Newsweek

Texas’s $1 billion school voucher program promises to prioritize students with disabilities. The program, signed into law by Governor Greg Abbott earlier this month, will allow Texas families to receive $10,000 per year to help pay for students’ private school tuition. But children with disabilities can qualify for as much as $30,000 a year. In Texas, educators and advocates are raising the alarm about how the state’s program could further strain public school districts tasked with conducting the evaluations to determine whether students qualify for these services. Public school districts have to conduct those evaluations even for those students who do not plan to enroll in public schools. Demand for evaluations is expected to rise since students with disabilities are first in line for the voucher program and can receive higher amounts based on their needs. Senate Bill 2 requires those evaluations to be completed within 45 days. It’s difficult to predict how much more demand there could be because families “could just request an evaluation just to see if the spaghetti sticks,” Andrea Chevalier, the director of governmental relations for the Texas Council of Administrators of Special Education, told  Newsweek.