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SCHOOL BOARDS: CHARTER SCHOOLS LOW ON SPECIAL ED INNOVATION

November 15, 2000

As charter schools continue to open across the United States to serve niche student populations, improve on the use of public education funds or both, special ed students do not appear to be among the early beneficiaries, according to a recent report by the National School Boards Association. However, the group argues, it is not too late to tweak federal and state regulations and adjust local strategies to help charter schools serve students with special needs.

Still in their infancy, charter schools are trying to resolve a variety of challenges such as funding school facilities and improving academic achievement to live up to the promises of their founders. Special ed, likewise, is a work in progress, according to the NSBA, which released "Charting a New Course: Fact and Fiction about Charter Schools" last month to provide guidance to local school boards sponsoring charter schools.

"Certainly there are some charter schools that provide rich experiences for special education students," the school boards group says. "But it is important to note that the charter school movement has not been a source of innovation in developing programs for these students."

Many charter schools still do not provide special ed services, despite federal law mandating them. In addition, funding remains inadequate in many cases, and special needs students are not represented in charter schools in proportion to public schools in the same school districts. In some cases, the NSBA notes, students that had been labeled as special ed students in public schools do not retain that classification in a charter school and, therefore, do not qualify for special services.

"State authority cannot allow schools to ignore federal special education laws, yet, in practice, many charter schools are irresponsible in this regard," the NSBA says. The school boards group appears to indict nearly every strategy charter schools have adopted to answer the financially challenging demand for special ed services. The NSBA complains that some charter schools ignore special ed services altogether or focus only on those with less-severe disabilities. At the same time, the NSBA criticizes those that focus heavily on special ed students because they are "effectively segregating them from less-restrictive forms of education."

"Although the record of educating students with disabilities in some traditional public schools is far from stellar," the NSBA says, "that is no excuse for allowing charter schools to ignore these students' hard-earned rights."

The NSBA makes several general recommendations for improving charter schools' special ed services, primarily urging public schools and charter schools to work together to answer many of the charters' shortcomings. Special education "is an area in which valiant cooperation and responsible experimentation should occur," the NSBA says.

State education agencies should create statewide committees, the NSBA says, to document trends and progress charter schools are making in providing services for special needs, at-risk, minority and limited English proficiency students. State education departments should also encourage public schools and charter schools to work together to ensure that students transferring between schools receive special services as quickly as possible and are referred to the school that can best meet their needs.

The first step toward such cooperation, however, may be improving relations between public school administrators and their charter school counterparts. Research cited in the school boards association report shows district superintendents are skeptical of many of the claims and promises charter school directors make, including about their intentions for serving students with special needs. For example, while 30 percent of charter school directors surveyed in January by RPP International said one reason they opened a charter school was to serve "special populations," public school administrators in a separate study in Arizona listed avoiding special ed students and skirting state regulations as underlying reasons some charter schools were founded.

Whether or not the intentions are suspect, the U.S. Department of Education says that in 1999 only about 8 percent of students attending charter schools received special ed services, compared to 11 percent in public schools. "And charters tended to serve those students with less-severe problems," the NSBA said.

The enrollment discrepancy may be the result of funding challenges that plague many charter schools as the movement continues to develop. According to early observations from the National Charter School Finance Study being conducted for the American Federation of Teachers, which has pledged conditional support for charter schools, special ed services bear the brunt of some of the inherent disadvantages in the charter school funding model.

"Charter schools serving high-need special education students, or exclusively special education students, often receive funding based on the average cost of special-needs students [throughout the state] and are thus underfunded," the NSBA notes. In addition, "Most charter schools that enroll smaller numbers of special-needs students are funded on the same basis as non-charter public schools with a larger proportion of special-needs students," which creates an incentive for charter schools to keep their special ed enrollments low.

The NSBA advocates a more equitable funding model for charter schools based on the actual costs of providing services for the students they enroll. "If, for example, charter schools should encounter heavier burdens than traditional public schools for providing services to special education students, it can be asserted that they may require additional resources to meet those needs," the group said.

State legislatures can play a role in establishing this balance, the NSBA adds. "Charter schools that enroll no special education students should not receive additional funding for that purpose. If the legislature intends for some areas to be differentially funded, the rationale for those decisions should be explicit."

The "careful, well-planned innovative experimentation" the NSBA advocates at the local level should also be supported by clearer federal regulations regarding charter schools' responsibilities or by exemptions from certain federal requirements, the group said.8