During Tuesday’s House Education and the Workforce Committee hearing, Rep. Mark Harris (R-NC) questioned experts about the benefits of school choice for students who have different needs.
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NewsTranscript
00:00The representative from North Carolina, Mr. Harris, is recognized for five
00:05minutes. Yes, thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I thank all of you on the panel. I've had
00:09the pleasure of reading your testimonies as well as hearing you this morning, and
00:13very appreciative of you being here and your time. Parents in my district have
00:17told me time and again that school choice is a priority of theirs, and they
00:23really long for anything that we can do at the federal level to make that easier.
00:27And Mr. Blanks, today I appreciated your testimony. It was inspiring, and yet we've
00:34heard lots of claims from the other side of the aisle made in opposition to
00:38school choice. Some are going to argue that school choice resegregates schools.
00:42We've heard that school choice deprives children with disabilities of their
00:46rights. We've heard that support for school choice is really a smokescreen
00:50for trying to destroy public education. Is it just me, or is the conversation
00:55that one side of this debate is having is totally disconnected from the
00:59conversations that real families are having around their kitchen tables about
01:04how best to educate their kids? Yes, yes, I firmly believe that when we're having
01:10these discussions about education that the other side will typically leave out
01:14the personal experience, stories like my own, or why parents want to send their
01:19child to a different school in in the first place. And so I am here to talk
01:23about my own experience, and as I've done this work, I've heard a lot about
01:27how vouchers or schemes or scams or whatever the case may be, but it was my
01:32it was my life-saving device for me and for my family. And we didn't have support.
01:38We didn't have any other options. I was stuck in this school, and I would beg my
01:41mom every day not to send me to that school. And so I do find some of those
01:44comments offensive, but I'm proud to stand behind the very policies that
01:48changed my life and put me on the path that I'm on now today. Thank you, sir, and
01:52God bless your mom for having the courage and the strength and
01:54determination to respond the way she did when she was asked to give a five-year
01:59reprieve to get things right. Mrs. Clark, your story represents one of those
02:04parents who wants options, and another objection we might hear to school choice
02:08is that there's no accountability if the school fails to serve children with
02:13special needs. But I noticed you went through the IDEA process, and it sounds
02:18as if the public school system failed your child. What would you say to critics
02:23who believe that the traditional public schools are the only safe place for
02:28children with special needs and learning disabilities? Thank you for the question.
02:32Why, I would say that's absolutely false, and we can look at the demand of parents
02:36of students with disabilities for school choice programs. You know, there's a sad
02:40running joke amongst parents of students with disabilities, and it essentially goes
02:44like, if you haven't cried in an IEP meeting with the public school, you don't
02:50really have a student with a disability. We all know, as parents of students with
02:54disabilities, how incredibly difficult the process is to actually get the
02:58services that our children need in the public school system. So this idea that
03:03IDEA is somehow benefiting all students in the public school system is
03:08absolutely false, and contrary to what you've heard, we don't lose all of our
03:11rights when we choose a school choice scholarship program. IDEA Part B,
03:16Proportionate Share Funding, that's been around since the beginning of IDEA, says
03:20that a proportion of all of the funds that come to the state should be used
03:25for students with disabilities that are in private schools and homeschools. I
03:29know one of my children on an ESA received IDEA funding from their local
03:33public school just last year, so there's a lot of misinformation out there around
03:38IDEA. Well, you also mentioned in your testimony that even at the state level,
03:43in order to qualify for Arizona's Empowerment Scholarship Account Program,
03:47you had to jump through a variety of hoops for several months. Could you take
03:52just a moment and elaborate on some of the reasons why it took so long? Yes,
03:56absolutely. Thank you for the question. So prior to Arizona's ESA program being
04:01universal, where every student qualified in 2022, families like myself had to go
04:06through the public school system process to have our students evaluated. That was
04:10an extra expense on the public school system, but the public school system is
04:13the one that had to qualify our students as a student with a disability. So there
04:18was, you know, an extra process, an extra burden there. Also in Arizona, you used to
04:22have to attend public school, either in person or online, for a hundred days. It
04:27was very difficult for families with students with disabilities or families
04:30that were moving into the states. All right, well, eliminating bureaucracy is
04:35one of the most important reforms I believe that we can make at the federal
04:38level. We can never forget that parental rights will always take precedence over
04:43government and that taxpayer dollars have got to be accountable to the
04:46taxpayer themselves. So I will ask you this, Ms. Clark, do you think that
04:50eliminating or reducing the role of the Department of Education would give more
04:54power to the states and people to influence education? Yes, I absolutely
05:00do. Ending the Department of Education or greatly disempowering it is something
05:04that I hope to see very soon. Well, it's clear under our Constitution the federal
05:09government was never supposed to have such an outsized role in education. With
05:14the number of students failing course subjects growing in our nation, it's
05:17clear that the status quo is not working as we've heard today. What I'm hearing is
05:22that parents and states are more than ready to step up and make sure children
05:26get the best education. And with that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.