One way that charter schools get high test scores is to get rid of students with low scores. The Education Law Center called out one of New Jersey’s High-flying charters for excessive disciplinary tactics imposed on students with disabilities. That’s a prelude to expulsion or “encouraging” these students to leave.
ELC SUPPORTS COMPLAINT OF EXCESSIVE DISCIPLINE OF STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES BY NORTH STAR CHARTER SCHOOL
A complaint filed by Rutgers Education and Health Law Clinic (Rutgers) with the NJ Department of Education (NJDOE) on August 17, 2018, alleges that the North Star Academy Charter School in Newark has engaged in a pattern and practice of imposing discipline without regard to students’ disability status, resulting in the inappropriate suspension and retention of students with disabilities and a denial of a free and appropriate public education.
Education Law Center, in a letter to the NJDOE on August 17, is supporting the Rutgers complaint.
Rutgers filed the complaint under a procedure requiring the NJDOE to investigate systemic violations of special education law by districts and charter schools. Rutgers’ clinical law fellow, Deanna Christian, Esq., prepared the complaint based on the Clinic’s representation of individual North Star Charter students and families, an examination of North Star’s discipline policy, and NJDOE data regarding suspension rates.
North Star Academy Charter School is managed by the Uncommon Charter network based in New York City. Under a single charter granted by the NJDOE, North Star actually operates 13 separate charter schools in Newark, enrolling approximately 4,000 students.
To manage classroom behavior in its Newark charter schools, North Star relies heavily on a “paycheck” system in which a student’s loss of dollars or points, and his or her ultimate detention or suspension, may result from minor infractions, such as poor posture, off-task behavior, or incomplete work or homework. Many of the infractions may be related to a student’s disability.
The NJDOE data examined by Rutgers revealed that, during the 2016-17 school year, North Star suspended 29.1% of students classified as eligible for special education and related services, placing it among New Jersey public schools with the highest discipline rates for students with disabilities. During that same period, all other K-12 charter schools in Newark suspended less than 9% of their special education students, while Newark Public Schools (NPS) suspended only 1.3% of those students.
“Some parents of students with disabilities who attend North Star have reported more than thirty out-of-school suspensions in a year, resulting in loss of instructional time and retention,” said Ms. Christian. “North Star’s use of the paycheck system, without modification for students with disabilities, has a disproportionate and discriminatory impact on those students and must be revised.”
The data presented to the NJDOE by Rutgers is consistent with complaints ELC has received from North Star parents. ELC also noted that North Star’s high suspension rate for students with disabilities was accompanied by a low enrollment rate of those same students: during 2016-17, only 7.3% of North Star’s students were classified, compared to 15.48% of NPS students.
“We applaud the Rutgers Clinic for requesting that the NJDOE investigate an apparent pattern at North Star of imposing excessive and inappropriate discipline on students with disabilities,” said Elizabeth Athos, ELC senior attorney. “A 29.1% suspension rate for students with disabilities is shockingly high, as is North Star’s low enrollment rate of classified students. North Star, like every other New Jersey charter, is obligated to ensure its discipline policies support, and do not undermine, the right of students with disabilities to a free and appropriate education under state and federal law.”
Education Law Center Press Contact:
Sharon Krengel
Policy and Outreach Director
skrengel@edlawcenter.org
973-624-1815, x 24
.
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Diane Ravitch's blog 
Please rethink the word “discipline”. To “discipline” is to teach. How could there be excess teaching? What you are talking about is not discipline. It is punishment. Or even abuse.
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More on the Newark charter school scam at Bob Braun’s blog: quote -The collapse of Newark’s Lady Liberty Academy Charter School hurt the nearly 500 inner-city children who attended the privately-run, publicly-funded school–but the debacle also exposed a reckless financing scheme used by former Gov. Chris Christie to help political allies in the charter school movement.
The scheme–known as “conduit bonds”– is so complicated even the spokeswoman for the New Jersey Economic Development Authority (NJEDA), the agency that devised it, conceded she doesn’t understand it.
end quote
Go to his blog for the remainder of his investigation
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Link to above Bob Braun article: https://www.bobbraunsledger.com/how-nj-boosts-profits-for-charter-school-developers/
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It should be illegal to mix public school funds with with private capital. I feel like a broken record saying this again but public-private partnerships are a recipe for corruption. The oversight & accountability for these funding streams are non-existent for the private entities.
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I read this yesterday, and it is an unbelievable fiasco of mismanagement and crafty profiteering leaving NJ taxpayers on the hook. Somebody needs to find a prosecutorial offense for Christie’s complicity.
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Imagine if we applied this concept across the board. Parents would get rid of the children who don’t meet their expectations. Communities would oust those who weren’t contributing to the pot via their spending power and taxes. Political parties would eject duly elected representatives who don’t vote the party line. The government would cut ties with Allies who weren’t pulling their own weight. Localities would cut services for those who just couldn’t “pull themselves up by their bootstraps” and get out of poverty.
Wait, this is starting to sound familiar.
I’ve got mine (and yours as well), too bad for you.
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I can’t get very worked up about this because when there was an outstanding black male school superintendent Christie had him removed and replaced by a non educator white woman from NYC who refused to talk to black or minority parents who sold the system out and where were the union leaders? missing in action because they don’t want minorities to have an education.
Parents,communities need to fight back and realize that these charter schools are prisons for our children. We are ALLOWING Jim CROW in the lives of our children. WE ARE ALLOWING union leadership and uncertified teachers run all over our communities. What else do we need to know to do something?.
Bob has been writing about the policies of the corrupt government for years in New Jersey, so when do we wake up and stop thinking about our small little minds and think big. We have been on a path that is destroying our communities .
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Beata, I hope you do keep getting worked up over this. It’s not only NJ that you see this kind of corruption. They are happening all over the country because these monetary schemes are written into state laws and in federal grants from DoEd. One example is Social Impact Bonds (a gift to Wall St) written in ESSA and in the DoEd PreK grants.
http://www.paaoregon.org/single-post/2017/09/21/Social-Impact-Bonds—-a-Primer
There are many laws on education at state levels that just need to be abolished- first are the charter & voucher legislation. None of these “reforms” were ever intended to advance education equity.
As a SPED educator it’s disheartening to see the steady erosion of funding that pays for the many requied services critical for children with significant needs. Austerity & secret charter/voucher contracts are draining more & more funding from public school systems.
It’s disgusting.
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“…where were the union leaders? missing in action because they don’t want minorities to have an education.”
It sounds like you have bigger problems than charter schools if your unions are racist and do not support the education of black and brown students.
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How do you blame the unions for the problems in Newark? That’s a stretch; the union may have its faults and shortcomings but the union does not make policy, does not impose charter schools on districts, does not hire or fire the teachers. Blame Christie, the legislature, the charter cheerleaders, the billionaires, the NJDOE, the superintendent, the mayor, etc. The union may have made some missteps but to heap so much calumny on the union is not really fair.
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Shameful and cruel.. but then look who is our president.
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The problem is that privatization INCENTIVIZES this behavior. If every single charter isn’t following this practice already, it is only a matter of time because in the “free market” of privatization, they will cease to exist if they spend too much money on students who are not the very cheapest to teach.
The idea of dumping the children who are the most expensive to serve is not new. It is exactly what insurance companies did in unregulated markets. There is absolutely no difference between those who believe that private insurance companies should be able to dump children who get cancer and those who believe that charter schools should be free to dump kids they don’t want to teach. When I hear people like Peter Cunningham fighting for the right of charters to dump the kids they don’t want to teach because someone pays him handsomely to insist that they must have that freedom, I imagine that Cunningham would be fighting for the right of insurance companies to dump sick children they don’t want to insure if someone paid him enough money. They adore charter CEOs who love Betsy DeVos because they have no morality except money. Although they certainly delude themselves that they are doing good by sacrificing “some” children so others can thrive.
Sacrificing the unworthy so that the worthy may thrive is something that is the basic premise of privatization. It is the MAIN FEATURE of the charter movement, not a bug.
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“ELC also noted that North Star’s high suspension rate for students with disabilities was accompanied by a low enrollment rate of those same students” — a feature not a bug
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