As Indiana’s legislators look to make school vouchers for private school tuition accessible for even wealthier families, they are also considering another form of vouchers called “Education Scholarship Accounts” (ESAs). These would be equivalent to debit cards loaded annually with $5,000 to $7,000 (plus up to $9,100 for some special education students) that parents/guardians could spend on educational services in lieu of sending their kid(s) to a public school. House Bill 1005 would make ESAs available for special education students, foster students, and active military families, but just as voucher eligibility has been expanded over the years, we can expect the same for ESAs.
Here’s how ESAs grew in Arizona between 2012 and 2020:
Source: EdChoice
While the ESA amount could be spent on private school tuition, it could also be used for therapy, transportation, school uniforms, and likely music lessons and sports camps. The language in HB 1005 is “qualified school, public school, or participating entity,” (p. 27, line 12), and the participating entities would be approved by the state treasurer. So what’s the hitch? If you are already homeschooling or paying private school tuition, free money probably sounds nice.
What are the problems with ESAs? 1. Diversion of funding from public school programs. Creating ESAs is like waving cash in front of families to incentivize them to leave their public schools. It also gives state money to families who were already homeschooling or already in private school. Removing money from public school programs will weaken the public schools and charter schools on which 94% of Indiana’s students depend. 2. High costs for à la carte education. As parents of high-need special ed students testified in education committee hearings (also here), the amount of funding the state proposes to provide through ESAs would be insufficient to purchase comprehensive services in the private education marketplace. Some children receive full-time one-on-one aides in public school, for instance, because public schools are required to provide a free appropriate public education under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Private schools have no such responsibility, and neither would a for-profit or nonprofit “participating entity.” Private entities could pocket state funds without fully meeting kids' needs, while public schools, which already don't get enough money for special education*, would be expected to provide full services with less.
Source (for average public school special ed expenses per pupil): Center on Reinventing Public Education report, “Ensuring All Students in Indiana Receive Their Fair Share of Funding.”
3. Lack of oversight. The program would be overseen by the state treasurer rather than the Indiana Department of Education, and the bill expressly forbids government regulation of the schools/entities participating: It specifies that a state agency “may not in any way regulate the educational program of a nonpublic school that accepts money from an account under this article,” (p. 38, line 13).** The public has an interest in the quality of the educational environment provided for children through state dollars. This begins with physical environment and infrastructure. Do the buildings meet the fire code and are they free of hazards such as lead paint or accessible toxic household cleaners? Is the drinking water clean? It extends to the psychological environment. Are children in safe and positive spaces free of manipulation and abuse? Under HB 1005, no state entity would have the responsibility to inquire. Most centrally, though, the quality of the educational environment is bound up in curriculum. With HB 1005, no state entity would have the right to ascertain whether children are receiving a developmentally appropriate, challenging curriculum that adheres to state academic standards. The language of the bill appears to guarantee that state funds could be used for conversion therapy or religious instruction. 4. No requirement for a certified teacher. In fact, HB 1005 prohibits the state from making any teacher or staff hiring requirements for participating schools or entities (page 38, line 17). So it sounds like the state could not even require nonaccredited schools to verify that a potential hire does not have a record as a child sex offender. 5. An environment ripe for scammers. Because parents would be making the decisions about how to spend this money, service providers and vendors of curricular materials would advertise directly to parents. Many parents lack the knowledge and training to assess the quality of such programs and could be vulnerable to unscrupulous operators. 6. Incentivization of year-to-year rollover of dollars. Parents could roll over as much as $2,000 per year. This means parents could spend as little as $3,000 on a child’s education in one year. What kind of education would a kid be getting for that sum? 7. Excessive administrative costs, or an invitation to fraud. How will the state treasurer ensure that the money is actually spent on kids’ education? Either the treasurer will spend lots of time and money to ensure that participating entities are operating responsibly and that invoices are accurate for services truly rendered, or not. In the first case, taxpayers will be paying a huge amount for inefficient administration even as public schools are under pressure to consolidate and reduce administrative costs. In the second case, we will see an explosion of a free-for-all which will deplete state coffers while encouraging fraud and exploiting children. Given Indiana’s record of lax oversight of charter schools, especially the virtual charter schools that have proven lucrative for their operators, a proliferation of fraud seems likely. And while legislators are the ones who will vote for HB 1005 (or the form of it included in the budget bill), it’s Indiana’s taxpayers who will foot the bill, and Indiana’s children who will pay. "What special education students most need is for their public school special education services and general education classrooms to be adequately funded, to allow the time and attention and teacher expertise they need to be successful."
To improve education in Indiana, we need to reject ESAs and instead invest in the essential community infrastructure of public schools. As parent and attorney MaryAnn Schlegel Ruegger says, "What special education students most need is for their public school special education services and general education classrooms to be adequately funded, to allow the time and attention and teacher expertise they need to be successful."
–Jenny Robinson and Keri Miksza
*Appendix A of the 2020 CRPE report shows how Indiana's special education funding lags that in Ohio, South Dakota, and New Orleans:
See also the Education Commission of the States' 50-state comparison of special education funding from March 2019.
**HB 1005 prohibits the state from regulating participating entities. An excerpt:
Chapter 5. Participating Entities Sec. 1. It is the intent of the general assembly to honor the autonomy of nonpublic schools that choose and are authorized to become participating entities under this article. A nonpublic eligible school is not an agent of the state or federal government, and therefore: (1) the treasurer of state, state board, department, or any other state agency may not in any way regulate the educational program of a nonpublic school that accepts money from an account under this article, including the regulation of curriculum content, religious instruction or activities, classroom teaching, teacher and staff hiring requirements, and other activities carried out by the nonpublic school; (2) the creation of the program does not expand the regulatory authority of the state or the state's officers to impose additional regulation of nonpublic schools beyond those necessary to enforce the requirements of the program; and (3) an accredited nonpublic school that is a participating entity may provide for the educational needs of students without government control.
___________________________________________________
Indiana Coalition for Public Education–Monroe County (ICPE–Monroe County) advocates for all children to have high quality, equitable, well-funded schools that are subject to democratic oversight by their communities. We are a nonpartisan and nonprofit group of parents, grandparents, caregivers, teachers, and other community members of Monroe County and surrounding areas. ![]()
Every crisis is an opportunity…for profiteers and privatizers.
During the pandemic, the demands on our public schools have multiplied. Public schools throughout Indiana are now supplying both in-person and online instruction. Teachers are stretched thin as they teach in-person and online students and adjust their curricula accordingly. Administrators are working around the clock helping school nurses contact-trace on top of their normal duties. School bus drivers are doubling up their routes in order to carry fewer students at a time. Districts are spending to improve their HVAC systems. School social workers are trying to track down and provide services to the students who have gone missing even as they give more assistance to the students who are present but whose parents have lost jobs and livelihoods. In other words, our public schools need more resources—they need more money—to be able to answer the depth of need in our communities. Yet due to Indiana’s funding model, which relies on per-student tuition support, public schools are already expecting lower revenue; in the pandemic, some students have disappeared, and many families have delayed kindergarten entrance. Let’s be clear: Public schools are the only schools that are legally obligated to educate and serve each and every child regardless of disability status, religion, or family income. We require our public schools to make or find the capacity to serve every child. Even before the pandemic, the fiscal situation for public schools was grim:
That sound you hear is the slow sweep of vultures’ wings. The chair of the Indiana House Education Committee, Robert Behning, has introduced a bill, HB 1005, that would give more state education dollars to parents who can already afford private school tuition. It would lift the family income cap for a family of four to $145,000 in 2023 (already, families of four earning up to $96,000 qualify for a 50% voucher) and remove the income tiers within the program so that all eligible families can receive a 90% voucher. This expansion would come at a high cost to taxpayers. Read Vic’s Statehouse Notes #348 to learn more about the fiscal impact. Were you paying $15,765 per child to send your two kids to Cathedral High School? No problem. The state of Indiana can pitch in. Or $21,795 for your junior at the International School of Indiana? If HB 1005 passes, the state of Indiana has your back. Educating children well is expensive, and the expense is worth it. But there’s a difference in how money is stewarded. When public money goes to public schools, it’s like investing in our community parks or city fire departments. The investments we make in infrastructure and personnel benefit the whole community for generations. When we send state money to private schools, the money may benefit individual families, but the costs disappear into a private world…a gated community, accessible only according to the values and capability of the school leadership, unaccountable to the whole. And while money follows children into private schools, their rights do not. Private schools don’t need to serve students with disabilities, or LGBTQ families, or families with different belief systems; they can fire their gay married employees, as Roncalli and Cathedral did at the behest of their Archdiocese; they don't need to adhere to state curriculum requirements. Vouchers in Indiana are enabling white flight, just like the segregation academies that are their antecedents. Private schools' student bodies may be much whiter than the communities in which they are located. Roncalli High School in Indianapolis has just 7 Black students this year in a school population of 1062. (Nearby public high schools in Southport and Beech Grove have 213 Black students out of 2,326 and 126 of 1005, respectively.) Even with the current voucher income limit, Roncalli received $1.8 million dollars in voucher money in 2019-20. There’s time to stop this bill, but it will take many voices. Email the House Education Committee (addresses are below). You can use the talking points ICPE has compiled. Do it today or tomorrow. The committee meets Wednesday. If you are on fire, consider signing up to testify in person at the committee meeting in Indianapolis on Wednesday. Rumor has it that privatization/school choice advocates will be there in force. Jenny Robinson and Keri Miksza P.S. Guess what? There’s an even worse part of HB 1005, a foot in the door for the blandly named “Education Savings Accounts,” which are like vouchers on steroids. More about that in another post. PPS. Contact Indiana’s House Education Committee to oppose HB 1005: Republican Representatives Behning ([email protected]), Jordan ([email protected]), Carbaugh ([email protected]), Clere ([email protected]), Cook ([email protected]), Davis ([email protected]), Goodrich ([email protected]), Teshka ([email protected]), Thompson ([email protected]) Democrat Representatives Smith ([email protected]), DeLaney ([email protected]), Klinker ([email protected]), Pfaff ([email protected]) Here are all the addresses together if you want to cut and paste: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] And Indiana PTA has created a quick form letter that allows you to send a quick email. This guest post is from Pat Howey, a special education advocate in West Point, Indiana.
Indiana parents and advocates: After December 1, it may be more difficult to get certain services for our students in special education. Thanks to the current Trump administration and Betsy DeVos, federal funding for special education to the Indiana Department of Education has been cut for 2018. Remember the outcry for "full funding" of special education, as was anticipated when the Education of All Handicapped Children Act (EAHCA) was enacted? Congress at that time said it could fund up to 40% of the cost of special education. In reality, Congress has never funded even 10% of the cost. Now, it is balancing its budget on the backs of the poor, the disabled, and the disenfranchised, and it has cut funding for special education. What this means: The small part of funding that comes from the federal government has been cut even further. Local school districts will now have to foot the bill for the services listed below. School districts that already are struggling to provide adequate services to all students will now have to stretch their budgets even further. After December 1, 2017, the IDOE has stated that it will no longer be providing funding through Special Education Excess Cost funds for the following services to local schools: (1) Extended School Year (ESY) in day programs; (2) ABA services in centers and in schools; (3) One-on-one services (paraprofessionals and aides) in centers and schools; (4) Related services; and, (5) Transportation. In addition, a cap on residential services and day services is being considered. What we can expect: Advocating for students in special ed will become more and more difficult. We can expect to have to fight for these services for special education children who need them, even though the IDOE memo states: "Please remember that funding is not a topic for case conference committee discussion. No decisions about services should be based on whether DOE is able to help schools with funding." Here is the link to the full memo: https://www.doe.in.gov/sites/default/files/specialed/seec-memo.pdf Folks, I predict that this is only the beginning. Things will get much worse. ADDENDUM Response from Dr. Kathleen Hugo, MCCSC's Director of Special Education, 11/28/17 The main impact of this on local school corporations will be that certain school-funded services, those that are extremely unique and expensive for a few students, will become the sole responsibility of the local school, further diminishing the available funds for the remainder of students. Special education has never been "fully-funded" by federal or state special education dollars. Yet the needs of students are increasing everywhere which is why the Indiana DOE has seen an increase in the number of requests for additional state funds to pay these excess costs. The IDOE was clear in pointing out that this does not relieve the local schools from their responsibility to provide these services, if necessary for the appropriate education of the student. Local schools will be required to pay these costs from their existing funds. Indiana special education funding is allocated to school corporations as one amount. There is no specific funding for paraprofessionals, related services, or teachers. The exception to that is when a particular student has extraordinary needs that are so unique that they are beyond the capacity of the local school corporation. The clearest example of this is when a student requires residential placement. Indiana has had a special mechanism in place for many years by which school corporations can request that IDOE pay for this "excess cost", for one particular student at a time. The memo was referring to the fact that the funds approved in this category by the legislature are being used up and so they are telling school districts that many of these excess services will be the responsibility of the school corporation, specifically services in local ABA centers, unique services in the summer, and others. ### Source: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ParentCommunityNetwork/permalink/1477268495725376/ |
Categories
All
Archives
September 2024
Friends
|