The GOP attack on special ed.

• Author: Conniff, Ruth
• Position: Political Eye - Republican Party on special education

Republican lawmakers and corporations have a new target: kids in special ed.

It sounds like a sick joke, but it 's true.

Like cartoon schoolyard bullies, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)--the powerful coalition of corporations and rightwing legislators--has worked out plans to trick special ed students and their families into giving up their federally protected educational benefits, in exchange for cheap vouchers that can be used in unregulated, fly-by-night academies.

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Working off ALEC's proposed legislation--recently leaked by a whistleblower to the Center for Media and Democracy, and viewable on the website ALEC Exposed--Republicans are pushing private-school voucher bills for kids with disabilities in states across the country.

At first glance, these bills don't seem all bad. Whether or not you agree with the idea of using public school funds to send kids to private school, individual disabled children whose needs aren't met in public schools might benefit from being able to use private school vouchers, right?

Wrong.

Advocates for the disabled strongly oppose special ed voucher legislation--and not because the vouchers drain resources from the public schools.

What a lot of people don't understand, says Jeff Spitzer-Resnick, managing attorney for Disability Rights Wisconsin, is that disabled students who take advantage of special ed vouchers forfeit their rights under the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

That means they no longer have a right to a "free, appropriate public education" or the specific services that come along with that.

Not only that, they give up their chance to get their school districts to cover the costs of private education, if the local public schools can't meet their needs.

"Embedded in the law is the ability to either voluntarily or legally force school districts to pay for private schools, at significant expense," says Spitzer-Resnick.

He should know, since he has forced school districts to pay for students' private education more than once. Under the voucher program, those kids would never be able to afford such an expensive deal. The voucher system drafted by ALEC and before the state assembly in Wisconsin gives parents of disabled kids the option to trade their rights for a voucher worth whatever costs less: private school tuition or the value of their special education services.

The result of this cost-saving, rights-stripping approach is on display in...