Study Backs Vouchers for Special Education
August 18, 2009
Offering vouchers for students diagnosed with special needs to attendprivate schools leads to fewer diagnoses and could save state and federaldollars, according to a new study by the pro-school-choice Manhattan Institute.
More than 20 percent of D.C. public school students are diagnosed withlearning disabilities, compared with about 12 percent in Montgomery County andabout 14 percent in Fairfax. Educators have long worried that failing districtslabel students as disabled when, in reality, they are behind academically forother reasons.
Vouchers could help the District, according to the study’s authors, becausethe city has a disproportionate number of special needs students and isobligated to send about 2,400 of them to private and boarding schools, whichsometimes cost nearly $100,000 per student per year.
"D.C. is one of the districts that might benefit even more thanmost," said Marcus Winters, co-author of the study, citing the millions ofdollars the district has spent in legal fees and non-public tuition.
Under most of the special education voucher plans in place around the country,parents receive vouchers worth the amount that the public school system wouldhave spent on their child.
Special education vouchers would check the rampant growth of public schoolstudents labeled as disabled over the past 30 years, thereby saving state andfederal funds aimed at those pupils, the study argues.
Since 1977, the number of special education students has grown by 66percent, to about 14 percent of the country’s school-aged population. Accordingto the study, districts have a financial incentive to over-diagnose specialneeds because they receive extra money based on each student labeled as such.
The authors analyzed the success of Florida’s McKay Scholarship for Studentswith Disabilities, started in 2000. They found not only that parents preferredprivate schools, but also that students in nearby public schools became 15percent less likely to be diagnosed with the most common category ofdisability. The authors reasoned that schools were wary to label students whenit meant that the student could leave the public system.
Nancy Reder, spokeswoman for the National Association of State Directors ofSpecial Education, said her organization opposes vouchers because they pullmoney from the public schools.
&l t;p>"We don’t have enough as it is," she said. "Special educationhas never been fully funded."