Charter schools and voucher schools –unless they are one of the few created specifically for students with disabilities–are noted for excluding them.
A Gulen charter in Minneapolis took over a public school and immediately kicked out 40 autistic students.
In this article, the parents of students with special needs in Wisconsin explain how their children are cheated by voucher schools and lose the rights guaranteed to them by law.
They write:
“Because of the activism of parents before us, our children attend school with their neighborhood peers. Across the country, students with disabilities have the right to a free and appropriate public education, with legally enforceable protections, through the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).
“Unfortunately, the rights and protections of the IDEA do not apply in private voucher schools such as LifeSkills Academy, and special needs vouchers would not change that. Private voucher schools are not required to have therapists or special educators on staff, and Wisconsin’s existing voucher program has a dismal track record of expelling or “counseling out” students with disabilities.
“The revamped special needs voucher bill puts no limit on the number of vouchers that could be granted statewide, reducing funding available for every school district in the state. While the recent statewide voucher expansion specified that schools must be in existence for at least two years before qualifying to take vouchers, the new special needs voucher bill makes no such provision, leaving the doors wide open for fly-by-night schools to choose Wisconsin solely to take advantage of the vouchers — and of some of Wisconsin’s most vulnerable students.
“The special needs voucher threat to the students of Wisconsin is why we are part of Stop Special Needs Vouchers, a statewide parent-led grass-roots group that advocates in favor of inclusive public education and in opposition to voucher schemes funded and supported in large part by out-of-state interests. We are deeply opposed to this latest attempt to pull public money out of public schools and into private schools where students with disabilities surrender their rights at the door, if indeed the door is not slammed in their faces.
“The private schools are the entities that would be given the real choice. And when private schools get to choose, students with significant disabilities lose. Our public school students stand to lose funding for critical shared resources, at a time when public education funding already has been deeply slashed.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on Roy F. McCampbell's Blog.
When we sent our child to a private/parochial school with his disabilities, the teacher called the students only by numbers and they would lock our child in a closet. When confronted, the principal basically told us they had no interest in educating our child and showed us the door. It was implied we needed to come up with more money to “assist” the school in his education. We switched to public schools and now our young adult is attending college. No vouchers needed.
Equal Emplyment Opportunity law should now be the case as Equal Student Opportunity law, so that private and charter schools cannot segregate our students.
No, sorry. Public education is governed by law. and should be accessible to all.That is why students with disabilities have the right to a free and appropriate public education. But private education has been, and should be exempt from those rules. Many parents have watched as public schools are forced to funnel more and more dollars into Special Ed programs, and as gifted and talented students remain static in overcrowded classrooms. If you are paying to give your child the best education possible, you want the dollars funnelled into appropriate teaching practices, and rigorous curriculum. That is why both venues exist, and should remain separate entities.The same for public and private universities.
If that’s the case, then private school students should not come to public school to receive extra special ed services.
As I often say, these laws sound so familiar to me and I realize that Florida and Jeb Bush/ALEC’s crazy, vindictive ideas are being used as a template all around the country.
In my Florida district the school “choice” law has been used for many years to concentrate special needs students in certain Title I schools that have the “capacity” to serve their needs. All special needs students are automatically eligible for an opportunity scholarship but few take advantage. Instead the public schools in white, upper middle class areas use the law to to protect their high-scoring “A” and “B” schools and they ship their low-scoring special needs students to the already lower-scoring Title I schools and, miracle of reform miracles!, they maintain their “A” and “B” grades while the Title I schools sink into “D” and “F” territory and face state takeover and staff dismissal.
The school grade deficit becomes so deep due to ever-rising cut scores, the requirement that special needs students must take the same grade level tests as their peers with little in the way of helpful accommodation regardless of their IEP, and it is impossible schools to climb out of failing status, despite all the state’s DA (differentiated accountability) Gestapo officers yelling “MORE RIGOR!” and “HIGHER EXPECTATIONS!” at us every day.
When we experienced and career teachers are all fired and stripped of our credentials in the next few years I’m curious who they think they will hire to work with these wonderful, special children since we have gone as much as 6 months before being able to fill special needs teacher vacancies? Who in their right mind would willingly choose a job where you know without a doubt that after 2 years you will be fired, stripped of your teaching license, and have your college education nullified because your students are unable to leap over the 15 foot high bar placed before them by the state board of education and legislature?
Florida is up to something else sinister regarding special needs students now but I have been unable to uncover the purposes as of yet. ALEC had our legislature pass a law last year requiring all teachers to complete the equivalent of 2 college classes in special education as part of their renewal process. This is odd, to say the least, since we are already required to have completed classes in special education in order to receive our certification in the first place.
Obviously one purpose of this new requirement is meant to enrich the providers of these newly created and required classes but we are suspicious that the other reason is to eliminate standalone special needs classes and teacher specialists since that fits in with the rhetoric coming our of our state capital. I suppose they can spin this somehow to meet the requirements of IDEA when hiring unqualified college graduates to replace us on the cheap by claiming they have 2 classes in special education attached to their credential.
The state DOE keeps claiming that the majority of our special needs students are mislabeled, misdiagnosed, and misplaced, not based upon real world data but because they “know it has happened in NYC and other urban areas” so they are dismantling our whole special education structure and using the often poor performance of the most disabled students as yet another brickbat to beat teachers over the head with and as evidence of our poor teaching skills. Actually upping the investment in helping these precious kids? Not so much. Just relabel, demonize and blame their teachers, and shuffle them from room to room until they leave or can be shifted to an opportunity voucher school where they won’t be tested or cost the state anything extra. It is evil as so much of the reform “ideas”.
Thank you, brave and tireless parents of special needs kids! Many of the kids I teach have illegal immigrant parents or uneducated and illiterate parents who are filled with fear and intimidation dealing with schools, or those who are barred by law from entering school property due to criminal history so few of these parents are able to effectively advocate for their kids. I do whatever I can and it has cost me much but I don’t regret it at all. These children deserve the best we can offer them instead of being used like political footballs that we deal with on the cheap.
The word “education” does not appear in the Constitution.
Where education is and does belong in the Federal Government is federal law: PL 94-142 now knows as IDEA. That, and civil rights issues, ARE the stuff of federal law and jurisdiction.
The irony is that while Mr. Duncan et al pay attention to everything else except IDEA and civil rights, the children with the greatest needs are the most unserved.
The irony is that while Mr. Duncan et al PROMOTE charter schools, vouchers, privatization, and testing every student regardless of disability; they do nothing about those same schools and procedures as they deny and dishearten children with disabilities.
The irony is that while Mr. Obama et al wants us all to Race to the Top after Mr. Bush et all wanted No Child Left Behind, IDEA is grossly UNDERFUNDED from the 40% “full funding” promised to states at decade ago.
And, then there’s the Federal Catch-22 – NCLB/RTTT requires annual testing of students in grades 3-8 and HS in English, reading, mathematics, etc. And, they exempt 1% (?) of the students with disabilities from the test while the rest sit in front of exams there is on chance of them having success or feeling good about their learning.
We’ve always had standards, testing, and data storage issues yet for some reason this has everyone riled up unnecessarily (sorry but this is all fixable) while the real problems go unaddressed. The real problems? Underfunding of IDEA. Subjecting students with disabilities and limited English to standardized tests and double standardized testing. Segregated charter schools.
Common core standards can be fixed. It’s the federal double standards that need work. And -that’s not news – that’s since 2002 with little outcry.
As I wrote here: http://systemschangeconsulting.wordpress.com/2014/01/22/wisconsin-fails-to-protect-the-civil-rights-of-children-with-disabilities-in-voucher-schools/
In Boston, the Gavin Middle School was “transformed” into the in-district charter school Unlocking Potential (UP Academy) beginning SY 2011-2012. It was part of a package deal in which several schools were closed and morphed into something else. The school department’s first presentation on the takeover included these statements:
• All students guaranteed a seat at UP; they may also choose from available seats at other schools
• All Gavin students in special education and SEI (Sheltered English Immersion) programs will receive high-quality, appropriate services at UP Academy
• [UP will] Offer individualized consultation for families of students with disabilities
The Gavin had for many years been home to a program for multi-handicapped students, some of our most medically fragile and compromised kids. They were not going to ace state MCAS tests or any other standardized exams.
When the deal had been made and UP’s CEO came to visit, it turned out that any enrolled student who wanted to remain at their school would have to fill out an application, which is not a normal procedure in BPS. Next, it turned out that UP had made recruitment phone calls to select students across the city who were already enrolled in Gifted and Talented classes. The only entity that had access to that contact information would have been the School Department. And finally, UP balked at accepting the multi-handicapped kids.
Our inimitable EduShyster tells the tale:
Now a former employee of UP Academy has contacted EduShyster to express concern about the number of students that the school lost during the past year. The writer estimates that 25% of the students who began the year at UP Academy, which took over the former Gavin Middle School, were gone by the end of the year.
“If almost a quarter of your students are leaving within the year, I think that’s a pretty serious problem. It certainly doesn’t bode well for long-term student retention. FYI: The administration claims that the vast majority of students who left at the beginning of the school year left because of “transportation issues.” If the school really did lose that many students–and the “worst” ones at that–then any plan to open a second school in Boston should include a section on how the administration plans to stop that from happening the second time around.”
And there’s more (you can’t make this stuff up, folks!):
http://edushyster.com/?p=1159
http://edushyster.com/?p=1727
And the MH program? Well, the kids got to physically stay at the Gavin building, but they are not considered UP students – their scores are attached to another, traditional, BPS school.
How has UP been judged? They’ve just been given another elementary school, the Holland, to “turnaround”.
Reblogged this on The Sup's Scoop.
Yeah. We just homeschool. It’s so much easier than dealing with the school. What he needs is an accelerated pace and a lot of one-on-one encouragement. The schools are unable/unwilling to deal with it. The schools just put him in the “behavior room” or send him to get his pull up changed (which he handles himself fine) whenever they want to get rid of him.