Comments on: Board of Regents urges state legislature to lift charter cap

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Wed, 16 Dec 2009 03:56:15 +0000

[...] Board of Regents urges state legislature to lift charter cap … [...]

By: peter

peter — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 20:19:15 +0000

I have perused charter school advertisements, what I have not found is a simple statement, “Special Education and English Language Learners are encouraged to apply.”

Perhaps the charter school lotteries should be conducted by the school district similar to the process used to assign children to high schools in NYC.

Producing a catalog of all charter schools, with descriptions, and an application form would relieve schools of the burden of recruiting and assure a fair distribution of students, including the assignment of all children, regardless of disability of language issues.

By: dirk

dirk — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 15:49:44 +0000

Being involved with the so called "charter movement" I applaud the need for more accountability for individual charters around serving SpEd and ELs, and I actually would like to see more accountability, but the means of getting there is wrongheaded. There are many reasons that individual charters underrepresent some special populations, some benign and unintentional, some insidious, with various degrees of culpability. And the fact of the lottery makes it such that individula schools cannot determine ahead of time who they will get, though they can certainly increase odds through thoughtful outreach and responosive program. One school I work with has an explicit special ed inclusion model an markets iself as such, and had mid 20% SPED in the initial year, and presumably as the good reputation spreads this years kindergarten class (as admitted by lottery) had a significantly lower percentage. There are a range of legal issues around settings that are offered in charters and IEP requirements, and the ability to serve all manner of students in often very small schools. I think a better way to handle this is to 1. employ testers who detect dscriminatory policies or practices at schools that underrepresent special populations, 2. look at CMOs with multiple schools, and when they reach a certain threshold (maybe 1,000 students) then they should reach comparable levels of enrollment or be able to offer an extremely convincing rebuttal for lower numbers (we have a great rate of decertifying SpEd kids as they no longer need services, etc.) 3. The needs of students served need to play into accountability mechanisms explicitly in a way it currently does not-- so even a school with a 100% proficiency would feel the heat if it was in a heavily EL neighborhood and significantly underrepresented same with SpEd. Folks should be concerned about the underrepresentation of special populations in charters, but the proposal is not a vialbe answer

By: Ritter

Ritter — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 15:27:40 +0000

Another reason this is unworkable. My experience has been that most elementary schools have higher rates of ELLs than middle and high schools, because most ELLs gain English proficiency by the time they reach middle school. As this is written it would appear that charter middle and high schools would have to enroll similar numbers of ELLs as the school district (K-12). I don’t think there is any way that those schools could find that many ELLs.

By: Board of Regents urges state legislature to lift charter cap « Race to the Top

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 15:21:31 +0000

[...] 12/14/2009, Gotham Schools, New York http://gothamschools.org/2009/12/14/regents-urge-legislature-to-double-number-of-charters/ [...]

By: Gideon

Gideon — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 14:27:37 +0000

Seems like this law might have the unintended consequence of encouraging charter schools to label students as special ed or ELL when they might be able to effectively serve these students without doing so. Moreover, there is a range of needs captured under the label of special education: two districts with the same special education rate might actually have very different populations, e.g., those who need extended time for testing versus those who need additional teaching support within the classroom. So forcing a charter school to match a district rate does not really address the needs of students.

By: Peter Murphy

Peter Murphy — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 04:50:37 +0000

This legislation, though well-intentioned, is unworkable. Charter schools are public schools of choice. The state would have to order parents to enroll their children with disabities or LEP needs to put them there – something completely unrealistic. Current charter school law, amended in 2007, requires schools to make “good faith efforts to attract and retain” such students. It is the job of the state Education Department and SUNY Charter Schools Institute to enforce this law and take action on those schools that are not carrying out this provision. Legislative proposals to provide additional means for charter schools to serve these populations include authorizing charter schools to locate at more than one site to blend small-school settings with economies of scale to provide more special education and LEP services – a provision endorsed by the Regents today and proposed by Senate President, Sen. Malcolm Smith (S.6266). Finally, it should be noted that several charter schools have sought an “at-risk” enrollment preference defined as students with LEP needs or who are special education students, but the state Education Department as refused to allow this preference based on its interpretation of federal disabilities law on encouraging least restrictive environment settings. SED must rethink this opposition, and allow charters to utilized this state statutory at-risk admission preference, and approve more charters to do so. Time for a “thoughtful” discussion on this important topic, to coin a phrase.

By: peter

peter — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 02:43:12 +0000

The following bill is pending in the Assembly, introduced by Assemblyman Maisel and many co-sponsors,

A07981 Memo:
BILL NUMBER:A7981

TITLE OF BILL: An act to amend the education law, in relation to
requiring charter schools to enroll children with disabilities and
English language learners in comparable numbers to those enrolled in
public schools

PURPOSE OR GENERAL IDEA OF BILL: This bill will make charter schools
enroll disabled children and English language learners in numbers compa-
rable to the school district which they serve.

SUMMARY OF SPECIFIC PROVISIONS:Paragraph a of subdivision 2 of section
2854 of the education law, as amended by section 5 of part 0-2 of chap-
ter 57 of the laws of 2007, is amended to read that “a charter school
must enroll the same or a greater percentage of students with disabili-
ties and limited English proficient students when compared to the
enrollment figures for such students in the school district in which the
charter school is located. Failure to comply for two consecutive years
shall be deemed grounds for revocation of the charter”.

JUSTIFICATION:Charter schools are often given the “average cost” per
student from a school district. This “average cost” includes not only
students with average needs, but also those with special needs. These
students, such as disabled students or those requiring special help to
learn English as a second language cost more than ordinary students. For
this reason, it is often a disincentive for charter schools to work
toward providing a comfortable environment for students requiring
special help. Charter schools must be required to expend the same number
of their resources in order to help with students that require special
help.