Franklin Towne Charter High School in Philadelphia has been accused of discrimination against a student with disabilities, reports Greg Windle in The Notebook.
Pamela James was thrilled when her granddaughter was accepted at Franklin Towne Charter High School. Her granddaughter raced off to tell friends the good news, and James gave the school a copy of her granddaughter’s Individual Education Plan (IEP), which included the need for emotional support — a common but relatively expensive requirement among students in Philly schools.
Hours later they were both shaken when James got a call from the Northeast Philadelphia school, informing her that her granddaughter could not attend as a result of her emotional disturbance diagnosis, that the class she needed was “full” and that the school would not accommodate her.
“After I took her IEP to the school, that’s when they shot me down,” James said. “That was really ugly discrimination.”
James was furious. No one at the school would return her calls, though she eventually received a brief letter restating that her daughter could not attend.
“I don’t understand how they’re able to do this,” James said. “They decided to change their mind because she needed emotional support.”
At that point, James did not know it is illegal to deny a student attendance at a public school based on their special education status. But she would soon find out. The Education Law Center of Philadelphia has since taken up her cause, sending an open complaint letter to the schools’ lawyer.
The article includes a graph created by the Education Law Center that shows the stark disparity between Philadelphia’s public schools and its charter schools in enrolling students with disabilities.
The only type of disability where charters accept the same proportion of students as public schools is “speech or language impairment.”
On every other type of disability, the contrast is dramatic. The public schools enroll more than 90% of students who are blind and nearly 90% of those who are deaf. The proportions accepted by charter schools are tiny. Eighty percent of students with autism are in public schools, 20% in charters.
Let us all be grateful to organizations like the Education Law Center. Without them, many students would have rights that are not enforced.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
But, but, but that private charter school is a public school, doncha know!
LikeLike
Charters are private schools, but even private schools and private businesses shouldn’t be able to deny acceptance based on special needs. Does a restaurant have the right to deny a customer entry because the business doesn’t wish to pay for a wheelchair ramp? No. A school should not have a right to deny a student because the business running it doesn’t wish to pay for a teacher or an aide.
LikeLiked by 1 person
If a charter school is funded by the state, it must obey civil rights laws
LikeLike
I still can’t believe charters are funded by the state. Yes, they have to follow civil rights laws! At the very least.
LikeLike
Charters are NOT private schools. Some charter schools are run by for profit organizations, but that is not true of all charter schools, and even those run by for-profits, like it or not, are public schools. Don’t be dogmatic.
A charter school with 1,200 students (like Franklin) should accept a student with this iep, and they will learn soon enough that they’re required to. Some charter schools are very small, trying to grow, and should not be required to accept students with certain ieps because they can’t support that student as well as a larger and better resourced public school can. As a parent, I would be foolish to send a special needs child to a school that can’t meet her needs when there is a neighborhood school available that can.
LikeLike
Charter schools are not public schools.
Federal courts have ruled that they are “not state actors.”
The NLRB has ruled twice they are private schools.
They are neither accountable nor transparent.
They accept the students they want and kick out those they don’t want.
They close school and bus their students and staff to political rallies.
Public schools can’t do that.
The only thing public about them is getting public money.
So does Lockheed Martin and Boeing. They are not public utilities. They are private companies with shareholders. But they rely, like charters, on public money.
LikeLike
Heather,
Did you read the article about the charter in Philadelphia that rejected a student after learning she had an IEP?
LikeLike
The fact that one has to “get accepted” at all means it’s not a public school. When my daughter decided last year she wanted to attend public school, I walked down the street and enrolled her. No “acceptance” needed.
And, yes, this applies to magnet and selective enrollment “public” schools as well. If it’s not open to the public, it’s pretty dicey to call it public.
LikeLike
An excellent but obvious point.
Those pushing/mandating corporate education reform like to tout their schemes and scams as being, for example, efficient. Efficient, yes, at saving themselves the time and effort and expense of educating actual living breathing students. Their bottom line: how does opening the door to one and all [aka “public schools”] contribute to swelling the bank accounts and egos of rheephormistas large and small?
I hope they get hit with the lawsuit they so richly deserve.
😎
LikeLike
If I had to guess, if the speech designation data were disaggregated, it would most likely reveal that charters mostly accept students with articulation problems that are largely cheap and easy to address. Students that are classified language impaired in which the problem is neurologically based are long term, very needy students that expensive to treat. My guess is that those students would be the ones most likely to be rejected. Not all students in the “speech” category of needs are equal.
LikeLike
It was the case for a student at my school. He was in a fairly restrictive classroom before he went to the charter school, who reclassified him as “resource” (cheaper than a more restrictive unit) and let him do nothing the entire year. When he returned to our school, he had to be put into resource and regular education classes, because we had to reclassify him. Because of attendance issues (a whole other story), it took nearly a year to reclassify him, and then he was classified into a more restrictive environment than he had been when he left. He lost two years of education. It was tragic.
LikeLike
This disparity between charter and the real public schools happens everywhere. The public schools take the much higher percentages of special ed kids with the more serious and much more expensive learning problems and disabilities. In addition, charter schools have admissions time constraints; they don’t accept new kids throughout the whole school year as do the actual public schools.
LikeLike
And the average person has no idea about the disparity. Today there is a somewhat viral story about a “public” school teacher on a Southwest flight who got more than $500 of unsolicited donations from fellow passengers after her seat neighbor was so impressed about her passion for her students at an underprivileged school in Chicago. Turns out it is one Rahm’s charters. But the general public thinks it was a wonderful public school story.
LikeLike
And it is, to some extent, because kids are being helped. But I TOTALLY get where you’re coming from. If schools were running one system instead of two, then there would be more money.
The public is starting to get wiser about charters (and this teacher may never have mentioned that the school was a charter), but a lot of people still think that running two parallel systems somehow doesn’t limit the amount of money coming ot each school.
LikeLike
The public schools wind up with most of the students that are conduct disorder students, which is unfair to the remaining public school students, as these students are generally the disruptors often with emotional issues. They are also more likely to drop out which makes the public schools look bad when the number crunchers post the data in local newspapers.
LikeLike
This is anecdotal, but the charter schools in my area attract students with conduct disorders and social disorders (adhd and high functioning aspergers). Those are the parents who are looking for alternatives to public district schools and they flock to charter schools. My daughter went to a charter school like this and despite the perception around here, the school had less funding than the public district schools in the area and lacked the resources needed to support (early career) teachers to work with so many challenging students.
LikeLike
When a colleague (in the role of advocate) and a parent of a student with special needs contested this practice in a co-location case, the board listened and the superintendent agreed with the colleague and parent’s point. Then, later, the colleague was moved to another school. The one we taught in was causing too many problems I “assume.” Fortunately, my colleague found a sympathetic administrator and received a good placement.
LikeLike
The charter school’s folks have NO CLUE, that’s why.
LikeLike
Is the reform crowd saying that their secret sauce does not work with a student that has an IEP ? Well…well…First there is no secret sauce – there is nothing academically that a public school can take from a charter to improve itself, If there is, let me know, re: Rose interview with TFA founder – he kept asking her over and over…what is it ? Here is what it is…throw out students with any problems – behavior or academic – and add in backward, borderline abusive no excuse classroom management. KIPP was started with hardcore no excuses management – not fair to vulnerable young children.
LikeLike
http://www.philly.com/philly/business/lacking-transparency-charter-school-law-needs-to-be-re-examined-20180303.html?amphtml=y
Linked article focuses on the charter law which allows Philly charters to collect extra revenue for SpEd students but spend it elsewhere. A study quoted shows ave revenue vs expend per SpEd student is roughly $12k vs $8k. A windfall, as long as they’re careful to accept only lo-cost SpEd studs & shun ED like this student. Article says charter law also allows them to hide the details of acceptance.
20 yrs of this law results in Philly’s way-out-of-whack publ vs charter proportion of more seriously disabled studs. (&, of course, such a large proportion of studs attending charters that their publics have long been in dire shape & continually declining.) It’s the same pattern seen everywhere, on steroids.
17 yrs ago – during economic hiccups affecting fin’l industry – my son’s then-gf moved from our chi-chi NJ town to inner Philly. Her CPA single mom was ‘downsized’, leaving dghtr to do 11th-12th there. After trying zoned school briefly (overcrowded & dangerous), she & her brother switched to one of their early virtual academies. Back then, there was a brick&mortar component for studying/ tutoring. She quickly found herself promoted to tutor 😀 Her ed took a hit, for sure. She found herself at a mediocre comm coll after grad.. Unfortunately mom relocated again, interrupting that; it was a few yrs before she could get AA & some career direction.
This anecdote speaks more to econ difficulties causing freq moves — but then, that is the story for so many kids these charters are supposedly designed to help! They would be so much better served by finding a solid pubsch at each stop. And that doesn’t mean an imaginary stdzd-curric/assessment unit in some Gates/ Obama/ Duncan hypothesis. It means class size 25 or less, well-paid unionized teachers, counselors, librarian, nurse, support services. Outrageous to me that Comcast (et al Philly industry) sits there like a tax-break-bloated vampire in the midst of such need.
LikeLike