Introduction

As policymakers on Capitol Hill wrestle with reforming the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), congressional Republicans and a host of conservative think tanks are vocally promoting school vouchers as a potential model for reform. After bipartisan consensus on the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001 and the Education Sciences Reform Act in 2002, apparently it is back to business as usual, with Republicans proposing school choice as a panacea for all manner of educational problems. In addition to believing that school choice invariably drives innovation, voucher proponents also argue that parental satisfaction should be the ultimate arbiter of school performance. That's why they see school choice as the most logical reform for the nation's complicated and troubled special education system.

Expanding choice and customization in education is a vital debate and the Progressive Policy Institute staunchly supports public school choice, public charter schools, and other publicly accountable choice options. However, the push for vouchers in special education is driven more by a political agenda than any specific special education reform issue. In fact, it is likely that special education vouchers would work at cross-purposes with other IDEA reforms that many Republicans and moderate Democrats support.

A little-known initiative in Florida has emerged as the basis for national proposals to expand choice in special education. Florida's McKay Scholarship program gives parents of children with special needs a voucher that they can use at a public or private school of their choice. (The program is named for former State Senate President John McKay, who was instrumental in its creation and is himself the father of a child with a disability.) When the House of Representatives considered its version of IDEA reform, two amendments based on the McKay model were defeated. Currently, special education already operates as a de facto choice program for some parents, and not without considerable abuse. Whether or not Congress adds a voucher component to IDEA, states today have the option of creating their own state-level McKay-like programs, which conservative policy analysts have urged them to do. Nonetheless, the idea is sure to emerge during Senate debate and as the IDEA reform bill moves forward.

But before policymakers embrace the relatively new McKay program as a national model for IDEA reform, it is worth taking a closer look at how McKay is working in practice and what early lessons that experience offers policymakers. Further, it is important to consider how voucherizing special education would interact with larger IDEA reform issues identified by multiple analyses as major special education problems.

This paper analyzes the history and structure of the McKay program, available information on participating schools and students, and the likely impact of vouchers in IDEA. We conclude that using IDEA reauthorization as subterfuge for advancing school vouchers is ill considered, both on its merits and timing. The McKay program in Florida appears to be functioning exactly as one would expect a private school choice plan to work. Unfortunately, while this earns the program high marks among voucher supporters, it gets a low grade as an effective special education reform. Although IDEA needs changes to better integrate it with emerging school choice options in many states, special education vouchers are a seductively simple approach. While potentially addressing some special education problems, these vouchers will create other problems and increase, rather than decrease, perverse incentives for parents and educators in special education.

In addition, vouchers fail to deal with serious core problems of IDEA that numerous policy analyses have identified and that the House IDEA bill, H.R. 1350, takes steps to address. In fact, rather than advance these reform efforts, special education vouchers threaten to erode the bipartisan consensus that has emerged for special education reform and complicate efforts to pass a significant reform bill.