Opponents of school-choice programs have often argued that children with special needs are effectively excluded, claiming private schools will not accept those students.

But a new report from the American Enterprise Institute shows that is not the case.

Instead, the report found children with special needs comprise a larger share of students in school-choice programs nationwide than their share of the traditional public-school population.

“Critics predicted that, once private school choice was implemented on a large scale, students with disabilities would become highly concentrated in the public school system. That hasn’t happened,” the report stated. “Students with disabilities are served in choice programs at a rate higher than that in the public school sector.”

The report is authored by Patrick J. Wolf, a distinguished professor of education policy and the 21st Century Endowed Chair in School Choice in the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas College of Education and Health Professions; John Kristof, a senior research analyst with the research and thought leadership team at EdChoice; Alex Wolf, a policy analyst at EdChoice; and Alli Aldis, a senior research assistant at EdChoice.

Based on data from fiscal years 2023 to 2027, the researchers conservatively estimated that 258,844 students with disabilities are participating in private school choice programs nationwide. That figure comprises 15.5 percent to 17.2 percent of students in private-school choice programs. In contrast, the share of traditional public-school students with disabilities is 15 percent nationwide.

The Oklahoma Parental Choice Tax Credit program provides refundable tax credits of $5,000 to $7,500 per child to cover the cost of private school tuition. The largest tax credits go to those with the lowest incomes, and families with income of less than $150,000 per year are prioritized. The program is available to all students, including but not limited to those with special needs.

Oklahoma also offers the Lindsey Nicole Henry Scholarships for Students with Disabilities (LNH) program, which allows families to use state tax dollars to pay for private-school tuition for children with special needs, as well as foster children, adopted children, and the children of military families. The scholarships range from $4,196 to $22,236 per child, based on the severity of a child’s needs.

In Oklahoma, the American Enterprise Institute report noted that the Lindsey Nicole Henry Scholarships for Students with Disabilities (LNH) program served 1,724 students in the 2024-2025 school year.

The report also estimated that 2,973 children with special needs used the Oklahoma Parental Choice Tax Credit program in the 2025-2026 school year.

“Some private schools serve only those with severe disabilities,” the report noted, “but most fully include students with disabilities in their general education program with some special assistance.”

The federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and Section 504 of the federal Rehabilitation Act of 1973 both provide explicit rights for children with special needs, prohibiting discrimination against individuals with disabilities and mandating that children with disabilities be provided a free appropriate public education, including personalized learning assistance.

But the American Enterprise Institute report noted many families face serious challenges when trying to assert those rights.

“Parents are supposed to drive the IDEA process, but not all parents are on equal footing,” the report noted. “Challenging the services provided to their child can take parents several years and tens of thousands of dollars to resolve. Lower-income families are at an extreme disadvantage.”

That reality was acknowledged by two Democratic state lawmakers during comments on the floor of the Oklahoma House of Representatives in April.

“I’m here to tell you, there’s state schools that aren’t going to follow the federal law,” said state Rep. Aletia Timmons, D-Oklahoma City.

“There are a lot of parents that are exhausted, trying to tell schools what they should already know,” said state Rep. Ellyn Hefner, an Oklahoma City Democrat who has a child with special needs.

Timmons, an attorney and former judge, said she routinely represented parents in lawsuits against Oklahoma schools that were violating the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act; the federal Rehabilitation Act; or Title IX law, which requires that girls be provided the same athletic opportunities as boys in public schools.

Timmons said she had to file cases in federal court before local school officials would “do what the law said they needed to do.”

Hefner similarly said parents of children with special needs face a daunting challenge when trying to make a local school comply with federal law.

Lucia Frohling, director of parent services at Oklahoma Parents for Student Achievement, works with hundreds of Oklahoma families who believe a local school is not providing required services to a student with special needs. In up to 75 percent of those cases, a resolution is reached within the local district.

But in the remaining cases, she said many families ultimately opt to find another venue for their child’s learning, and Oklahoma’s school-choice programs play a big role in making that possible.

“For parents of students with disabilities, when you have tried everything and it’s not working, you want to find the best educational environment for your child, and parents are seeking that out at a higher rate,” Frohling said. “We have seen state complaints increase across the nation and in Oklahoma, as well as due-process filings and mediation requests. So that shows some parents are dissatisfied with their current schools, and they want something different.”

Frohling knows that situation firsthand as the mother of children with learning challenges that were not addressed in their original public-school district.

“I know for two of my three children, a private school has changed their lives,” Frohling said. “And for the oldest, a public school meets his needs. But every child is unique, and they should have access to the school that best fits their needs, and it should not matter what name is on the outside; it’s what happens inside that is going to change that child’s life.”

Several private schools in Oklahoma are designed to serve children with special needs, in many cases taking students who are effectively excluded from the public-school system due to behavioral issues.

For example, all students at Paths to Independence school in Bartlesville have autism.

“The majority of our children had experienced some kind of school failure, so they either were being sent home on a regular basis or were on partial days. They might be refusing to go, because of the anxiety,” said Clair Bartley, executive director of Paths to Independence. “We don’t send kids home. We alter the environment, do what needs to be done to keep them in school and let them be successful. That’s a big support for families, that their children are in school and they can count on that. Parents can hold jobs.”

She said Oklahoma’s school-choice programs have been hugely beneficial to the families her school serves.

“Because of the Parental Choice Tax Credit and Lindsey Nicole Henry Scholarship, most families, even from low income, can afford the tuition required to attend,” Bartley said. “So that makes a huge difference for them.”

The Texoma Autism and Behavior Intervention School (TABI), a pre-K to eighth grade school for children with autism, often takes students who are too disruptive to attend local public schools.

The goal of officials at TABI is to help students overcome disruptive behaviors and learn to communicate in an effective and productive manner that allows them to return to a traditional school setting and be successful.

“Generally, when we take them, they are elopers; they’re biters; they’re screamers; they are just aggressive,” said Patti Overby, executive director and school psychologist at the Texoma Autism and Behavior Intervention School. “A lot of them are aggressive. They will hit, bite, scratch, punch you.”

Some students enrolled at the school have little or no verbal ability when they arrive.

“We also teach kids to speak around here,” Overby said. “We get a lot of them that are nonverbal.”

Over time, officials at the school teach those children how to express their feelings without violence or disruptive behaviors.

“It teaches them how to say, ‘I need a break,’” Overby said. “It teaches them how to say, ‘I can’t do this. I need to step away from here,’ to kind of advocate for themselves because these kids carry around a lot of anxiety. So rather than hit, bite, scream, whatever, we teach them that when they go back to school that’s not an appropriate behavior. What you’ve got to do is you’ve got to ask for help. And that has helped a whole lot with most of our kids.”

Overby said most families in the local area are low-income, and even parents who are middle class have often burned through much of their financial resources trying to address a child’s challenges before sending them to TABI.

She said the families whose children attend her school benefit from both the Oklahoma Parental Choice Tax Credit program and the LNH program.

“We would not exist were it not for those two entities,” Overby said.