One of the model laws promoted by ALEC creates vouchers for students with disabilities.
ALEC is the far-right group that brings together big corporations and very conservative state legislators to figure out strategies to advance privatization and protect corporate interests. ALEC does not like public education, does not like regulation, does not like unions, and does not like teacher professionalism. It likes vouchers, charters, online learning, all as unregulated as possible, and teachers who can enter the classroom with little or no certification or training.
ALEC pushes vouchers for students with disabilities as a way of establishing the legitimacy of vouchers, using the most vulnerable children as the poster children for their favorite anti-regulation, anti-government ideas. Once vouchers get a start in one sector, they reason, it is easy to make a case for vouchers for all. As states are slowly discovering, the more charters and vouchers schools there are, the more difficult it is to supervise what happens in them or where the money goes.
Florida has a voucher program for students with disabilities. It is a sham. Florida journalist called it “a cottage industry of fraud and chaos.” Gus Garcia-Roberts won the Sigma Delta Chi award for public service journalism–one of the highest honors of the profession– for this series about the abuse and neglect of students with disabilities who receive vouchers in Florida.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The requirement that Special Ed kids be included in high-stakes testing is serving as an incentive for traditional public schools to counsel out these kids who are bringing down their school’s test scores. So the architects of this scheme effectively created a pipeline for the unregulated voucher schools, too. It would not be difficult to duplicate this plan with charters, even in states without vouchers, due to federal requirements that Special Ed students be required to take high-stakes tests.
This is so insidious. It sets disability rights and Special Education back decades. How cruel to be exploiting such a vulnerable population.
While this promotes the privatization agenda, one gets the impression of glimpsing the NIMBY ideology behind it, too, which fosters the re-segregation of “undesirables.”
Whatever happened to IDEA and FAPE? This is increasingly egregious.
Read a bit of the series and am seeing something I had not seen before. Apparently one of the charters mentioned got recruitment help from local public schools because it would take difficult students off of their hands, where they would simply disappear from the testing radar because charters are not held accountable to the same standards as public schools.
I have been thinking of charters as “creaming” students in order to produce superior results, but this is possibly an even darker side to the charter industry. Of course public schools will encourage their troublemakers to “go charter” if there is a “dumping ground” charter available to take their problems off of their hands. And with no accountability for charters, the “dumping ground” charters can have the troublemakers do basically whatever they want (which will of course encourage young hooligans to seek them out, as they might have a reputation for being an “easy ride”).
I have a new business idea — my own “dumping ground” charter school that lets its students eat ice cream, break stuff, and do whatever they want all day. I’ll call it “Pleasure Island”. What do you think?
Ron P., Néw Orleans has dumping ground charters. The high-performing charters get rid of their low-performing kids and stay “excellent” that way.
We defeated this proposal in Wisconsin last year, but now ALEC and Am. Fed’n. for Children are back and have convinced Gov. Walker to put the proposal in his budget. Fortunately, the same group of Republican Senators who helped us kill it last session, still oppose this idea.
To be a devil’s advocate here, if we are heading down this line, why should I or any other adult without school aged children be required to pay taxes for education. If ALEC is all about “choice” (which, of course they aren’t), how about those of us who don’t have children? Can’t we “choose” not to pay taxes for schools?
Our nations resolved that debate in the 19th century with a commitment to mandatory public education which is enshrined as a constitutional right in every state constitution. No state has given any serious thought to amending their constitution to take that right away from its citizens.
Thanks.
Because, perhaps, it is in your best interest to live in a society where all citizens are educated? Educated so they can become plumbers and engineers and construction workers and computer programmers and doctors and entrepreneurs and nursing home aides who will contribute to the economy and provide innovations and services for you throughout your lifetime. It is short-sighted to think that only people with school-aged children should invest in the education of our citizens.
Adults with or without school-aged children have a vested interest in contributing to public education in their communities.
In Ohio we have the “Autism Scholarship Progam” which pays for a private autism school (I guess “scholarship” sounds better to some ears than “voucher”). So now we have a lot of small, private autism schools, including at least a couple of state-wide chains.
The state congressman who proposed the enabling legislation, Jon Peterson, has a grandson with autism. I always wonder where HE goes to school. I’m betting a well-funded, upper-middle class district, not one of the one-room schoolhouses his grandfather help start.
Yes just what kids with autism need: no mainstreaming with typical peers, jeez!
Just as we have seen charters leading to resegregation, vouchers are now being used as a tool for re-institutionalization, the warehousing of the SpEd population. At a nice profit no doubt.
You have a very good point. Whether it is creating Autism Only voucher schools in Utah, or regular ed. vouchers that segregate children like in Milwaukee. That’s why we filed the ADA complaint with USDOJ against Milwaukee’s voucher program.
It also exists in Georgia:
http://www.doe.k12.ga.us/External-Affairs-and-Policy/Policy/Pages/Special-Needs-Scholarship-Program.aspx
http://www.edchoice.org/School-Choice/Programs/Georgia-Special-Needs-Scholarship-Program.aspx
http://blogs.ajc.com/get-schooled-blog/2012/05/22/georgias-private-school-scholarships-neovouchers/
Which learning disabilities should have specialized schools and which should not?
Your questions suggests that you think that segregating students based on disability type is appropriate. There is no educational evidence that supports such segregation.
I was thinking mostly about specialized schools for the deaf. There are several in Pennsalvania for example, and at the post secondary level there is of course Gallaudet University . Are those schools inappropriate?
The deaf community would largely argue that such schools are appropriate due to their specialized communication needs (sign language), which is why most states have such a school. However, such schools are not without controversy, especially because many do not want deaf children with other complex disabilities. I have represented such children who have been expelled from the Wis. School for the Deaf.
So my question still stands. What other population of students has such specialized needs that a specialized school would be appropriate?