Study: Florida vouchers reduce number of kids labeled as disabled

Researcher Jay Greene’s latest work on vouchers in Florida, released this morning, finds that McKay vouchers for disabled students reduce the likelihood that a struggling student will be labeled disabled (and specifically as having a Specific Learning Disability, or SLD). Why? Maybe, Greene suggests, because districts realize they will not reap the additional funding the state pays for disabled students – and may in fact lose all the funding for that student – if the student’s family chooses to get a voucher and leave public schools.

But if fewer students are labeled disabled, is that necessarily a good thing?

Could it be that the threat of vouchers is causing some schools to not properly identify students as disabled, when maybe they are disabled and could use the extra help? Here’s Greene’s response via an e-mail to the Gradebook:

“You're right that we cannot know for sure whether the reduction in identification of children having SLD is reversing over-identification or causing under-identification. But given the rapid growth in SLD and its very high rate, it is far more likely that it is currently being over-diagnosed and McKay is restraining that over-identification. To believe otherwise we would have to believe that more than 6.2% (a total of 172,000) students truly have a processing problem in their brains and that the tripling of that rate over the last three decades has been caused by a true increase and/or better diagnosis of the disorder. It is simply implausible to believe that more than 6.2% of Florida students truly have an SLD and more than 14% truly have a disability unless we are willing to stretch the word 'disability' well beyond its normal usage.”

Ron Matus, State Education Reporter

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Comments

[Allison Hertog]

I write from the Florida special needs voucher trenches - I am both an attorney for parents of disabled public school students and a fierce proponent of the McKay Scholarship. I don't doubt the results of Greene and Winters' study which addresses those students with "marginal" disabilities. But special needs vouchers may provide an even greater benefit (to both schools and parents) for moderately disabled students.
In my experience, the most severely disabled get expensive special education services, regardless of what the quality of those services may be. But there are few private schools (at least in South Florida) which can meet the needs of those students at a reasonable cost - even if a parent gets the maximum allowable McKay Scholarship to private school – about $20,000!

Because of the way Florida special education funding is structured there is no added incentive for giving special ed. services to the moderately disabled - the schools do not get more money for labeling or serving them than they get for the mild or marginally disabled. Yet, the moderately disabled are more difficult and expensive to educate. Thus, I have found that Florida parents of the moderately disabled tend to be less satisfied with the public schools which generally are not effectively educating them.

If a parent of a moderately disabled student leaves public school with a McKay voucher worth let's say $10,000/year, that money could put a good dent in a private school tuition which may do a better job educating that child. At the same time, the school district still retains the federal special ed. funds for that child but is no longer responsible for the touch job of educating him or her.

The bottom line is that while special needs vouchers may not decrease the financial incentive to label students who are moderately disabled, they may result in a win-win situation for both schools and parents. And the largest growth in the use of special needs vouchers may come from those students given Response to Intervention.

www.MakingSchoolWork.com

[yikes]

Was there ever a voucher he didn't love? In Arizona, they tried vouchers for foster children. Like Florida. vouchers were found unconstitutional there as well, weren't they?

[yikes]

I vaguely recall Figlio relaesing a study a few weeks ago (6 or so?) showing Florida's voucher system to be ineffective, with the students performing no better in their voucher school than in their prior school. Were Mackay students included in that study?

[yikes]

Hmmm...I suppose Mr. Greene may not know of response to intervention, which may be a btter reason if special ed numbers are decreasing. Funded by the Walton family, is this report a Republican release?

[John]

It is all about money. Here in pasco they are slowly phasing out self contained classrooms and putting more and more kids on "consult". Why? The more on consult the fewer teachers they need.

[JohnM]

Sherm, remember, this is a newspaper sponsored blog-site. Consider your sources.

[Sherman Dorn]

Ron,

You didn't mention an important fact: this study did not appear in a refereed journal. That doesn't disqualify it, but it is something that belongs in reporting of studies.

[JohnM]

"!," unconstitutional is as unconstitutional does. The law does not have to be "logical," only logically applied. Nowhere does that say fair. That is one of the problems, lawyers speak for us to judges (former lawyers) to address laws written by lawyers.

[!]

Aren't vouchers unconstitutional?

[JohnM]

What I find amazing is, a few years ago "gifted" was the condition du jour. Nearly every kid got some sort of "gifted" designation. Now, "exceptional" is the condition du jour. Nearly every kid gets a designation SLD, ADD, ADHD, BS and etc. The classifications follow the funding. One principal even declared that all the the students at his school were "above average."

When will society understand EACH child is different and needs special attention. The class size amendment was one of the best (yet unfunded) policies to come along in a long while. The taxpayers in Florida said they wanted a better education system. The legislature dropped the ball by not funding education properly, instead spending money to create the FCAT/school grade monster. The school boards are doing a pretty good job with the dollars they are given. However, there are too many "chiefs and not enough indians." From the DOE down to the school level administrators there are too many people and too many dollars being spent unwisely. The teachers get to put up with all the micromanaging by administrators, super level administrators, parents, media and teenagers. How about letting the professionals do their job and wait to find out that more times than not the kids will do what they are expected to do, at their own pace.