"War, huh, yeah
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing"

— Edwinn Starr, "War"

The District of Columbia Public School system has a troubled history with special education. In reviewing a U.S. Commission on Civil Rights study on the subject, footnote 4 on page 7 led to a data source in which DCPS stood out like a very sore thumb: disputes between families and the district over special education: In 2018-19, DCPS had a rate of special education due process complaints filed which stood at more than eight times the national average per 10,000 students with disabilities served:

This led me to wonder what more recent data, and to wonder about how the states of Arizona and Florida would compare to DC in that more recent information. A web of policy diffusion between the states of Arizona and Florida resulting in both states eventually adopting robust formula funded education savings account programs for students with disabilities. The process began in Florida in 1999, when Florida Senate President John McKay passed and Gov. Jeb Bush signed what became a statewide voucher program for students with disabilities. Under the federal IDEA legislation, parents had the right to sue school districts for failure to provide a free and appropriate education (FAPE) for a district-financed private school placement. The practical difficulties of financing such a suit, however, left it as an avenue mostly accessible to well-to-do families. Districts have long contended that they do not receive enough funding for special education.

The McKay Scholarship program turned both of these unfortunate facts on their heads: you no longer needed to file a lawsuit to access private schools. Moreover, McKay Scholarship-participating families were entitled only to the funding that districts have spent decades describing as inadequate. Access to private education for students with disabilities was delightfully democratized and a financial win-win developed for families and districts. Tens of thousands of special needs students participated in the program, and it spent many years as the largest school choice scholarship program in the country.

Over in Arizona, our education freedom Scooby-gang was determined to emulate Florida’s success. In 2005, Arizona lawmakers passed, and Gov. Janet Napolitano signed a voucher program for children with disabilities. The Arizona school district industrial lobbying complex sued the program, and in 2009 the Arizona Supreme Court struck it down as violating the Blaine Amendment in Arizona’s Constitution. The Arizona Blaine Amendment forbade aid to “private or religious schools.” Dan Lips had proposed an account-based choice program in a paper for the Goldwater Institute, and the lightbulb moment happened: an account-based program with the option not to spend money at private and religious schools would be meaningfully different than a voucher program as pertaining to constitutional issues, among other advantages. Firing up our school choice Mystery Machine, we passed the first ESA program in 2011 and survived court challenges. Our compatriots in Florida became the second state to pass an ESA program for students with disabilities in 2015, and the ESA and McKay programs were eventually merged into a single ESA program.

How could this help DCPS and their never-ending cycle of special education conflict? Below is that more recent special education conflict data I referred to, and the rate of various conflict measures per 10,000 students with disabilities are displayed for Arizona, DCPS and Florida.

DCPS should not wait on the federal Olympians to look down from their perch on Capitol Hill to impose such a peace settlement on DCPS and the families it is constantly at war with. DCPS should settle this peace themselves as fast as possible by creating a robust ESA program for students with disabilities. You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. Someday DCPS will join us in this humane and beneficial policy and give peace a chance.

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Anyone associated with the pursuit of “economic development” will tell you that the quality of local schools is a key factor in a community’s ability to attract high-paying jobs. Businesses are better able to recruit and retain employees if their children have access to a good education.

Academics are just one element in assessing schools. The availability of student services increasingly is a key consideration for families – especially with regard to autism.

 According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, autism is the fastest-growing development disability in the nation. The prevalence of autism in U.S. children jumped from 1 in 150 in 2000 to 1 in 59 in 2014. The reasons for that surge are the subject of much debate. It may be due to better diagnosis, increased awareness, and broader definitions of autism; the spectrum of disorders has expanded to include a wider range of language abilities and social behaviors.

Regardless of the causes, schools and communities are struggling to keep up with the increasing demand for autism services – and not just because they have a moral duty to do so. They also have a legal obligation. The federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), first enacted in 1975, mandates that public school students with intellectual disabilities, including autism, are entitled to early intervention services and special education.

Alas, compliance with IDEA -- by districts and by entire states – has been uneven, to say the least. The Houston Chronicle in its 2016 investigative series “Denied” reported how Texas officials arbitrarily decided what percentage of students should get special education services, leaving thousands of children searching for assistance.

Parents need alternatives outside a system that not only may not be working for them, it may be working against them.

There is another incentive that cannot be ignored: Being an autism-friendly community can have economic benefits.

Research has found a correlation between autism and affluence -- upper-income parents are more likely to have children with autism. Again, the causes are uncertain. Perhaps it’s because parents with higher educations and higher-paying jobs have more resources than their less-educated and less-affluent counterparts to seek diagnoses and services for their autistic children. Nevertheless, many childhood developmental disabilities have an inverse relationship with socio-economic status – the poorer the family, the more likely a child is to have a developmental issue. Autism, however, appears to be the opposite effect.

A 2010 University of Wisconsin-Madison study found that affluent children were almost twice as likely as the poorest children to have autism. Poor neighborhoods did have lower rates of diagnosis. But even among children with no autism diagnosis, the richest children displayed signs of autism 39 percent more often than those in the poorest neighborhoods. This was true within all ethnic groups: Wealthier African-American or Hispanic parents were more likely to have autistic children compared to poorer people of the same ethnicity.

Is it because of lifestyle or other environmental factors? Or are certain traits of successful people – especially those involved in such fields as engineering and the sciences – passed on to their offspring?  The search for answers continues.

Whatever the reasons, the statistical reality is that educated, affluent parents are more likely to have children with autism, and thus will seek to live and work where they have access to quality services. Communities have an obligation to provide such services to all regardless of socio-economic background, but the demographics of autism indicate there is a positive externality to adopting such policies: an influx of the kinds of educated residents and high-wage employers that areas compete with each other to attract.

A 2011 online survey by Autism Speaks found that nearly 75 percent of respondents were not satisfied with their community's resources and services for people with autism. Among those who said they are generally pleased with the availability of services and resources where they live, many cited satisfaction with the educational services their child receives.

It costs more than $8,600 extra per year to educate a student with autism. Federal grants can help defray costs, but they don’t cover everything.

Education choice can play an important role in bridging that gap and providing families more options.

Florida has two education programs that assist parents of children with special needs, including autism. The McKay Scholarship was the nation’s first such voucher program, providing eligible students the opportunity to attend a private school or transfer to another public school.  It currently serves 31,000 students. The Gardiner Scholarship is an education savings account (ESA) that goes further by allowing parents to spend funds on a combination of programs – not just schools (including home schools), but also tutoring, specialists, curriculum and technology. It serves more than 11,000, making it the nation's largest ESA.

Several states, including Arizona, Mississippi and Tennessee, have adopted either vouchers or ESAs for special-needs students. In 2004, Ohio launched the nation’s first and only private school voucher program exclusively for students with autism. Unfortunately, Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe in 2016 vetoed a bill that would have created an ESA for students with disabilities.

ESAs offer families the most freedom.  Parents can choose where to spend the money, specifically tailoring schooling and services to meet their children’s individual needs. That empowerment can also incentivize providers to offer a wider array of services, and at lower cost.

As the autism spectrum expands to include more diverse behaviors, it’s vital that students have as many education preferences as possible to find the best fit. That could be a traditional classroom setting, a charter or private school that specializes in autism, a homeschool network of parents of children with autism, or even a combination of those. Indeed, it’s unrealistic to expect all the possibilities to fit under one roof, within one paradigm.

States that lead in providing varied choices to families with autism aren’t just doing the righteous thing. They also are making themselves a more desirable place in which to live and invest. Ultimately, that will boost the quality of life for all.

President Obama has often called on us to be true to who we are as a people, as Americans. And in his second term, he has the opportunity to transform the education system back to our core - to where parents are primarily in charge of children’s educations.

We have paid a price for transferring authority and responsibility for educating children from parents to government entities. With mostly though not always good motives (remember Brown v. Board of Education), we allowed the dream of the government-owned and operated common school to live on despite overwhelming evidence that, in reality, it wasn’t working. A child’s educational destiny continues mostly to be a function of his/her zip code and the competence of strangers who sit on local school boards.

For more than three decades, a long, slow correction of this anomaly in American society has been underway. First, intradistrict and interdistrict transfers began to appear that allowed limited parental choice within some parts of the public school system. Then magnet schools surfaced, offering options such as vocational, talented and gifted, and language immersion programs, and responding to more demands. In 1992, charter schools emerged. Today they account for almost 6 percent of all public schools, approaching 6000 total, and the number grows steadily each year because the demand from parents so far is insatiable.

Thanks to my colleague at the American Center for School Choice, Gloria Romero, a new tool has appeared. The parent trigger empowers parents to make changes to their school when they are not satisfied. Already 20 states have considered the approach and seven have adopted laws.

Private school choice programs continue to gain support, too. And they have done so despite fierce opposition from forces that want to defend market share over a parent’s right to choose. Today, 32 such programs operate in the country. And in recent years, many school choice bills have either been passed by legislatures with Democratic majorities or signed by Democratic governors. Just as important, once enacted, these programs have only grown. No state has repealed a program or decided choice does not serve the public well. Moreover, the doomsday scenarios that opponents consistently forecast for public education systems have never happened.

It’s said you can’t argue with a river; it is going to flow. Parents are going to take back the authority and responsibility for educating their children. The river has been flowing for more than 20 years and the current is gaining speed. It’s time for more Democrats to stop arguing as families assert their fundamental and universally accepted American value that they know the best choice for their children. Democrats need to work in positive ways to transform our system. We need good schools and there’s plenty of room for all types - public, charter, and private.

President Obama has the life experience, as well as the political skills and credentials, to lead this transformation, and to make it less jarring and less confrontational. (more…)

by Allison Hertog

Last spring the U.S. Government Accountability Office issued a study concluding that charter schools enroll a lower percentage of special education students than traditional public schools. Some commentators have questioned this study’s methodology and conclusions, while others believe it confirms what they have seen in practice. Regardless of where you stand on that debate, charter schools have a great opportunity to increase their special education admissions and improve how well public education serves all struggling students.

Charter schools can do this by using a bottom-up model called Response to Intervention, along with the Common Core standards. Response to Intervention can be employed in any school – private, public, charter, maybe even virtual – but it is particularly well-suited for implementation and success in charter schools because of their enhanced freedom to enact school-wide reforms.

Response to Intervention (RTI) is a special education reform codified into the 2004 reauthorization of the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. It's designed to decrease the rolls of special education students. Following a dramatic rise of the number of students identified as specific learning disabled (SLD) in the 1990s, researchers from the Progressive Policy Institute and the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation suggested in a landmark 2001 paper, Rethinking Learning Disabilities, that the SLD label was a “catch-all” for low-achieving students which serves as a “sociological sponge that attempts to wipe up general education’s spills and cleanse its ills.” A 2002 report from a presidential commission on special education stated up to 40 percent of children identified for special education weren’t truly disabled, but were simply not taught to read properly. (more…)

by Eva S. Moskowitz

Big. Bold. Fast. I constantly remind my team at Success Academy Charter Schools in New York City that as well as we are doing in rolling out new high-performing schools (we have one of the most ambitious plans in the nation) we can’t possibly move fast enough. While we now serve thousands of students with a better public education than they otherwise would have gotten, our city has hundreds of thousands of students who need better school options.

It isn’t possible to work as quickly or as urgently as this problem requires. Each year in my city, thousands of students are added to wait lists at high-performing charter schools and the city’s elite public school test-in programs. If you don’t get in, you have school choice but you have to either choose from among lousy zoned district schools, expensive private schools, or move to suburbia.

With the need for more great schools crystal clear in New York and around the country, it is absurd that we could even be having this national debate over whether or not there should be a federal role in education. Of course there should be a federal role, especially in the area of parent choice.

During the recent “I3” competitive grant competition and President Obama’s “Race To The Top” competition, we saw enormous leverage for reform from Washington. Many people didn’t know that leverage was possible, but the proof is in the pudding. States (many with Democratic governors) like Tennessee, New York, Illinois, and Massachusetts lifted caps on the creation of new charter schools – in large part because President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan dared them to.

The Obama administration used its bully pulpit and a relatively small amount of federal money to incent smart, pragmatic policies at the state and local levels. The federal government ought to be able to do the same thing to incent urgency in statehouses, school districts, and on the ground in communities that desperately need good school options.

Bigger. Bolder. Faster. Yes, the federal government ought to be in a position to point its finger at states and districts and say, “Folks, we love you, but your kids are dying. You need to move faster!” At Success Academy Charter Schools, we see this as a moral imperative – the same moral imperative that led to the creation of Title I and IDEA, among other civil rights initiatives. Do federal legislators really think they can afford to sit silently, while the opportunities of another generation of students vanishes? (more…)