025, City Council Finance Division.1
Tuition was 74 percent of due process payments in FY2012, and services 21 percent.7 Services then grew faster: to $372 million, or 41 percent, in FY2022, and to a peak of $535 million, about 45 percent, in FY2024.7,1 The Comptroller reported in August 2023 that services were 58 percent of FY2023 payments made to that point, but on a full-year basis tuition has remained the larger share.7,9,13 Service costs fell to $376 million in FY2025 ($436 million adjusting for the accounting change), while IESP case filings fell 38 percent; tuition costs did not show the same decline.1 DOE told the Council that IEP cases cost about $105,000 a year per case, against about $28,000 for an IESP student, and that IESP cases were 21 to 22 percent of due process costs in FY2025 and FY2026.1
Caveat: DOE cannot separate Carter cases (reimbursement after parents pay) from Connors cases (direct payment to a school for families who cannot pay up front). At a March 13, 2025, Council Committee on Education hearing, then-First Deputy Chancellor Daniel Weisberg said direct payments do not identify Connors cases because DOE also pays schools directly for pendency in Carter cases after a family's first win: "We just don't have the data organized that way." General Counsel Liz Vladeck said the Connors model, meant to give lower-income families access, "has not succeeded" at leveling the playing field, citing DOE's demographic data and litigation experience.17 The public data cannot test that conclusion independently.
Where the money goes
Payments the city makes directly to schools are public. Checkbook NYC, the Comptroller's spending database, lists each DOE payment by payee and budget code; due process payments are recorded under budget code 2127, labeled "Carter Cases" and, starting during FY2025, "Due Process Cases."6 In FY2026, payments to schools and other organizations in Checkbook's "payments to contract/corporate schools" category under that code totaled $513 million across about 160 payees; the 10 largest received 42 percent.
Payments to other schools included Winston Preparatory School ($8.9 million in FY2026), the IDEAL School of Manhattan ($8.7 million), the Churchill School and Center ($8.0 million), Aaron School ($7.5 million), Mary McDowell Friends School ($6.1 million), the Windward School ($2.9 million), Stephen Gaynor School ($2.7 million) and the Gateway School ($1.5 million).6
What these figures cover. They are payments issued in each fiscal year, which can cover tuition owed for earlier years, settlements, hearing orders or pendency; a payment says nothing about the merits of any case. They leave out reimbursements paid to parents or their lawyers and payments to individual service providers, which Checkbook records separately and does not tie to a school, so they understate what the city pays for students at each school. Payee names follow Checkbook's records, with capitalization and corporate suffixes such as "LLC" simplified.
Year-by-year data
What changed in 2014
On June 24, 2014, Mayor Bill de Blasio and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver announced changes that DOE would put in place by Sept. 1, 2014. Where settlement was appropriate, DOE would seek to settle within 15 days of receiving a parent's notice of intent to place a child in a private school. It would not re-litigate settled or decided cases unless the IEP placement recommendation changed, and would avoid litigation when it could not offer a placement or when a child was about to enter a school's final grade. It would require full paperwork every three years instead of every year, and pay tuition monthly when a school required it.18 Speaker Silver said at the time that parents "have to fight this battle year after year."18
Spending on the line rose from $234 million in FY2015 to $499 million in FY2019 and $710 million in FY2020, and IBO counted about 5,300 "Carter students" in 2015 and almost 14,000 by early 2021.11,10,12 IBO pointed to several drivers, including more students, rising tuition and growing use of private service providers.12,13 A February 2026 Manhattan Institute report argues that the no-re-litigation policy lets private placements continue year after year without a new finding on whether the public schools could serve the child.22 Under IDEA's pendency, or "stay-put," rule, a child stays in the current placement while a dispute is pending, which is why DOE keeps paying schools directly after a family's first win.21,17
Other changes since: Executive Order 91 of Dec. 27, 2021, began moving New York City's special education impartial hearings from DOE's Impartial Hearing Office to the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings (OATH), giving OATH concurrent jurisdiction until a full transfer.19 In January 2026, Mayor Zohran Mamdani cited special education among services the prior administration had underbudgeted, in announcing a $12 billion shortfall over FY2026 and FY2027.20 The Council created a separate unit of appropriation for due process cases, used starting with the FY2027 budget, and the FY2027 budget assumes $149 million a year in savings from bringing more services in-house.2,3
What this tracker can and can't show
Publicly available (tracked here)
Annual spending on the due process budget line, from City Council Finance Division reports built on DOE and OMB data, IBO, the Comptroller and the State Comptroller.
The split between related services and tuition and other costs, for years with a published breakdown.
Due process complaints filed and settled and average settlement cost, newly reported in the Mayor's Management Report for FY2026; hearing timeliness is in OATH's chapter of the same report.5
Payments to individual schools and organizations, from Checkbook NYC.6
Race and ethnicity, sex, age and ZIP code of students with due process cases, from DOE reports required by the Council's budget terms and conditions. In FY2025, white students were 64.9 percent of settled or closed cases, against 16.1 percent of public school enrollment.2,24
Not publicly available
A split between Carter and Connors cases; DOE says its data cannot produce one.17
School-level totals that include reimbursements paid to parents, which Checkbook does not attribute to a school.
Family income; DOE's reports to the Council give only the median income of the student's ZIP code.24
Outcomes for students placed in private schools through due process. We found no public data on their academic progress, graduation or later outcomes.
See methodology.md for how the figures were assembled, where sources disagree and how each was checked.
Sources
New York City Council Finance Division, Report on the Fiscal 2027 Executive Plan, Department of Education (June 2026). FY2020–FY2025 actuals (Chart 2), FY2025 accounting change and $278 million estimate, FY2026 spending through April 2026, service costs, IEP and IESP case costs.
Checkbook NYC, Office of the New York City Comptroller. Department of Education spending, expense category "payments to contract/corporate schools" (6700), budget code 2127, fiscal years 2025 and 2026, retrieved Oct. 7, 2026, through the Checkbook NYC API. Query details are in the methodology.