MADISON, Wis. – Public school advocates in Wisconsin say there is no demand for private school vouchers for special needs students.

Officials at 28 private schools clearly think they’re wrong.

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Last year Gov. Scott Walker and Republican legislators expanded Wisconsin’s private school voucher program to include special needs students. That means children with disabilities can receive a voucher for $12,000 per year to attend the participating private school of their choice, beginning in the fall.

A total of 28 schools throughout the state have signed up for the Special Needs Scholarship Program, meaning they will accept special needs students with state vouchers, according to WPR.org.

“The program is open to special-needs students whose applications to open enroll in another public school are denied and who have individualized education plans in place,” according to a report from WXOW.com.

The participation of so many schools is a clear signal that officials expect a certain percentage of parents to pull their special needs kids out of public schools and take advantage of the voucher program.

The very existence of the program has enraged a lot of Democrats and other public school apologists, who want the state money attached to special needs students to remain exclusively with public schools.

Critics have tried to focus the debate on political considerations, rather than maximizing choices for special needs families.

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“This is just taxpayer subsidies of religious education so that Gov. Walker’s biggest contributors can make a buck,” state Rep. Chris Taylor, a Madison Democrat, told WPR.org last year.

How is that different than public schools – the source of income for teacher unions, the biggest supporters of the Democratic Party – keeping the bucks for themselves?

One parent of a special needs student told WPR.org that “No longstanding statewide disability group has asked for these vouchers.”

But it’s not up to any statewide group to decide where special needs students attend school. It’s up to the parents of individual students. Now they will have more choices.

If there aren’t enough parents interested in the vouchers, the program will certainly die and public schools will maintain their corner on the special needs market.

If there’s significant demand for the vouchers, that would suggest that parents probably would have appreciated more choice all along, and public schools should never have been allowed to monopolize the market.

Critics also charge that “private schools won’t undergo the same level of scrutiny as public schools,” according to WPR.org.

That suggests that private school special needs programs won’t properly serve students, because they won’t be sufficiently monitored by the state.

If that’s the case, won’t parents realize that and pull their children out?

Do public school defenders trust parents to make intelligent decisions on behalf of their special needs children? If so, why would they possibly object to giving them choices through the special needs voucher program?