BuckeyeBlog

The Legislature has been trying to pass a Special Education scholarship plan for years.  While public charter schools and the EdChoice scholarship are saving taxpayers money, could a Special Education voucher do the same?

It has helped in Florida.  McKay Scholarship students cost less to educate on average than traditional students in public schools.  And now new research from Jay Green and Marcus Winters for the Manhattan Institute indicates that in Florida, even more money is saved because districts who have lost kids to the McKay Scholarship are now diagnosing 15% fewer special needs students! 

While diagnosing fewer students with learning disabilities sounds like a horrible way to save money, the truth is since the Federal Government passed IDEA-Individuals with Disabilities Education Act-in 1975, the number of special needs students has ballooned from 8.3 percent in 1976 to 13.6 percent in 2007.  That’s a 64% increase!  And many experts believe that number has been artificially inflated by schools who gain financially by increasing their diagnoses of lower category special needs students and thus obtaining more money from the state.

The bottom line is, if schools only diagnosed those students with real learning disabilities and if special needs students could obtain vouchers to attend the schools of their choice, Ohio would likely save millions at a time when every dime counts.  Fewer kids stigmatized with a label, more choice, less cost — it all adds up to a winning combination for Ohio.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 19th, 2009 at 4:00 pm and is filed under Observations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.