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Florida's 'Other' Voucher Program Taking Off

When Dorian and Paul Neidhart went house-hunting in Miami 13 years ago, their search focused on the neighborhood where they had grown up. They wanted their own children, someday, to go to the same public schools that had meant so much to them.

The couple settled into a house in the Pine Crest area—four doors away from Paul's boyhood home. When the time came, they enrolled their daughter, Meghan, who has a learning disability, in Coral Reef Elementary School, the same school both parents had attended.

But nostalgia and reality have since parted ways. Big class sizes overwhelmed Meghan. And her schedule, a conglomeration of regular and special education classes, was chaotic and counterproductive, the Neidharts found. Meghan would be pulled out in the middle of a lesson to work with specialists, then be returned as the rest of the class was well...