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Email a FriendPosted on 12/23/2003 9:27:08 PM PST by bdeaner
New Forms of School Choice: The Real McKays
School Choice Forces Emboldened by Recent String of Judicial and Legislative Victories
By Robert Holland
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The fastest-growing voucher program in the land is the McKay Scholarship, which three years ago emerged in the choice-friendly climate of Florida. As of July 2003, more than 9,200 Florida special-education students were using McKays to attend private schools equipped to accommodate them. (Special education is education lingo for individualized instruction developed to meet the needs of each student judged to have a disability.) McKays predate the June 2002 Zelman decision. But the U.S. Supreme Court’s go-ahead for vouchers has thrust them front and center as a model for the rapid expansion of educational freedom.
McKay Scholarships are now the second largest voucher program in the nation. (With 11,000 vouchers, the 13-year-old Milwaukee program is still No. 1) If several states adopt a version of the McKay Scholarships, or if Congress uses the McKay principle to retool the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), then nationwide school choice could well be at “the tipping point”—the moment at which something new and unusual becomes ever-present and inevitable.
Under the Florida program, named for former state senate president John McKay, parents who are dissatisfied with the quality of public school special education programs are eligible to use a voucher to enroll their children in private schools. The voucher is equal to the per-pupil cost of public school special education and is applied toward tuition and fees. Growth in McKay use has been explosive, yet its potential is enormous—there are 375,000 special-education students in Florida who are eligible for a McKay scholarship. Nationally, 12 percent of America’s 48 million public schoolchildren are enrolled in special education, which, depending on the degree of disability, may entail services ranging from medical to psychiatric to therapeutic.
Research by Manhattan Institute scholars Jay P. Greene and Greg Forster indicates that parental support for the McKay concept will run deep if it ever goes national. Surveys in Florida show high levels of parent satisfaction: 93 percent are either “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with their McKay private school as compared to only 33 percent who are satisfied with the special-ed program in their public school. Surveys of school safety and student behavior also show pronounced differences: Almost half of the pupils in public schools say other pupils have victimized them because of their disabilities. At McKay schools only 5 percent report such incidents. While 40 percent of McKay parents responding to the survey said their children had behavior problems when they were in public school, only 18 percent said misbehavior occurred at their McKay school.
The researchers surveyed parents who had withdrawn their child from a McKay-funded school for various reasons and asked whether Florida should continue the program. A resounding 91 percent said “yes.” The level of support was almost uniform without regard to race, income, or severity of disability. It showed that even parents who opted out thought families were better off because they had a choice.
School choice advocates say a bill pending in Congress to reauthorize the massive Individuals with Disabilities Education Act offers an excellent opportunity to advance the voucher concept. Originally adopted in 1975, IDEA was intended to guarantee each disabled child access to “free and appropriate” public education. It regulates virtually every aspect of special education, on which some $50 billion a year is spent annually by local, state and federal governments. IDEA mandates that school districts create an “individual education plan,” or IEP, for each disabled child, but in practice this process has become a bureaucratic nightmare. Cato Institute analysts Marie Gryphon and David Salisbury explained the problem in a July 2002 white paper (“Escaping IDEA”):
“The process mandated by the statute has not only failed to achieve its purpose of ensuring an appropriate education to each disabled child. It has marginalized the parents it was intended to empower and has created a barrage of compliance-driven paperwork so overwhelming that special educators are driven to quit the profession.”
Representative Jim DeMint (R-SC) puts the case this way: “Too often, the complicated and adversarial federal IDEA system prevents parents from making choices unless they are wealthy and have the time to navigate the confusing IDEA bureaucracy. Families at all income levels should be given options to ensure that their disabled children receive a truly equal and quality education.”
Of course, the national teacher unions and other special interests oppose McKay-type reforms. They want so-called “full funding” of special education with no major changes in the bureaucratic and lawsuit-prone IDEA. So far they have frustrated bills like DeMint’s that give states the flexibility to try McKay-style choice.
Opponents say McKay schools aren’t accountable because they operate outside government compliance rules. People for the American Way (PFAW) and the Disability Rights and Education Defense Fund issued a joint report claiming that once parents use a voucher to leave a public school, “they have effectively opted out of the legal rights and educational services guaranteed under IDEA.” The report recites various horror stories, including one about a private school that changed its address four times in a year and was cited for health and safety code violations. Said PFAW president Ralph Neas, “Florida officials have taken an out-of-sight, out-of-mind approach to the McKay vouchers, and we’re seeing the serious consequences that this lack of oversight is having on children with disabilities.” Similarly, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) posted to its website a 2002 letter to a House subcommittee on IDEA reform. The gist of the letter—signed by the usual suspects: the National Education Association, American Federation of Teachers, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, National PTA, and American Association of University Women, joined by social-work and religious groups—is that private schools do not have to comply with government regulations on teacher certification, assessment and curriculum.
School choice advocates counter that the most powerful form of accountability is to parents, who can withdraw their children from schools that fail to live up to their commitments. A Manhattan Institute study provided the evidence that parent power makes a difference. Researchers found that 86 percent of McKay voucher recipients said their schools delivered the services they promised. By contrast, only 30 percent said they received all federally mandated services when their children were in public school.
Read the complete report here.
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