The trickle of stories relating to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has grown to a steady flow, thanks to the recently-released (and formerly secret) database of corporatist cookie-cutter state legislation at ALEC Exposed.
I was excited this week to see Ruth Conniff of The Progressive take on ALEC's privatization efforts on education for students with special needs. The article is called ALEC, Republicans Beat Up on Kids With Special Needs (someone at The Progressive definitely has the knack for writing a red-meat headline!) and the article itself pulls no punches:
Like cartoon schoolyard bullies, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)—the powerful coalition of corporations and rightwing legislators—has worked out plans to trick special ed students and their families into giving up their federally protected educational benefits, in exchange for cheap vouchers that can be used in unregulated, fly-by-night academies.
The article highlights the many downsides to ALEC's so-called Special Needs Scholarship Program, a voucher program that siphons taxpayer money from public education into private, for-profit schools. This ALEC model legislation has been introduced in Wisconsin as AB110, with plans for a legislative push in the fall.
The broader privatization-attack on public education is enough reason in and of itself to oppose the bill. But that's not even the top reason for disability-rights advocates:
What a lot of people don’t understand, says Jeff Spitzer-Resnick, managing attorney for Disability Rights Wisconsin, is that disabled students who take advantage of special ed vouchers forfeit their rights under the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
That means they no longer have a right to a “free, appropriate public education” or the specific services that come along with that.
And when schools whose top priority and bottom line are all about profit aren't required to provide a specific something for their students -- many of them don't.
When students lose the rights to special-education services, the door opens to potential exploitation, including the fraud and abuse that has come to light in Florida, the state with the longest-running special education voucher program. I diaried that story two weeks ago (FL Special Needs Vouchers: "Using Disabled School Kids as Lab Rats"); here's part of how Conniff summarizes the Florida scandal-story:
[Miami New Times reporter] Garcia-Roberts told of fly-by-night schools for the disabled in Florida, including South Florida Prep, where “two hundred students were crammed into ever-changing school locations, including a dingy strip-mall space above a liquor store and down the hall from an Asian massage parlor.” Students zoned out in front of blaxploitation flicks, supervised by inexperienced staff with no books and no curriculum requirements. At one school, parents complained that an administrator spanked his charges with a paddle, telling them the state had no jurisdiction to make him stop. (Turns out he was not far off: The Department of Ed can’t pull McKay scholarship funds from a school based on its disciplinary policies.)
Here in Wisconsin, we could well be in for these and other consequences, including increased segregation of students with special needs, and pressure for public schools to ditch students with special needs into voucher programs in order not to have to own their standardized test-scores.
As she concludes, Conniff once more emphasizes the ALEC roots of this legislation:
[S]hadowy, corporate interests are deliberately manipulating people’s fears
and again quotes Jeff Spitzer-Resnick:
“This whole movement is predicated on trading on parents’ legitimate frustrations for what their kids are not receiving and then sprinkling magic fairy dust by saying, ‘Here, we’ll give you a voucher and all your frustrations will go away.’ ”
I appreciate Conniff's ability to turn up the outrage meter -- this bill is indeed an outrage!
I also, however, find myself struggling with a question. When the "other side" is propagandizing full-force and framing a complex issue in black and white terms, should we respond in like manner? Or do we have the responsibility to present the more nuanced view, even when that undercuts the thrust of our "this legislation is outrageous" message?
I'm thinking of an exchange I had in the comments on my first diary on this issue, Piratizing Special Education in Wisconsin: AB110. In that diary I acknowledged, "there are indeed some satisfied parents in states where this kind of voucher is already a reality -- Ohio and Florida being the most frequent comparisons." And it's true. Despite all its devastating downsides, this kind of program does indeed result in some people getting out of inadequate public-school situations that aren't properly addressing their students' special needs, and into better private-school situations, without having to mount a massive effort or even a lawsuit to force their public school to make it happen.
The commenter thanked me for acknowledging the complexity, having heard the stories of some satisfied parents. During the exchange, I made this comment:
I wish both sides of the aisle could do a better job of acknowledging complexity. One challenge of acknowledging the full picture, alas, is that when only one side does it, the other side ends up with a position that sounds more convincing because it doesn't admit weakness. Catch the AFC, for example, admitting that this bill might be anything less than pure perfection!
Conniff's article does not admit of the complexity either. She teases at it, but then dismisses it far too unequivocally:
At first glance, these bills don’t seem all bad. Whether or not you agree with the idea of using public school funds to send kids to private school, individual disabled children whose needs aren’t met in public schools might benefit from being able to use private school vouchers, right?
Wrong.
I'd like to continue the conversation. Are we bringing a balloon to a knife-fight when we tell the balanced stories that our ideological opponents refuse to tell? Or must we step back from our principles to be able to compete, to create the sound-bites that will sway the opinions and actually send bad legislation down to defeat?
Thanks for reading, and thanks in advance for any contributions you bring to the conversation!