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Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Vouchers: Show Me The Money
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
State Department of Education officials have devoted a section of their Web site to the new scholarship program for disabled K-12 public school students — a.k.a. the Georgia Special Needs Scholarship.
For nearly two months, parents have been able to get information on eligibility requirements and rules that participating private schools must follow, as well as being able to submit their “intent” to seek one of the tuition vouchers.
Now, they can also find out just how much tuition the voucher will cover. Yesterday afternoon officials put up a nifty “scholarship calculator” that estimates the potential award for each individual child.
Jeff Gagne, the state official who’s overseeing the start of the program, told me there’s information on more than 184,000 special education students in the calculator. Each scholarship amount is based on what the state would pay for a specific child’s special education services in public school.
Gagne hadn’t figured the average or mean scholarship amounts yet, but he did find that the range topped out at about $15,300.
Of course, the largest scholarships will go toward those students with the most severe disabilities who have been receiving the most extensive services. But, after state lawmakers claimed the average scholarship would be about $9,000 when they were selling the program earlier this year, many parents have been banking on that figure.
I suspect when they use the calculator lots of them will be surprised at what they find.
UPDATE: On Thursday, State Board of Education members approved the list of 115 private schools that will be participating in the voucher program this coming school year. There’s an interesting mix of campuses, including loads of faith-based schools as well as schools that have long-established programs for special-needs kids, such as the Atlanta Speech School.
