“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.
