Special needs, foster kids deserve school choice, too

No state is perfect when it comes to education reform, but Arizona's long history of embracing reform through rigorous standards, strong accountability and parental choice has been a model for the nation.

With a strong charter school law and more school choice programs than any other state, Arizona's parents enjoy a good deal of educational freedom - a benefit that offers tremendous help to the state's children.

While there is still much to be done to ensure educational opportunity for every child in Arizona, polls continually show that parents want lawmakers to keep pushing for educational improvement, and that they like having choices in education.

The popularity of the state's education reform efforts, especially school choice, continues to pose a significant challenge for national and local special interest groups. Tragically, the special interests hit a new low when they decided to launch a legal broadside against two of the state's newest choice programs - vouchers for children with special needs and foster children - laws signed by Gov. Janet Napolitano.

Among the groups behind this lawsuit were the Arizona School Boards Association, the Arizona Education Association, the American Civil Liberties Union and the People for the American Way. Their goal? To remove 306 children from the private schools carefully selected by their parents and guardians, and declare victory for a system that too often places the interests of adults before children.

In a decision that will hopefully be overturned by the Arizona Supreme Court, an appellate court ruled against parents and children, and for the special interests, declaring these two choice programs unconstitutional.

If you read the press releases of the ASBA, AEA, and PFAW, you would conclude that the appellate court had struck a positive blow for humanity and that not a single child was affected. Blaring headlines screamed that the court had rejected "voucher schemes" and said "no to vouchers," but not a word in these releases mentioned anything about the type of programs affected or the children whose lives were adversely affected.

Why did these groups ignore the fact that 306 special needs and foster children are the ones who are hurt by these lawsuits, and the subsequent, misguided decision? Because these groups know and understand that they are on the wrong side of the education reform debate.

Parents in Arizona, like the parents in nine states and the District of Columbia, want change - the kind of change that expanding parental choice brings about. Today, there are more than 151,000 children in voucher and scholarship tax credit programs around the country; this year, legislators in a record 44 states have introduced school choice bills to create new programs or expand existing programs.

These special interest lawsuits were never about what's best for children and families. They were, and are, about the education establishment's ongoing national battle to restrict options for parents, even at the expense of the disadvantaged children fortunate enough to participate in these programs and attend schools that finally work for them.

Our hope is that this decision will be overturned by the Arizona Supreme Court, and that the children and families who are affected by this misguided court ruling can celebrate a real victory.

John Schilling is the chief of staff and director of national projects for the Alliance for School Choice. From 1997 to 2001, he served as Arizona's associate state superintendent of public instruction and chief of policy and planning at the Arizona Department of Education.