School Choice Now! is the official blog of the American Federation for Children, the nation's voice for educational choice. We seek to improve our nation’s K-12 education by advancing systemic and sustainable public policy that empowers parents, particularly those in low income families, to choose the education they determine is best for their children.
Showing posts with label special needs scholarships. Show all posts
Showing posts with label special needs scholarships. Show all posts
Families on Oklahoma
are breathing a huge sigh of relief and celebrating a legal victory that
upholds Oklahoma’s voucher program designed for children with special
needs. In a landslide victory—the high
court ruled 7-2—the court said that two school districts could not sue parents
participating in the Lindsey Nicole Henry Scholarship for Students with
Disabilities Program.
The program—passed
with bipartisan support in 2010 and signed into law by former Democratic
Governor Brad Henry—now serves more than 150 students with special needs. One of the students whose lives have changed
thanks to this program is Ian Buckley:
Ian
Buckley attended public school through the third grade with an Individualized
Education Program.
With
a learning disability and a sensory integration disability, Ian struggled
socially in school. Many afternoons, when he was picked up from school, he was
upset. Ian did not fit into any peer group at his school.
In
July 2010, Ian’s family applied for the Lindsey Nicole Henry Scholarship for
Students with Disabilities Program. With the scholarship, Ian switched to Town
and Country School, a private school for children with special needs.
“Socially,
he’s a lot more sure of himself now,” said Gerald, Ian’s father. “It’s a great
learning environment, and [Ian is] a lot more receptive and is not afraid to
ask questions.”
Ian,
now in the fifth grade, is thriving at his new school.
“The
scholarship made something really terrific feasible,” Gerald said. “The
scholarship introduced Ian to the school that he’ll go to for the rest of his
school life.”
- American Federation for Children | Alliance for School Choice, MSG
Last month, Steven Spielberg opened up about being diagnosed
as dyslexic five years ago. While he was
diagnosed as an adult, Spielberg speaks
about the struggles of learning to read and being bullied in school. What helped him overcome his struggles? Making movies and his parents’ dedication to
ensuring that he received the education that best fit his needs.
Every night, Spielberg says in his first interview about his dyslexia,
his parents worked with him and reviewed his homework.
And while James Redford, not Steven Spielberg, is the
director of a new HBO documentary on dyslexia called The Big Picture: Rethinking Dyslexia, which premieres on Monday, October 29, both have a lot to say
on the subject matter. The film profiles
students and famous faces including Richard Branson, Charles Schwab, and California Lt. Gov. Gavin
Newsom, all of whom have thrived despite—and sometimes in part because of—their dyslexia.
Today, we still don’t know a lot about dyslexia. But we do know that people with dyslexia have
normal and healthy brains that work differently. There are more tools nowadays to help students
struggling to learn to read, including a new font called OpenDyslexic, which weighs letters down to make
them easier to read. And of course, there
is a private school voucher program in Mississippi that began this school yearfor students with Dyslexia.
Anthony’s family moved to Florida just to participate in the
Florida Scholarship Tax Credit program because his family wanted to find the
school that could best serve Anthony, who has Asperger’s syndrome. Here’s Anthony, in his own words, on his
experience of attending the school of his parent’s choice thanks to Florida’s
private school choice program:
Before
I started going to Liberty Christian Academy, I thought it was normal that kids
didn’t accept kids like me, or that all teachers didn’t know just how to deal
with someone who was different. I have Asperger’s syndrome, but I do well in school. Still, I
didn’t seem to fit in. I thought, well, that’s as good as it gets. I wasn’t
happy. I didn’t like school. I ate alone. My mom didn’t know what to do until
she heard about Step Up For Students in Florida. We moved from Ohio to Florida
and once I qualified, she applied for the scholarship and I started at Liberty
Christian part way into my sophomore year. The kids there are accepting of
different people. They even chose me as the vice president of our National
Honor Society chapter. It’s a challenge, but I think I’m ready to step up and
rise to the occasion. I think I can really be a standout.
—Anthony Hamilton, a Florida Tax
Credit Scholarshi recipient and junior at Liberty Christian Academy, Tavares,
Fla.
The Florida Scholarship Tax Credit is serving more than
45,000 students this school year. And
earlier, the program was expanded by increasing
the cap on donations by $10.25 million, bringing the statewide donation cap to
$229 million and expanding eligibility to include students in grades 2-5
without the prior public school attendance requirement.
The Georgia constitutional amendment for a charter school authorizing commission isn’t the only school choice news making headlines in the Peach State. The state legislature is working to expand the Georgia Special Needs Scholarship Program, a voucher program for children with special needs.
House Bill 181 includes several changes to strengthen the the program, which helps nearly 3,000 students attend the school of their parents’ choice. Both the House and Senate have passed the bill, but the House must vote on the amended Senate version before the legislation heads to the governor’s desk.
Here are the proposed changes to the Georgia Special Needs Scholarship Program included in House Bill 181:
Specific Parent Notification Policies: Requires stronger parent notification policies so that parents of eligible students know the educational options available to their children and be able to make the educational choice that best meets their child’s needs.
Multiple Enrollment Dates: Creates three enrollment dates of August 1, October 1, and March 1 each school year so parents have the option to enroll in a school that best meets their child’s educational needs. If a student enrolled in a participating school continues to struggle, multiple enrollment dates will allow parents to find a school that better meets their educational needs, instead of staying in an ill-fitting school for an entire year.
Payment Deadlines: Establishes specific dates for when tuition money must be paid to participating schools, allowing schools to better serve their students. Specific payment deadlines will allow schools to remain in the program. Currently, many schools do not receive payments from the state for months and have been forced to leave the program due to the financial strains. This will allow more schools to participate and stay in the program and provide more options for kids!
Individual Education Program (IEP) Requirements: An erroneous rule change in 2010 required students to have an IEP for an entire school year prior to participating in the program. House Bill 181 requires that students have an IEP at some point during the year. This was the original intent of the law and will remove unnecessary barriers for students. If a child attending public school is diagnosed with a learning disability and receives an IEP in October, the student would have to remain in public for another entire year before becoming eligible for the program. This change allows students who need more options, to have access to those options in a timely manner.
Though these changes are technical, they will without a doubt strengthen and streamline the program, thereby providing even more help to thousands of students across Georgia.
- American Federation for Children | Alliance for School Choice, MSG
The Wisconsin
Special Needs Scholarship Act, Assembly Bill 110, was passed
out of the Assembly Committee on Education last week on a 7-4 vote. And the Senate Committee on Education is
considering the Specials Needs Scholarship Act as well.
Successful passage and
enactment of the Special Needs Scholarship Act would be just the latest in a
surge of school choice programs for special needs students around the country.
There are currently 10 private school choice programs across the nation for
children with special needs. They operate in eight states—Arizona, Florida,
Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Utah, with two programs
in both Arizona and Ohio. At the beginning of the 2011-12 school year,
nearly 30,000 students were enrolled in the programs.
In the Senate
hearing on Tuesday, more than 30 parents and children testified in support of
this bill. While the Committee has not
yet voted on the measure, Committee members listened to more than five hours of
testimony.
Just one of the many
parents to testify, Sally Schaeffer, mother of Lydia, spoke at yesterday’s
hearing in support of this important legislation.
Read parts of her testimony below for the inspiring story of why the
Badger State needs the Special Needs Scholarship Act.
Families of children with special needs in North Carolina have new hope today, thanks to a new tax credit measure passed by the legislature with strong bipartisan support and awaiting approval by the governor.
House Bill 344 passed the House by a 94-20 margin and a 44-5 margin in the Senate. A total of 65 percent of Democratic legislators supported the measure, and Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina (PEFNC) led the effort to generate support for the proposal, rallying thousands of parents on behalf of school choice.
If enacted, North Carolina would become the 14th state or jurisdiction in the United States to provide parents with access to private schools through school vouchers or scholarship tax credits.
Here's PEFNC president Darrell Allison (emphasis ours):
With this strong showing of support within and beyond the legislature, our hope is that this is enough compelling evidence for our governor to support this measure with her signature. With a stroke of her pen, thousands of families will be able to afford placing their special needs children in educational environments that meet all of their needs. Pending the governor’s approval, this will be the first piece of K-12 legislation that gives parents statewide choice regarding public and private education in North Carolina; in a word, awesome.
This comes just a week after the legislature voted to eliminate the state’s 100-school cap on charter schools, a measure that also passed with strong bipartisan support.
Here's the full release about today's news from PEFNC.
- American Federation for Children | Alliance for School Choice, MAG
In our discussion yesterday about the benefits of special needs scholarship programs, we failed to mention that public support for school voucher (and scholarship tax credit) programs for children with special needs is overwhelming.
Seriously, these types of programs are off-the-charts popular. Case in point: North Carolina.
In the Tar Heel State, school choice advocates, led by the highly effective group Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina, are fighting to pass a special needs scholarship tax credit.
They polled public support for the program, and the numbers were astronomical: A February 2011 poll found that 82 percent of likely Democratic voters favor a program that would allow special needs children to attend a nonpublic school that meets their needs. Yes...you read that right. Likely Democratic voters.
Eighty-two percent support special needs scholarships!
Wow.
Now, here's the nitty gritty of the bill:
-- The Tax Credits for Children with Disabilities Act, House Bill 344, which passed the Education Committee on April 26, would provide tax credits up to $6,000 for parents of special needs children for nonpublic tuition and other services.
-- North Carolina has nearly 200,000 special needs children in public schools. Currently, North Carolina pays $8,160 and school districts pay $1,931 per student to attend a public school that often fails students with special needs. This program will create more educational options to children and be a financial lifeline to hundreds of thousands of families.
-- Experts say that up to five percent of qualified students would take advantage of the tax credit, which would save the state $10 million per year and school districts $9.2 million per year.
People who want to prevent the creation, growth, and expansion of school choice programs have but three effective weapons on their side: money, manpower, and mythology.
Special interests spend time and money to disseminate innuendo about school voucher programs and scholarship tax credit initiatives, throwing as many rumors at legislators until they identify a myth so lethal that it torpedoes school choice legislation.
No mistruth is as pernicious, however, as the one that is cropping up with regularity this year: that school voucher programs and scholarship tax credit programs somehow don't help children with disabilities. It's an allegation fraught with emotion, but filled with error.
Here's the truth: school voucher programs for students with disabilities have flourished in recent years—and with bipartisan support.
Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Utah offer scholarships to children with special learning needs. In total, these programs allow 25,000 children access to private schools—educational institutions they otherwise would have been unable to attend.
In fact, 35 percent of the existing school voucher (and scholarship tax credit) programs in America are specifically designed for children with Individualized Education Plans (IEPs) or other special needs classifications.
And, according to a press release issued today by the American Federation for Children and the Alliance for School Choice, 16 states are considering special needs scholarship legislation during the 2011 legislative session. This is huge!
In Wisconsin, special needs scholarship legislation is receiving broad support, as evidenced by this video (below) and on this website: http://www.specialneedsscholarshipswi.org/
Nationally, more than $200 million is being spent this year for publicly-funded private school choice programs for children with disabilities. All of the data, including rigorous research and academic comparison studies, indicates that these programs work. One researcher even found that Florida's special needs scholarship program benefits nearby public schools—thanks to healthy, innovation-fueled competition.
But if you want to really know what people think about school vouchers for children with special needs, just ask a parent.
As one parent of a student who receives a special needs scholarship in Utah wrote, "One of my sons was so verbally abused in public school that he became physically sick each morning at the thought of going to school….[School choice] enables my son to attend a school where he can reach his full potential. don't feel I exaggerate when I say that [this program] gave him back his life."
- American Federation for Children | Alliance for School Choice, ARC
