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.
Parents, kids and the principle of freedom won a victory in the Ohio Senate today, although by a narrow margin. The vote on SB 57, the Special Needs Scholarship was 17 to 15 in favor. All Democrats voted against the bill, along with Republican Senators Stivers, Schuring and Grendell. Now SB 57 moves to the Ohio House.
