We have seen this story again and again. A lawsuit against the charters in New Orleans and the District of Columbia filed on behalf of children with disabilities. A charter school in Minneapolis that literally pushed out 40 children with special needs, part of a pattern in which the nation’s largest charter chain–the Gulen-affiliated schools–keep their test scores high by excluding students with disabilities. Study after study showing that charters take fewer children with disabilities. Even a federal study by the GAO documenting that charter schools have a smaller proportion of children with special needs, to which the relevant federal official responded with a yawn and a promise to look into it someday.
And now the AP has documented the widespread practice, in which charters take fewer students with special needs, take those with the mildest disabilities, and harm the public schools that are expected to educate a disproportionate share of the neediest, most expensive to educate children.
As this movement, this industry, continues to grow, aided by lavish federal and foundation funding, abetted by a thriving for-profit sector, we must ask the same questions again and again: What is the end game? Are charters becoming enclaves for those who want to avoid “those children”? Will we one day have a dual school system for haves and have-nots? Will our public school system become a dumping ground for those unwanted by the charters?
And why is the U.S. Department of Education not asking these questions?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It always comes down to the money and there is less or no money in special needs children. The disturbing thing is how policy is now closely aligned with the dollar signs. I realized that public schools probably have a bigger amount of money but it goes into their work (and they are so busy at the job of educating that they don’t have time to advocate).
Not quite right. Children with special needs bring in more money, but they pull down the school’s test scores.
I just sent this to Secretary Duncan via email:
Dear Secretary Duncan,
In a blog post today Diane Ravitch asked the following questions:
“Will we one day have a school system for haves and have-nots?”
“Will our public school system become a dunping ground for those [students] unwanted by charters?”
“Why is the Department of Education not asking these questions?”
In case you haven’t seen it, here’s a link to the blog post: https://dianeravitch.net/2012/08/21/most-charters-avoid-students-with-special-needs/
Last time I emailed you I received a very nice two-page letter in response from the assistant undersecretary for charter schools. No disrepect meant to the gentleman or to his position, but I don’t expect a response. What I would really appreciate is a thoughtful examination of the harm your “reform” policies, especially those around charters and vouchers (for example in Louisiana) are doing to students in public schools.
As a public school teacher I am doing my best every day to ensure my students are prepared to be part of a participatory democracy. The latest trends in “ed reform,” supported by your office (and by extension the President), show that the ones who get to participate are the ones with enough money to buy influence.
Please show my students something different.
Respectfully yours,
Michael Kaufman
Actually special needs children pull in the same amount of money, regardless of exceptionality (at least in Louisiana) In those cases its better to allow students with mild exceptionalities and leave the severe profound disabled students to the public school districts. Charters in Orleans had pattern of enrolling in some cases no special education students, or relative percentages equal to less than half of what like sized schools were taking on. In addition – the students they took on were generally of the milder disability persuasion. I made a little post dedicated to this topic since I used to work at LDOE. 🙂
Not true. Here in Louisiana children with special needs have an extra amount attached to them above the initial MFP amount. I have worked in special education for over ten years and am currently in administration. Even though there is extra money, it doesn’t always follow individual children, but goes towards meeting their needs as a group in each school. This pays for extra assistants, equipment, technology, etc. Even so, many of these students are still unable to pass the state tests with proficiency. Which makes sense, since most are, by evaluation, functioning below grade level by at least two standard deviations, or more. That is why charter schools want nothing to do with them. Too labor intensive, no sure shots, too costly, takes away from profits.
Yet, as I understand it, when they get to high school they will have to take the ACT!
What I meant to say was special education students pull in the same amount of “extra money,” regardless of exceptionality, about 1.5 base MFP if i recall correctly. Base MFP is about 4000 dollars so an extra 6000 dollars for total of 10K plus any local funding that might be extracted from local districts and redistributed to charter schools and voucher non-public schools.
To maximize your profit you want to stick with students only requiring mild/moderate services like the hearing impaired, which make up the largest percentage of special education students. MFP is paid out based on October 1 counts and February 1 counts, but testing doesn’t come till around March/April.
You can do the math on that.
Thanks for clarifying. Enjoyed the post.
Excellent letter. Thank you.
The GAO study also pointed out that charter schools are more likely to have high percentage of students with disabilities than traditional schools. This specialization in teaching students with particular special needs is something that zoned schools can not provide.
The GAO report did not say that. You are wrong.
TE…where do you get your information? This post is not accurate. That is definitely not true in CT, MA, RI or NY.
Linda- there seems to be a great deal of variation by state. Charter schools in Pennsylvania, Virginina, Ohio, Iowa, Wyoming, and Nevada enroll a higher percentage of students with disabilities, on average, than traditional public schools in those states according to the GAO report. There is a nice map presenting the data on page 8 of the report.
Matthew DiCarlo specifically examined charters in Ohio and showed that the charters were compared to the statewide averages, which is misleading.
Comparing them to their local districts, they have far smaller proportions of special education students.
I suggest you read his post and correct your information: https://dianeravitch.net/2012/06/21/more-re-gao-report-on-charters-and-special-education/
” However, when compared to traditional public schools, a higher percentage of charter schools enrolled more than 20 percent of students with disabilities. During an interview with Education, an official noted that there has been an increase in charter schools for students with disabilities, such as schools for students with autism, for example, which may help explain this difference.”
Page 8-9 GAO-12-543 Serving Special Populations
A small number of charter schools are specifically for children with special needs.
Most charter schools, as is amply documented by the GAO reports and multiple studies, enroll disproportionately small numbers of students with disabilities.
That was the point of the GAO report. Did you miss the point?
Actually I thought the most important point of the report was that charter enrollment varied greatly by state. In Virginia, the average charter school enrollment has a much higher percentage of disabled students than the traditional schools in that state. In Illinois, it is much lower than traditional schools. I think this points to different state regulations, not anything inherent in charter schools.
I am glad we agree that I was not just making things up though.
No, you were just making things up.
Almost every study of charters show that they enroll disproportionately small numbers of students with disabilities.
There are a few charters for autistic kids or other special needs.
Most charters exclude students with disabilities.
You missed the point of the GAO study or were obfuscating.
I do not know what makes a number small, but table 1 of the GAO report states that 11.7 % of charter schools have a student population with more than 20% with disabilities.
Oh. So 88.7% have small numbers of students with disabilities, and according to studies cited on this blog, many of those students have the mildest sorts of disabilities.
88.7% is a larger number than 11.7%, isn’t it?
You know, correcting the misinformation and misinterpretation and skewed arguments that you post is consuming far too much of my time.
Do you have a motive for lurking on this blog and posting so much that is in error?
You are really very tiresome.
By your logic, 92% of public schools “have a small number of students with disabilities….” because the comparable figure for high levels of learning disabled students in public schools is 8%. Of course that is not the right way to think about these numbers.
I would suggest people just read the report.
I suggest that people read the studies of charters. You consistently mis-state studies and facts. You seem to know very little about education research. You mislead the readers of this blog.
Sorry for the slight miss quote.
I think what he’s saying is that of schools with high percentages of disabilities, charter schools are disproportionately represented there too. The very first page of the GAO report says this: “However, when compared to traditional public schools, a higher percentage of charter schools enrolled more than 20 percent of students with disabilities.”
So, great. The charter schools for “regular” students keep out kids with disabilities, while there are also a lot of charter schools with atypically high numbers of kids with disabilities. Just more segregation on both ends.
I’m not sure that it’s very useful to use terms such as “segregation” here. If we’re talking about mild disabilities such as ADHD, just to speak of “ADHD segregation” seems rather unrealistic. But if we’re talking about severe disabilities such as serious autism — well, charters are schools of choice, and if families with severe disabilities feel that a specialized school is best for them, “segregation” has such an ugly history that it becomes a completely loaded term here.
We have a chain of charters here in Ohio that are designed for children on IEPs and that are known to enroll high numbers of children on the autism spectrum. I have several aquaintances who have sent their ASD children to these schools. The chain is called Summit Academy and they have over two dozen schools all over the state. They are non-profit.
The funny thing is, even this chain cherry-picks. The Summit schools describe themselves as “specifically designed for children with AD/HD, Asperger’s Syndrome and and related disorders” (e.g., High-functioning autism and PDD-NOS). In other words, If your child is non-verbal, you will not be sending him there.
Ohio also has a program called the Autism Scholarship program that gives families “the choice to send the child to a special education program other than the one operated by the school district of residence.” It is basically a voucher, and private schools have sprung up all over the state to serve children eligible for the Scholarship and to collect the voucher money.
I don’t know anything about any of these schools, and anecdote is not the plural of data, but at an autism conference a year or two ago, I met the father of a girl who’d been kicked out of one of the schools that operates on the Scholarship because of her behaviors.
So there may be less to the claim that charters enroll lots of special needs children than even the most jaded of us here think.
Dr. Ravitch – I am posting data from the government study you told me to read and I think I am posting it accurately. Readers can judge for themselves if I misquoted anything by reading the report.
Certainly one can argue with how any statistic is constructed, but given that you recommended that I read the study, I thought it was reliable. The post by Mr. Di Carlo does warn that “.. it would be wise to resist using this GAO report to draw ANY conclusions about the extent of differences in special education enrollment between charter versus regular public schools (to say nothing, obviously, of the far more complicated questions of why they arise, and what that means for policy)” (emphasis is mine), so perhaps all of the data from the study should be viewed as suspect, not just the ones I posted about.
One last point. Mr. Di Carlo does say that the locational issues he in the Ohio case may be “extreme” because of the concentration of Ohio charter schools in 8 districts (apparently charter schools are only allowed to operate in those 8 districts in Ohio). This bias is likely to be smaller or perhaps nonexistent in other states.
For some reason, you feel compelled to post negative comments to almost every post that appears. Is this your day job? You add neither heat nor light, just a consistently negative tone.
I would not characterize my posts as negative at all. The original post here was one pointing to the specialization in educating students with special needs that we might be seeing in charter schools. It was positive about choice in schools.
If there is a theme to my posts, it is about pushing the discussion away from the extremes of rhetoric that surrounds this issue. If the vast majority of posters on the blog supported a libertarian position on education, I would argue against that point of view. I post arguments in favor of allowing parents to choose a school even if they are poor because no one else here does.
I also think I must have generated some light. Your posting of several responses to my posts suggests that you might think so as well.
When I realized that you were responding more often to the blog than I was, I have to say that I found that extremely offensive. I ask again, do you have a day job? This is not your personal blog. You always have the opportunity to start your own, you know.
TE,
I don’t want to get in a back and forth with you, but you seem to have a very high opinion of yourself and you easily dismiss others. I have gathered this from many of your posts. Possibly you believe you are educating all of us. You have your angle and you stick with it no matter what the post. I sort of skim over you at this point.
Have you read the AP article that Diane recommended, TE? It was just published. I suggest you do.
I did not have much luck with the last thing Dr. Revitch suggested I read, (the GAO study) but perhaps the AP article will go better.
I’m going to ask you to get a grip and stop posting so much. I have often made the point that this blog is a civilized living room with a lot of voices. It’s my living room. I don’t like people who hog the air time.
I will certainly not respond to questions in the future.
You are welcome to post comments. The volume of your comments was simply overwhelming. Please restrain yourself.
Slightly off topic, but are you aware of what Paul Vallas has done to Special Ed. Programs in Bridgeport, CT? This is outrageious, and probably illegal:
http://jonathanpelto.com/2012/08/21/what-is-paul-vallas-doing-to-bridgeports-special-education-students/#comments
It is definitely illegal…this would never happen in a wealthy CT suburb…see comments on Pelto blog. Trying to find an advocate to call and alert OCR.
“outrageous.”
Mea culpa!
Does Vallas have Jim Flanagan and the Boston Consulting group up there selling horribly overpriced and unnecessary software and finessing sweetheart deals for other cronies like he did in New Orleans?
I have not seen BCG and Jim Flanagan in any of my readings, but he has all kinds of no bid contracts to old connections, cronies , etc.
Just search Vallas under the http://www.jonathanpelto.org blog. He has conducted extensive research. It is mind blowing.
He packs up his circus and travels to the next unsuspecting victim next June….looks like it will be Indianapolis….someone warn them.
It’s crazy how he manages to do that. . .leaving a trail of financial ruin and dubious results in his wake. RSD didn’t even report data on attendance and discipline or dropouts for a year or so, but Vallas got LDOE to modify their Accountabilty test scores as if they had submitted results that New Orleans never reported, before or since, which boosted the SPS scores for a year or two while he was there. The scores still weren’t stellar, but LDOE touted them as if they were, and then he hit the trails.
As an amusing side-note he also used to ride a train to work and home from Chicago every week, for like the first 6 months, because he doesn’t like flying – so he was only there a few days a week.
He works part time here as well for $229,000. This turnaround spin is
all a shell game. They juke the stats to find ways to improve scores. Drop the % taking the typical state test (low sped can take an alternate test and it doesn’t affect your scores). Then, voila…your scores go up.
Graduation rates are manipulated. Decrease the failure cut off to 60% and require all students receive a 55 whether they do any work or not. Show up for one semester, earn at least a 75%, either ignore or do not enforce the attendance policy…all other semesters must be at least 55…pass with a 60 and you only had to work for one semester.
There are other tactics used by another “reformer” in our state that are questionable. There is one who has even proposed letting all kids in one city, whether they qualify or not, be eligible for free and reduced lunch. Now you have high performers in this category and poof…the scores improve.
This isn’t about he kids…it is about their reputations and their ability to keep the turnaround circus train going and going and going.
Ca Ching!
The kids be damned?
The kids be damned! (not a ?)
Yeah. Most of Louisiana’sAccountabilty and data department has fled the building. John White is hiring TFA kids as assistant superintendents and directors. They already know what they want the numbers to looks like.
LDOE has cut off access to much of the data i used to provide researchers. Every year they change their magic SPS forumla and rescale all the prevous scores to make it look like they are making improvement. Who can tell or keep up even if they allowed anyone to take a peek?
Did you know we have Shadow Schools in Louisiana too?
I tried to get some media types to investigate a few I know of, but I think I’ll have to publish something on them myself in the next week or so. I don’t have the resources to research the extent of this situation on my own (we have around 1500 schools) but i believe there are more than the two I have documented.