New SCW Report Highlights Schools’ Work with Students with Disabilities

WEST ALLIS — School Choice Wisconsin and the Wisconsin Institute of Law and Liberty (WILL) today released a new report that shines new light on the amount of special needs students in Wisconsin’s choice schools serve students with disabilities.

The report, Serving All: Students with Disabilities in Wisconsin’s Parental Choice Programs, demonstrates that contrary to previously-reported, incomplete data, private schools in Wisconsin’s choice programs enroll roughly the same percentage of students with learning disabilities as public schools.

Based on responses from schools enrolling 40 percent of students in the state’s choice programs, the SCW-WILL research found that more than 10 percent of students in choice schools likely have a disability. The study’s findings mirror a non-partisan five-year evaluation of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program conducted in 2012 by John Witte (University of Wisconsin) and Patrick Wolf (University of Arkansas).

“This report puts to bed one of the many lies opponents of parental choice use to slander Wisconsin’s programs as discriminatory,” SCW President Nic Kelly said. “Choice schools work with parents to create a positive learning environment for students — and often do so without extra funding public schools have access to.”

“As public support and enrollment in choice schools grows across Wisconsin, so do efforts to discredit and destroy the program,” WILL Research Director Will Flanders said. “In response to desperate and outrageous reports disparaging the ways choice schools serve Wisconsin students, WILL and SCW are providing the facts.”

The full report can be found here.

For media inquiries, please contact [email protected].