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I dont guess this; if its true that charter schools educate the same percentage of sped students as the district as a whole, why oppose a bill mandating that they educate at least half that number? And why criticize the union for the data that SED puts out?

The debate over actual numbers between city and state is bizarre. It’s 2010 – Steiner better figure out a way to fix this.

Argument number 8 – thank you! I’ve been trying to say this for how many years now? Of course the “Evil” one is more succinct and to-the-point than me. Love her or hate her, she knows how to kick some butt!

Ya gotta love it when people write emails such as this one. You would think that Eva would be less eager to fire off missives after the brouhaha over the interaction with Klein. And besides that, didn’t a Gotham Schools reporter just show an increase in the number of students receiving special education services to 16% since 2004?
All this proves to me is that there are lies, there are damned lies and then there are statistics.

So EM writes that there are too many Special Ed referrals in NYC in the same letter that she claims some special authority “as the mother of a special needs child.” Good thing she appointed herself the expert. Eva knows best.

Look at the comparison of SPED in charters and traditional public schools in Kim Gittelson’s article. I’m sorry, but there are too many comparisons where the “pink” bar is far shorter than the “purple” one. Including 3 out 4 Harlem Success Academies

By “special ed” students do we mean: any child with an Individual Education Plan?

even if that plan recommends only push in/pull out services- such as speech therapy, guidance counseling, physical therapy, etc?

I am pretty sure that is what EM is saying.

I have not looked at Kim’s report but am guessing it may also mix apples and oranges in this respect.
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In my district, when we look to see if there is an equitable rate of enrollment of special education students in our community schools, we are clear to separate the students into two large categories- those whose needs as described in their IEPs require a setting of either CTT or Self Contained classes (meaning that the student is being taught by a special education teacher for a significant portion of the school day) vs SETTS services that are offered in a push in or pull out basis only.

Much like when the pro- charter folks measure poverty they erase the difference between eligibility for Free vs Reduced Price lunch and talk about Title One eligibility as one gross measure of poverty.

I think this may indicate a voluntary manipulation the data measured to try to paint an apples to apples picture when indeed we have apples and oranges.( Tip of the hat to Ellen- damn lies, indeed)

At least that was the case we saw locally with Girls Prep Charter that claimed that 8% of their students had IEP’s, incidentally the same rate as our district average for students needing only SETTS services.
On the other hand, District One schools serve an average of 21% (ES) and 25% (MS) students with IEPs. If you take out the SETTS portion (8%), you see that GPCS, just as an example, is NOT serving the 13- 18% of students district wide who have severe enough disabilities to require a special education teacher in the classroom for a significant portion of the day.

Of course, I am no special education expert by any stretch of the imagination so perhaps I am using the wrong lens here?

Please comment on this distinction if you know better and can explain this pattern which I believe is systemically true.

The discussion over the number of students with disabilities in charters is not always going to work in the favor of the the law regarding Least Restrictive Environments (LRE). In the charters that I worked in, we always had a larger percentage of students with disabilities than our surrounding districts. Therefore, we had a large number of services in place–SETTS, CTT, counseling, speech, etc.–and could serve students who might otherwise be referred without immediately sending them on for evaluation to the CSE. We gave them the same services that the classified students were receiving; only if they did not improve with intervention did we then refer them. This would obviously reduce the percentage of students on the books being served; should we have consigned these middle and high school students to referrals that they may not have needed?

Second, we were always under great pressure to decertify students, both from the state and the city, and part of our accountability measures were to report the number of students we had decertified. I agree with decertifying as many students as are ready; that is in the spirit of LRE and we should all be working towards that goal.

Finally, we regularly received IEPs for 12:1 or 12:1:1 classrooms for our students. By far most of the students did not actually require such a restrictive environment, and were suffering under these classifications because way back when, when they were younger, someone had decided that they needed to be separated from their peers. Again, let’s keep LRE in mind: instead of setting up self-contained classrooms, we followed our mandates for inclusion, kept the students, and educated them with their general education peers with the services they needed to be successful.

From everything I am reading, we would be attacked now for: 1) providing supportive educational environments that would mean students would not have to be referred for services; 2) decertifying students who no longer required services; and 3) pushing for the least restrictive environments for students who had been trapped in self-contained classrooms well past the programs’ efficacy for the students.

How is any of this in the actual best interests of children?

VET,
Unfortunately, I have been a daily witness.