A program to improve chances for students with disabilities spends more to give them less.
Published December 14, 2003
Implicit in the size of Florida's most lucrative school voucher is the assumption that teaching disabled students comes at a premium.
But suppose the extra money didn't really go for extra educational services or specially certified teachers. Suppose it just improved the profitability of the private schools instead. Could state government still justify handing out as much as $21,300 a student anyway?
This question is not hypothetical. A Palm Beach Post examination of private school reporting forms has determined that 77 percent of schools accepting McKay Scholarships this year do not offer classes "specifically designed to meet the needs of children with exceptionalities." That's three out of four schools in a program created specifically to help students with disabilities. Debbie Tanguay, a Palm Beach schools special education resource teacher who was appointed to a Senate task force on McKay vouchers, told the Post: "I get calls all the time from parents who say their child's speech or writing isn't improving in the private school, and that's because the school doesn't have a strategist working individually with their child. The parents are always surprised."
Is the Department of Education surprised as well?
The McKay vouchers are the most costly of the state's school privatization ventures, serving 11,946 students this year at an estimated cost of $82-million. In just the past three years, the McKay bottom line has jumped 13-fold. Yet DOE commissioner Jim Horne, an accountant who is proposing a "Return on Investment" index for public schools, has been asking precious few questions about whether the state is getting its money's worth with McKay. Until as recently as this summer, Horne was saying that the only necessary gauge for success was whether parents get to choose the schools.
The Post finding gives measure to the more anecdotal evidence that has surfaced around the state, evidence of vouchers awarded to an unlicensed school in disrepair, to a home school that was alleged to split the money with parents, to a couple that created a voucher home school to serve only their son. Lawmakers now know that most of the private schools they pay to teach some of the state's neediest learners don't meet even the baseline requirements for the job. If these schools were public, they would be in direct violation of the federal Individuals With Disabilities Education Act.
It is possible that some of these schools, despite their lack of appropriate credentials, are doing a good job with their students. But the problem is that the state has no way to know. The students don't take the FCAT and some don't take any standardized tests at all. So the most DOE would know is whether parents express satisfaction, which usually correlates to whether the student is receiving good grades. Given the size of the McKay vouchers, the private schools have a considerable financial stake in providing such grades.
The Senate committee that is analyzing the McKay program would be wise to question the private schools that have provided true educational services for disabled students long before the state offered the lure of vouchers. Most of these providers welcome a variety of academic standards, such as accreditation or exceptional education certification, because they know the benefit to students. Larry Keough, a lobbyist for the state's Catholic schools, puts it this way: "The scholarship program law ought to have some assurances in it that the school the child is attending is superior to the one he left."
That assurance seems the least the state can provide, given the extent of its own investment in this enterprise. Florida is paying, comparatively speaking, top dollar to these schools. Yet it doesn't know what kind of education they are providing and now knows it is directing disabled students to places that often offer no specialized services. How many more families must endure such an unwelcome surprise?
