Latest / DiveIn: Diving into Special Education's Most Complex and Pressing Debates / School Vouchers and Students with Disabilities: A Conversation with Kevin Welner

Transcript

School Vouchers and Students with Disabilities: A Conversation with Kevin Welner · DiveIn: Diving into Special Education's Most Complex and Pressing Debates

0:03
The voucher programs often start with what are called poster
0:06
children, children who are perceived as more
0:10
in need of other alternatives or other resources.
0:14
And then once the foot is in the door, the programs expand.
0:23
From the Division of Research of the Council for Exceptional Children,
0:27
this is dived, a podcast about equity,
0:30
diversity and inclusion, inclusion in special education.
0:34
I am your host, Federico Weitholler, professor at the University
0:38
of Illinois, Chicago.
0:42
Welcome, welcome, welcome to our fifth episode of the second season of
0:46
Dive In. In our last episode, we talked to Mitchell
0:50
and David Beckman about the implications of the Trump administration
0:54
for special education. Today we are
0:58
going to delve deeper into one of those implications that
1:01
we talked last episode. Today we
1:05
are going to try to better understand voucher
1:09
programs and their implications for the education of students with disability.
1:14
And for that we have an amazing guest.
1:17
Today we present an interview with Kevin Wellner.
1:21
Kevin is a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder School
1:25
of Education and specializes in educational policy
1:28
and law. He's also the director of the National Education Policy
1:33
Center. He's the author of numerous books such
1:36
as Legal Rights, Local Wrongs, When Community Control Collides with
1:40
Educational Equity by Sunny Press and Neo Vouchers, the Merchants of
1:43
Tuition Tax Credits for Private Schools by Roman and
1:47
Littlefield. He's also the author of
1:51
Of Schools Choice, How Charter Schools Control
1:54
Access and Shape Enrollment by Teachers College Press.
1:58
So here's the interview. Enjoy the show.
2:05
Well, thank you so much, Kevin, for being here with us. We're very excited about
2:09
to learn more about voucher programs on students with disabilities. Well,
2:12
thank you for inviting me, Federico. Let's start from the basis. Now, for those in
2:16
our audience that don't know what vouchers are,
2:19
can you give like a 101 brief of what are
2:23
voucher programs? Yeah, well, it's, it's not surprising that
2:27
some people might be confused because I think there's some, some intentional
2:31
confusion going on. The term voucher doesn't
2:34
pull very well. So we've seen all sorts of
2:38
other terminology and even Byzantine
2:42
program structures to accomplish the same goal.
2:46
So you'll hear about tuition scholarships instead of vouchers.
2:50
You'll hear school choice. You'll hear tax credit, scholarship programs,
2:54
you'll hear education, savings accounts, et cetera.
2:59
The basic idea of what a voucher is and what
3:02
a voucher isn't is a little disputed. But basically it's
3:06
a public subsidy, a taxpayer subsidy for private
3:10
school tuition. So that said, there are some policies
3:14
that are somewhat different and that people should discuss a bit
3:17
separately. So there's Town tuitioning programs, which you
3:21
see primarily in Vermont and Maine,
3:24
which were originally designed to serve
3:29
mainly rural schools, rural communities.
3:32
By having the state pay for tuition at the local schools,
3:36
which happen to be private schools, those town tuitioning
3:40
programs have been litigated and now have turned much more into
3:44
traditional, what we see, what we think of as voucher programs.
3:48
And then there are also direct tax credits that are provided to private
3:52
school parents to offset some of the cost of their tuition
3:56
payments. They're usually, but not always for much smaller amounts
4:00
than we see with voucher programs. But those
4:04
are the, with, with those exceptions,
4:07
the town tuitioning and the direct tax credits,
4:11
pretty much everything you hear about that's, that smells a little bit like a voucher
4:15
is in fact a voucher. Smells like a voucher, sounds like a
4:18
voucher, it's a voucher. Yes, that's, that's certainly how I'm
4:21
going to be using the term term today. Yeah,
4:25
so just, I mean, just summarizing because I also
4:28
wanted to ask you that, as you said, there are many different types of vouchers.
4:31
So for what I understand there's like the traditional voucher. Right. That a parent
4:35
gets from the state and can use money to go to
4:39
a private school. There is also education savings
4:42
accounts. Right.
4:47
Where the state opens a particular saving account for the parents,
4:51
where they deposit money for parents to use for educational
4:54
expenditure. And the other one was tax
4:58
credits, correct? Yep. Yeah. And we're now seeing, I think two
5:01
states have mixed those last two. So you have tax credited
5:05
donations going to voucher granting nonprofits that then
5:09
grant instead of what, something that looks like a traditional voucher, they grant an
5:12
esa. So yeah, so setting
5:16
aside those two, you know, the direct
5:20
tax credit and the town tuitioning, I think what we see with the different
5:23
types of vouchers are what you call traditional vouchers,
5:27
what I call conventional vouchers, which is when the taxpayer money comes into the state
5:30
coffers, the state has a program that then provides a voucher
5:34
for parents to take to a private school to pay for tuition.
5:39
What I call neo vouchers are these tax credited
5:43
donations. So this is sort of what I was referring to earlier as a Byzantine
5:46
structure, so bear with me. But let's say you owe money,
5:50
you're a business or an individual taxpayer, you owe tax money to
5:53
your state. The state in these places that have these neo
5:57
voucher programs, which by the way is most of the voucher programs
6:01
that have existed while I've been studying this have been this type.
6:06
So a State will forgive that tax
6:10
money that you owe. Offer a 100% tax credit. In some states,
6:13
it's a little bit less than 100%, but in most it's 100% tax credit.
6:18
If you donate an amount to
6:22
one of these nonprofits that then pools your donation with other people's
6:26
donations and then hands the money out to a
6:30
parent to take to a private school to pay for tuition.
6:35
So it's essentially the same thing. It's just the state money isn't direct,
6:38
it's indirect. And then the newest program that
6:41
we see that's growing quite a bit, and pretty much every new proposal uses
6:45
this approach, is called an education Savings Account, or esa.
6:49
Some states call like Empowerment Scholarship account,
6:52
but they always use the ESA acronym.
6:56
And the idea there is fairly similar.
7:00
The parent has control over the money to take to a private school to pay
7:04
for tuition. But it's even more deregulated
7:07
in the sense that parents. In several senses, but mainly in the
7:10
sense that parents can use that money not just for tuition,
7:14
but depending on the state, they could use it for homeschooling
7:18
expenses, for tutoring expenses,
7:21
and for a variety of other types of expenses,
7:24
not just for tuition. Just to clarify,
7:27
even those tax credits. So when the state forgives these tax owned
7:31
by a particular company, that money will come from
7:35
the same money that we're funding public schools.
7:39
It comes from the state budget. And we
7:43
might get to this later, but the impact of
7:47
a voucher system on the state budget can be
7:50
and frequently is indirect on the public school
7:55
budget. Right. So the states,
7:57
most states largest, I think all states largest expense is for public
8:01
schooling. And so when you have a hit on the
8:04
state budget, it places stress on everything the state does.
8:08
Roads, prisons, schools, et cetera. Higher education has taken
8:11
a big hit. So yes,
8:15
those are all. And by the way, it's not just businesses.
8:18
Depending on the state, it might be only businesses,
8:21
only individual taxpayers or both who can donate
8:25
to these nonprofits. Wow. So it's a
8:29
not so simple context as one may think. There's many different
8:32
ways and hidden ways to funnel
8:36
those funds. Sometimes I think for what
8:39
you were saying, to try to provide more flexibility
8:43
in the use of those funds. Yeah. Again, the people who
8:47
are advocating for voucher policies very successfully,
8:51
I should add, they've grown quite a bit,
8:54
tend to be coming from a strong free market orientation.
8:59
And another way of saying that is that they really don't like regulations,
9:04
they don't like strings attached to the money.
9:07
So I'm not sure,
9:11
Federico, where you were Born, I think it was in Europe.
9:15
Is that right? New option. Argentina.
9:18
Argentina, Okay. I was gonna, I was going to make a Europe reference.
9:22
So, so, so that transition wasn't very
9:25
smooth. But I live in Spain right now. I'm reciting.
9:29
Okay. That's why I was associated. Okay. So the.
9:33
Throughout Europe, there are a lot of programs that look
9:37
a little bit like our voucher programs. They have government
9:41
payments to private, to fund
9:44
private school educations, but those are much,
9:47
much more highly regulated programs that we see
9:50
in the US and there are a lot of reasons for that. Some of them
9:53
are deal with our, our First Amendment, our Constitution.
9:57
But, but a lot of them are also political. The way that
10:02
these, I'll call them voucher like programs in
10:06
Europe grew up arose out of a very
10:09
different historical context than the free market advocacy that we see
10:13
here in the US and by the way, we've been talking about vouchers
10:19
here, generally specific to students with
10:22
disabilities. A lot of our voucher programs here
10:26
in the US Started as targeted
10:30
only toward eligibility for students,
10:35
families with students with disabilities. Currently,
10:39
I count 14 states that have programs targeted
10:42
for students with disabilities specifically.
10:45
Many of those same states also have one or more additional
10:49
voucher programs that reach other groups. But, and the
10:53
other thing I should add is that the.
10:57
Those voucher programs that started targeting students
11:01
with disabilities, those states,
11:04
it's not a coincidence that they also have other programs
11:09
that reach a broader range of groups.
11:14
Students with disabilities, students who are attending schools
11:17
that are lowly rated, students who are foster
11:23
in the foster child system, students who.
11:28
I'm trying to think of the others. There are some, I think, that use students
11:31
who are children of people in the military. But basically,
11:35
the voucher programs often start with what are called
11:39
poster children, children who are perceived as more
11:43
in need of other alternatives or other resources.
11:47
And then once the foot is in the door, the programs expand.
11:52
So you start with a small program serving
11:56
a targeted community, and then you move toward a universal
12:00
or near universal program to make the
12:03
voucher, excuse me, the taxpayer subsidies available to
12:07
all families, regardless of wealth or need. And we now
12:11
have, and this is really just over the last five years, we've seen this
12:14
explosion. We have 12 states that have these universal
12:18
or near universal programs. Wow.
12:21
So really they're benefiting or using students with disabilities
12:25
as a great leverage to get the ball rolling and expand
12:28
voucher programs in the state. That would be the cynical and probably
12:32
accurate interpretation of what's happened. Yeah.
12:38
Let's get about the who of this. I mean, who are using this
12:41
voucher, we talked this, like 14 states. I think what I counted was like 16
12:45
programs in 14 states, kind of with the
12:49
availability. Yeah, okay. Yeah,
12:52
but who's using it? There's been a lot of discussion,
12:57
you know, people that are against vouchers saying only wealthy
13:01
families are only able to use these vouchers.
13:04
Other people says, no, there's a lot of minority families who are using these vouchers,
13:07
even within the group of students with disabilities.
13:12
Well, the rules matter. And every
13:16
state has its own distinctive program. So obviously, if you
13:20
have a voucher program targeted with students with disabilities, towards students
13:24
with disabilities, then students who do not
13:28
have disabilities are not eligible to participate and the people using it would be
13:31
students with disabilities. The same thing
13:35
with the other sorts of categories I mentioned. The most common limitation
13:39
that you've that we've seen historically on voucher programs are
13:43
income ceilings. So usually phrased
13:47
as within a given percentage of the federal poverty level or of
13:51
more commonly, free and reduced lunch eligibility,
13:55
those income limits are sometimes like three or four
13:58
times the free and reduced lunch
14:02
eligibility, which brings the eligibility well
14:06
into the middle class.
14:09
But the way that what we've seen play
14:13
out is that within any given group,
14:17
so within 300% of free and reduced lunch
14:22
eligibility within families who have students
14:26
with disabilities, within any of those
14:30
groups, what we see is that the
14:34
people who are most likely to take advantage of the voucher are the people who
14:38
are most efficacious. So parents
14:41
with more wealth, parents with more
14:46
formal education, et cetera. And that's not surprising,
14:49
because in any sort of a marketplace
14:54
that's, that's at all complex, knowing how to work the
14:57
system to essentially out compete
15:01
your competitors is the best
15:04
predictor of who's going to get access to that opportunity.
15:08
So let me switch then
15:13
a little bit in responding to your answer, to thinking not
15:16
so much about these targeted programs, but about the dozen programs
15:20
I just mentioned that are expanded.
15:24
Right. So universal or near universal,
15:27
because we've seen in the last few years, we've seen some really
15:31
important data come out about who's using those
15:35
programs. And key part of that answer
15:38
is that the expanded programs overwhelmingly
15:42
benefit parents where students
15:46
are already enrolled in private school.
15:49
So in Arizona, for example, 71% of students using
15:53
their ESAs in 2003 were already enrolled in
15:56
private or homeschool. In Arkansas, the percentage was
16:00
even higher. Ohio and Iowa, we have
16:03
reported similar findings. Now, these numbers might,
16:07
I think, drop a bit as the programs mature,
16:10
but I think the trend is clear and I think it's important
16:14
for a few reasons. One is that it means that the voucher programs
16:17
are indeed creating another entitlement program for the
16:21
wealthy. But it also means that
16:25
the programs, and this gets back to something we were just talking about.
16:28
They're inflicting a pretty big hit on state budgets. Right.
16:31
Even. Even though voucher
16:35
advocates originally sold the policies as a way to save states money,
16:40
the argument was that the incentives would prompt students to
16:44
move from public to private schools. But that's not happening. So someone
16:48
has to pay for these new subsidies and.
16:52
Yeah, so that's, I think that's an important part
16:56
of the story.
16:59
I'm sorry, just go ahead. No, no, go ahead. Well, I was going to say
17:02
it's not really surprising that the wealthier families are using the vouchers. As I said,
17:09
there's an issue of parental efficacy, knowing how to work the system.
17:13
But also if you're already paying tuition
17:17
and the government offers you a subsidy, why wouldn't you be the first in line
17:20
to take it? Right. And then another part of the story is that
17:24
parents aren't the only ones doing the choosing. Schools choose
17:29
and the schools in
17:32
order to be successful,
17:36
a school has incentives to enroll
17:40
students who have, well, who are fairly low cost to
17:44
educate, which gets to issues about students with
17:47
disabilities and also students who are less likely
17:51
to be disruptive, students who are more likely to have rich opportunities to learn outside
17:54
of school and so are going to do
17:59
well in class, go to, to these top colleges, etc. And that helps
18:02
the private school to be successful. And then
18:06
finally, I think finally in
18:11
most states, parent private schools can require parents to pay
18:14
tuition above the amount of the voucher.
18:19
And that means that
18:23
I should say that we're actually seeing clear evidence now in states with
18:27
voucher policies where
18:31
private schools have responded to the changed
18:34
market created by the taxpayer subsidies by as you
18:38
would expect, if we accept how market forces work by
18:42
raising their tuition. So this
18:45
more demand, more cost, right? Yeah. I mean,
18:48
why if, if I'm paying say $9,000 in tuition
18:53
to my private school and a voucher comes along
18:57
giving $8,000 in taxpayer money
19:01
to the private school, the private school can then charge me, I don't
19:05
know, three, $4,000 on top of that $8,000,
19:08
I'm still in a better situation and the school has a lot
19:12
more money. So it's a market forces issue.
19:16
And again, the vast majority of policies allow the private
19:19
schools to pay tuition beyond the amount of the voucher.
19:23
I think with regard to students with disabilities, this is really, my last
19:27
point on that question, with regard specifically
19:31
to students with disabilities, I think there are two types of barriers. One is the
19:34
one I mentioned. The private schools have a choice. And a lot of private schools
19:38
simply will not accept students with particular disabilities.
19:42
At least then
19:45
there's also the issue
19:49
of access to appropriate personnel
19:53
and resources and accommodations.
19:56
And if you're a parent
19:59
of a student with disabilities and
20:04
you're trying to do that parental efficacy I mentioned earlier
20:07
and trying to research all the different schools and opportunities,
20:11
one thing you're going to confront is that a lot of
20:14
depending on the disability the child has, you're going to find that a lot of
20:17
the private schools simply don't have the personnel and resources and accommodations
20:22
for you to want to enroll your child in that school.
20:27
So that's an important barrier.
20:30
As you know, the Council for Exceptional Children put out
20:34
a position statement opposing all voucher programs,
20:38
including those directed specifically to students with disabilities,
20:42
because of these and other concerns about the
20:47
private schools, but also because if you read the statement,
20:50
because of what they're concerned about in terms of the long term harm to
20:55
public schools that are going to continue to serve most students with disabilities.
20:59
Yeah, absolutely. And that happens sometimes. It happens in this
21:03
similar patterns. We see also charter schools, right, that may not be
21:08
directly steering out with students, but they just don't have the services
21:12
and parents goes there. And of course the parents that are savvy and as you
21:16
say, doing those parents that are doing the research and being
21:19
what the market will call engage consumers, they're not going to send our
21:23
kid there. They're going to send them when they have the services.
21:28
And I should add that you and I have both written books on that exact
21:30
topic. Charter schools and issues of
21:35
access. Yeah, your books. I say School's
21:39
Choice and you wrote it with
21:44
momandi. Is that how you pronounce your name?
21:47
Yes, yes, yes. And your book is excluded by
21:51
choice. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Excellent book. That really, really helps
21:54
to understand the interplay between racial barriers and disability
21:58
barriers and class barriers in the context again of charter schools. Thank you for that.
22:02
Chicago, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was predettos. That was in Chicago. Yeah,
22:06
thank you for that. You know, one of the things, you know,
22:09
I've been looking at the different arguments, you know, in favor of vouchers
22:13
and there were some that are, that were very interesting to me.
22:16
One was that idea
22:21
provides incentives to over identify students with disabilities.
22:25
And if we have vouchers, that identification
22:30
is going to come down. And there are some studies that I've seen there is
22:32
at least one that looked at that with the Florida
22:36
program looking at. Indeed, with the avenue
22:39
vouchers, there is less identification of students with
22:43
disabilities in public schools. Do you know anything about that or do you
22:46
have some opinion form around that?
22:51
So if I'm understanding correctly, I think part of the answer is
22:55
that the way we identify students with disabilities in public
22:59
schools is governed by overwhelmingly by idea,
23:03
the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. And IDEA does not
23:07
apply to private schools, including private schools that accept public subsidies,
23:11
which is, I think an important issue we should discuss because
23:15
I think that is a huge issue if
23:19
we're talking about the interplay between vouchers and students
23:23
with disabilities. But the
23:26
issue of. And this, I think this overlaps with
23:30
what I was just discussing in terms of whether the services
23:34
are available in a given private school.
23:37
So if I have a child enrolled in public school and the child
23:41
has an IEP and I take that IEP with me to enroll
23:44
the child in a private school,
23:47
depending on the private school, they might be interested in reading it, but they
23:51
certainly don't have to comply with. Yeah,
23:54
yeah. So identifying. Yeah. So the
23:57
issue of whether a child is identified as having a disability in
24:01
a private school, there's no. The formal mechanism that
24:05
we think of when we talk about that is gone.
24:08
Yeah, yeah. If a parent unilateral move
24:11
their kid to a private school.
24:14
Sorry. The only way to get fully identified
24:17
is ask the district to identification and there is some basic service
24:21
that they could serve as part of the responsibility of the district.
24:27
Services. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. So you can,
24:30
you can ask, you can demand the local school district
24:34
assess your child and provide equitable services if
24:39
the child has a disability and your child is enrolled in. In a
24:42
private school, or as
24:46
you point out, you might not. Those numbers go
24:49
way down because the way IDEA applies,
24:52
it doesn't apply directly to the private school. You still have some protections
24:56
as a parent or some access to resources as a parent if
25:00
your child is going to private school. But it's
25:04
not a demand you can make of the private school itself. Yeah,
25:08
no. And that's very important to clarify. Once you are in a private
25:11
school, IDEA doesn't apply to you. So you are not,
25:16
you don't have the right of faith. The free appropriate education,
25:19
the least restrictive environment, an individual educational
25:22
plan, procedural safeguards, all those things are gone.
25:26
Once you choose to go to a private school, you have some protections
25:30
under 504. And if, if the schools
25:35
receive federal funding, which with the vouchers, there's also discussions that.
25:38
Well, you know, I know there was a case in Arizona, if I'm not mistaken,
25:41
where they say, well, it's not the state who's
25:45
funneling the funds to schools, but it's the parent through the Educational Savings account
25:49
using that. So 544. That's not applied either.
25:53
I did not know about that. That doesn't surprise me, but I wasn't aware of
25:56
that case. And the other one is ADA would be the most
26:00
broader policy, but it doesn't apply to religious
26:04
schools that now are part also the voucher program.
26:07
Yes. So. So here it gets a little complicated,
26:11
but I think it's important to, to walk through.
26:14
Yeah. So private
26:25
schools that receive federal funding are
26:29
covered by Section 504 of the Rehabilitation
26:33
act, but the application to
26:37
private schools is different than to public schools.
26:40
Private schools are only required to make minor adjustments,
26:44
whatever that means. Even private schools
26:49
that do not receive any federal funding
26:53
are covered by Title 3 of the ADA, the Americans with Disabilities act,
26:58
unless, as you say, they fall under an exception
27:01
for schools controlled by religious entities.
27:04
Yeah, so, yes, it's. And as we mentioned,
27:08
IDEA doesn't apply to the school. It still has some protections for parents with
27:12
regard to equitable services. So there is
27:16
a. Yeah, it's, it gets complicated.
27:19
Yeah. Yeah. And there's, there's a lot of concerns with that because one
27:23
of the things we're finding through, through the research is
27:26
that those,
27:30
those changes or those waivers
27:33
are not very well communicated to parents sometimes, and they're not
27:37
even in the legislature or the information
27:41
that parents are getting of how much they're losing
27:44
if they're moving into a voucher program. Yes, it depends on the
27:47
state. It depends on the program. Like the new legislation
27:51
introduced in Texas, it's called SB2,
27:55
does include a provision about making sure parents are aware.
28:00
But, but again, it depends on every. Whenever within the US
28:04
as opposed to Spain or probably Argentina.
28:08
The, the rules
28:11
for these policies are.
28:14
We could talk about sort of in, we could use a broad brush
28:18
and talk in broad terms about what a voucher policy is
28:21
and what it entails. But really, every state's policy is
28:25
a little bit different. Same thing with charter schools. Right. So.
28:29
And really the same thing with, with any, you know, if we move outside of
28:32
education, if we're talking about, you know, higher education, for example,
28:35
or roads or prisons. Every, every state has its own set of laws.
28:40
And so, yes, it's, it's important to recognize there are differences.
28:44
And when we, when we speak about these, these research Findings we're
28:48
also trying to generalize as best we can.
28:51
Yeah, but. But every state's going to be different. Yeah,
28:55
maybe state specific. Absolutely. You know,
28:58
one may say, you know, who cares if they don't have, they don't have all
29:01
these legal protections if they are happy with the school and
29:04
they have good educational outcomes? Right. So what
29:08
do we know about the educational outcomes or
29:12
the experiences of parents that are using these voucher schools?
29:17
So the vast majority of voucher
29:21
programs are and have been designed
29:26
to be opaque regarding results, regarding academic
29:31
results, regarding who's using them, all the things that researchers tend
29:35
to care about. The data are
29:38
not either not collected or not made available in most voucher programs.
29:44
According to a 2018 federal government study,
29:49
there is no publicly available data that
29:53
allow us to examine how well private schools are in voucher programs,
29:57
are serving students with disabilities specifically.
30:01
That said, we do now have some very
30:05
clear evidence about how well private schools are doing in
30:09
these voucher programs, and it's not good.
30:13
Several of the larger expanded programs
30:17
were researched in quick succession.
30:20
Studies came out between like 2016 to 2019.
30:24
The studies focused on four programs, one in Washington
30:29
D.C. one in Louisiana, one in Indiana,
30:32
and one in Ohio. And while
30:36
the results from DC Started negative and ended up
30:40
largely awash, the results from the other three were devastating,
30:45
showing dramatically negative academic
30:49
incomes. Actually academic incomes, academic results for,
30:53
for mathematics learning among voucher recipients.
30:57
The results for reading also tended to be negative. But. But nothing startling. Like with,
31:01
with the mathematics learning for Louisiana and Ohio.
31:04
The negative results were comparable to the impact of like Katrina and
31:08
Covid. I mean, just devastating results.
31:13
There have been attempts by voucher advocates to
31:17
say, well, that's not, that doesn't apply to ESAs, those were conventional programs,
31:21
or that doesn't apply outside Louisiana because Louisiana had too many
31:24
demands placed on schools to issue tests and schools didn't
31:28
good schools didn't want to participate or I mean, all sorts of what
31:33
I would call excuse making and trying to move the goalposts about,
31:38
about the results. But there's no question the results were very,
31:41
very troubling.
31:45
Wow. So it, it's large.
31:48
You still do see some advocates making the,
31:54
you know, we need to help these students have better academic opportunities
31:57
argument. But it's, but for the most part that,
32:00
that part of the advocacy argument has,
32:04
has disappeared because the results are just so bad.
32:08
So what are the strongest advocacy arguments if it's
32:12
not outcomes, it's more about funding, about addressing
32:18
funding issues in the state. Well,
32:21
as I mentioned, the funding is Not a good selling point
32:25
either. Although it's interesting you raised that because that did used to be
32:30
the argument. ProPublica published a
32:34
detailed article this past July titled School
32:38
vouchers were supposed to save taxpayer money. Instead they
32:41
blew a massive hole in Arizona's budget.
32:46
And it's not just Arizona,
32:49
as I mentioned earlier.
32:52
Other states have this pattern of who's taking up
32:55
the vouchers. Right. So it tends to be
32:59
families, for example, who already are sending their kids to public,
33:03
to private school. If, if the state takes
33:07
on the tuition payments for families
33:11
sending their kids to private school, that's a whole new entitlement.
33:14
Right. That's a whole new part of the budget.
33:17
And so what we saw in Florida
33:21
was I think it was a. $4 million.
33:24
No, 4 billion. Yeah, $4 billion.
33:28
Just slightly. I think it was 3.9 billion for the 2 point for
33:32
the 24, 25 school year.
33:36
That's not the hole in the budget, that's the, you know, estimated cost of the
33:39
program. Yeah, in Arizona it was a
33:43
billion dollars. Just maybe just short of a billion dollars. Obviously a
33:47
smaller state, but the governor of Arizona said
33:51
they require that it's going to require budget cuts to other
33:55
important, you know, the massive hole in the budget has to
33:58
somewhere that when you're balancing the budget it's going to require cuts elsewhere.
34:03
So with regard to the impact of vouchers on funding,
34:06
we really have two types of data. We have those
34:09
new numbers about the impact on state budgets. And it's
34:13
not just Arizona by the way, where the numbers came in much higher.
34:17
Florida and other states, they said oh
34:20
no, this isn't going to cost anywhere near that amount. And then the numbers started
34:24
coming in.
34:27
So with regard, that's, that's one
34:30
type of data the state
34:34
budgets overall. The other is trying to figure
34:37
out the impact on public school budgets. In particular,
34:42
there was a report put out by Public Funds Public Schools which is
34:45
part of Education Law center, which I should add
34:49
on chair of the board of trustees. So I, you know,
34:52
take the full disclosure. Yeah,
34:56
Public Funds Public Schools put out a report.
34:59
I want to say it was less than two years ago. Sam Abrams
35:03
was the lead author and it, it documents the correlation
35:07
between massive increases in public spending
35:11
on voucher programs. They looked at Arizona
35:14
and Florida as well as five other states with the largest long
35:19
standing voucher programs. So they looked at the,
35:22
they document the correlation between those budget increases,
35:25
those increase, the increased spending on voucher programs in those states and
35:29
a decrease in the portion of those
35:33
states GDP going to Public school going to public education.
35:38
And they found that that correlation, even though public school enrollment
35:42
in the states generally decreased, and they found that in six of those
35:46
seven states, the per pupil spending in public schools
35:50
was substantially reduced or frozen after adjusting for inflation.
35:56
And meanwhile, over the same period, if you look across other states,
36:00
the 43 other states, per pupil funding
36:05
increased almost 11% nationally.
36:09
And so the conclusion that those
36:13
researchers reached was that this, you know, the, the hit on the broader
36:17
budgets was indirectly or, you know, somewhat directly
36:21
hitting the public school budgets in particular.
36:25
Wow. There's another tool that your
36:29
listeners might find useful. It's from the Economic Policy Institute and
36:33
it was released only a month ago. It's a calculator
36:37
that you could, you can go to their website and I
36:41
could give you that to add. Yeah, we'll put it on
36:44
the, on the link with the show. It allows anyone to
36:48
estimate the cost of a voucher program to
36:52
a given public school district.
36:55
Focusing on the, on the issue that of declining revenue
36:59
from declining enrollment. So it's a very direct way of thinking
37:03
about if you are, and this is particularly important, I think,
37:06
in smaller communities that have only one or two or three schools available.
37:12
If you're, you know, in a large urban or suburban area with lots
37:15
of schools available, it might not be quite as important.
37:18
But if you have a,
37:22
say, a single school and you, and you're losing 20, 30% of the
37:26
enrollment, you still have to maintain the building, you still
37:29
have to pay teachers, et cetera, et cetera, and you end up with a real
37:34
tight, difficult set
37:37
of decisions about where to spend the remaining money that you have.
37:40
And it hurts the education, the argument is that hurts the education of the students
37:44
who do remain in the school. Yeah,
37:47
so, so I'm here for you. Is like educational outcomes
37:51
not so good so far? At least for what we know.
37:55
There's not a funding reason either. So what
37:58
are the main remaining arguments to push for this legislation?
38:03
Well, I mentioned that, that the Maya advocates of vouchers are
38:09
strong advocates of free market or deregulated programs.
38:14
And I think that when you boil,
38:17
when you boil it down, there are, there's that reason and
38:21
the religion reason. And so
38:25
the, that reason is simply we don't want, we don't
38:29
like government, we don't like government bureaucracy, we don't like
38:33
the regulations
38:37
attached to government money.
38:41
And we want to free up the free market to give
38:44
parents choice and to give innovators
38:48
freedom to experiment within
38:52
that marketplace. And parents decisions will then drive improvement.
38:56
Right. It's the Argument, We. We see to some extent with charter
39:00
schools, and we see with pretty much everything in society. Right. Everything from
39:03
airline deregulation to bank deregulation,
39:07
et cetera. Right. The religious.
39:11
The religious issue is pretty straightforward. Right.
39:15
The establishment clause has been interpreted up to now to not
39:19
allow public schools to have religious
39:23
instruction and proselytizing. And if we shift
39:26
the money to fund taxpayer money to fund private
39:30
schools, that means that the actions of
39:34
the school are not attributable to the government in
39:37
the same way. And so the schools can engage in religious instruction.
39:41
And so if you're a family who wants your child to
39:46
where it's extremely important for your child to have religious instruction
39:50
in school, public schools
39:53
then cannot serve that purpose. And that
39:57
means you can't benefit from taxpayer subsidies
40:01
in the same. Without a voucher plan, you can't benefit from taxpayer subsidies
40:05
in the same way that a less religious family
40:09
could. Well, the Supreme Court is about to hear a case for
40:13
religious charter schools, if I'm not mistaken, too.
40:16
Yes. That's the St. Isidore case out of Oklahoma that was announced just
40:20
last week. Yeah. And we could discuss
40:23
that. I think it's. Yeah. It's important to understand what's going on
40:27
in that realm as part of this.
40:30
This larger story. Yeah. Because that. I mean, that's.
40:33
That's playing within this narrative. Right. Of adding religious schools
40:37
to the repertoire of school choices.
40:40
Yeah. So until 2020,
40:43
there was a case from the supreme court called Espinosa
40:47
vs. Montana Department of Education that the supreme court decided in 2020.
40:51
Before then, it was. We had voucher
40:55
programs around the country. Not a lot of them, but we had some
40:59
that only provided
41:03
the voucher to
41:06
a school that provided a secular education,
41:10
basically excluding religious private schools. And the Supreme Court
41:15
in Espinosa held that a private school cannot be excluded
41:19
from a voucher program because of its religious status.
41:22
To exclude the private school or a private school run by
41:26
a church from any government program
41:31
just because of its religious status is considered by the Supreme
41:34
Court to be a discriminatory violation of the First
41:38
Amendment's free exercise clause. And then a couple years later,
41:41
we had this case out of Maine that I obliquely referenced earlier.
41:45
It's called Carson v. Macon. But he dealt with the tuition, the town tuitioning
41:49
program there, and a very similar issue, but it focused not so
41:52
much on religious status status, but the question of whether the state
41:56
could exclude a school.
42:01
The state allowed schools to be run by churches, but still required a secular education.
42:05
And again, the court said, no, that's a violation of the free exercise clause.
42:09
So now we have this case out of Oklahoma. It's a
42:13
virtual charter school called St. Isidore,
42:16
run by the, that would be run by the Catholic
42:20
Church there. Um, and it
42:25
would be, you know, according to their, their application
42:29
and according to the arguments they're making in court, they want this to be an
42:32
expressly religious charter school. So proselytizing
42:36
curriculum, everything would be tied to the
42:41
beliefs, the Catholic beliefs. And the school also
42:46
is essentially reserving its right to, to engage in a faith based
42:49
discrimination. Yeah. And so
42:54
the Supreme Court just took up that case. The state Supreme Court in
42:58
Oklahoma struck down the,
43:03
the, found that. Found the, the, the granting
43:06
of that charter to be a violation of the state's charter school law as well
43:09
as the state's constitution, essentially a separation of church
43:13
and state provision in the state constitution.
43:18
And the U.S. supreme Court is going to look at that
43:21
case primarily through the same lens or asking the
43:25
same questions that it did in the case out of Montana and the case
43:28
out of Maine. Most people who watch the
43:31
Supreme Court think that it's, it's very likely
43:35
that they're going to require
43:39
all charter school laws throughout the country to essentially become a
43:43
type of voucher law. In other words,
43:46
to require the charter schools to
43:50
require the charter granting organizations. So school
43:53
districts, the state, whoever it is, to require
43:58
the school districts and other charter granting organizations
44:01
to allow religious institutions to apply for and
44:05
receive charters and to then
44:09
run the schools as religious schools.
44:12
A follow up question I have with that because I think one of the things
44:15
that the show strive to do also is not just to talk about students with
44:17
disabilities, but within the group of students with disabilities
44:21
look at issues of racial disparities or other forms of heterogeneity
44:25
within the group. One of the things that I see with this
44:28
is, for example, that LGTBQ
44:33
students with disabilities may face discrimination because
44:37
of this new trend on opening religious schools.
44:41
Yes. And I, and I think that it's not just religious schools,
44:44
of course, that discriminate against LGBTQ kids.
44:48
But yes, that, that is a,
44:51
a very real possibility. The other group that I think is
44:55
most likely to be swept into that intersectionality would be
44:59
children in immigrant families, particularly children
45:03
whose first language isn't English. The issues I
45:06
raised with regard to students with disabilities about having the personnel
45:10
and resources at would
45:14
also apply, I think, to students whose first language is
45:17
not English. Yeah. And they don't have the same protection,
45:20
not the same services. Right. In private schools, they're not required to Provide.
45:24
They're not required to provide the services. They aren't even required to accept the
45:28
student. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's interesting. Intersection of
45:31
LGTBQ English language learners, but also of racial minorities.
45:35
I think so too. Because what we're seeing is that, and we discussed before
45:39
is like the mostly within the group of students with disabilities,
45:42
it seems that the profile of families that are mostly the beneficiaries
45:46
of this are middle, higher income, white families of
45:50
students with disabilities. I mean, the simple answer is yes. And I think it's because
45:53
of a lot of things, including the very high correlation in the US
45:57
between wealth and wealth,
46:00
class income and race and ethnicity.
46:04
Yeah. So, you know, we've been talking about all these issues,
46:08
you know, and we have a few questions, but I think one important one is
46:11
about accountability. What are the accountability
46:18
procedures or policies that are there to keep
46:23
schools that receive vouchers accountable?
46:27
Well, as I mentioned, the policies are inherently deregulatory.
46:30
Right. They're promoted and designed by those who think an unregulated
46:34
free market will yield the best outcomes. So there's
46:38
very little transparency or accountability.
46:41
Instead, the choices of families are supposed
46:45
to hold the schools accountable.
46:49
Responding I should. I'm trying to think of
46:52
how to phrase this, but I think responding
46:55
to market incentives, if you're talking about the private schools here,
46:59
responding to market incentives really often means avoiding a school
47:03
students, avoiding students who will yield
47:08
lower test scores or more classroom disruptions and
47:12
who will cost more to educate.
47:14
So that that unregulated market does create
47:19
incentives, but they aren't necessarily incentives that are going
47:22
to help families with disabilities.
47:25
Yeah. And I should add that in that sort of market, even when
47:30
market forces or other forces shut down a bad actor's
47:34
private school, that person or company can open up a new one
47:38
and again take the taxpayer money through vouchers.
47:43
So, yes, we've seen what
47:46
I was discussing earlier about the difficulty that some parents
47:50
of students with disabilities have in finding a private school.
47:54
There was a study, the final official evaluation 2010
48:00
of the Washington, D.C. voucher program found
48:05
that a main reason why students didn't use the voucher offered to
48:09
them in D.C. was that they were unable to find a
48:13
participating school with services for their student disability.
48:18
In fact, 22% of parents who rejected a voucher in
48:21
D.C. that had been offered for their child didn't
48:25
sell because the school lacked special special
48:30
needs services for their child. And I think it was all
48:33
it was 12% of parents who accepted the voucher then
48:37
left the program citing 12%
48:41
of those who then left the program cited that of
48:45
the lack of disability services at the school as the reason.
48:49
Yeah. And I've seen another study I think was from 2016
48:52
or 17 finding that
48:56
actually specialty schools are not enrolling in vouching programs.
49:00
Schools that specialize in particular students or in particular subject
49:04
areas, they're not enrolling. What we have is more like a generalized
49:08
school that are much more general. Right. Yeah.
49:11
Yeah. It's tough. There are trade offs a policymaker has to make because
49:15
I mentioned the issue of what's called topping off or requiring parents to
49:18
pay more beyond the amount of the voucher. If you do that,
49:22
you can get more schools to participate if you
49:25
allow. If a school serving students with autism
49:29
charges $30,000 a year and the voucher is $10,000,
49:34
the parent then is on the hook for the 20,000. But at least the
49:38
school participates. Right. That's one argument.
49:41
The school wouldn't participate if it were capped at the 10,000.
49:45
Yeah. And probably for what you were saying before,
49:48
if they open those kind of programs, probably the ones who are going to use
49:52
them are the ones who already enroll on those schools, I imagine,
49:57
or they're not enrolled privately in public
50:01
schools because I mean, those schools are pretty expensive. And I don't
50:04
think a voucher program will go a long way providing
50:08
the full tuition for a specialized school.
50:13
So, you know, I close usually
50:17
with kind of the same similar question to all our interviewees.
50:22
And I know this is what I'm going to ask is kind of hard particular
50:24
in these times, but I want you thinking about within the next five years,
50:28
what would you like to see regarding equity and inclusion regarding students with
50:32
disabilities? You can think about voucher programs or in general.
50:35
And I know that these four years may be particularly hard to
50:39
dream in the current circumstances.
50:44
Yeah. With that qualification.
50:48
I think that because we're talking about not just private schools,
50:52
but private schools receiving vouchers and we mentioned
50:56
that the protections of IDEA don't apply to
50:59
private schools. And we've discussed 504 and ADA,
51:03
and we discussed other issues of discrimination.
51:08
There is absolutely nothing that says
51:12
that a state's voucher program cannot attach
51:17
those strings to the public money the same way the federal government
51:21
does with idea. Right. So extension of protections
51:25
to students attending any school that accepts taxpayer funding.
51:29
Again, I'm dreaming here. I don't. I think the problem is that
51:33
the states that are most likely to consider that seriously are not the states adopting.
51:37
Adopting the voucher programs in the first place. There's A, there's not a very good
51:40
Venn diagram there.
51:43
So, so with that qualification and with your qualification,
51:46
I think that that is something for, for us
51:50
all to think about in terms of why we're not requiring these
51:54
protections to follow the money and follow the student
51:58
to a private school. The same way that European
52:03
systems generally require their publicly
52:06
funded private schools to comply with most of the same
52:10
rules that their government run, government run,
52:14
publicly funded schools are. I would also add,
52:18
and this gets, this is much broader. Years ago I
52:22
wrote a, a law review piece with Dan
52:26
Lawson. Do you know Dan? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
52:29
He was in our show, let's say our artist. He was in our show like
52:32
three, four episodes ago. We talk about disciplinary issues. Yeah.
52:36
Ah, okay, there you go. Well, I mean this goes back well over a
52:39
decade, probably closer to two decades. But he and I
52:42
were looking at the IDEA protections in
52:46
particular or lawsuits in general that were enforcing
52:50
individual parents rights under IDEA,
52:54
mainly under IDEA, sometimes under 504.
52:59
And you might have seen this is going
53:02
to be a little bit circular, but I know when we wrote
53:05
our School's Choice Access Charter School Access book, we came across situations where
53:10
we spoke to advocates
53:14
for parents with students with disabilities who said that
53:18
when a charter school failed to
53:21
comply with the law, they would contact that charter school as
53:25
their, as the attorney and the charter school would almost immediately back down for that
53:29
individual child and then would continue the practice and get
53:32
another complaint the next year from another parent. Right. The school is still engaging
53:36
in the same behavior. And that's not just charter schools.
53:40
There are bad actor schools in every sector.
53:44
And what
53:48
I would like to see, and what Dan and I advocated in that article is
53:52
for idea itself to be, and in section 504,
53:56
I guess to be amended in a way that allows
54:00
for protection of group rights. So it's not just individual parent advocating
54:04
for that parent's child, but mechanisms available to
54:08
try to use these lawsuits to change behavior
54:12
more broadly. Yeah, that's fascinating. I mean,
54:15
because one of the things that you say that is very important that happens in
54:18
regular public schools, charter schools, and vouch for is that
54:21
the burden is always on the parent. I mean the protections are there,
54:25
the legislations are there, but if you don't have the resources,
54:29
the time, the understanding, you're not going to be able to benefit
54:32
from those because schools may not be able to comply with
54:36
those. And if you don't complain, nothing's going to happen. Right. It's always important.
54:41
And, and again, the parents who are most likely to be able to advocate
54:44
for their kids are generally not the parents
54:49
of kids who, who really need, need those. I mean every,
54:52
every child needs resources. But, but if you're going to try to try,
54:56
try to rank them, kids who have parents
55:00
who are going to be able to file those lawsuits are much more likely to
55:03
be getting rich opportunities to learn in other
55:07
ways in their life. No, that's totally true. I mean there's such
55:10
a huge racial class disparities in
55:14
terms of who can sue and who can raise concerns to
55:17
schools. And we see that in all the legislation, for example on
55:21
unilateral placement. You mean you see the Andrew case or the prior cases
55:24
that have shaped how students with disabilities unilateral place
55:28
students, most of them did not come from low
55:31
income families. But yeah,
55:34
that's a whole another episode. But I wanted to thank you
55:38
Kevin for being here with us. Thank you Federico. I'm speaking with you.
55:41
Yeah, take care.
55:47
Thank you for listening to Dive in, a podcast
55:50
about equity diversity and inclusion in special education research.
55:54
This episode was produced by me, the Merico by donor.
55:57
We contributions of Tasia Gonzalez, Kelly Carrero
56:01
and Haya Abdelaki. I hope you enjoyed the episode and
56:04
learned as much as I did. Take care and I see you next time.