One of the model laws circulated and advocated by the rightwing group ALEC is a voucher program for students with special needs.
ALEC, you may know, represents many of our nation’s major corporations. It has about 2,000 conservative state legislators as members and a few hundred corporate sponsors. ALEC crafted the “Stand Your Ground” law that the shooter invoked when he killed Trayvon Martin last spring in Florida. ALEC also crafted model legislation for voter ID laws that are characterized by its critics as voter suppression laws.
In education, ALEC has written draft legislation for vouchers for all, vouchers for special needs, charters, alternative certification, test-based teacher evaluation, and anything else they could think of to transfer public money to private hands and to undermine the teaching profession.
Ohio recently expanded its statewide voucher program, which was written originally for students with autism; now it is for students with disabilities of other kinds. This is part of the ALEC game plan to erode public support for public education. Read the article from Ohio. It says that the private schools are not accepting the students with the greatest need, and that some students who never attended public schools are now getting public subsidy. All combine to reduce public funding to public schools.
The Florida voucher plan for students with disabilities is called the McKay Scholarship program. It was embroiled in controversy when an investigative reporter discovered that the program was unsupervised, that some participating schools had no curriculum, no educational program and were run by unqualified people. Which raises the question of whether the point of the program is to help the children or to dismantle public education.
New York state has a similar program for pre-K special education students. Although it is not called a voucher program, it is almost completely privatized (and it predates ALEC’s agenda). The New York State Comptroller recently released an audit showing the program to be rife with fraud, inflated enrollments, corruption, etc. It is also the most expensive program for pre-K special education in the nation.
The private sector does not have all the answers. Neither does the public sector. Any program using public money should be carefully, rigorously supervised and regulated, especially when children are involved.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Though I had already read the Cincinnati Enquirer article the other morning over breakfast, I did click on the link and discovered the on-line version had a very interesting inset (on the left, and I had to keep refreshing to get rid of the ads) that included information not in the print edition. One of these pieces of information was:
“118: Number of voucher recipients expected to attend the Springer School & Center in O’Bryonville, which had the most applicants of any special education provider in the state.”
Now the Springer School is a very highly-regarded private school for children with Learning Disabilities, such as dyslexia, and ADHD, and it’s been serving LD/ADHD students since 1968. It has a beautiful campus in a nice part of town. So obviously it can manage quite well without the public support provided by vouchers (private schools in Ohio have always gotten some public support in the form of transportation and other services but the vouchers are a whole new level).
Anyway, the point of my comment is, here is some more evidence that students with the greatest need will not be served by the voucher program. If a child has physical disabilities, intellectual disability, significant behavoiral challenges, etc., he or she will not be attending Springer.
“ALEC crafted the “Stand Your Ground” law that the shooter invoked when he killed Trayvon Martin last spring in Florida. ALEC also crafted model legislation for voter ID laws that are characterized by its critics as voter suppression laws”
That statement shows a lot of ignorance. Zimmerman acted in self-defense. It’s unfortunate that the media manufactured it into a racial profiling case. It was not. And how does showing your picture ID when you vote, voter suppression? You need ID to do most everything else. What about voter fraud?
“undermine the teaching profession”? vouchers and school choice options do not undermine the teaching profession. It may undermine control of the teachers’ unions, but how would it undermine the teaching profession? It would only create more schools. And more schools need more teachers. I think the future of teaching is a good one. Teachers can get a job at conventional public schools, charter schools–including online charter schools, and private schools. THOSE ARE TEACHING JOBS TOO!
The more I read of these blogs, the more I see closed-mindedness and the bias of those who care more about the future of teachers’ unions than they do about the future of education in this country.
It seems a ‘voucher’ is the right-wing answer to everything. Listening to Romey/Ryan, it is clear vouchers are their answer to education and medicare—–but will the spirit of the free market inspire business models to take vouchers from the most needy of our population even when the profit margin would be less?? Whether it is education or medicine, the disturbingly consistent solution by some seem to be: take your chunk of money and good luck!
Sad times.
voucher is a way to kill off the public sector, while creating profits for a newly deregulated industry that provides no better service and often worse.