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Special education vouchers, a view from New York

Jay Greene, in the conservative Manhattan Institute's City Journal, speaks on giving parents of kids w/disabilities vouchers so they can put their kids in schools they feel will meet their needs. Jay says:

"In 1975, Congress passed legislation giving students with disabilities the right to an appropriate education at public expense. But having a right is only as good as your ability to enforce it. In New York City and elsewhere, public schools regularly delay and frustrate disabled students seeking appropriate services—everything from tutoring to speech therapy to treatment of severe disabilities—making their federally protected right all but meaningless. Rather than compelling families with disabled children to contend with obstinate public school systems, we should give them the option of purchasing the services they need for their children from a private provider. That is, we should give them special-ed vouchers—good for the same amount of money that we already spend on them in the public school system—that they could then use to pay for private school. Not only would this bring better services to disabled New York students; it could also save the public money."   Continue reading here.

Patrick J. McCloskey is a journalist and the author of The Street Stops Here, about inner-city Catholic education also weighs in about how Catholic schools can help fill the gap.  Patrick states:

"Catholic schools have long offered disadvantaged and minority children an alternative to New York City’s dysfunctional public school system. Under half of black and Hispanic students in the public schools graduate on time; when they’re from impoverished neighborhoods, they fare even worse; and of those who do graduate, only about half go to college. But students at inner-city Catholic high schools, who are mostly minorities, achieve nearly 90 percent graduation rates, archdiocese records show.

Tragically, the writing is on the wall for many of the Catholic schools, which have been closing in the city at an alarming rate. Costs are rising, and enrollments are in decline as a result. Individual contributors and foundations, suffering deep losses to their portfolios, are struggling to sustain the levels of assistance that they provided so generously before the Wall Street meltdown. Job losses have diminished many parents’ capacity to pay tuitions, further cutting into enrollments. Almost 500 Catholic elementary schools closed nationwide last year, the 2009 Official Catholic Directory reports, more than doubling the previous year’s number of closings."  Continue reading here. 

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