The Promise of Special Education Vouchers
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In the fraught arena of school reform, few policy proposals have been more contentious than vouchers. In allocating taxpayer dollars to children whose parents want them to leave failing public schools to attend private and parochial institutions, voucher programs have drawn the ire of teachers’ unions and church-state separatists, as well as these groups’ political allies. Of late, these voucher opponents have had some high-profile successes: In 2006, for instance, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that a key component of the state’s Opportunity Scholarship Program was unconstitutional. And in 2009, President Obama and congressional Democrats enacted legislation to kill a voucher program in Washington, D.C., that had helped children escape the district’s dismal public-education system and improve their academic performance in private schools.
And yet, despite the discord and setbacks, vouchers seem to be experiencing a resurgence. Legislatures across the nation are once again taking up bills to adopt or expand programs that use public dollars to help students pay for private schools. In August, the Associated Press reported that at least 30 states had introduced legislation allowing the use of public funds to support students attending private schools. Twenty-eight states had considered tax breaks for families paying private-school tuition. So far this year, voucher programs in more than a dozen states have either been initiated or significantly expanded. They include Ohio, which expanded its program by quadrupling the cap on voucher recipients, and Oklahoma, which implemented a tax credit for donors to scholarships that fund education at private schools. Indiana launched the nation’s broadest private-school voucher program, which provides a voucher to any child in a family of four with income of less than $60,000 a year.