It didn't get a lot of attention, but U.S. Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) declared war on public education for students with special needs last month when he introduced the CHOICE Act (S. 1909, "Creating Hope and Opportunity for Individuals and Communities through Education Act").
He's actually proposing three voucher programs. One would expand the failed D.C. voucher program. A second would create a new military-kids voucher program.
The third would undermine the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act beyond all recognition, by directing IDEA funds into existing voucher programs for students with special needs, but stripping the funding of any requirement to actually abide by IDEA.
Here's the actual text from the bill, amending IDEA to decouple the funds from IDEA's requirements:
(III) a selected school accepting such funds shall not be required to carry out any of the requirements of this title with respect to such child.(emphasis mine)
For years, ALEC-disciples in
state legislatures have been hard at work funneling state tax dollars from public schools into private religious and for-profit schools... and now they are taking it to the federal level.
Students with special educational needs have extra-big targets on their backs. In the public schools, they are assured a free and appropriate public education by the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Since "appropriate" is different for every student with a disability, the plan for each student is specified in a collaboratively-designed Individual Education Plan (IEP) that spells out how the school will meet that student's unique educational needs. The IEP is a legal contract between parents, the student and the school system that must be enacted by the schools, complete with due process rights.
But... the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act does not apply in private voucher schools.
Let me say that again:
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act does not apply in private voucher schools.
This is true in EVERY voucher program in this country, enacted or proposed, including voucher programs aimed specifically at students with special needs (like the proposals that keep coming back in Wisconsin)!
So students with disabilities surrender all their IDEA rights and protections when they take a private school voucher, and private schools cherry-pick which students with disabilities they wish to serve. That means the public schools, who have to accept and educate everyone according to IDEA, wind up educating the students with greater challenges - with less and less money as the private voucher schools hoover up an increasingly greater share.
Until now, the voucher programs couldn't access the funds attached to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. While federal IDEA funding has routinely fallen short of necessary levels, at least the dollars have been firmly attached to IDEA being carried out in the schools that take the dollars.
ALEC, Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), and the usual cast of radical GOP Senators co-sponsoring the bill, want to change all that. They want IDEA money for private schools, but they don't want the private schools to have to follow IDEA law.
You can see the seeds of this cash grab over at ALEC Exposed, in an ALEC model resolution called the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act Resolution, from 2003.
The resolution first decries the chronic under-funding of IDEA and urges Congress to fully-fund IDEA to the promised 40% level, which sounds great until you realize that what they want to do is funnel that money to private schools. The resolution goes on to decry the "burdensome regulations" of the IDEA, and to laud Florida's fraud-ridden special needs voucher program.
But is anyone reporting on this?
Not Education Week.
Not Governing Magazine.
Surely not Fox News (did I even need to say it?!)
And if the press won't report it, how are people going to know that:
The school profitizers want the money that's supposed to educate some of the most vulnerable students in our country, but they don't want to be obligated to actually educate students with special needs once they've taken the money.