Sunday, April 20, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

COLUMN: Vin Suprynowicz

"What about the special-ed kids?"

What about "the special-ed kids?" a department head from the Clark County School District was asking me last week, pulling out what the statists have always figured was an unbeatable trump card in their case against a free market in education. "You conservatives never have an answer for how the private sector is going to take care of the special-ed kids!"

In fact, if your wife bears a "special-needs" child, does that give you any moral right to stick a gun in my face and take what you need out of my pocket to meet those "special needs"? No? But if you've got no moral or ethical right to do such a thing personally, how can you delegate someone in a uniform to do the same thing for you?

Mind you, this is a fully adequate and sufficient rebuttal to the question.

But as it happens, concerns that "special-needs" kids are likely to "fall through the cracks" in a privatized school system turn out to be so much hokum, anyway.

In a briefing paper released by the Cato Institute on March 20, David Salisbury, director of the free-market think tank's Center for Educational Freedom, reports on the lessons of the school choice movement in Florida:

"In 2000, Florida instituted an innovative school choice program for children with disabilities. During the 2000-2001 school year, the McKay Scholarship Program for Students with Disabilities provided scholarships to more than 1,000 students who chose to attend private schools rather than remain in their neighborhood public schools. Currently, more than 8,000 special-education students in Florida attend 464 private schools throughout the state. ... "

The three-year-old program provides scholarships averaging more than $5,000 to students with a wide array of so-called "learning disabilities" and other "special needs."

Mind you, I wouldn't hold up such a program as ideal, since it still depends on the redistribution of government tax money. Scholarships like those collected from private sources by outfits such as the Arizona School Choice Trust (or its sister in Ontario, Canada) are clearly preferable, since they cut politicians and educrats out of the loop entirely.

Nonetheless, "Critics of school choice often argue that school choice benefits only the best and brightest, leaving behind those children who are most difficult to educate," Cato scholar Salisbury points out. "Sandra Feldman, president of the American Federation of Teachers, has repeatedly warned that private schools will turn away handicapped students or students they perceive to be difficult to educate." But, "Florida disproves those claims.

"Private schools have proven their willingness to accept McKay scholarship students, and the fact that 89 percent of McKay students re-enrolled in their scholarship schools demonstrates that most parents are satisfied with their chosen private school ... "

Most important, and unlike the government schools, Mr. Salisbury notes, "With a McKay scholarship, parents are in control. If the school their child is in fails to meet their expectations, parents can enroll their child in another school."

Meantime, despite absurd federal requirements that "children with disabilities must still spend a year in their assigned public school before becoming eligible for a scholarship," and "parents must navigate complex procedural requirements ... before a scholarship can be awarded," the programs's "fiscal impact on the state ... is positive.

"Allowing more students to choose private schools reduces the cost of public education for taxpayers" ... and "allows the state to transfer some of its enrollment burden to private schools, relieving pressure on public school classrooms and budgets."

And all of this is assuming that "special education" isn't a problem primarily caused -- and then vastly exaggerated -- by our government schoolmasters in order to excuse their own ongoing failures, of course.

In my own book, "Send in the Waco Killers," I quote Robyn Miller, a former government-school teacher with experience in both rural Montana and suburban Denver, telling the editors of the Fresno, Calif.-based Education Liberator that, "When I was a public school teacher, I used to think the system caused 75 percent of all learning disabilities. Now I think it's about 99 percent."

"Sentencing" kids to learning-disabled classes creates in them "a pattern of failure for so many years to come," Ms. Miller worries. Yet she estimates at least 80 percent of those condemned to such a fate have "normal sight, hearing and intelligence," but simply cannot read "because of ineffective teaching methods."

On page 86 of his fine book "The Exhausted School," John Taylor Gatto agrees: "The most disturbing instance of the testing racket is the multibillion-dollar reading remediation program. To learn to read fluently takes about 30 contact hours. It is a fairly easy skill for anyone to pick up. ... Indeed, the only way to stop a child from reading and liking it in a literate environment is to teach it the way we teach it. But the industry of reading and its pseudo-scientific scare tactics is the most effective way to intimidate parents and taxpayers to stay in line, so you are discouraged from finding out just how easy it is."

Private schools couldn't deal with "special-needs" kids? Actually, they can. And in the meantime, at least they don't create the "special needs."

Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Review-Journal and author of the books "Send in the Waco Killers" and "The Ballad of Carl Drega."