Parry, thanks for your thoughtful question. As we mentioned in the column, the empirical studies all show that accountability testing has no effect on special education placement rates. So your hypothesis that local teams will want to get rid of “struggling students” to avoid “lower standardized test scores” doesn’t square with the evidence. (See the Education Myths book, linked above, for a rundown on what the studies on this show.)
You ask whether we might see a proliferation of specialized private schools for SLD with vouchers. Florida’s voucher program for disabled students is by far the oldest and largest such program (there are five nationwide) and we haven’t seen very much of that so far. In practice, almost all the SLD kids are going into regular schools. That tends to support our hypothesis that a lot of these kids were not legitimately SLD.
However, if we did see a burgeoning of SLD schools, that wouldn’t bother me at all. Here I speak only for myself, but I frankly don’t care whether a bunch of legislators in Washington think that my daughter should be educated in this or that type of school. They don’t know my daughter, and they have no idea what her unique needs call for. Maybe a special school is precisely what my daughter needs. Or maybe it would be a bad idea for her, but the right idea for somebody else. Parents are always better placed to make decisions for their children than politicians and bureaucrats. They will always know their children’s needs better, and they will always be more highly motivated to get the best for their children.
Finally, you want to know whether vouchers would be an “effective practice.” As it happens, there is empirical research on this as well. At the end of our column we linked to two studies showing that Florida’s special education vouchers have delivered better services to the students using them and have produced better outcomes for disabled students remaining in public schools.
