Students with Disabilities Are Overrepresented in Private School Choice Programs.

by Patrick J. Wolf, John Kristof, Alex Wolf, et al.

Key Points 

• Critics predicted that, once private school choice was implemented on a large scale, students with disabilities would become highly concentrated in the public school system. That hasn’t happened.
• We conservatively estimate that 258,844 students with disabilities are participating in private school choice programs.
• Students with disabilities are being served in the private school choice sector at a rate higher than that in the public school sector.
• Private school choice programs provide important educational options for many students with disabilities, helping ensure they can access the education that best meets their needs.

Introduction

On June 27, 2002, the US Supreme Court released its decision in the seminal case Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, upholding the constitutionality of Cleveland’s private school voucher program. Ralph Neas, then-president of People for the American Way, was not happy. He strode to the microphone at the lectern on the Court steps and stated confidently, “Private schools do not accept students with disabilities.” The crowd of school choice opponents cheered.¹

Neas didn’t say, “Private schools are not required to accept all students with disabilities.” That statement would have been true. Instead, Neas implied that no private school, anywhere, had ever enrolled a student with a disability. That claim was false.

But a question remains: Are children less likely to be supported by a school voucher, tax-credit scholarship, or education savings account (ESA) if they have a disability? The answer is no.

Students with disabilities are represented among the 1.5 million students in voucher, tax-credit scholarship, or ESA programs at a rate above their presence in the public school population (Figure 1). Using a combination of hard data and research-guided assumptions, we conservatively estimate that 15.5–17.2 percent of the students in private school choice programs have a disability. That plausible range rests above the 15.0 percent national rate of students with disabilities in public schools.² Private school choice programs thus provide an attractive option for over a quarter of a million students with disabilities.