By STEPHANIE BANCHERO And CAROLINE PORTER, Wall Street Journal | http://on.wsj.com/MkESM8
A new government report shows that charter schools are not enrolling as high a portion of special-education students as traditional public schools, despite federal laws mandating that publicly financed schools run by private entities take almost every disabled student seeking to enroll.
Rush Jagoe for The Wall Street Journal | Kelly Fischer says she visited three New Orleans charter schools, and all told her that they couldn't provide services to her disabled son, Noah.
The report, published Tuesday by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, is the first comprehensive study focused on charter schools' enrollment of special-needs students, which has been a central issue in debates over those schools' rapid growth in the U.S.
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.
Charter schools have been a flashpoint in the education wars since they began roughly 20 years ago. Run by companies or nonprofit groups using taxpayer funds, charters are free from many bureaucratic constraints of traditional schools and, typically, do not employ unionized teachers. Last year, more than 1.8 million students were enrolled in charters, more than five times the 350,000 enrolled in 2000, according to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.
Backers say charter schools offer a vital alternative to parents in districts with poorly performing schools. More than 45% of students in charter schools were eligible for free or reduced-price lunches in the most recent school year, compared to about 41% for non-charter public schools, according to the alliance. Teachers unions and other critics say that charters take the best-performing students with the most involved parents, and siphon funds from traditional public schools that are left to teach lower performers.
Federal law requires all public schools, including charters, to admit students with disabilities. Schools are legally required to carry out individualized plans for each disabled student, which could include extra reading help, or placement in a classroom with fewer students.
Critics have contended that charter schools refuse to enroll special-ed students, or push them out once enrolled, to save money or boost schoolwide test scores. Charter-school operators and supporters say their enrollment numbers are lower partly because many parents of special-needs children choose to enroll in traditional schools that often are more experienced providing such services, or in private schools that can give those students individualized attention.
In addition, charters in some states don't have access to regional cooperatives, which school districts join to provide costly special-ed services. And charter schools, on average, receive 20% less funding than traditional schools under some state funding formulas.
The GAO report said the reasons for the enrollment disparity weren't clear. It said "anecdotal accounts suggest" that some charter schools discourage disabled students from enrolling or deny admission to students with more severe disabilities. But it also said that traditional public schools tend to be larger and often have more resources for special-needs kids.
Eva Moskowitz, who runs the high-performing Success Academy Charter Schools in New York, said one reason for the enrollment disparity is because some charter schools try to move students out of special education through intensive instruction. About 7% of disabled students at Success Academy move out of "special education" classification, compared to 1% for the school district, she said.
In New Orleans, where charter schools have the biggest presence of any major city, enrolling about 75% of all students, a group of special-ed parents and advocates, including the Southern Poverty Law Center, filed a federal lawsuit alleging discrimination in 2010, based on complaints that several schools—charter and traditional—refused to enroll disabled students, kicked them out or neglected to provide proper services. The suit says that special-ed students made up 12.6% of the total population in non-charter schools, but only 7.8% of charter-school enrollment in the 2008-09 school year.
Louisiana Superintendent of Education John White said he didn't want to comment on pending litigation, but said that the state, which oversees the schools covered by the suit, is taking steps to improve the system. He cited a new common enrollment process allowing students, for the first time next year, to select schools on one form.
Kelly Fischer, a plaintiff in the New Orleans suit, said she enrolled her blind, autistic son, Noah, in two traditional schools in 2009 that failed to provide adequate services. At one school, she said, teachers gave him the same printed worksheets as other students. The next year, she visited three charter schools and all of them turned her away, saying they couldn't provide services to her disabled son, now 11 years old--a violation of federal law.
Eventually, she enrolled him at Lafayette Academy Charter School, where, she said, her son is doing well.
In a letter included in the GAO report, the U.S. Department of Education said it would provide more guidance to charter school on their legal responsibilities for special-needs students, and said it would review state policies and charter-school enrollment practices to discern what might be causing the skewed enrollment figures.
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.
A version of this article appeared June 20, 2012, on page A2 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Charter Schools Fall Short on Disabled.
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