BuckeyeBlog

In justifying his veto last year of a voucher program intended to help disabled children achieve better in their educations, Governor Strickland offered up two of the teacher unions’ tried and true critiques of school choice. One was the fallacy that regulatory accountability is both effective and the only tool for conforming public expenditures to public goals. We’ll explode this notion elsewhere on BuckeyeInstitute.org in a couple of days or so.

Strickland then offered the familiar assertion that school choice hurts the children who remain in public schools, through draining resources in a way that would harm “…the vast majority of students, including disabled students, who attend public schools.”

Unfortunately, the facts don’t back the Governor up on this assertion.

The Manhattan Institute’s Jay Greene and Marcus Winters have looked at the Florida McKay Scholarship, the program model for Ohio’s special needs voucher, and found that:

Public school students with relatively mild disabilities made statistically significant test score improvements in both math and reading as more nearby private schools began participation in the McKay program. That is, contrary to the hypothesis that school choice harms students who remain in public schools, this study finds that students eligible for vouchers who remained in the public schools made greater academic improvements as their school choices increased.

Disabled public school students’ largest gains as exposure to McKay increased were made by those diagnosed as having the mildest learning disabilities. The largest category of students enjoying the greatest gains, known as Specific Learning Disability, accounts for 61.2% of disabled students and 8.5% of all students in Florida.

The academic proficiency of students diagnosed with relatively severe disabilities was neither helped nor harmed by increased exposure to the McKay program.

Strickland has threaten to veto SB 57, Sen. Coughlin’s and Rep. Peterson’s latest version of a statewide special needs scholarship.

If he follows through on his threat, we’re wondering exactly how the Governor will explain to the parents of disabled children across Ohio, both those who would have taken advantage of the voucher and those who wouldn’t have, why he chose to ignore the facts about a special needs voucher and favored the prerogatives of teacher unionists and other adults over the needs of their children.

For a fuller briefing on the special needs voucher, visit BuckeyeVoices.org where a podcast with report author Winters has just been posted.

There is still time to RSVP for the Buckeye Institute’s breakfast lecture on Tuesday, Dec 11, 8:00am-9:00am at the Cincinnati Art Museum.

Our speaker is Dr. Arthur Brooks, author of Who Really Cares: The Suprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism.

In his book Who Really Cares, Dr. Brooks thoroughly refutes the conventional wisdom that conservatives are cold-hearted and lacking in compassion for others and society at large. Brooks has discovered just the opposite, and that for reasons of faith, family and other traditional American values, conservatives overall give significantly more to charity than liberals despite earning less in income.

Listen on our BuckeyeVoices podcast to an interview between our Reagan Fellow Ken Blackwell and Dr. Brooks and you’ll hear why this is an event you and your friends will want to attend.

This unconventional truth is the starting point for a revealing journey Brooks takes looking at the role of charity in strengthening civic virtue in individuals, communities and our nation.

Along the way Brooks shows why government funding can never substitute for privately donated resources – a policy point in need of understanding and appreciation by political leaders in Ohio.

We hope you can join us! Please contact Jenna McNulty to RSVP for this event.

The Cato Institute’s Peter Van Dorn gives a thoughtful analysis of electric utility regulation posted yesterday on Buckeye Voices, the podcast service of the Buckeye Institute.