George Mitchell on WPR

George Mitchell, who is the George half of GeorgeandSusanMitchell, the entity that has brought you everything from School Choice Wisconsin to the Alliance for Choices in Education and its predecessor, the American Education Reform Council, was on Wisconsin Public Radio this morning. (You can find the audio archive here; look for 01/24A.) I was able to get in as the first caller, questioning Mitchell about accounatability. He said some things that were not quite true, but since today is Voucher Accountability Day at fr&r, I'll save that for later.

But I was able to catch part of his response to the caller after me, who asked about special education, before I went inside where I don't have a radio and can't make the live streams work. Mitchell said something technically accurate, but misleading. The caller stated that schools in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program do not have to take special education students, and asked how this was fair. Mitchell said this was not true, that voucher schools do have to take any and everyone. What he didn't say--at least in the part I heard before I got out of the car--is that voucher schools are not required to provide special education services. A school may accept for admission a deaf student, for example, but the school does not have to provide sign language translation or other aid. Parents would be insane to send their deaf child to a school that will not provide the service.

By default, then, most special needs students--especially the most severe, and those with severe health impairments--inevetably end up in the Milwaukee Public Schools, where by law, we muct provide all accomodations no matter how expensive. As Mitchell went on and on about how voucher schools did the work at half the price, I kept thinking about how the cost of a voucher student (~$6300) is not significantly lower than MPS's per-pupil spending on non-special needs, non-college bound (AP and IB are expensive programs, and the bureaucracy to support those programs and special ed is huge) students. If MPS didn't have any special needs students, our cost would be much, much lower.

Update: I just listened to this part of the program again, and I was right. Two other notes: Mitchell said that some MPS schools exlude special needs students. This is false. Every single MPS school must accept and educate special needs children. Period. Also, Mitchell told us, as is true, that voucher schools can't exclude low-performing students from admission. But these same schools are not excluded from kicking these students out--as long as they feel they can afford it--later in the year. The MPS schools that do screen (for example, Rufus King High School, or Roosevelt Middle School of the Arts) for academic performance are still required to take in neighborhood students even if (I believe) there is a waiting list for admission district-wide.

Seth has a link to the state guidelines about special needs teaching in voucher schools.

Also, props to sometime-contributor Sarah Fadness, who was the first caller after the news break!