Sign Up For Our Newsletter

Too many children with learning disabilities do not receive the education and services they need.

More than 30 years after Congress passed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), achieving the law’s goals of restoring parental control over children’s education and guaranteeing services for special-needs students in public schools remains elusive.

A number of states implemented policies to fulfill the IDEA’s intentions by alternative means. Scholarship programs succeed in making it possible for parents in Florida, Ohio, Utah and Arizona to place disabled children in alternative schools. Citywide projects flourish in Milwaukee and Cleveland, despite strong-arm legal tactics by opponents designed to stop or diminish their effectiveness.

In Kentucky, a prefiled bill by Lexington Rep. Stan Lee would not only make the commonwealth the fifth state to offer such scholarships, it would also be the Bluegrass State’s first statewide school-choice program controlled by parents.

State law currently allows special-needs students to attend schools providing educational services not available in their resident district schools. However, this system is largely ineffective and relatively few students participate because school districts – not parents – control the process.

To move a child from an unsuitable public school, parents must open a complicated process wrapped in red tape and without any assurances. They must be prepared to fight – and even sue – local school districts that have both administrative means and economic motives for keeping students within their boundaries.

This constant specter of controversy and litigation has created an atmosphere in which paperwork comes before pupils and bureaucracy increases at all levels. Through his scholarship proposal that would require no tax increases or additional education funding, Lee’s program would offer parents a way around the courtroom instead of through it.

A body of evidence suggests that Kentucky’s special-education situation is serious … and worsening. For example, during the 2005-06 school year, there were about 109,000 special-needs students attending public schools throughout the commonwealth. This equals 17 percent of the state’s total public-school population, which, according to data from both the federal and state education departments, has increased more than 60 percent since 1980.

These alarming figures become even more troubling when compared to the rest of the nation. Kentucky’s overall disability enrollment since 1993 is three times higher than the national rate and outpaces national growth rates in specific disability categories by as much as 21 to one.

While a number of different issues have contributed to this dramatic expansion, one factor offers greater cause for concern than most – the apparent deliberate over-identification of special-ed students. A Bluegrass Institute analysis indicates that at least 11,000 Kentucky children have been wrongly diagnosed. Students from certain racial minorities are the most likely to be misidentified.

The fact that the growth of Kentucky’s special-needs population has not been uniform across all disability categories also offers compelling evidence that such over-identification is occurring.

For instance, the number of “hard” disability cases diagnosed by medical doctors, such as blindness and autism, has increased significantly less in recent years than disabilities in “soft” or “judgmental” groups, where students are deemed “disabled” by educational committees. Children who would have been determined to be “normal” 10 or 20 years ago are today being subjectively classified as “disabled” by medical laypersons.

One prime reason for this practice is the fact that school districts can improve their funding situations by over-identifying children. The state distributes funding to school districts based on how many students they identify as having special needs. This in itself is proof that Kentucky’s special-ed policy demands meaningful reform.

The scholarships created by Lee’s program – ranging from $4,300 to $12,000 – would certainly remove the financial incentive to brand capable students as “disabled” and give parents of children who suffer from real learning disabilities the opportunity find a more suitable school for their kids. In fact, these scholarships would cover the cost of tuition at many of Kentucky’s more than 400 private schools.

While the concept of educational competition in any form is a fiercely debated idea that has a substantial number of entrenched adversaries in Kentucky, the evidence shows that other states are using school choice to help special-needs children improve their chances for a better life.

We challenge opponents of educational liberty in our state to answer this question: Why don’t Kentucky’s neediest children deserve the same chance?

Anders Edwardsson is an analyst for the Bluegrass Institute, Kentucky’s free-market think tank.  This article previously appeared here.