School Voucher Programs Should Be Clear About Disability Rights, Report Says
December 4, 2017
By: Cory Turner
Source: NPR Ed
School voucher programs need (at least) three key ingredients:
1. Multiple schools (don’t roll your eyes, city dwellers, this one’s a brick wall for many rural parents).
2. A system that makes private schools affordable for low-income parents. Choice isn’t choice if it’s only the rich who get to choose.
3. And transparency, so that a child’s caregiver can review the options and make an informed choice.
This story is about that last ingredient.
A new report from the nonpartisan U.S. Government Accountability Office says many of the nation’s voucher programs — and the private schools that participate in them — aren’t giving parents the information they need to make an informed choice, especially parents of kids with disabilities.
Federal law says that students with disabilities are entitled to certain protections when they attend public school (more on those in a minute). If parents use a publicly funded voucher to enroll their child in a private school, they leave many of those protections behind. Some families do this knowingly, trading federal guarantees in a cash-strapped public school for the hope of something better on the private market.
But often, parents don’t understand when…