Congress Should Make Special Education Choice a Legislative Priority
When it comes to special education school choice, parents deserve more options to select the best way forward for their children.
Despite a well-intentioned federal law that provides baseline rights for parents of special needs children across all states, a stark divide has emerged in education opportunities for children with disabilities, based on whether they live in states with school choice.
Students with disabilities in choice states have significantly more options than their peers in non-choice states. Congress needs to update the law to expand choice nationwide for students with disabilities.
The centerpiece of federal special education law — the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act — was passed 50 years ago at a time when ascendant reform-minded activists were redefining liberalism to rely less on the redistribution of wealth through federal agencies and more on the expansion of due process rights through compliance regimes hashed out by federal judges and special-interest legal organizations.
The law provides a right to an Individualized Education Program, a plan negotiated between the public school system and the child’s parents, but not a right to a high-quality education of the parents’ choice.
Rediscovering History as the Story of Liberty
History can be a way to center ourselves today and renew the institutions and beliefs that are central to that history and its legacy.
Is America Good Enough for Wendell Berry?
Genuine traditions and stories can prevent their inheritors from recklessly chasing the future simply because it’s the next thing.
James Q. Wilson and the Crisis of Our Time
"When we profess to believe in deterrence and to value justice, but refuse to spend the energy and money required to produce either, we are sending a clear signal that we think that safe streets, unlike all other great public goods, can be had on the cheap."
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Civitas Outlook
Locke, Meet Claude
The concern is not regulation per se. It is a regulation that outruns its justification by arriving before the evidence, foreclosing the technology before its benefits are understood, and insulating the powerful from competition that would otherwise discipline them. That is the pattern worth resisting.
Get the Civitas Outlook daily digest, plus new research and events.
Civitas Outlook
Locke, Meet Claude
The concern is not regulation per se. It is a regulation that outruns its justification by arriving before the evidence, foreclosing the technology before its benefits are understood, and insulating the powerful from competition that would otherwise discipline them. That is the pattern worth resisting.
Get the Civitas Outlook daily digest, plus new research and events.
