A new report from the Federal Government Accountability Office criticized charter schools in D.C. for their high suspension rates. Will Betsy DeVos care?
Washington Post columnist Joe Davidson writes:
A new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report says suspension and expulsion rates for charters in the capital city are double the national rate and disproportionately high for black students and those with disabilities.
During the 2013-2014 school year, for example, “D.C charter schools had about a 13 percent suspension rate, while the national rate for all charter schools was about 6 percent,” the GAO reported. “This was also true for expulsions, with charter schools in D.C. reporting double the rate of charter schools nationally.”
The agency that oversees charter schools in the District acknowledges it has issues, but it also had problems with the GAO’s findings. In a response included in the report, the D.C. Public Charter School Board said the GAO “reaches some inaccurate conclusions and from these draws ill-advised recommendations” because it did not use more recent data.
Data from the 2014-2015 and 2015-2016 school years show that “steady and significant progress has been made every year in reducing out-of-school discipline,” the board said in response.
If there is good news here, it’s only by comparison. D.C. charter suspension and expulsion rates did fall from the 2011-2012 to the 2013-2014 academic years. Also, the charter suspension rate is only a little higher than that of the city’s traditional public schools.
But that’s not good enough.
When D.C. charter schools kick students out, they are not allowed to return, the GAO reported. They generally transfer to a traditional public school.
“In contrast, D.C. traditional public schools generally do not expel students,” the GAO said. “Instead, D.C. traditional public schools generally use long-term suspensions (greater than 11 days) and temporarily transfer these students to an alternative middle and high school.”
It’s no surprise that the greater suspension and expulsion rates for charter schools fall heavily on black students. From preschool discipline and throughout the criminal justice system, studies have shown that black people are treated more harshly than white people for similar conduct.
The GAO “found that the rates of suspension for Black students in D.C. charter schools were about six times higher than the rates for White students and the rates for students with disabilities were almost double the rates for students without disabilities.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
High suspension rates for black students, particularly for black boys, are a national problem, not just a problem in DC. We should spend be researching how to better serve these young people as lengthy suspensions only compound the problem. Adding charter disruption to the mix with their capabilities to expel students causes more dislocation of service and cannot be helpful. At least the public schools can provide more options for these troubled students, and they can provide a better trained staff for handling students that may require a more restrictive or therapeutic environment. However, it is unfair that public schools take students during the school year if the charter has already received compensation for an expensive, troubled student. The original idea behind the need for charters was that they would address special problems that were not being met in the public system. Instead, we see them shedding expensive, problematic students like a snake sheds its skin.
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Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education and commented:
I wonder is the suspension rate is similar to the percent of the population of the school.
Every year more and more school are criticized fo removing disruptive students. I have alway believed that no single student has the right or should be allowed to keep 25 or 30 others from learning.
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You are right, but these troubled students also have a right to an appropriate education. Suspension may get them out of the school for a time, but it is no solution to the problem.
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Yes, they do have the right to an appropriate education, rt.
Suspending them does nothing to provide them the services, education, training, etc, that they need.
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Agreed, they need a true alternative school with small class and therapeutic approach to working with these students.
I have seen a couple of individuals in my life that were just a terror in school because they wanted to be, not for any other reason than to create havoc. I saw those some individuals a few years down the road when they were in their early 20’s, they were miraculously cured.
My point is the behavior of some children is a medical issue and for some children, it is a choice.
Unfortunately, in our schools, we have created more laws and rule that have made helping these children in which their behavior is a choice. They get too many chances and never learn from their actions.
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David: I agree. We need real alternative schools which are not prisons but do address the fact that certain behaviors are not compatible with learning. These alternative schools should house the percent of the school population that teachers judge not to be compliant with reasonable expectations. And they should be funded so they do not have to compete with other schools.
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While I agree that the needs of the other children need to be addressed so that they can continue their education without major disruptions, what would your suggestion be on how to deal with these students who have behavior problems?
Suspending them does not teach them anything, or help them learn how to behave, or help them with their social and emotional problems.
Keep suspending them, without giving them the support they so desperately need, and you are just creating more kids who will wind up in the “school to prison pipeline.”
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In my district we did in school suspension, and the high school kids hated it because they were expected to keep up with the work teachers drop off. Teachers covered the suspension room on a rotating basis as a duty period. I would think with technology we could even do better with Skype or something similar. The students could hear the class, but be unable to disrupt it.
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I’m not convinced that Skype or other technology would work. Those are too easy for the kids to blow off. They need trained teachers to teach and supervise and support them.
If the schools cannot set up a separate in-school classroom with teachers specifically trained to deal with these kids, then perhaps they need to set up a separate school, as the local school district here has done, staffed with specially trained teachers, social workers, and counselors. The students keep learning, while also learning to deal with their educational/social/behavioral/emotional problems. They need to show progress and, basically, “earn” there way back into the regular schools.
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I taught my first three years at an alternative middle school. At some point, I need to write about my experiences there. Alternative schools need FAR more than just warehousing kids. The schools need small classes, strong teacher, and many mental health and parent support programs. To simply move them out of schools and not support these kids is a waste.
At least in my area, there is no political will to do what REALLY needs to be done for these very high risk kids, who eventually rejoin the general education at regular schools, yet are no different (or sometimes, because of difficult influences at alternative schools, worse) than when they went into the school.
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Antwan Wilson, the new DC Superintendent is a Broadie from Oakland CA . He will have to figure this out. He is a champion of charters as a solution to every problem. He is also among the majority of Superintendents who, according to EdWeek, work for an average of 2.5 years before they move along.
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Totally off topic but here is another charter “success” story. High school loses accreditation mid-year, leaving seniors unable to apply to the in-state colleges of their choice (or more accurately, they can apply, but have to rely on the same exception that exists home-schooled kids). This after the school assured them a the beginning of the year that this would not happen.
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What are the rates of suspension for public schools? TIA, Duane
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It is in the report cited. The difference is that the public schools always take the kids back. The charters don’t have to.
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The reason I asked was that I thought that the overall suspension rates in public schools was somewhere on the order of around 2-3% which would make the charter rates outrageous in comparison. I’ll read through the report and get back.
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National suspension rates as shown in figure 4, pg 22 are 6.2% for public schools, 6.9% for charters (no mention of ‘counseling out’ and/or cohort loss) whereas DC rates are almost double those figures. Expulsion rates are around .5% for DC charters vs less than .1% for DC public schools and around .3 for national public and charters.
What I find most distressing is the GAO’s usage of the term “Public Charter School” as the designation for charters. Does anyone know the portion of truly public charters, i.e., run by an elected school board vs private charters in DC?
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Duane, do you have any statistics about how many special needs students and ELL kids are not admitted to the charters in the first place?
Because the public schools are required to admit them, no matter what.
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No idea Zorba.
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Don’t really know hardly anything about DC schools.
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Racial oppression is a goal, not a side effect of privatization. Will Elizabeth DeVos care about high punishment rates? Of course she will — she will cheer with all her little heart.
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So … is it Diane Ravitch’s honest, sober, considered view, that if Black students are suspended from schools at a higher rate than, say, Chinese students … that this is due solely to racist discrimination? That is, they behave just as well, or as badly, as Chinese students … but teachers discriminate against them? (But I thought teachers were all Good Guys.)
Of course, no one reading this blog believes this.
But such is the sad state of politics in the US that all sides happily propagate things that they know, in their hearts, are not true.
How will we ever solve our problems if all sides lie?
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Doug,
Where should these children go? The streets? Got some suggestions?
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First, DC is a ‘chocolate city.’ And I may be on my own with this opinion, but I honestly believe that many black, brown, and poor students learn differently from how they are being taught. Our obsession with testing and accountability doesn’t allow for multiple methods of delivery or assessment even if there may be other, better ways to reach some children. I think many of them are not being adequately challenged and are bored to the point of being disruptive. Others are reflecting the hopelessness of their circumstances. Many of these children, especially those in charters, are also not being taught by well-trained or experienced teachers. Yes, some kids are just going to be a headache (or some other body ache) everyday of the year, but a competent teacher who is given plenty of latitude (among other supports) and knows what she’s working with makes a huge difference in a classroom.
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And on how to better serve these young people: Any talk about the achievement gap is always about how the performance of black students is ‘less than’ that of whites. The REAL achievement gap is between where black students currently perform and their unrealized potential. There are examples of the successful teaching of black children and black student achievement. We just have to be willing to recognize it and implement the practices that have yielded those results. Read: Lisa Delpit, Asa Hillard III, Claude Steele, Theresa Perry.
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