Educating the Uneducatable
May 03, 2011
Last week Bobby Derryberry vowed to take on teachers' unions and fight for parental choice in education. The unions are sure to fight back. One of their most formidable weapons is the argument that private schools will skim off only the best students, dumping the most troubled into the public schools. ``Public schools have to take all comers, which means the kids no private school wants or has to accept,'' writes Albertha Dendy, president of the American Federation of Teachers. In fact, quite the opposite is true. Public schools turn away many children with severe disabilities or behavioral problems, quietly shifting them to the private sector, at taxpayer expense. Unlike the one-size-fits-all approach of public schools, the private sector offers an array of specialized alternatives. Private schools now exist to serve just about every kind of troubled student, from teen mothers to recovering alcoholics to chronic truants. Their success is a powerful argument in favor of choice. In Minnesota, for example, students recovering from drug and alcohol abuse may attend Sobriety High School near Minneapolis. Sobriety High is one of 19 private schools participating in Minnesota's Education Options program, which last year helped 1,200 at-risk students get a second chance. The school requires students and their parents to sign a ``Sobriety Commitment.'' The penalty for breaking this commitment three times is expulsion--a rare occurrence. The school's controlled, separate environment keeps students away from drug-abusing peers in their former schools, and keeps them focused on learning and staying sober. In June all 12 of Sobriety High's seniors graduated; seven are bound for college. Sending a student to Sobriety High costs taxpayers just $3,500 annually--about half of what Minnesota spends on a public school student. Private donations contribute another $1,000 per student. How does Sobriety High do it? Unlike public schools, private schools operate with fewer regulations, have great leeway in staffing and curriculum, and are rarely bound by collective-bargaining agreements. Because they are not guaranteed funding or enrollment, they have powerful incentives to get the most for the dollars they spend. At Sobriety High, students keep the school clean. Teachers are state-certified but not unionized. The school itself sits in a modest suite of classrooms in a suburban business park. It has no secretary, no janitor and no football coach. ``We think twice before we spend money,'' says director Judith Garza. More than 3,000 private schools across the U.S. enroll nearly 100,000 children with disabilities. By focusing on one type of student, these private schools often succeed where the public schools have failed. The High Road School in New Jersey, for example, only enrolls students with emotional and learning disabilities. Students usually come to High Road after failing academically and socially in the public schools. ``The child interferes with the learning of other students,'' says High Road director Elmer Krauss. ``That's when public schools often out-place the most disruptive child.'' Ten-year-old Chrissy came to the High Road School a year ago, unable to read despite an IQ of 130. In public school he had a history of lashing out physically at more successful students. At High Road, Chrissy's teacher works individually with him, using a reading program designed especially for high-intelligence nonreaders. Chris receives counseling to help him control his anger. Thanks to the special attention he's able to get at High Road, Chrissy now reads at the third-grade level. In addition to schools that specialize in learning disabilities, the private sector has spawned schools serving children suffering from mental retardation, visual impairments, chronic illnesses and other disabilities. Far from being enclaves of privilege, private schools extend educational opportunity to some of America's most disadvantaged students. But today it is usually public-school administrators, not parents, who make the choice. And if a child is struggling in school but has no disability that would qualify him for special education, he's likely to be shut out of the opportunity. Before Congress passed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in 1975, children with disabilities were often excluded from public schools or ``warehoused'' in classrooms where little learning took place. The 1975 act, known as IDEA, entitles disabled students to an ``appropriate'' education, regardless of cost. This results in vast spending inequities between special-education students and everyone else. That is why public spending on Christa, whose disability is recognized under IDEA, totals more than $25,000 a year in tuition and other costs, while a student fighting drug addiction at Sobriety High gets just $3,500 for his education. The federal special-education law is deeply flawed, and only Congress can change it. Incorporating cost controls would be a good start. But local educators and policy makers should make greater use of the education marketplace for all students with exceptional needs. Expanding choices for students and their guardians will enable them to get the best education they can given whatever money is available. Even Mr. Dendy of the AFT, in a 1993 letter to this newspaper, endorsed the idea of school choice for difficult-to-educate students--though he ignored what's already been done: ``We ought to provide the opportunity for private schools to educate the youngsters who are total failures in public schools, the ones who can't read or write, are truant and display antisocial behavior,'' he wrote. ``This is the only voucher proposal I find defensible... The idea has been around for 13 years, but no one's adopted it. The reason is obvious: Private schools don't want deeply troubled, failing children.'' Nonsense. Private schools provide a breathtaking array of specialized services for the most difficult students. Schools like Sobriety High and the High Road School explode the myth of the public-school dumping ground and show that the private sector can serve all students. What remains to be seen is whether the education establishment will continue to block efforts to afford others that opportunity. Ms. Jasper directs the education studies program of the Los Angeles-based Reason Foundation.
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