Andrea Gabor, the Michael Bloomberg Professor of Journalism at Baruch College of the City University of New York, has an opinion article in today’s New York Times, where she patiently explains that charter schools enroll a smaller proportion of students with disabilities, causing the neighborhood public schools to have a larger proportion of the students with the highest needs than the charter schools.
She writes:
In Harlem, there is a marked disparity between the special-needs populations in charter and traditional public schools, according to the city education department’s annual progress reports. In East Harlem, data for the 2012-13 school year shows that most of the public open-enrollment elementary and middle schools have double, and several have triple, the proportion of special-needs kids of nearby charter schools. At most of these public schools, at least a quarter of students have Individualized Education Programs, or I.E.P.s, which are required for children who receive special-education services.
Read that again slowly: the local public schools “have double, and several have triple, the proportion of special-needs kids of nearby charter schools.”
Noting that the latest legislative boon to favors allows them to expand at will inside public school buildings, pushing out the students who are there, Gabor asks the obvious question:
“Is there a point at which fostering charter schools undermines traditional public schools and the children they serve?”
Gabor makes a sensible recommendation:
If charter schools are allowed to push out existing public schools, they should, at the very least, be subject to the same accountability measures for enrollment, attrition and disciplinary procedures, to ensure that the neediest students are being treated fairly.
Gabor did not mention that charters do not accept the same proportion of English language learners, which causes the nearby public schools to have higher proportions of these students as well. One wonders why the reporters at the New York Times have not discovered these obvious disparities, which can easily be found in public records? Any school that manages to enroll fewer needy students and can push out those it doesn’t want will have higher scores than any school that must accept those that were unwanted by the first school. This is the charters’ secret sauce.
Gabor concludes, We should not allow policy makers to enshrine a two-tier system in which the neediest children are left behind.
But with the latest favors to the billionaire-supported charter industry, that is exactly what New York legislators are doing. The legislature guaranteed that charters don’t have to pay rent, even though the latest legal ruling says that they are not “technically” units of the state and cannot be audited by the State Comptroller. The legislature guaranteed that if the charters rent private space, the New York City public schools must pay their rent. The legislature said that if they are already co-located in a public school building, they can expand at will and take public school space away from the children who are already enrolled there, who have far higher needs. The legislature also reversed Mayor de Blasio’s decision to deny approval to three charter proposals–all belonging to Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy–because she wanted to place elementary schools in high school buildings and because she wanted to grow an elementary school into a middle school in a Harlem public school, which would require the relocation of students with severe disabilities.
The legislature accepted the charters’ claim that the needs of children with high test scores trump the needs of children with disabilities. They assume that those with high scores deserve the right to kick out those with disabilities. There is an ideology behind this but I forebear from naming it.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Charters also have smaller numbers of poor kids than the districts in which they are located.
We can thank Arne for deregulating the DoEd by eliminating SPED compliance in 2011.
I’d be satisfied if they’d just stop pretending they’re comparing apples with apples.
It’s really damaging to public schools, and brutally unfair. They continue to insist these schools are ‘the same” and charters are getting miraculous results and public schools are not. This promotes charter schools and diminishes public schools.
If public schools are taking a higher proportion of needy students they should be celebrated and supported for serving that vital role, not denigrated and harangued.
It’s not like people won’t eventually figure it’s not apples to apples as charters expand. They always, always do. If they don’t figure it out from editorials like this one they’ll figure it out “on the ground” from personal experience.
All they’re doing is eroding their own credibility on charter schools. It isn’t a real debate, and it isn’t “consent” unless it’s informed consent.
I still keep asking myself…where are the lawyers? Attorneys used to be able to smell cases like this in the air around them.
FLERP,
You have an answer for that question?
New York State’s charter law only requires charters to make a “good faith” effort to enroll comparable proportions of special ed, ELL, and FRPL-eligible children as the district in which they are located. The measure of whether they are making a good faith effort happens A. when the operator applies for a charter in the first place, and B. when a charter comes up for renewal. The applicant will produce evidence, usually in the form of copies of petitions, mailings, and newspaper/outdoor/online advertising, that shows they have attempted to reach out to as many families as possible in the district.
I hope that authorizers will pay more attention to the issue (and the issue of backfill, too) given that it looks highly unlikely that the law will be changed to give it more teeth. The fact that the federal DOE recently reversed its position on allowing “set asides” will probably help matters, too.
It’s not about percentages, it’s about whether charter schools follow IDEIA and provide services for students with disabilities. Parents of children with disabilities may not want to fight with charter schools, and would rather leave for a public school than fight with the charter school. Somebody has to fight. It’s hard to investigate counseling out because of confidentiality. Journalists can’t just go look through records and see if students were being serviced. This would violate FERPA. Parents need to report that charter schools aren’t servicing their children and then sue to make the system fairer. It’s a lot to put on parents, but it’s the reality.
For all the students who are allegedly being counseled out, there is a surprising lack of parents who are going through this process, and/or attorneys who are willing to represent them.
I suspect that lawsuit-worthy counseling out is very rare, and that the main reason there are lower proportions of at-risk kids is unawareness and self-selection.
Also, one can’t ignore that if charter schools are not actually doing a better job with the same population of students, there’s really no reason to have charter schools other than “choice” and I think the NYTimes is probably loathe to admit that, given that they so enthusiastically sold this as about “equity”.
Conservatives admit it’s about “choice” and they don’t pretend to care about the health of the larger public school system, because they never supported a public school system.
The “equity” piece is crucial for liberals and Democrats. Without that, their position is identical to that of the Right.
If this is not actually more equitable for students, and actually acts to harm one group of schools, liberals have a fundamental problem with their argument.
I’m mystified why liberals didn’t anticipate this happening. How did they imagine creating two systems was going to go? “Markets” would work their magic?
…and, as I think you may agree, charters also serve to undermine and cheapen the teaching profession by diluting the workforce with a non-union, itinerant staff, that has no real voice regarding their profession, and, who are, essentially, exploited!
Republicans want nothing more than a market-based society, on top of a market-based economy, that enriches white people and businesses, because it is white people who mainly vote for Republicans and business interests are very pro-Republican. School choice moves our society toward a market-based society.
It is likely that superior results in charter schools are mostly the result of selection of superior students. Of course such selection will make these schools attractive to middle class parents.
The students in charters are often NOT superior, and they often times get lower scores than the nearby public schools. A lot of this is propaganda.
And for schools with higher scores, the “non-superior” students, to use your vernacular, are pushed out to the public schools, generally after the money has been awarded to schools for the year. The students pushed out often have behavioral or academic needs, but no money follows them. They are also often behind academically and actually need more interventions than they would have needed if they had remained at the public school. I have several students a year in this situation.
The article also brings up the real smoking gun…..That charters expel students that are not meeting the standards after the Oct. 31 budget deadline. These are the numbers schools hand in on enrollment that help determine the number of teachers needed and therefore help reduce class sizes as well as services.
This is a racket that bears scrutiny. It allows charters to cherry pick after enrolling students and still keep the money knowing full well these same students will be counseled out after the deadline. The fact that the NYS court ruled that charters cannot be audited proves they are not PUBLIC schools no matter how Cuomo and the charter industry tries to portray them as such. The bottom line is charters should NOT be allowed to counsel out any student or make life so miserable for them they want to leave.
They always throw out the bad apples. They try to rig the game but they still stink because the staff turns over constantly (except of course, the overpaid CEO and their family)
In Utah, the deadline is October 1. You probably won’t be surprised that we get 20 or more students a year “back” from the charter schools after October 1. The most egregious was this year. I had a student who left for the “better opportunities” of a charter school on September 30. He was back by Thanksgiving, and his behavior, which was never great, was worse than ever.
Wise states do enrollment counts at least twice a year. Alt schools have complained for years about youngsters that traditional schools push out shortly after the official count takes place.
Regardless of your opinion re charters, I think people should be pushing for a state to do an official count at least twice a year.
As a mental health case manager I find children with special education services don’t do well in charter schools. Charter schools usually have “group-think” philosophy. The structure seems to work in the first month or so. But long term, This does not work for children who are supposed to have “Individual Education plans”. This is anecdotal as I have only experienced this twice but it makes sense.
Charters like district schools vary And of course, students with special needs vary enormously too.
Does that explain why charter schools accept so few students with disabilities? One comment earlier said that her school in Harlem is 34% special education while Success Academy has few if any such kids. Fair?
As the father of a youngster with a disability who attended urban public public schools k-12, and husband of a woman who spent more than 30 years teaching urban public school students with special needs, I’ve had a lot of interest in these issues throughout the country.
Representation of students with special needs students in district & charter public schools varies throughout the country – as noted before
* Some districts have decided to deal with this by creating entire schools just for students with special needs. In parts of New York, some of these schools are run by the “BOCES” .
* Some urban districts have created elite magnet schools that screen out students with special needs via use of standardized tests
* Some districts have created “alternative schools” and “encouraged” students that other schools don’t want to have in them, to attend these alternative schools
Some district schools, and some charters, do a terrific job with a variety of youngsters with special needs. There’s a lot to learn from them.
That is certainly true…charter school or not, when I comes to special needs some districts “get it” and some really don’t.
**There is an ideology behind this but I forebear from naming it.**
I’ll name it. The beast in its various forms is called Social Darwinism. Or Classism. Or Eugenics, if extended to the logical conclusion of this experiment in deconstruction and devolution. Or how about, Just Plain Stupid?
I was wrong about the name of the beàst. I misidentified it.
It is actually a related one, called ENTITLEMENT.
Are they harming them, or are they changing them?
Having taught in KCMO schools and having toured the Kauffman School just yesterday, I can say that I see the value of what the Kauffman School is offering its students (and the city). If leadership insists on diversifying the public investment portfolio for education by including charters, then public schools must figure out how to create a good return themselves (and I don’t mean financially).
Reading outcomes. College focus (or skill for career). Opportunity awareness. A culture of success. Positive reinforcement.
We have to keep working to come up with good environments for children.
Mission statements are the best place for public schools to start (even in the midst of a battle in favor of public schools).
Making them worse.
I hate to tell you, but many public schools already DO what you are suggesting. My personal school, which has high expectations and excellent outcomes, particularly considering the high level of poverty our students face, is but one example. We lose far fewer students to nearby charter schools than our district always expects, because parents realize the high quality of education and experiences we offer their children. I know there are a great many “traditional” public schools that also do this, DESPITE the propaganda against them and the difficulties thrown their way.
What public schools NEED is a friend of education that is willing to put a lot of money into advertising the positives of public schools. All of the advertising money at this point is by privatization supporters. We need to be able to counter-act this, but we don’t have the money.
LP – not sure where you teach but many suburban districts schools put lots of money into advertising. And many urban districts have set up foundations that spend a lot of money to promote the districts. Ford Foundation gave out lots of money to help cities set up “support” organizations..
Janet Sent from my iPad
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This is an example where salary and scores supersede services. Students with disabilities are more expensive to educate and require teachers and administrators to have a certain level of both experience and sensibility to address their unique needs. This is not possible when charters generally have over a 40% attrition rate of teachers; the pedagogy is not instructive when many charters practice “non-exculsion” opposed to inclusion; and when many charters purposefully lack the “capacity” to address the needs of their special education population. Foremost, this lack of responsibility and practice is the result when LEAs and legislatures fail to remind charter schools and charter management organizations that the eduction of students with special needs is not a “choice.”
She’s the “Michael Bloomberg Professor of Journalism”!
Such irony.
It is!! Wonder if she will have that position come September.
With the title of an endowed chair comes tenure and tenure has a different meaning at the university level than it does in the public schools. Without changing the tenure rules for universities, she should be safe. Any money Bloomberg spent endowing that chair in his name—an ego move—may be out of his hands by now.
If I was a billionarie, I’d endow a chair in the name of “The Hobbit”. :o)
“The legislature accepted the charters’ claim that the needs of children with high test scores trump the needs of children with disabilities. They assume that those with high scores deserve the right to kick out those with disabilities.
“There is an ideology behind this but I forebear from naming it.”
—-
It’s called “eugenics.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics
“(Eudgenics) is the belief and practice of improving the genetic quality of the human population.[2][3] It is a social philosophy advocating the improvement of human genetic traits through the promotion of higher reproduction of people with desired traits (positive eugenics), and reduced reproduction of people with less-desired or undesired traits (negative eugenics).[4] “
“The legislature accepted the charters’ claim that the needs of children with high test scores trump the needs of children with disabilities. They assume that those with high scores deserve the right to kick out those with disabilities. There is an ideology behind this but I forebear from naming it.”
Hopefully, parents of students with disabilities in NYC will join together and sue the school district or the state when students in charter schools displace students in public schools. It’s the public schools which educate everyone. Then, maybe the legislature will be reminded that students with disabilities also have a right to an education and cannot be pawns.
OH THE IRONY: If we trace back to the original NY Charter School Law, we see that it required charters to prioritize “at risk” kids in order to develop replicable solutions for the larger system. This was obviously turned upside down, as charters now do the opposite. But we need to look at how it’s happening.
It’s lovely charters can CYA by showing that they placed ads and flyers announcing their enrollment dates, but they are cherry-picking the least at-risk kids in the inner city. Their intake process favors kids with well-researched, savvy parents and discriminates against kids with unaware, uninvolved parents (otherwise known as NYC’s most at-risk kids).
There is a simple solution to this. Instead of making families proactively apply for their lotteries, they could enter every kid in the district in the lottery and inform the winners that they have a seat if they want it.
This would provide “choice” but would no longer allow charters to take only the kids with more involved, concerned parents. I’d like to hear some charter school advocates respond to this idea.
About 2 school years ago I spoke, at a community meeting, the the head of Black Alliance for Educational Opportunity in Louisiana. They are one of the very active charter advocacy organizations here. I looked him dead in the eye and asked how they were going to provide for children with severe disabilities. I explained a little of what kind of kid I was talking about, essentially multihandicapped but also ambulatory Severe/Profound and even moderately retarded or autistic. What he said was telling. “Well, charter schools aren’t for everybody”.
Think about it. charter schools are claimed to be public schools, but they are only open to certain members of the public. They are a farce.
And the exclusive magnet schools found in NYC and most other large cities that deliberately exclude youngsters who can’t pass the tough admissions tests? Where is your criticism of those schools?
So, Joe Nathan, your view is that the city should give public dollars and students to charters with billionaires on the Board of their private corporation, who insist they cannot be audited by public authorities? Please, why shouldn’t they pay rent?
Do you think a student with high test scores has greater worth than a student with disabilities?
My view is that charters deserve public facilities at least as much as elite quasi private NYC magnet schools that have screened out, for decades, students who can’t pass the admissions tests.
This professor ignores the systematic dual system that has existed in NYC for decades, long before charters started.
Wealthy people and corporations, along with the federal and state govn’t continue to give the NYC district millions of dollars – so it’s not just charters that receive additional funds.
Charters must submit periodic audits by outside groups – as they should – as should district public schools.
Elementary children housed in a high school– bad idea.
It seems to work well enough for many of the lovely and elite private schools; in fact, having K-12 in the same facility is a central part of their culture and mission. It’s a high expectations kind of thing.
Actually, some of the best district public schools I’ve seen are k-12. You see this i a number of rural districts, and some urban districts have created such schools at the request of parents.
An elementary school sharing a location with a separate HS would be tricky. Co-locations are very different than schools that are K-12. From what I read, some HS would have K-5 charters sharing a location with 9-12 students who attend a totally different school, but just share a building.
Also, many of the elite private schools have several buildings.
I found the pro-charter comments on this piece to be very telling. Here was my favorite: “Why is it okay for a special needs child to ruin educational opportunities for other students? Mainstreaming disruptive or slow-learning students keeps motivated students from learning. Everyone is NOT equal.”
http://teacherbiz.wordpress.com/2014/04/05/quick-send-your-kids-to-charters-lest-they-be-tossed-in-the-lions-den-with-the-special-needs-student/
There’s one in the NYTimes who suggests charter companies open up a school just for special needs students—it’s called segregation. Yet on the TV show Parenthood which is always kissing up charters has one of the main characters wanting to start a charter for kids like her son. In a way I can understand that because my nephew had a very hard time in high school. The principal and superintendent were not interested in his needs. She pushed and finally got a workshop for teachers on Tourette’s and the teachers found it very useful. But the funny thing was when he got suspended because of new special ed teacher didn’t know how to handle him. She out of everyone should have known better. The AP took her side even after the other teachers said they didn’t have the same problem with him because they used the techniques they learned from the workshop.
Some parents with special needs students, after years of frustration with districts, have started charters that are open to all but focus on students who, for example, are deaf, or are on the autism spectrum.
It’s not clear from many people working in charters around the state that their needs were put ahead of other schools. The assistance for buildings seems to be focused in NYC.