Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Selective outrage on 'public money to private schools'

Thanks to Oklahoma's new special-needs scholarship law, "at least $700,000 in state public school funds will be paid this year to send special-education students to private schools in Oklahoma," Kim Archer reports in the Tulsa World.

That's good information to have, but I would suggest that some follow-up reporting would discover that $700,000 isn't the full story. Why? Because, as even the opponents of Lindsey's Law can tell you (see, for example, the first 15 seconds of this clip), even before Lindsey's Law was enacted school districts already sent special-needs kids to private schools. My recollection is there are hundreds of private placements each year (apparently at least 10 are out of state), with nary a peep from school administrators about "constitutionality" or "public money going to private schools."

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