Voucher opponents argue that allowing some children to exit public schools for private schools will burden the public system with the most difficult to educate children, who are presumed to be left behind by school choice. However, the experience of other countries that have adopted school choice as part of their national education policy reveals that, far from creating ghettos of costly and tough children, well-designed parental choice policies can actually produce better outcomes for learning disabled children (at least when it comes to their inclusion in mainstream education settings), according to an article by Lewis Andrews in the current issue of Policy Review. In Denmark, which has a long history of having resources follow special needs children to schools approved by their parents, only a tiny percentage of learning disabled students are schooled in specialized institutions. In the Netherlands, where children who require additional services for serious learning disabilities are awarded a personal budget that their parents can spend at either a special or a mainstream school, inclusion of learning disabled children is high and the policy is widely supported. Getting the details of a choice policy right is crucial, however. In Sweden, where parental choice exists for all but disabled youngsters, who are subject to a centrally managed system, special-needs students are primarily educated in separate institutions and the percentage of children classified as needing special ed services is high. In the United Kingdom, where parental choice is essentially limited to government-run schools, difficult-to-educate students have tended to be excluded from popular schools, and many are confined to failing schools in poorer districts. The author concludes that the key variable in achieving good results for learning disabled children is the willingness of legislators to extend freedom of choice to parents of the learning disabled. See "More choices for disabled kids," by Lewis M. Andrews, Policy Review, April and May 2002.
