A lawsuit was filed in federal court on behalf of five students at Achievement First Crown Heights, claiming that the charter school did not provide mandated services “and were punished for behavior that arose from their disabilities.”
The lawsuit charged that the students did not get physical therapy and other services for weeks, and that a student with autism “was disciplined for not looking in the direction a teacher instructed or for hiding under his desk.”
Achievement First is a “no-excuses” charter chain with schools in New York, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. Its backers include some of the wealthiest supporters of privatization. The families are also suing the New York City Department of Education and the New York State Education Department for permitting Achievement First to avoid its legal responsibilities to the children. One parent said that her autistic son, a third-grader, was sent to a second-grade classroom as punishment for his behavior. The website of the chain “describes this approach as part of Achievement First’s strict approach to discipline.” It is part of a policy called “sweating the small stuff.”
It will be interesting to see whether federal courts allow no-excuses charter schools to abrogate the rights of students with disabilities.
“Sweating the small stuff,” indeed. While they no doubt intend otherwise by that phrase, they are unintentionally revealing that they “sweat”/abuse the “small stuff”/children.
These schools are sweatshops for students and teachers, and Skinner Boxes for training the Worthy Poor, until their managers decide they are no longer “worthy,” and are then dumped back into the public schools.
For all the hype, sanctimony and self-congratulation, these are bad people, doing bad things.
This isn’t the first time Achievement First has been accused of violating the rights of students with disabilities. The US DOE’s office of Civil Rights substantiated claims made against them in CT : http://articles.courant.com/2013-06-11/news/hc-achievement-first-settlement-0611-20130610_1_academy-students-disabled-students-classroom
The courts may rule that the local public school (LEA) is responsible for the IEP, leaving the charter chain free from the extra expense or responsibity for implementation. This has been the pattern of past litigation between LEAs and private schools re: compliance with the IEP. According to IDEA private schools are not required to meet the IEP contract.
It will be interesting to see how this litigation proceeds given the charter gets government money but is deemed a private entity. The charter will most likely dump all responsibility for services & cost of on to the public schools which will further starve public ed of money & resources.
The “No excuses”, poor excuse for an education, charter schools deserve to be sued or denying services to special needs students!
From Arne Duncan down, the so-called education reform proponents are looking for ways to eliminate special education because it cost too much! As a special educator, this year I have been forced to do full inclusion with my first graders. The way they justify it is by saying that a table in the corner of the general education classroom is a pull-out situation. Full continuum of services are being denied students by such deception. Administrators and School district personnel use the LRE (least restrictive environment) as their excuse in providing students and experience with more/total time in the general education environment, regardless of what is stated on the current and previous IEP’s. Full inclusion sounds good, but many students with reading and learning disabilities need situations/settings where they feel free to take academic chances and avoid the distractions in a large general education classroom.
Here is a lovely story on Newark: http://www.bobbraunsledger.com/newark-trying-to-force-teachers-to-talk-parents-out-of-special-education-programs/
I’m not a lawyer, but how can these so-called public charter schools get away with keeping out students who have disabilities? Doesn’t the Education For All Handicapped Children Act (PL 94-142) apply to charter schools? Or the Americans With Disabilities Act?
Jens,
Charter schools are not public schools
They are private corporations operating with public funds
Like Boeing
But even Boeing has to build planes that are accessible to people with disabilities.
Welcome to the discussion. You will learn much.
1. It is about time.
2. What took so long for such a lawsuit? I’m surprised we haven’t seen this in every charter school that has the “no excuses” or Moskowitz’s secret sauce disciplines in place.
3. The Billionaire’s are only involved for the ROI, don’t want this for their own kind or own children, and don’t give a rat’s rear about education or kids. Period. They need to get the hell out of education.
4. Lastly, were any of this to happen in public schools, the parents would have lost their minds over it long ago and likely done everything to make sure their kids got proper services. Why do they simply accept expulsion or withdraw their kids from those wonderful charters without a fight?
This IS happening in public school. Ask parents of dyslexic children how hard they have to fight for testing, accommodations, and IEPs. Common Core nonsense is killing the dyslexic kids. My child and thousands of others in public school are being forced to take our state CC test without the 504 plan accommodations. It’s 20% of their grade, and it’s all legal in our state public schools. That’s 1in 6 kids at least. More than 30,000 in my county will face blatant discrimination because of this learning disability.
Michelle, why do you think that is? Why would it be in a public school’s best interest to have lots of children take exams without their necessary accommodations? Because they will get rewarded for the failing test scores? Of course not.
So that’s the question — is it because the cost of managing the IEPs is too expensive and those public schools have been told that charter schools are getting better results with less money with the same kids? That’s what is happening in NYC.
It’s legal because there is huge amount of DISHONESTY coming from the reformers. Contrary to what certain charter schools post here, it is not public school teachers who are demanding that children with IEPS need to take tests with no accommodations. It is not public school teachers lobbying to cut their budgets and increase class sizes. Nope, that’s how the “reformers” spend untold millions of dollars.
If you have one system where children with IEPs can be pushed out of their “system” (privatization) and one system where children of IEPs must be served within the system (public) even if it is another school, there will always be an incentive for the charter school folks to push out as many expensive children as possible. and that is exactly what we have seen.
If you don’t mind, Michelle, What state are you talking about?
Do parents give up rights when they go to a charter? Do they sign something?
While I applaud the parents for taking action, I am puzzled as to why a parent would enroll their child in such a school to begin with let alone a child with specific disabilities? Do these parents not ask questions? Surely they just didn’t go in and sign up. I’ve heard similar horror stories regarding these “no excuses” charter schools. Why are parents not doing their due diligence and vetting the school they will be sending their child to?
Parents enroll their children, even those with special needs, in charter schools because of the major propaganda spread by charter schools, legislators, and USOE. The propaganda, in the form of incessant advertising online and on TV, makes charters out to be “better” and “higher quality” than public schools. Parents also enroll them to avoid “those kids:” those in poverty, those who are minorities, etc. At least, those are the reasons in most cases in my area of the world.
Also, with the One Newark app, children were being placed into charters even when their parents didn’t want it – that is, I guess, at the discretion of the charters, right? Charters don’t have parents clamoring to get their kids in – that is charter BS hype. One Newark assisted “asses in seats” so to speak.
On the other side of this, some parents in dangerous neighborhoods do want their kids sent to a charter – particularly charters that are new and adding grades from K-2 – so their kids don’t have to go to school with older kids and/or in tough neighborhoods.
I don’t know why they enroll their kids in schools that treat their children like silent prisoners though. I really don’t.
Perhaps their child’s zoned school doesn’t provide an appropriate setting for the child’s needs. For example, a child who lives in the catchment area of famed and high-performing NYC DOE zoned schools like PS 321, PS 107, PS 29, PS 234, PS 41, PS 87, and PS 290 whose IEP calls for a self-contained setting? They are out of luck, because those schools don’t offer a single self-contained seat.
Or perhaps their child’s zoned school does offer special education services, but is deficient in other ways: it isn’t safe, or the outcomes for all students, not just those with disabilities, are historically dismal.
Or perhaps they simply have a different opinion than yours about what’s best for their child.
Regardless of the outcome of this lawsuit, I hope that these children have found or will find a school that’s right for them. The organization that has taken on their case has a good track record of getting children placed in private schools: http://nylag.org/client-stories/sonia
Let me get this right, Tim. The parents have a different opinion, and they chose Achievement First for their child. And now they are suing the school, and the DOE and the state. Does this mean the parent changed their opinion?
Sure, of course. They are entitled to pursue the appropriate services for their child, as did the parents of “Sonia,” who attended a traditional district NYC DOE school.
My response was to the vexed question of why a parent would choose a charter or something other than their zoned school.
I love how this school was a no excuses school.
Yes: NO EXCUSES!
Their top level executives have no excuses to make when it comes to turning over a profit, weeding out the weaker, the slower, the differently abled, and the English language learner.
No excuses for making sure to cover up information and prevent transparency.
No excuses for making sure to prevent any kind of collective bargaining.
Any excuses made for not doing any of those things would probably be about the only thing to get a charter school leader fired.
What’s your excuse, Tim?
Tim, Re your reply to Donna’s comment: Under Cami Anderson, Newark Public Schools closed schools, so parents can’t send their children to “zoned public school.”
The “Renew Schools” with principal/teacher churn, didn’t show Cami’s promised results as of Oct 2014.
booklady,
I’m not sure how the conversation veered to Newark, but for whatever it’s worth, I believe Newark should have a democratically elected school board, and that they should transition to that arrangement as soon as possible, without any intermediate period of mayoral control. If the citizens of Newark want to have the kind of conventional school assignment plan that just about every other school district has (the notable big-city exceptions are New Orleans and to a lesser extent Detroit), then they should get it.
In New York City, though, street address assignment is the default system for all K-5 and the majority of middle-school children. Almost every high school child can attend the school closest to his or her home if location is the top priority.
What I have always found interesting is the quiet acceptance of talented-and-gifted programs and other types of NYC DOE schools that screen on the basis of academic ability, and unzoned schools of choice that admit students via a lottery (the Central Park Easts, Brooklyn New School, Manhattan School for Children, and Castle Bridge, e.g.). The end results are cream-skimmed student populations, often housed in co-located settings, that are far wealthier and have lower rates of at-risk students than their districts, and which serve to destabilize and de-fund local zoned schools.
Yet we don’t hear a peep about this. Can you think of any reasons why that might be?
Tim,
Have any of those “choice” schools you mentioned demanded special consideration and more resources because they claimed to solve the problems of failing schools? Do they demand to expand to be 100 schools serving carefully selected children but pretending they deserve to expand because they are serving all at-risk kids?
Have any of those “choice” schools you mentioned said they were BETTER than other schools because their far more talented teachers and system turned any child from a failing public school into a scholar?
If you don’t understand why someone would criticize a school that has been lying about what it has been doing for years, and why someone would not criticize a school that is NOT lying about what it is doing, then just come out and admit. it.
Dishonesty is fine if you believe in the school, according to Tim. We should never ever mention if something they are implying happens to be completely untrue, according to Tim. If another school is doing the same thing and doesn’t lie about what it is doing, it is just as terrible, according to Tim. And he doesn’t understand why anyone would ever want to point out dishonesty because other schools are doing exactly the same thing and being perfectly honest about it! So why can’t someone else do the same thing and lie about it? At least, that seems to be Tim’s rationale. Lies, truth, no difference when it comes to Tim.
Tim, it seems like your one-trick-pony comment is about zones and catchments. Get over it.
It’s about PROFITS for the few … disguised.
Good. Students with disabilities are constantly targeted by other students.
“Students with disabilities are constantly targeted by other students.”
MV,
Please explain as I’m not sure what you are trying to say with that statement.
TIA,
Duane
BREAKING NEWS: Bill de Blasio assures property owners in non-integrated school zones that protecting the value of their investments is sacrosanct, and that he will not endanger the value of those investments by pursuing any meaningful, actionable strategies to combat school segregation.
(I wish I were making this all up.)
http://ny.chalkbeat.org/2015/11/06/de-blasio-city-must-respect-families-investments-amid-school-diversity-debates/
Good grief Tim. Do you seriously think that schools should not be “zoned?” Do you think that, and I use Newark again, kids in the Ironbound want to go to school 30 miles away? 30 miles away, by NJ Transit bus, takes hours. If I took a bus into Newark, I would have to leave my house at 7:45 to get to work by 9, and I live five miles away.
Do you not understand that?
Do you think students are trapped by the street on which they live and that attending their neighborhood school(s) is punishment?
I will never understand your argument for zip codes and catchments. ALL PUBLIC SCHOOLS SHOULD BE ADEQUATELY FUNDED. Public, NEIGHBORHOOD, ZONED, CATCHMENTED schools should not be starved of funds, teachers, nurses, supplies, aides, etc., in order to shut them and funnel dollars to charters. Period.
It should not matter where the kids live…public schools should be adequately funded and staffed. Period.
“Do you think students are trapped by the street on which they live and that attending their neighborhood school(s) is punishment?”
PARENT #1: I wish my daughter could attend the school your daughter goes to. There are a lot of problems at the school we’re zoned for. My daughter is miserable there, and I’m really worried about her.
PARENT #2: All public schools should be adequately funded, see you later!
Bullshit, Flerp. Really? Seriously?
Seriously.
By the way, I don’t think that school districts should be unzoned. But I do think that people be capable of understanding how students and parents might feel “trapped” by the school zone that their street address assigns them to. If you’re incapable of understanding that on any level, then you are suffering from a serious failure of imagination.
FLERP, I think the goal should be to make sure that every school is a good school. It really is intolerable for any district to point to their “good” schools and their “bad” ones. The ID will always reflect the income levels of the neighborhood.
I think that’s a defensible policy. But you must admit that a defensible policy does not necessarily address the concerns of specific parents with specific children.
When I was a kid, children with special needs were bused to special classes at special schools. As education and research as evolved, and as special needs are recognized (and I speak from experience–my sis in law’s nephew is, literally, a genius, with asperger syndrome), so I know what his parents, his mother particularly, went through to get her son the education that he needed. A very expensive to the taxpayers education, that he needed, and deserved, and I wouldn’t complain one bit about.
So, your insight into Tim’s argument about special needs kids – and I’m paraphrasing you as I understand your argument – doesn’t fly. Her son wasn’t “stuck” in a “failing school” inside the zone/catchment of his neighborhood. He received services, from his town, in a school that was capable of providing said services. I have a feeling we’ll all hear about the wonderful things he will do in the future, as he now gets ready to attend college, and wants to work in New York.
Anyhow, this article is about how charters are shortchanging the kids with special needs, kicking them out, ignoring their ieps and pretending how one-size-fits-all works – while treating the “scholars” (rhymes with dollars) like silent prisoners, and requesting of their parents that they consider withdrawing their kids.
Tell me what zip codes DO NOT offer special education, won’t you? Tell me what schools within those zip codes don’t offer special ed, and I would bet you those scholars/dollars they are charters.
I see you’re a lot nicer to Diane Ravitch in your replies than to me. I get it, she earned it and I did not, but to blatantly write that I dismiss someone’s desire to “wish” their kid into a different school is ridiculous. I repeat, all public schools should be fully funded. Period. Not starved of resources, financial or otherwise, just to eventually shutter them and move the kids into charters which do no better and do not serve all.
Something was written here long ago about charters needing the public schools because, after all, where else will they send the “undesirables?” True, isn’t it?
Anyhow, I have no desire to argue with you, Flerp. Once in a blue moon, you write a true pearl, but most of the time, you and I can just agree to disagree.
Donna,
I would highly recommend that you listen to or read the transcript of the two-part This American Life on school segregation that aired earlier this summer. You will come away from it with a better understanding of what families zoned for low-performing schools are willing to do for a better option for their children.
It is a pretty safe bet that the concept of the school catchment area isn’t going away anytime soon. I do think that in dense urban/suburban population centers featuring pockets of hypersegregation located immediately alongside areas with hardly any minorities, breaking the link between street address and school assigment makes a lot of sense. We should be ashamed by how segregated schools are in New York City, Essex County, NJ, and (especially) Long Island. De Blasio’s stance on this is an embarrassment.
You and Mayor Bill and other Plessy v. Ferguson fans should familiarize yourselves with the research on school integration. Make sure to re-read Chapter 31 of “Reign.” No intervention is remotely as powerful for at-risk kids than attending a school that is <40% FRPL-eligible (in the urban Northeast and Midwest, FRPL eligibility is essentially a proxy for minority enrollment). Kids literally live longer lives if they do nothing more than get out of a hypersegregated district school.
The idea that these issues are caused by funding gaps is a red herring, at least in this part of the world, as is the idea that money is being funneled to charters–it's students who go to charters, and money goes with them. New York City schools will spend a whopping $26,151 per student this academic year, as much as $10,000 per student more than some of the nation's highest performing districts in nearby leafy suburbs in New Jersey and Connecticut. Taxes are sky-high, all levels of government are saddled with huge obligations, and only foreign immigration is staving off population loss and aging. Even if a more money strategy worked, there isn't more money to give.
Pursuing meaningful, actionable policies to integrate schools will confer substantial indirect benefits. Suburban sprawl is terrible for the planet, and it is largely driven (get it?) by whites who are pursuing "better schools" (wink). Families will no longer need to spend way over their heads to buy into a district with low numbers of at-risk kids–Elizabeth Warren's excellent "The Two-Income Trap" demonstrates how much of a drag this is on the middle-class economy.
I would not go so far as Warren and propose that children be given universal public school vouchers. A solution in New York and New Jersey would involve consolidating districts at the county level, and a change in how schools are funded–preferably a Vermont/Arkansas model, where property taxes are paid directly to the state, and aid is then allocated by student need.
Again, you think parents want their kids bussed 1 plus hours in any direction to get out of their own neighborhood schools? Perhaps my mind is so small I cannot fathom bussing my kid at 6 a.m. in the dark for 1.5 hours to go to school, and 1.5 hours at the day’s end. Especially my precious 6 year old, and certainly not on an NJ Transit bus.
Taking that further, since my mind can’t even wrap around sending my precious child across town…in a large city…you suggest kids should go across towns of the same counties where the bus ride, plus transfers, could take 2 or more hours? And you think parents want that?
I guess I’m just too stupid to get it.
As an aside, you don’t think the hyper-segregation caused by charters is a problem?
I’ll be a broken record. All the smoke and mirrors, and rhetoric, and billions of vulture-philanthropic tax write offs, and undemocratic appointed boards, and midnight regulating and closed door laws and slipping in TFA and underfunding schools and opening charters and bashing teachers and unions – hasn’t made a difference. Really it hasn’t. Eva’s scholars couldn’t cut it, but they sure knew how to fill in bubbles, and Eva’s investors are feeling the ka-ching. Don’t look behind the curtain–lets keep the status quo. Lets even step it up further and dumb them down with common core and test and punish.
Fully funding public schools would have been the better route, and billionaires could be doing a lot more to make the world a better place, and invest in neighborhoods…but, they’d rather open Walmarts, pay their employees crap, show them how to get welfare and foodstamps, and put their kids into highly segregated for-profit charters so they can train the poor young to obey the man, stay silent, and never think for themselves.
Oh, but bussing the kids from here to there – yes, that’ll work? i don’t think so.
I find it difficult to believe that you aren’t aware of the literal lengths that parents are already willing to go to to have their child placed in a better educational setting– again, I would recommend that you listen to or read a transcript of the This American Life report, or take a closer look at your own metropolitan area.
Kids zoned for some of the nation’s best public district high schools travel to the elite magnet schools in Bergen County. Thousands of kids cross state lines to attend a variety of private schools. As for New York City, in a few short hours kids in Great Kills, Inwood, Wakefield, Springfield Gardens, and Canarsie will get up way before dawn to start their journeys to high schools and charters and TAG programs located far away in other boroughs. Would they stay in their own neighborhood if they could? Undoubtedly. But it isn’t their job to fix their schools, and their kids only get one shot at their education.
But this is all beside the point, and it is what makes de Blasio’s inaction so depressing: no one needs to be bused across town to do something about hypersegregation in New York City’s traditional district schools (and nice try inserting the red herring about charter segregation–the implication that the black and Latino kids at NYC charter schools are being drawn from even minimally integrated district schools is laughable). PS 191 and PS 199 are located a leisurely 10-minute walk apart; many residences in PS 199’s zone are closer to PS 191 than PS 199 and vice versa. New York’s remarkable density, walkability and mass transit options, and startlingly segregated neighborhoods and school districts that are often located literally side-by-side afford it a unique opportunity to take a crack at solving the most intractable problem in American public education.
Unfortunately, cowed by special interests and his own political vulnerability, de Blasio has joined the Plessy v. Ferguson fan club, and many thousands of kids in New York will be worse off because of it.
Duh. Have I not written that every public school should be adequately funded? You proved my point. Thank you.
This is a non sequitur.
The NYC DOE will spend $26,251 per traditional district student this year. Schools serving higher proportions of at risk kids get much more funding than non-integrated, <10% FRPL schools like PS 321.
Contrast this with Millburn, which spends $19k per child, the Caldwells 17-18, New Canaan, Darien, Westport, etc all between $17-19.
Separate but equal doesn't work. Separate but give the poor districts lots more doesn't work–see Newark, Camden, Asbury Park, Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, etc. You can google "Paul Tractenberg segregation" to find numerous essays and research papers that will get you up to speed on this.
"In effect, the educational success of [New Jersey's] school funding litigation is being undermined by the extent to which the poor urban districts are overwhelmingly populated by low-income children of color with vastly greater educational needs than the norm. And they are living in an extraordinary state of isolation, which does not bode well for our state and society."
Leaving aside the truism that every public school should be adequately funded, wouldn’t a state have to create something along the lines of a “superdistrict” to have an impact on a city like Newark, where there are so few white students that you end up with hypersegregation no matter how you distribute them?
Yes, consolidation or the magnet concept would be necessary to integrate places like Newark, Camden, Mount Vernon, etc. Tractenberg points out that consolidation would have other benefits, too, as it would ultimately lead to fewer resources being diverted from classrooms.
Is anyone going to go along with consolidation without kicking and screaming? Of course not. If only there were a progressive big-city mayor whose stock-in-trade is class issues, who enjoys unchecked control over his city’s schools, and who has numerous opportunities to integrate individual schools and districts to show everyone that it can be done without the sky falling.
There are third world countries that have no schools or services for the blind, deaf or disabled. In the United States we have a principle and policy as a nation that every child deserves and has a right to a free and public education. Who are you that you do not support that belief ? I would call you unAmerican.
I just returned from the excellent new movie, “Spotlight,” about the Boston Globe’s investigation of Catholic Church abuses. There is a great line – “It takes a village to raise a child, and it takes a village to abuse one.” Time for investigative journalism, class action suits and an up rise from teachers and parents.
Probably a statement of the obvious, but “Sweating the small stuff” is an ironic twist to “Don’t sweat the small stuff”. Given the abuses being revealed, it might better be “Beating the small ones” or even “Berating the small ones”. Upon reflection, it does seem that the small ones are indeed being treated as “stuff”.
Reblogged this on Exceptional Delaware.