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target practice

May 16, 2012

High-needs enrollment targets could challenge some charters

by Rachel Cromidas, at 12:43 pm

A screenshot from the state's proposed enrollment targets calculator. It shows the range of target enrollments for a school enrolling 150 students in Brooklyn's District 15.

The state is preparing to take a step forward in implementing a two-year-old clause in its charter school law that requires the schools to serve their fair share of high-needs students.

When legislators revised the charter school law in 2010, their main objective was to increase the number of charters allowed. But they also added a requirement that charter schools enroll “comparable” numbers of students with disabilities and English language learners, populations that the schools typically under-enroll.

What comparability would mean has never been clear — until now. Last week, the state unveiled a proposed methodology for calculating enrollment targets, and it intends to finalize the algorithm at next month’s meeting of SUNY’s Board of Trustees, which oversees charter schools.

The targets would vary from school to school and be determined based on the overall ratio of high-needs students in each district. The proposal includes a calculator that determines enrollment targets for any school based on its location, the grades it serves, and the size of its student body.

Under the proposed methodology, a charter school with 400 students in grades five through eight in Upper Manhattan’s District 6, for example, would have to enroll 98 percent students who are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, 15 percent students with disabilities, and 44 percent ELLs. In District 2, which has more affluent families and fewer immigrants, a similar school would be expected to enroll 64 percent poor students and 13.4 percent ELLs. But it would still need to have 15 percent of students with special needs.

Some charter schools already meet and exceed their enrollment targets. But many others fall far short, as a charter sector self-assessment published last month indicated. The report found that 80 percent of charter schools enroll a lower proportion of poor students than their district.

Under the law, repeated failure to meet the enrollment targets could result in a school losing its right to operate. But more immediately, charter schools that don’t meet their enrollment targets will be expected to show a “good faith” effort to boost their numbers, according to Cynthia Proctor, a spokeswoman for SUNY’s Charter Schools Institute.

“Once the methodology is approved and targets set, part of developing authorizer practice will certainly be conversations with schools and related guidance on expectations in terms of good faith efforts to meet targets,” Proctor said in an email.

Those efforts are likely to include focusing recruitment efforts on high-needs populations and asking the state for permission to give preference to different groups of high-needs students in their admission lotteries, as some schools have already done.

“Some of the charters may need to change their enrollment procedures to make sure they’re reaching out to those families and places and centers,” said Jacqueline Frey, who runs DREAM Charter School in Harlem.

But Frey added, “From my perspective, this doesn’t change the nature of how we do our business.” The school has more special education students than the targets would require but slightly too few low-income students and ELLs.

Other charter school operators say the targets represent a step forward in addressing ongoing inequities in charter school enrollments but don’t solve the problem.

“It seems like it’s the outcome we all want, but it doesn’t sound like it’s telling us how to get there,” said Morty Ballen, the founder of the Explore Charter Schools network.

Indeed, schools face real challenges around enrolling some high-needs populations. State law requires that they admit students via a lottery and fill their seats, so charter schools cannot simply set aside a portion of seats for high-needs students. Once schools are full, they cannot admit midyear arrivals, who are often immigrants who do not speak English. Plus, schools that help some students shed their ELL or special education designation could be dinged if their portion of high-needs students decreases.

The methodology could still be changed to reflect some of the challenges. The state’s proposal notes, for example, that ELL students are not evenly distributed within school districts, but instead tend to concentrate in certain neighborhood pockets, so the methodology might generate targets that are unreasonably high or low for schools.

The targets are only for charter schools, but their creation is causing the state to look at enrollment trends in district schools, too. Together, the scrutiny can only be good for students, said James Merriman, executive director of the New York City Charter School Center.

“We support efforts to improve transparency around special education and student enrollment in both charter schools and district schools with the end goal of improving achievement for all kids,” he said.

SUNY’s Charter Schools Institute is holding a webinar May 18 to detail the proposed target methodology and will accept comments about it until May 29.

“We hope that one of the realizations that emerges from the extensive process followed to bring us to the point where we are now is that this is complex work,” Proctor said.

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  • Nychistoryteacher

    One way charter schools could meet enrollment targets would be for them to have the same admission policies as any other DOE school. Don’t require parents to complete an additional form to apply, require that they make up losses due to attrition and require that they take over the counter students.

    It seems clear that if you have a different admissions policy than other schools in the DOE, you will have a different student population than other schools in the DOE.

  • Ellen Mc Hugh

    As the rationale for charters includes the a statement to the idea that they are laboratories for education services, providers of shared information on their education practises and instruments for change how is that the DOE  has to require that they correct their inequities?
    I would also inquire as to why you indicate that for charters this is a challenge but make no reference to the fact that at a typical public school this is also a challenge.
    It’s not both ways: you cannot say a charter school is reflective of the surrounding community if they need to be coerced into solving their inequities.
    And whoever that Proctor person is, s/he sure has the lingo down..the lingo of faux education wonks….
    “We hope that one of the realizations that emerges from the
    extensive process followed to bring us to the point where we are now is
    that this is complex work,” Proctor said.”

  • cab

    I do not think filling out an application form is the problem.  Many charter schools receive many, many more applications than they have seats available, as evidenced by waitlists.  If the application form were scaring people off, there would be no need for lotteries. I think where some charter schools fail is in providing the services that keep high needs students in the schools.
    Also, shouldn’t specialized high schools also be required to meet certain enrollment targets for high needs populations?  There was a very moving article in the NY Times SchoolBook written by a high-achieving student with special needs who qualified for admission to Brooklyn Tech, but could not attend because the school was not equipped to provide the accommodations he required.  

    The problems are systemic.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002397245457 Mary Conway-Spiegel

    By not having the same enrollment process/procedure(s) as every other community school, a charter school is not LIKE every other community school.  ”Once schools are full, they cannot admit midyear arrivals, who are often immigrants who do not speak English.”
    The above issue goes to the heart of what happens in a community — constant flux/movement of new immigrants into the city AND parents taking their kids out of school for weeks at a time. Good bad or indifferent this is the nature of “business as usual” in communities and this chaotic way of operating affects test scores, attendance etc.  Schools with high ELL populations have become accustomed to these issues because they’re forced to…Charters are neither accustom, nor compelled to do the endless grunt work it takes to keep attendance stable.
    Good start, but once again, too little too late and not nearly enough.

  • Let’s Be Honest

    Accepting high needs students (Special Ed, ESL, SIFE, etc.) is only half the issue.  Non-Charter Public Schools (hereafter referred to as REAL Public Schools)  must accept new admits throughout the year.  We have children being admitted mid-year from other neighborhoods, states and countries.   

    A possible scenerio:  A student arrives from their native country on April 1st.  They speak NO English.  While there is still a one-year exemption for the State ELA exam, there is NO exemption for the State Math exam.  If there is no translated version of the Math test in the child’s language and if there are no translators available for that language, what happens??  I’ll tell you.  The student must take the Math Exam in English and their score counts against the teacher and the school.   This is a situation that REAL Public Schools face all the time    In other cases we actually may have a translated version of the exam available in the student’s language but many students come to us with little or no formal schooling so it may be of little help.   Again, the student’s score will count against the teacher and the school.

    Even transfers of English-speaking students causes disruptions to the classrooms when the children arrive mid-year.   Often there are other circumstances involved, homeless shelters, custody issues, orders of protection, parents who don’t really value their children’s eduction enough to realize that changing schools in the middle of the year is something that should be avoided if at all possible.   Charter schools don’t have to deal with any of these issues MID-YEAR so there is really no way to compare test scores of Charter Schools to those of REAL Public Schools.

  • Let’s Be Honest

    Yes Mary, they have no clue how much time and effort is expended on new arrivals throughout the year.  Including additional placement testing, LAB-R testing, parent orientations, scheduling, etc.   Wouldn’t we all LOVE to have a set register in the beginning of the year that never goes up during the year?   Mid-year admissions, although necessary, cause so much disruptions to our schools.

  • http://twitter.com/leoniehaimson leonie haimson

    Retaining high-needs students, and reporting accurate student attrition figures is just as important, if not more so; what is being done about this?  And where is the oversight to ensure the numbers are accurate?

  • Mr. Flerporillo

    How would people apply for charter schools if there were no application forms?

  • Lauramir1

    You miss the point. The extra form requires a level of involvement and/or literacy that serves as a filtering process. Many, many neighborhood families to be helped to fill out the basic public school application. The extra form, which may require extended writing guarantees that the charters won’t have to deal with these needy/dysfunctional families

  • Mr. Flerporillo

    No, I got that point. I’m just unclear as to how families would apply for seats if there were no applications.

  • Nychistoryteacher

    Red Herring….

    Some charter schools do receive many applications, but this doesn’t prove that applications are not a filtering process. Involved parents are actively seeking out schools where children of other involved parents already going.

    Without a doubt, anytime you add a level of complexity in doing anything,   less people will do it, especially the least motivated.

  • bee

     If charters have so many applicants, then why on earth do they spend so much $$$$$$$ marketing and advertising themselves?

  • guest

     Do you assert that there are no DOE schools that have admissions policies requiring forms to fill out, testing, interviews, tours, etc. to apply? Are you stating that there are not DOE schools whose admissions policies are much more stringent than charter schools?

    Have you investigated, for instance, the admissions policies of many of the middle schools in CSD 2? A lottery is much fairer than what those kids have to go through.

  • guest

     Nychistoryteacher, please justify the admissions policies of the choice process in the DOE’s middle schools that result in schools screening out low-performing students and concentrating them in just a few schools.

    Please actually investigate the data and prove that choice middle schools in CSD 2, for instance, have the same population of free and reduced lunch, special needs students, ELL students, etc., that the district as a whole has.

    In fact, please compare PS 234′s data, for example, to CSD 2′s as a whole and show how a public school such as that meets the test that charter schools will have to meet under this law. It’s really time to stop throwing around generalizations and look at the specifics.
    Then, please justify why a charter school would be held to a different, higher standard than public schools.

  • Jay1

    Now charter schools can start to see declines in scores that public schools suffer from.  The ONLY reason public education gets such a bad rap is because of the huge population of low performers who are low performing for reasons other than the teacher.

    Charters were started with the promise of hope, but they were able to keep out the most hopeless so their numbers always looked better.  Few bothered to question the ‘success’ of charters, seeing all minority children as the same.   In fact, the charters consistently take the top performers and have mechanisms for driving out slackers and problem kids that no public school can muster.

    DO NOT TELL ME ANY DIFFERENT.  I have a CLOSE relative who is a charter school principal who kicks out low achievers and troubled kids all the time.  She marvels to us how much easier it is than in a public school.

    Well, the ‘social justice’ advocates have realized that their grand experiment was just a shell game and that corporate lackeys and politicos want shiny numbers, not troubling statistics.  So now these ‘activists’ want charter schools to start scooping up more of the dregs that public schools are saddled with.  If that happens, charters, they will find, were no magic bullet to the problem of minority underachievement.  It is a cultural and generational problem that white do-gooders cannot fix, no matter the cost in blood and treasure.  You cannot change another race or culture to become like you, just because you think it will be better for them.

  • cab

    Well, as a charter school employee, all I can say is we do take mid-year admits.  We deal with parents taking their kids out of school for weeks at a time, too.  Unless you’ve looked into every single school, charter or not charter, it’s absolutely unfair to level those sorts of accusations.  

  • Let’s Be Honest

     In Reply to cab (reply link is missing below his/her post)

    I’m not talking about mid-year admits from your list of applicants.  As others have already said, having parents involved enough in their child’s education that they actually fill out an application in advance is already separating them from the other mid-year admits that I’m speaking about.

    Tell me how many mid-year admits that your school accepts who are newly arrived immigrants with absolutely no English or possibly no formal education from their native country.   Let me guess.. none.

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