The market test

The problem with the analysis below is this: The voucher program passed the market test -- parents like it.

According to the dictum of economist Robert Coase, if you torture the data long enough it will confess to anything. Suspect the data, whether in the form of results or surveys. Respect the choice of parents who always want the best for their children.

That said, vouchers do not create a market as the vouchers are free to parents; paid for by the taxpayer. When the supposed consumer does not have to pay for the good, no real market exists. Vouchers and charters are simply a means of playing free market.

Yet the premise of the article fails when it attempts to place data over choice.

June 26, 2007
Contact: Education Sector Communications Office,
202-552-2849

Information Underload: Florida's Flawed Special-Ed Voucher Program
New Education Sector report cites problems with a popular voucher program for special-needs children.

Washington, D.C.— Florida's popular McKay Scholarships for Students with Disabilities Program promises to give parents seeking private placements for their special-needs children an alternative to the costly, complicated, and time-consuming federal process—a voucher they can use at a public or private school of their choice. And school choice advocates promote the McKay program as a model for other states and the federal government. Four other states have programs modeled after McKay, and at least a half-dozen others are weighing whether to follow suit.

But despite its promise and growing popularity, the McKay program has not yet proven that it works as either an adequate school-choice or special-education reform measure. In a new Education Sector report, Senior Policy Analyst Sara Mead identifies some serious flaws in the program, namely its lack of public accountability and dearth of information on student outcomes.

Mead argues that under the current structure of the program, taxpayers have almost no knowledge of how their money is being spent, and neither taxpayers nor parents have access to solid information about the performance of McKay schools. Mead suggests that expanding school options for students with disabilities is a worthy objective. But she cautions against using McKay as a model and advises policymakers on steps to take as they seek to replicate the program in other states.

Read "Information Underload: Florida's Flawed Special-Ed
Voucher Program" at: http://www.educationsector.org/research/research_show.htm?doc_id=506895.


This research was funded by The Annie E. Casey Foundation.

Education Sector is an independent education policy think tank devoted to developing innovative solutions to the nation’s most pressing educational problems. We are nonprofit and nonpartisan, both a dependable source of sound thinking on policy and an honest broker of evidence in key education debates throughout the United States.


Renée
Rybak
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