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Federal Study: Charters and Special Education

By dianeravitch
June 20, 2012 //
18

The General Accounting Office, which is the federal government’s watchdog agency, just issued a report concluding that charter schools are failing to enroll a fair share of students with disabilities. Advocates of students with special needs have complained about this for the past few years, and it is now confirmed.

The report showed that special-education students—those with diagnosed disabilities from Down Syndrome to attention-deficit disorder—made up 8.2% of charter school students during the 2009-2010 school year. While that was up from 7.7% the year before, it was below the average at traditional public schools of 11.2% in 2009-2010, and 11.3% the previous year.
“These are differences that cannot remain. They are not acceptable,” said Rep. George Miller (D., Calif), a charter-school proponent who asked the GAO to look into the issue. The House passed a bill last year that would make it easier for charter schools to expand, and “we want to make sure that all children—including those who are special ed—have a chance to participate in this revolutionary education reform,” he said. The Senate hasn’t yet voted on the bill.

Congressman George Miller of California, who requested the study, is the leading Democrat on education in the House of Representatives. Miller is a big proponent of testing (he was one of the prime sponsors of NCLB) and now of charters. He is also a favorite of Democrats for Education Reform, the organization of Wall Street hedge fund managers that promotes charters everywhere. DFER has raised large sums of money for Miller.

Eva Moskowitz, a charter founder in New York City, says in the article that the reason the numbers of special education students are low is because her schools are able to move students out of special education because of her schools’  superior methods. But this claim demonstrates that her schools take students with the mildest disabilities, and leaves those with high needs to the public schools, a complaint often lodged against charters.

The most disturbing comment in the article about the study comes at the very end.

Jim Shelton, who oversees charter school initiatives for the Department of Education, said the enrollment gaps between charters and traditional schools are a “relatively small difference,” and that it was difficult to draw conclusions based on the information provided. But he said his office would takes steps to address the issue.

Shelton, formerly of McKinsey, formerly of the Gates Foundation, formerly part of Race to the Top, formerly in charge of innovation grants, now runs the U.S. Department of Education’s charter school initiatives. He sees only a “relatively small difference” in the data presented by GAO. In other words, no problem here. Move on, look the other way. He finds it difficult to draw conclusions. He sees nothing of importance. But his office will “take steps” to address this unimportant issue.
In a story about this report in Huffington Post, Shelton says, “The report puts a fine point on issues we were concerned about,” demonstrating his lack of interest in the issue. Expecting Shelton to monitor charter school violations of the rights of students with special needs or of any other wrong committed by these private sector schools is putting the fox in charge of the henhouse.
Diane
Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform, Special Education, U.S. Department of Education

This Teacher Asks a Good Question

By dianeravitch
June 10, 2012 //
3

I received a comment from a teacher of children with high needs. The teacher writes about the challenges she or he faces every single day and the small victories achieved when a child is able to understand expectations or accomplish a limited task. Yet no matter how demanding the job, the teacher will be judged by the students’  test scores. The teacher will be held accountable to meet goals set by politicians who have no concept of the situation and who would not survive a day in this teacher’s classroom.

The teacher wonders: How do we get these politicians to stop acting as our superiors? This question suggests other questions: How dare the politicians pretend that they know more than teachers who do the work? How do teachers regain their professional autonomy? Who will want to teach in the future under these conditions? Will we ever be free of their harmful intrusions? What makes them think they are improving education when they impose so many harmful policies?

I love how you think! I just started reading your blogs and have learned a lot from them. I teach the severely handicapped and our day’s progress (miracles) might be getting a kid to look at me, to get to the potty before an accident occurs, or having a student respond appropriately to greetings. Now I’m told that their test scores will be used to grade me! Nothing on the Florida Alternative Assessment tests these skills. These wacko politicians have no clue what is involved in teaching at these center schools. It cannot be tested on the FAA. Further, i-observations that are being required by many districts in Fl have many good teachers becoming “needs improving” teachers. I fear our future. How can teachers control their own profession like doctors and lawyers and get these politicians out of the schools? Just wondering!

For this teacher, every piece of evidence that a child makes a connection is a miracle. Progress is slow, sometimes glacial. What standardized test will reflect these miracles? What measure will validate the teacher’s daily work? Which of the politicians who now determine the teacher’s value could do what he or she does every day?

Diane

Categories Education Reform, Special Education

The High Cost of Privatizing Special Education

By dianeravitch
June 7, 2012 //
4

As the movement to privatize public schools grows stronger, we should pay attention to the costs of privatization.

Those who push for privatization also claim that private business operates more efficiently than government and will thus save taxpayers’ dollars.

If only it were true.

The latest example in the privatization sage was a story in the New York Times of June 6 about what has happened to the cost of privatized special education for preschool children in New York City. The cost, now at $1 billion for 25,000 children of ages 3 and 4, has doubled in the past six years. It is far more than is paid for the same services in other cities and states.

New York City now spends about $40,000 per child in the program. Says the article, “Massachusetts, whose program is considered “resource-rich” by experts in the field, spends less than $10,000 a child.”

Oversight by the city and state has been lax, and efforts to tighten regulation in Albany has been blocked by the industry’s lobbyists.

The private contractors, who have their tuition rates set by the state, have become an influential lobbying force in Albany, where they have regularly rallied parents of disabled children to protest spending curbs in the program.

Auditors’ reports have found that:

Some contractors have billed the program for jewelry, expensive clothing, vacations to Mexico and spa trips to the Canyon Ranch resort, The Times found in a review of a decade’s worth of education, financial and court records. Others have hired relatives at inflated salaries or for no-show jobs, or funneled public money into expensive rents paid by their preschools to entities they control personally.

New York is the only state that has turned this program over to private contractors, many of which operate for-profit. Typically, the same firms evaluate the children and then provide services to them. 83% of the firms that conducted the evaluation also provided the services needed. Critics believe, not without reason, that the companies have a finanical incentive to over-identify children’s needs to inflate their bottom line.

When services are privatized, there will inevitably be operators who overbill for their services and pad the books and their profits. Lax oversight enables fraud. In the case of this program, oversight is very lax indeed: Regulators rely on contractors’ own accountants to vouch for billing. City and state officials conduct audits infrequently, and when they do, the results often languish on the shelves of the State Education Department. Some audits have not been given final approval and released until years after the contractors being audited went out of business.

Thus, the growing cost does not mean that children are getting more services they need, but that private firms are getting more profits at the expense of the children they supposedly serve.

A spokesman for New York City’s Department of Education defended the program and said that although it was expensive, it works.

As this article shows, it certainly works for the private contractors, who use the children and their parents to prevent appropriate and necessary oversight.

Diane

Categories Education Reform, NYC, Pre-K, Privatization, Special Education

Undermining Special Education?

By dianeravitch
May 26, 2012 //
18

I thought I was done with blogging for the day but then I read a comment on an earlier post. It was very disturbing. If true, it’s frightening to think that the Obama administration plans to “monitor” special education by test scores and to reduce the number of people on the ground.

“For-profit higher education is a $30 billion industry, and it has the wherewithal to call off the regulators.” Exactly. DoEd will reform (translation: eliminate) OSEP’s compliance procedures assuring IDEA and special education IEPs are effectively working for children with disabilities. OSEP director Melodie Musgrove told us at the Council for Exceptional Children’s international convention (CEC) in April, 2012 that they will be monitoring “achievement data” (translation: standardized test scores) from Washington and cutting back on state compliance officers (translation: firing). Her “vision” for OSEP  is “results driven accountability” and to “reward teachers who work with sped students.” (translation: TfA exploiting the SPED teacher shortage).

OSEP’s shift from compliance to monitoring sets back 40 years of special education progress in assuring all schools provide a free appropriate public education for children with disabilities.

Musgrove signaled that DoEd and OSEP would essentially ignore IEP violations.
This is a huge gift to the for-profits. Shifting away from school compliance on IEPs  means schools will not be accountable to parents or teachers for providing individualized educational services. You know, all those expensive services like smaller class groupings, collaborative teaching, inclusion, transportation, psychological support, speech therapy, OT, PT, etc. that the profiteers don’t want to pay for.

Musgrove said we could call her anytime a 205-245-8020 or e-mail her at melody.musgrove@ed.gov. She added, we might not like what we hear…

If you are the parent or child of a child with special needs, or if you care about children with special needs, you should get in touch with Musgrove.

Diane

Categories Education Industry, Special Education, U.S. Department of Education
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