> The tuition ceiling is not necessarily onerous either. The
> average spending per pupil in a district -- a common metric for
> setting the voucher level -- obscures significant variation in
> spending by school.
Spending per pupil also includes spending on special education.
"What, Mrs. Smith, you'd like us to enroll your deaf daughter in McDonald's Elementary School? Well, of course, she's welcome to come -- I assume she already knows how to read lips.... In her old school district, she had two classroom interpreters *and* a speech therapist? My, how extravagant!... I never thought about how the echoes in these rooms would make it hard for someone to use a hearing aid; but the rent in this space was so low, and you know how expensive it is to remodel...."
One could alleviate this problem by giving special-needs children extra voucher money, but this leads to more problems: (1) Mainstreaming special-needs children is usually more expensive than sending them to special schools; (2) Some parents will try to "work the system" to get their child certified as learning-disabled for the sake of the bonus money.
-- perl -le"for(@w=(q[dm='r 0rJaa,u0cksthe';dc=967150;dz=~s/d/substrdm,\ (di+=dc%2?4:1)%=16,1ordi-2?'no':'Perl h'/e whiledc>>=1;printdz]))\ {s/d/chr(36)/eg;eval;}#In Windows type this all on 1 line w/o '\'s" == seth gordon == sgordon at kenan.com == standard disclaimer == == documentation group, kenan systems corp., cambridge, ma ==