Do Charter School Discriminate Against Special Needs Kids?

One of the common complaints about charter schools is that they discriminate against kids with disabilities, “creaming off” non-disabled kids from applicants in order to avoid lowering average student achievement. For example, Save our Schools-NJ claims that “most charter schools serve many fewer students with Limited English Proficiency, fewer very low-income students, and fewer special needs students, especially those with high needs.”

A new study from Marcus Winters at Reinventing Public Education analyzed New York City data on charter school enrollment of kids with special needs. Here are the findings:
•    Students with disabilities are less likely to apply to charter schools in kindergarten than are regular enrollment students. This is the primary driver of the gap in special education enrollments.
•    The gap grows as students progress through elementary grades, largely because charter schools are less likely than district schools to place students in special education—and less likely to keep them there.
•    The gap also grows as students transfer between charter and district schools. Between kindergarten and third grade, greater proportions of regular education students enter charter schools, compared to students with special needs.
•    There is great mobility among special education students, whether they attend a charter or traditional public school. Close to a third of students in special education leave their school by the fourth year of attendance, whether they are enrolled in charters or traditional public schools.
In other words, charter schools classify fewer kids as eligible for special education services, particularly kids with mild learning disabilities. The report urges that traditional schools replicate “effective academic or behavioral interventions that allow [charter] schools to declassify students” or not identify them as disabled in the first place. This is especially applicable to NJ, which has one of the highest rates of classification in the country.




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