I have a PHP script that gets a product and displays it's Special Price:
 
$productModel = Mage::getModel('catalog/product');	
$product      = $productModel->load(3030);
var_dump($product->getData('special_price')); 
This displays the following:
 
string '1.9500' (length=6)
 
However, the product has a value of 0.95 in the Special Price field in the Magento admin area. Can't seem to find a way of getting the actual field value via PHP.
 
Using Magento version 1.5.1.0