Today, Jay Greene and Marcus Winters released an analysis of Florida’s McKay Scholarship Program. According to Greene and Winters:
we found that those students with relatively mild disabilities ?the vast majority of special-education students in the state and across the nation ? made larger academic gains when the number of private options nearby increased. Students with more severe disabilities were neither helped not harmed by the addition of McKay scholarship-receiving private schools near their public school.
This paper is a follow-up to Greene and Forster’s 2003 study of McKay Scholarships. In the 2003 study, they found that McKay schools offered a superior learning environment for special needs students; there were fewer physical assaults on students, superior services, fewer behavioral problems, and smaller class sizes.
