|
Voucher lets parents home-school
disabled child
by Lori Horvitz, August 13,
2002, Associated Press and Local Wire
Desperate to teach their son to read, Bill and Helen Thompson
took an extreme turn: They started
their own private school and used a
state-funded voucher to help cover
tuition.
Will Thompson, 9, was the only student of the Good Will
Academy, which his parents named
after him. He is completing third
grade this summer. Will's mother and
various public school teachers took turns teaching him
at his kitchen table or
living room, at the public library or next to the Harry
Potter display at the Barnes and
Noble.
Although they have an occupational license to operate a
school, the Thompsons essentially
have been home- chooling their
learning-disabled son - getting
$5,000 from the state for it. State officials say the
Thompsons' approach probably is
unique, but they are one of thousands of Florida
families using a fast-growing voucher
program to get help for their disabled
children.
Florida's John M. McKay Scholarship for Students with
Disabilities Program lets parents
seek vouchers if they think public
schools aren't meeting their
children's special needs. The program covers all kinds of
impairments, including
deafness, blindness, emotional difficulties and learning
problems. Parents of such
children consider the McKay scholarships a godsend.
Opponents of vouchers say giving $5,000 to a child's
family for home-schooling is
just another example of how vouchers suck money from the
public school system.
"And where's the accountability?" said Sharon Rousey, vice
president of Seminole County's
Special Education Parent-Teacher
Association. "Are you going to
retest these children to see if they are doing something
better in
this private environment?"
The Thompsons, whose son's reading improved two grade levels
in home study, say they're using the
money the school system would have
spent on their son anyway. They said
they pulled Will from public school
because he never received the
intensive, specialized reading instruction he needed for his
dyslexia.
"We never had the intention of
opening a private school for our son, but we
had no choice," said Bill
Thompson, a 57-year-old microbiologist.
The couple feared Will might end up like many other people
with learning disabilities -
illiterate or lacking a high school
diploma. Nationwide, 35 percent of
such students do not finish high school.
Many cannot pass the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test,
the state's mandatory graduation
exam. Students taking the reading
and math exams are not allowed many
of the accommodations they can receive
in the classroom, such as
having passages read aloud.
More than 90 percent of the state's 8,700 learning-disabled
10th-graders failed the reading test
in 2001, according to figures from
the Florida Department of Education.
These problems have made McKay vouchers
increasingly attractive to parents
since the program started four years ago.
Named for the current state Senate president, the program
began with just two students in
1999-2000. During the past school
year, the state steered nearly $28
million toward vouchers for about 4,400 students.
About 6,600 kids are expected
to receive the scholarships this year.
Last week's court ruling declaring Florida's other voucher
program - which gives private-school
scholarships to children who attend
chronically failing schools -
unconstitutional did not apply to McKay money.
The appeal of a McKay scholarship is twofold: Kids don't have
to struggle with the FCAT, and
parents say their children get more
attention and better instruction.
Will is intelligent, but he and other people with his form of
dyslexia have difficulty connecting
letters with sounds - a fundamental
reading skill. One in five Americans
has dyslexia, the name for a variety of reading
problems that now can be
detected in children as young as 7 using brain scans.
"It's not that my son can't
learn," said Helen Thompson, 51, a biologist who
also is dyslexic. "He just can't read. The point is the
schools should be teaching my
son to read."
The Thompsons said Will's public school should have caught the
problem earlier. He was having
trouble remembering his ABC's in
kindergarten. His parents hired
teachers to tutor him three times a week after
school, but it did not help.
Even after he was diagnosed with dyslexia in the second
grade, his reading grew
worse, his parents said. Even tutoring failed to help
him. "In the afternoons, the entire
second grade would work on reading
assignments, with students reading stories about Mayans
or volcanoes and then answering
questions," Bill Thompson said. "Instead of helping
Will read, they would have him draw
pictures."
Volusia school officials said teachers try to reach every
child, but it's a challenge to
provide the intensive help that the
learning-disabled need. Identifying
children with dyslexia early has been a problem, said Joann
Doyle, a Volusia reading specialist for 30 years.
Schools typically wouldn't recognize
it until students started to fail,
she said.
Volusia started training kindergarten teachers five years ago
to detect reading problems. The
practice is expected to become more
widespread under the new federal "No
Child Left Behind" law, which sets aside
millions of dollars to screen
children for reading difficulties.
"Kindergarten teachers will be doing a more in-depth
diagnostic test to identify children
who are at risk," Doyle said. "In
the past, teachers referred children
with problems to special education rather than try to
identify and do corrections within the classroom."
Unhappy with how Will was doing at Sweetwater Elementary in
Port Orange, his parents chose to
start their own school in August of
2001.
Will's scholarship amounted to almost $5,000, a little less
than the average value of vouchers
in the McKay program. Amounts range
from $4,300 to $19,000, depending on
the disability and the services needed.
More than 340 private schools agreed to take McKay students
last year. The number is up to an
estimated 600 private schools this
year. They must show they are
financially sound, abide by anti-discrimination laws,
satisfy health and safety
codes and hire teachers who hold bachelor's degrees or
higher or have at least three
years of teaching experience.
The Good Will Academy met all of the requirements, state
officials said. To get their son
back on track, the Thompsons turned
to the same reading program that
Helen Thompson used when she was a third-grader in
Rhode Island in 1959. The
Orton-Gillingham Multisensory Method was developed in the
1930s as a new way
to teach the letters and sounds to people with
different kinds of dyslexia.
With Will, Helen Thompson started from the beginning. She
taught him how to listen to a single
word or syllable and break it into
sounds. She taught him which letters
represent which sounds and how to blend
those sounds into
single-syllable words. She also taught him the different rules
and patterns of the English
language.
Will's school year lasted 200 days, 20 more than a typical
school year. The school day varied
from two to eight hours of
instruction, sometimes more. His
parents also took him on field trips. Last month, they took
Will to watch a turtle lay
eggs at the Canaveral National Seashore.
Will, a quiet, introspective child, likes playing basketball
and soccer. He loves playing video
games on the computer.
So what did he think about his school?
"It's fun, sort of," he said, later adding: "You can't make
new friends. Recess isn't as fun.
The teachers are better."
"The important thing is that Will has joined the rest of the
world - he's switched to regular
books," his mother said.
Helen Thompson said her son still has a lot of work ahead of
him. A public school teacher who
tested him said his reading improved
two grades this past year, but that
he remains six months behind. He also
continues to struggle with
writing and spelling.
His parents are enrolling him this fall in a Miami private
school that specializes in dyslexia
and costs $18,000 a year.
The school does not accept vouchers, so the Thompsons are
dipping into their savings. Will and
his mother will move to South
Florida, leaving his dad and two
older sisters, ages 11 and 12, in Central Florida.
"We'd like to get him back
into public school, where he has his friends and
activities," Bill Thompson said. "It's one
of his motivations for working
hard - to get back to where he was."
As for the Good Will Academy, the Thompsons plan to keep it
open in case they have to enroll
Will there again. But he won't be
eligible for another voucher unless
he spends the year prior in a public school.
| 