For those who think that school voucher programs serve only the needs of more advantaged and brighter students — the ones that voucher opponents are always claiming will be “creamed” from public schools — it might be worth taking a look at a new report on a Florida voucher program, signed into law by Governor Jeb Bush in 1999, that serves special education students exclusively. Florida’s McKay Scholarship Program — named for the former Republican president of the Florida senate, John McKay, whose daughter struggled with learning disabilities — is the second largest voucher program in existence nationwide. It is used by 9,202 special education students out of 375,000 eligible special education students statewide. While it is more than a bit difficult to establish what success means for many students in special education, especially for the most severely handicapped, the Manhattan Institute’s Jay Greene and Greg Forster have come up with some useful measurements and found that the program has had impressive results.

Based on two telephone surveys conducted with parents currently using McKay vouchers and parents who had used a McKay voucher but no longer do, the researchers found that 92.7% of current McKay participants are “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with their schools. Only 32.7% were satisfied with their public schools. Looking at the issue of how often special education students were victimized because of their disabilities, the researchers found that in public schools, 46.8% were bothered often and 24.7% were physically assaulted; in the schools parents attended with their McKay vouchers, they reported that 5.3% were bothered often and 6% were assaulted. The schools taking McKay vouchers are doing this superior job with the same amount of money as the public schools, or only slightly more. Seventy-two percent of the program’s participants report paying either nothing or less than $1,000 a year above the value of the voucher — which is set at the amount the public school district would spend to educate the student in question.

Thus, under a voucherization of special education, parents in Florida are being given a chance to leave the public schools if they cannot accommodate their children; and those that have taken this option are reporting overwhelming satisfaction. While it is cruel to keep any child stuck in a failing public school, it is especially cruel to leave students with special needs trapped in a monopoly unable, and with little incentive, to serve them. And giving the parent of these children a choice doesn’t cost the public an extra cent, the way Florida has set up its program.

Voucherization has the added benefit of removing some of the perverse incentives built into most states’ special education systems. Designating a child as learning disabled can bring more money to a school, even if sticking that child into a special education class will actually stunt his or her development. If students so designated might flee the public schools altogether, administrators would think twice about artificially swelling their ranks. For the severely disabled, it is probably beneficial both to the children and to the public schools to place them in the specialized schools that can best help them. It’s the kind of idea Schools Chancellor Klein might want to consider as he tackles the question of how to streamline New York’s system.