Can vouchers help disabled students?
Proposal allows parents to choose best setting for kids
Texas has a special-needs problem in public education. As Brian M. Rosenthal’s multi-part “Denied” series for the Houston Chronicle detailed in 2016, Texas systematically keeps thousands of children out of special education and pushes students out of special education programs to meet the state’s limit on such programs. Those practices have had notable negative effects on the mentally ill, have disproportionately affected Englishlanguage learners with special needs, forced families to leave Texas to get the education their children need, and driven families out of the public school system altogether.
Despite the good work of dedicated special needs teachers in public schools, the larger system in place is ill-equipped to address the unique needs and circumstances of every student with special needs. The Texas Education Agency estimates that there are approximately a half-million students with special needs, though the actual number may be considerably higher. These students face a tough road because of a variety of difficulties, including autism, speech delays and vision or hearing impairments. That’s in addition to conditions like cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, Spina bifida, and delays in intellectual development.
That is where parental choices in education come in.
One of the fiercest debates this legislative session is whether to create an education savings account (ESA) program. ESAs are proven to benefit children with special needs and their parents. “Special Needs Students Need Education Savings Accounts” (co-published by the Goldwater Institute and the Texas Conservative Coalition Research Institute), details how these programs help students with unique circumstances in ways that the public school system cannot.
Rebecca Hucker, born with a physical and mental deficiency called Turner’s Syndrome, recently described how difficult attending public schools was for her.
“You won’t have a nurse on call every day, speech therapists or adaptive PE teachers,” Hucker wrote in an op-ed published last year in the San Antonio Express-News. “Your parents won’t be able to arrange for specialized transportation to get you to school. And, more importantly, you won’t find anyone in the administration looking out for you.”
Though numerous private school choice programs for students with special needs similar and more severe than Hucker’s have existed for quite some time, Arizona was the first state in the U.S. to create a special-needs ESA program in 2011. That program allows a deposit of 90 percent of a child’s funding from the state formula into a private account. Parents may then use that account to buy educational products and services for their children. Arizona has since expanded access to its ESA program, but students with special needs still comprise the majority of enrollees (58 percent). The program has been a tremendous success.
For example, Arizona parents Kathy and Cristo Visser, whose son Jordan has cerebral palsy, used the ESA to pay for at-home tutoring and education therapy services to create the custom learning program their local public school refused to offer Jordan.
Holland Hines also uses an ESA to help her son, Elias. Elias is on the autism spectrum and has hyperlexia.
“Elias is now happily attending a private school that was created for children of all abilities, with a fantastic teaching staff who have years of training,” Hines said. “He has an adapted schedule that allows him to attend school half time to work on academics, social interaction and classroom etiquette. The other half of his school week is spent attending speech, occupational, physical, and music therapies that his doctor prescribes. And all of this is perfectly tailored to his needs.”
Lawmakers in five states have enacted some form of ESA, and Texas could help its special-needs population by becoming the sixth. Education savings accounts can give families access to quality learning experiences for their students today. Texas children, especially those with special needs, should all have this opportunity.
Butcher serves as education director for the Goldwater Institute, an Arizona-based libertarian think tank. Withers is general counsel at the Texas Conservative Coalition Research Institute.