For Students with Disabilities, Vouchers Fail the Test

June 19, 2002

By Jim Ward

IF THE U.S. Supreme Court were Hollywood, then you could say Doris Simmons-Harris has received top billing on the marquee. The 48-year-old Cleveland mother was the original plaintiff who challenged the constitutionality of the city's school voucher program.

Although Simmons-Harris' name has been etched into legal history, most Americans know nothing about her. But they should.

Voucher supporters have aired slick TV ads featuring a variety of parents.

Yet, you're unlikely to see many ads including Simmons-Harris or other parents whose children are among the millions with mental, physical or learning disabilities. Simmons-Harris never believed the private schools participating in the Cleveland voucher program would accept children like her son, who has attention deficit disorder. Anyone who examines voucher programs will find her skepticism is justified.

In the two urban voucher programs that are funded by public tax dollars, many private schools are either unable or unwilling to educate children with disabilities. In 1996, the year that the Cleveland voucher program began, Ohio businessman and voucher advocate David Brennan wrote to then-Gov. George Voinovich, informing him that "none of the existing private schools will be able to handle a seriously handicapped child."

A few years later, an Ohio Department of Education spokeswoman was equally candid, reporting that many Catholic schools "are not equipped to handle handicapped children" or offer needed services. This is significant because Catholic schools comprise most of the participating Cleveland voucher schools.

Students with disabilities also meet with a chilly reception in Milwaukee, home of the nation's oldest publicly funded voucher program. Only two years ago, Wisconsin officials found that only 8 percent of the city's voucher schools offered special education services.

While state law forbids Milwaukee's voucher schools from explicitly barring these students, these private schools offer no "welcome" mat for students with physical or learning disabilities. The proof can be seen on Empowering Parents for Informed Choices -- an online school database for Milwaukee parents.

On this Web site, for example, Emmaus Lutheran declares that it cannot serve students who have cognitive or learning disabilities, or are emotionally disturbed. Harambee Community School has no special education teachers.

Blessed Sacrament explains that "students who are 2-3 years below grade level cannot be realistically brought up to grade level" because the school lacks tutorial and other programs. Imagine the uproar if a public school made that declaration. Yet another school reports that it "cannot serve wheelchair- bound students."

Florida's McKay voucher program is designed specifically for disabled students, but the state has failed to hold participating schools accountable. AJC Management, which operated six voucher schools in Florida this past school year, faced a variety of allegations from parents, including reports of physical abuse. Teacher turnover has been a major problem.

More than 90 percent of Florida's private schools do not participate in the state's voucher programs. This reflects the unwillingness of private schools to open their doors, as public schools do, to all children.

Moreover, a 1998 survey by the U.S. Department of Education of private schools in large inner-cities found that between 70 and 85 percent of schools would "definitely or probably" not be willing to participate in a voucher program if they were required to accept "students with special needs such as learning disabilities, limited English proficiency or low achievement." Among religious schools, 86 percent expressed this same unwillingness to participate.

Voucher supporters don't seem the least bit bothered by this information.

William Rusher, a pro-voucher syndicated columnist, recently wrote that there are some "essentially ineducable youngsters in the ghetto, on whom vouchers would simply be wasted." Indeed, the voucher crowd seems all too willing to write off entire groups of America's children.

The Supreme Court's 1954 Brown decision struck down "separate but equal" schools, but voucher programs threaten to usher in a new form of segregation. When education is left to the marketplace, it shouldn't surprise anyone that many private schools have absolutely no interest in accepting students whom they cruelly label "ineducable" or too expensive to teach.

Jim Ward is president of ADA Watch and the National Coalition for Disability Rights in Washington, D.C.