RALEIGH – While advocates of greater educational freedom continue to wage legislative battles for broad forms of school choice, a fertile area for study and reform has received little attention: the increasing role that private institutions are playing in the education of disabled children.
Defenders of the government-school monopoly like to suggest that choice is a wacky, untested idea, which is entirely false from an international and historical perspective. With respect to children with learning or other disabilities, the claim is false even within the confines of the United States, where many students already receive publicly funded services from private institutions – and their right to do so has been upheld in court, even in cases where they were served by religious institutions.
Most recently, the state of Florida created the McKay Scholarships Program in 2000. It provides parents of special-education students with vouchers worth between $6,000 and $20,000 to cover tuition at private schools capable of meeting their unique needs. By 2003, reported two scholars at the Manhattan Institute, there were nearly 10,000 students using the McKay vouchers. About 93 percent said they were satisfied at their private schools, vs. only 33 percent of similar students who remained in the public schools.
While choice programs aimed specifically at disabled children may appear to be too narrowly focused to excite activists or yield important lessons, the reality is that many thousands of North Carolina students have been diagnosed with physical or cognitive disabilities that affect their academic careers in one way or another. There is also promising evidence that existing private institutions in North Carolina have valuable services to offer these children.
In Durham, for example, the Hill Center is currently a partner with the public school system to provide instructional services to 67 special-needs children. The private school usually charges tuition, but in this case the services are being funded by a grant from GlaxoSmithKline Foundation. According to an evaluation by RTI International, participants showed a greater-than-expected gain in reading scores after just one year in the program.
Other countries have significant experience with allowing public subsidies to follow disabled students to private schools. Lewis M. Andrews, who directs the Yankee Institute for Public Policy in Connecticut, summarized the international record in a recent, invaluable book from the Cato Institute, What America Can Learn from School Choice in Other Countries.
Denmark has long allowed parents to choose public or private schools and still receive taxpayer funds to help defray much of the cost. Typically, Danish students attending private schools under the choice program cover 80 percent to 85 percent of the tuition with public dollars. According to Andrews, disabled students became a major participant in Denmark’s choice program beginning in 1969, when the parliament enacted a law to promote mainstreaming of disabled students in regular classrooms. Nearby, in the Netherlands, private schools play an even larger role in the education market – making up about two-thirds of the country’s elementary and secondary enrollment – while policy changes in 1990 brought about more options for disabled students, who had previously been concentrated primarily in specialized government schools. Sweden, Australia, and New Zealand also offer key lessons in how – and how not – to provide more school choices to the disabled, Andrews argues.
North Carolina is, as usual, behind the times.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.