Federal report: Charter schools enroll fewer students with disabilities than traditional public schools
The Government Accountability Office issued a 46-page report on charter schools and students with disabilities, finding that charters enrolled a lower percentage of students with disabilities than traditional public schools in 2008-2009 and 2009-2010.
Nationwide in 2009-2010, students with disabilities represented 8.2 percent of all students enrolled in charter schools. In traditional public schools, students with disabilities accounted for 11.2 percent of students.
In the prior year, charter schools enrolled 7.7 percent of students with disabilities, compared with 11.3 percent in traditional public schools.
In Georgia, charter schools had 2 percent fewer disabled students than traditional schools, according to the GAO report, which was based on federal Department of Education data.
GAO draws no conclusions in its straightforward report about why this disparity exists, noting:
Against the backdrop of a growing and changing charter school landscape, we found that enrollment of students with disabilities in the aggregate is lower in charter schools than in traditional public schools.
Whether these enrollment differences will persist or continue to narrow is difficult to predict, given the lack of information about factors underlying these differences and how they affect enrollment levels. By issuing guidance that raises awareness about the practices that might be perceived as an attempt to discourage enrollment, officials in the states we visited have already begun to take steps to forestall the possibility that charter school admission practices play a role in lower enrollment levels in charter schools.
However, the guidance Education issued in 2000, while important in providing basic information to charter schools with respect to students with disabilities, does not provide more detailed information on the acceptability of specific admission practices under applicable civil rights laws. Moreover, while Education sponsored research several years ago that pointed out problems in charter school admission practices, we believe that the study’s findings do not adequately address the range of possible factors affecting enrollment raised in our report.
For its report, the GAO visited 13 charter schools and interviewed staff, writing:
Officials representing about half of the 13 charter schools we visited said that having sufficient resources to serve students with more severe disabilities, including providing a self-contained classroom when needed, was their greatest challenge. For example, two officials said that their school facility could not provide a self-contained classroom. A third official explained that providing a self contained classroom is especially challenging because of the need to provide separate classrooms for each grade grouping as well as teachers.
Thus, if a school had 3rd and 4th graders requiring self-contained classrooms, they would need to have space to accommodate two separate classrooms. The official said that the charter school would not have enough teachers to cover those different grade levels. According to representatives of charter school organizations we interviewed, providing services to students with severe disabilities can be very costly and some charter schools could face severe financial difficulties serving students with very severe disabilities.
Charter schools that cited insufficient resources as a challenge included both charter school LEAs and charter schools within a district. Other resource challenges school officials cited included the cost of specialists’ services, and obtaining staff qualified to serve their students’ needs, such as a bilingual special education teacher or a specialist to teach an autistic child. However, two charter schools within a district said that, because the district provided all services needed, the cost of services was not a challenge. Both charter schools were located in the same school district.
–from Maureen Downey, for the AJC Get Schooled blog
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89 comments Add your comment
mountain man
June 27th, 2012
12:15 pm
I would love to see a breakdown of costs for “regular” students versus “special” or “disabled” students. If anyone has seen such a breakdown, I would love to see it. I think it is probably deliberately not broken out this way because the parents of the “regular” students would revolt if they knew how much was being spent.
Apparently, when IDEA was passed, the Federal government agreed to pay UP TO 40% of the ADDITIONAL costs to educate these “special” students (so it is only a “partially funded mandate” – why not pay 100% of the additional costs your law requires). But the Federal government only ACTUALLY pays about 17% of the additional costs, leaving the state and local to pay the other 83%. And you know what has happened with the state money. And local funds are being cut due to lower home assessments.
Maureen Downey
June 27th, 2012
12:19 pm
@Living, Feel free to be jealous of Delaware for its $100 million Race to the Top grant victory, but Georgia also won a Race to the Top grant worth $400 million. (11 states and the District of Columbia won.) I have to imagine there are many states that didn’t win that are envious of Georgia.
Maureen
EduKtr
June 27th, 2012
12:24 pm
@love/hateteaching: Unions fight against accountability in traditional public schools, where union membership—especially up north—is often a condition of employment.
But you cannot have escaped noticing that it is the unions and their surrogates here in this blog who uniformly OPPOSE charter schools and the very flexibility charters enjoy. Ditto when it comes to empowering parents to choose among competing schools.
How does the extra $168 yearly which Georgia Association of Educators members pay their parent union (the NEA) bankroll this? Here are some resource links …
ref: http://www.nea.org/home/18469.htm
ref: http://goo.gl/rtJIZ
ref: http://goo.gl/bNdPt
NTLB
June 27th, 2012
1:03 pm
@KWDMom—- First question for you: Are you a minority? Second question: Are you an educator? I am both.
You grossly misconstrued my statement. If you are cognizant or even well informed of the student achievement gap that exists between White and minority students in Georgia and this country then we can talk. The missions of most charter schools in Georgia are focused to close this acheivement gap, you can’t cherry pick students for this—that is my point.Ridgeview does and has a great job with their minority student population.
And once again, if you or any other person on this blog think education is “color blind” and of equal access to all, then you are all in for a rude awakening.
living in an outdated ed system
June 27th, 2012
1:04 pm
But you see, @Maureen, Georgia will waste the $400 because they have no agreement amongst the stakeholders. I’d rather have $100 million spent wisely than $400 million going into the toilet!
living in an outdated ed system
June 27th, 2012
1:04 pm
And believe me, I am not envious of Georgia. The environment is toxic here.
living in an outdated ed system
June 27th, 2012
1:06 pm
Where is Georgia’s common roadmap? Where’s our strategic vision? You’re willing to take money without a cohesive strategy to spend it that every stakeholder has bought off on. Instead, we have no consensus and we have people who will do everything possible to protect the status quo and be Diane Ravitch wannabes.
catlady
June 27th, 2012
1:12 pm
Funny, but our public, non-charter school provides a self-contained class for students from 2-4+ grade. (I say 4+ because many of the kids are held here for 4-5 years, as it is understood that the schools will be working with them until 21, and a high school stay of 6-7 years is deemed not to be good.)
Charter schools have a specialized group to work with, because kids are usually NOT randomly assigned there. Parents have to be aware of the presence of a charter, seek information, and apply, which means you have better than the run of the mill parents/kids there. Part of it is self-selection, but it is borne on the back of social and cultural capital. Not every parent has a wealth of this capital to draw from.
Good Mother
June 27th, 2012
1:24 pm
Catlady says that charter schools essentially don’t discriminate; it’s up to the parents to self-select. She writes “Part of it is self-selection, but it is borne on the back of social and cultural capital. Not every parent has a wealth of this capital to draw from.”
I agree. That’s true. Some sub-cultures in Atlanta value sports more than education. I once heard a man brag that he bought his 13 year-old son a $300 baseball glove and he said he camped out overnight to put his son into the best baseball camp. I asked him why he did this and he replied that he wanted his son to get an athletic scholarship to college….but….what if he put all that time and effort into learning academics? Aren’t academic scholarhips more plentiful that athletic ones? (yes)
In the South we as a society teach our sons that sports are more important that academics — in particular, the black sub-culture. Time on the baseketball court could be time in the library.
It is no secret why there are very few Indian and Asian boys on the baseketball and football fields….yet, there are many getting academic scholarships.
So, it’s not a “cultura” access problem down here in Atlanta as it may be in Catlady Country (Appalachia). Down here it is a mind-set — stand on the corner and make up rap lyrics, play basketball and football and rail on the “white” society the “man” is bringing you down.
Hogwash. Get the rap music out of your ear, pull up your baggy pants and walk respectfully into the school library and read….
Irisheyes
June 27th, 2012
1:31 pm
I wonder how well charters, who encourage their students to think outside of the box, will play in Texas now that the Republican party is officially against “critical thinking skills”. I’m sure the same platform will be coming here to Georgia soon.
catlady
June 27th, 2012
1:56 pm
GM, an example of the social/cultural capital I am talking about plays out like this: You are at the ball field watching your son/daughter practice, and casually talking with the other moms/dads. You overhear two parents comparing notes about applying to college, such as when their child is taking the SAT or taking it over to try and increase the score. Or,they are comparing notes about AP Physics vs some other AP class for acceptance into Tech. In this scenario, if you don’t already know a lot about college applications and acceptance, you are acquiring this kind of middle class capital that well may benefit your child.
In Appalachian North Georgia, we have other “cultural” obstacles, ie “You can’t leave here and go to college, boy! Are you trying to show you are better than yore daddy? I worked in the mill for 40 year, and that’s good enough for you!” and other such beliefs.
T-Square
June 27th, 2012
1:57 pm
Irisheyes – So, this is a left vs. right type issue? I thought this was an issue about how to best educate your children? At any rate, care to share some actual details or are we just going to ride the hyperbole train into town?
T-Square
June 27th, 2012
1:58 pm
catlady – In Appalachian North Georgia, we have other “cultural” obstacles, ie “You can’t leave here and go to college, boy! Are you trying to show you are better than yore daddy? I worked in the mill for 40 year, and that’s good enough for you!” and other such beliefs.
And that is the reason that, out of the 86 in my graduating class, only about 6 of us made it permanently out of the county and graduated from college. The rest are back home working in the mills.
Mountain Man
June 27th, 2012
2:26 pm
“But you cannot have escaped noticing that it is the unions and their surrogates here in this blog who uniformly OPPOSE charter schools and the very flexibility charters enjoy”
Of course teachers and teachers “unions” oppose giving charters that flexibility – it is withheld from public schools. Teachers are crying out for mandated parental involvement – but the cries fall on deaf ears. Teachers are crying out for real discipline, but the cries are ignored, Teachers would even like to see the exising truancy laws enforced so they aren’t expected to teach kids that aren’t there, but to no avail. Teachers would LOVE to be exempt from some of the onerous testing requirements, but only charter schools get THOSE exemptions. Charter schools are constantly bragging about how they accomplish so much more than public schools and “follow the same rules”, but the truth is , they have a totally different set of rules. If charters are so good, let’s remove all their waivers, tell them they cannot require uniforms and parental involvement, and give them a random selection of students assigned out of the general student population to teach, and see how well they do.
That would almost be as funny as sending a Walton High teacher down to an APS inner-city school and evaluate them on the test scores of their students.
ELMom
June 27th, 2012
2:33 pm
@Mountain Man if everyone agrees that flexibility is important then why remove the flexibility to charters just to spite them and prove what we already know (lack of flexibility does not work)? Why can’t we instead insist that all of our schools have flexibility? Some districts have already gone charter for this very reason.
Mountain Man
June 27th, 2012
2:35 pm
“Why can’t we instead insist that all of our schools have flexibility? ”
AMEN! Give the lady a gold star!!! That is what I (and a lot of people) have been saying all along!
I love teaching. I hate what it is becoming...
June 27th, 2012
2:39 pm
@EduKtr “But you cannot have escaped noticing that it is the unions and their surrogates here in this blog who uniformly OPPOSE charter schools and the very flexibility charters enjoy. ”
No, actually I had not noticed such a thing, because no one here has ever claimed to be a union “surrogate” – they have only be acccused of such by folks like you. Oh, and those accusations include me, even though I do not belong to PAGE or GAE, and have often asked why traditional schools cannot have the same flexiblity as charter schools.
I don’t oppose flexibility. I do not even ooppose charters in principle. I oppose charters claiming they are something which they are not, and proponents who insist on one set of rules for tratisional public schools and another for charters, while then making comparisions as though the schools were on equal footing.
@Mountain Man “Charter schools are constantly bragging about how they accomplish so much more than public schools and “follow the same rules”, but the truth is , they have a totally different set of rules.’
Amen.
sneak peek into education
June 27th, 2012
2:46 pm
I wouldn’t mind having every school a charter IF AND ONLY IF they can show that the education our children received is superior in every way from our traditional schools. The fact is that this is not the case. Sure there are some that do exceed that of the traditional schools but those are few and far between. On the whole, most charter schools perform at the same level or below that of their traditional counterparts. It should also be noted that they can’t provide the results they promise even with the flexibility that is not allowed in traditional schools. I also have a problem with the for profit charters coming in to make money off the back of our children. There are numerous cases throughout our country where our children are being used as pawns to line the pockets of the money-men. I am not a Diane Ravitch wannabe but she has exposed many of the malpractices and dishonesty that goes on behind the doors of some of our charter schools. She does not advocate the status quo and has offered very viable suggestions to improve the educational opportunities for all of our children and not just the chosen few. It is funny that the statements referring to how broken our schools are are in fact instigated and perpetuated by the people who want to swoop in and make some big bucks.
Good Mother
June 27th, 2012
3:28 pm
Catlady said “In Appalachian North Georgia, we have other “cultural” obstacles, ie “You can’t leave here and go to college, boy! Are you trying to show you are better than yore daddy? I worked in the mill for 40 year, and that’s good enough for you!” and other such beliefs.”
I understand. As a woman I was expected to be married out of high school and get a good-paying, steady postal worker job.
…yet, especially in the city…there is access to education and those that have not can clearly see there is a way to middle class life — thorugh education. Out in the sticks, in rural places, there isn’t even a bus to get someone to a job or a library or even to a grocery store…
but down here in Atlanta we have all kinds of programs for the poor and access to learning but what we don’t have is a lot of parents who would rather help their kid than blame the “man.”
Really?
June 27th, 2012
5:00 pm
‘As a woman’? Still desperately clinging to the fantasy?
sneak peek into education
June 27th, 2012
5:14 pm
For those of you who think that the for profit charter companies really care about the education of our children, this shows it’s all about the money….
http://capitalroundtable.com/masterclass/For-Profit-Education-Private-Equity-Conference-2012.html
RCB
June 27th, 2012
5:23 pm
No matter what kind of school you attend, there are a LOT of free resources in Atlanta. Whether you to choose to avail yourself of them or not is a personal/parental choice.
living in an outdated ed system
June 27th, 2012
5:23 pm
Herein lies the problem with Georgia’s public education system. It all goes back to a Constitution that is woefully inadequate. The first paragraph of Article VII of our state constitution reads like this: “The provision of an adequate public education for the citizens shall be a primary obligation of the State of Georgia.”
That’s right. ADEQUATE. Not “quality” or even “high quality.” Adequate. So it seems we’ve been fine with mediocrity. I do not support such pathetic language. Our children need the best education possible, and if our local public schools won’t do it well, then lets give our public charter schools a fair shot. What’s wrong with a few more “Drew Charter School” successes? Success means our kids are graduating and getting the skills they need for college and/or future career. Isn’t that what we want for our kids?
I don’t want adequate. Do you?
RCB
June 27th, 2012
5:25 pm
“Whether you choose…”…. Sorry.
NBCT
June 27th, 2012
5:46 pm
Its a shame that schools do that.
Jerry Eads
June 27th, 2012
6:32 pm
At the risk of being flip, oh duh. OF COURSE they enroll fewer special ed students, and, if we looked deeper, OF COURSE they enroll less disabled special ed students. HUGE amounts of money are expended by public schools to address the needs of these kids. Charter schools tend (I repeat, TEND) to not be monitored as closely as regular public schools. They tend (I repeat, TEND) not to have the same level of funding as regular public schools. To some extent, they tend (I repeat, TEND) to be able to “cherry pick” their students. I’m actually very heartened that the fed report percentages are as high as they are. You want a real eye opener, take a look (which we can’t) at Georgia’s private schools taking advantage of the tax incentives. Those percentages for special education will approach zero. Your tax money at work.
MB
June 27th, 2012
6:58 pm
One problem in comparisons is that you are looking at very different types of charter schools; Ridgeview, for example, is a conversion charter. It was a Fulton County public school which converted to charter status, so it serves all students in its geographic feeder area, just with contracted differences in curricular delivery, parent participation requirements, standardized dress, etc. That is very different from schools like KIPP and the FSA schools, which draw students from various geographic areas. (And, as is noted, earlier, who don’t provide transportation for their students.)
Teacher&Mom: All public school systems must decide by June 30, 2015, whether they will request flexibility under IE2 (e.g., Gwinnett and Forsyth systems) or charter system (e.g., Fulton – effective 7/1/12 – and Decatur and Marietta City systems), or remain at status quo with state requirements. An overview of the differences, with citations of related Georgia Code and legislation is at http://tinyurl.com/GaDOEChartIE2
MB
June 27th, 2012
7:03 pm
In Fulton County Schools’, per a budget presentation with 2010 figures, federal funds covered 25%, state funds 14%, and local funds 61% of the average cost of $30,323 per FTE for special ed students. For 2010, that meant that (in Fulton Schools alone), $156.9 million was spent on 5174 students, with $96.4 million of that amount local (property tax) funds. For comparison, cost per FTE for “regular” (non-SpEd, non-ESL) students in Fulton was $8704 per FTE; again, since class sizes have increased for students in regular (and gifted) classes, it would seem reasonable that the differential may be even greater now. Here is the link to the budget document: http://tinyurl.com/FCSSSpEd
mountain man
June 27th, 2012
8:27 pm
Thank you, MB.
catlady
June 27th, 2012
9:23 pm
T square–Your hometown still has mills??
catlady
June 27th, 2012
9:25 pm
GM: Here it is being a bank teller. You get to know the young men “headed up.”
This gets old
June 27th, 2012
9:49 pm
@sneak: Back to beating the old tired drum of anti-capitalism, again?
Demonizing profit will apparently continue to be the mantra of the Democrat left and their union allies. To them, rather than being places of learning, schools are primarily places of cash (dues) generation for the unions and their political allies.
Parents and their kids don’t matter. And reform is a dark word, indeed.
3schoolkids
June 27th, 2012
11:12 pm
The problem comes in the comparison. You can’t compare the traditional school to the charter school BECAUSE it is not the same student population and BECAUSE the regulations (mandates) are different. The only way you could make a reasonable comparison would be to follow “subject” students from different SES, racial and ability groups from year to year. That means in order to get data about whether a charter model works better than the traditional model, you would have to track student a and student b and student c and supply them with the same assessment model (testing, evaluations, etc.) to determine which model works best. Neither side, traditional or charter, will ever let that happen so you will never get a scientific comparison. No one wins the argument so we continue to banter back and forth and let this or that political candidate vie for our attentions based upon our emotions.
It is no surprise charters don’t take as many disabled students. Comparing percentages again will give you the wrong picture. The larger inner city charter will have more resources (i.e. more funding from a larger base of disabled students) to provide services whereas a smaller charter will not have the resources and will not be able to provide the needed services, so will not attract a disabled student to apply for enrollment (or will deny a disabled student enrollment-and there are quite a few civil rights lawsuits nationwide as a result).
If you look at the QBE reports you can see this. It all comes down to the financials. If the charter can take several mildly disabled students that can be mainstreamed and don’t require extra services (PT, OT, ST) then the extra money they get for that student benefits the school’s bottom line. If they enroll a student that requires more services, or a full-time nurse and special needs transportation then they will actually have to spend the funds they get for that student on just that student and it doesn’t help their bottom line. Don’t mean to generalize, am hoping there are some charters out there that are actually trying to serve their students and aren’t doing it for the money. Please keep in mind some blanket waivers for charters mean they are not required to have teachers certified in special needs teaching special ed (which saves them money).
QBE can also be very revealing about funding for disabled students, the funding varies by categorized disability so saying we spend $30,000 on disabled students vs. regular is generalizing and irresponsible. If you want to know what is spent, read the QBE and do the research on the GADOE website, including what each category stands for and the services that might go with it. As a parent, I do not know what disability category my son was in when he was in the system, I only know that if we had opted to take the Special Needs Scholarship it would have provided about $8700 for 2010 (not necessarily every year because they re-evaluate the disability and need for services for his diagnosis which at the time was significant developmental disability).
Once you do the research if you still believe that disabled students should have no right to these services at the cost of the taxpayer, then contact your elected officials. Please remember to include free/reduced lunch, transportation, gifted funding, welfare, food stamps, medicaid, corporate taxbreaks, the list could go on. If your “regular” neighborhood kid was hit by a car and suddenly disabled and was going to need special ed for the rest of their education would you feel the same way about everyone having the right to these services? I only wish sunshine, fresh air and exercise could fix my kid-or any other.
I volunteered in my son’s kindergarten class quite a bit. One day a kid who I had not heard speak a word all year said “paint!” while we were painting a craft and you should have seen the whole class celebrate! This kid was beaming because he KNEW what he had done! Should he have been denied that opportunity? No.
Mary
June 27th, 2012
11:15 pm
Still waiting for our turn in CCPS…
http://www.news-daily.com/news/2012/jun/26/fair-play-or-foul-pay/
sneak peek into education
June 28th, 2012
12:34 am
@this gets old-you are so wrong. I am not an anti-capitalist and just because you say it is, doesn’t make it so. I just happen to believe that it is wrong to make a profit off the backs of our children. The very people who are filling the airwaves with the manta of “our schools are broken beyond repair” are the very ones who are waiting to make big bucks off our children.
T-Square
June 28th, 2012
8:30 am
catlady – Assuming you see this, excluding lumber mills, I believe there are 3 major mills in the county, plus another dozen or so within a reasonable distance for commuting.
living in an outdated ed system
June 28th, 2012
12:01 pm
Still waiting, @Maureen. I’d love for you to tell your readers why you think our constitution is acceptable. “Adequate” education? Are you kidding me? I don’t want $400 million of taxpayer dollars from RTTT going to an “adequate” education system. We have a completely broken system and until it is fixed, I would rather see us invest money into some innovative approaches to education. If our local schools won’t reform themselves, then maybe some competition from public charter schools is EXACTLY what this state needs!
Good Mother
June 28th, 2012
3:34 pm
…but if the citizens want charters, let them go where they want to go to get educated — it’s THEIR money.
I don’t give a hoot whether a charter school is for-profit or not — if they teach the kids — good for them!
That’s what I want — a good education for my children and if a for-profit company can provide it AND make a profit — then everyone wins.
I mean, think of it like this –
Do you want to drive a car that the government made, that doesn’t make a profit — and it breaks down and leaves you stranded and is dangerous? or do you want to drive a car that a for-profit company made that is reliable and dependable?
I am all for helping special needs children. Everyone needs an education. What I am not for is a bloated government bureacracy forcing me to choose a public school by denying a charter school.
Think about it — what if the government REQUIRED us to buy a government car that broke down and wouldn’t allow us to build our own charter car company that made a dependable vehicle?
It’s TAXPAYER money and we have a RIGHT to say how it’s spent.
BobDean
July 1st, 2012
4:17 pm
Properly written standards should be clear and easily understood by all stakeholders. The CCSS are very far from meeting this goal. Any standards that need professional development to be understood are no standards at all. As standards go the CCSS are a colossal failure.
The CCSS are inferior to many previous state standards. Even if they were superior, raising the ba r when you aren’t meeting the present bar and expecting more success defies logic. The proponents of CCSS would have us believe that if you are having trouble losing 5 lbs, the solution is to raise your goal to 25 lbs. Hogwash! If you aren’t dealing with the reasons you can’t lose 5 lbs then you have no chance at all of losing 25 lbs.
Since standardized testing has become in vogue the bulk of educational effort and resources has become focused on bringing the bottom of the academic curve up to a very mediocre level. If anyone thinks this is the way to make our students globally competitive they are fools.
I disagree that teachers will eventually make the implementation of the common core state standards work because the goal is not possible. Is it possible to make everyone above average?
We need to junk our comprehensive school system and the one size fits all design it requires and divide our schools into academic and vocational tracts. This is the model used in the top performing European countries and we would be wise to follow suit. I’m not expecting that kind of change anytime soon. The real “Dream Act” is believing that our present politicized system will ever compete in the new global economy.