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incentive structure (Updated)

May 17, 2012

Charter school leaders sound caution about enrollment targets

by Geoff Decker, at 12:06 pm

Eva Moskowitz and her charter school network are objecting to new targets meant to push charter schools to enroll a fair share of students with disabilities and English language learners.

When they revised the state’s charter schools law in 2010, legislators included a requirement that the schools register a “comparable” number of high-needs students. Now the state has proposed a methodology to calculate enrollment targets for charter schools based on how many students attend the school and the overall ratio of high-needs students in each district. Schools that currently enroll too few students with special needs will be required to show at least a “good-faith” effort to enroll more.

But a top official in the Success Academies network said Wednesday that she objected to any such requirement. Setting enrollment targets creates a disincentive for schools to help students get to the point that they no longer need special services, said Emily Kim, general counselor for the Success Academies network.

“For us, our goal is not to hit a number and stay at that number for English language learners,” Kim said. “Our goal is that they learn English, that they perform at the highest levels, and that they graduate from high school college ready and are successful in life.”

“So if our figures go down, we’re proud of that,” she added.

UPDATE: A state education official said the proposed targets would not penalize schools schools if their students are declassified as special education or ELL. Through what’s being called a “three year lag,” schools would get credit for students who had been classified anytime in the last three years. “With the three-year lag, there is little to no chance that there will be a dinging of schools for declassification of a child,” said Assistant Commissioner Sally Bachofer, who helped developed the targets.

Bachofer also said that declassification rates at individual schools, while not a part of the proposed methodology, could be presented during the charter renewal period as a “good faith effort” to serve these high needs students.

Kim was part of a four-person panel recruited by the New York City Bar Association to discuss charter school co-locations.

That topic soon gave way to a discussion of the general merits of the charter school movement. UFT Vice President Leo Casey, Coalition for Educational Justice organizer Zakiyah Ansari, and New York City Charter Center CEO James Merriman also sat on the panel, which Inside City Hall host Errol Louis moderated.

Kim said she wasn’t speaking on behalf of the Success network, but a spokeswoman later said Moskowitz agreed with her.

Moskowitz is a critic of the way the state currently tracks ELL students and believes a more telling metric is the rate of students who pass a state proficiency exam for English language learners.

Across the city, many students do not pass the exam even after attending city schools for several years. According to a Success network review, 36 percent of first-graders identified as ELLs in 2003 had not passed the exam seven years later.

Of the nearly 2,500 students who attended a Success school last year, 7 percent were ELLs, according to state data. In some of the districts where the network operates, the ELL rate is twice as high. But in the 2009-2010 school year, 36 percent of students in Success schools tested out of ELL, twice the citywide rate, Sedlis said.

“That is a major problem in this city,” said the spokeswoman, Jenny Sedlis. “Charters should not be forced to replicate the dysfunctions of the district.”

Merriman said special education enrollment targets could run the same risk by incentivizing schools to identify students as having disabilities excessively.

“Special education has been used, unfortunately, sometimes as a tool for discrimination against African American males, as a way to isolate them in self-contained classrooms,” he said. “We don’t want to make normative what we all know is a bad system.”

The charter school center that Merriman runs released a report last month acknowledging that the city’s charter schools don’t serve as many high-needs students as they should. He said during the panel that changing the distribution of students isn’t as simple as it might seem.

“It’s not easy sometime to get ELLS to come in to your school,” Merriman said. “They tend to come in as a community. They want to make sure as a community that their students will be served well.”

Plus, with many city charter schools still scaling up, they lack the kind of specialized teachers to serve even small populations. Some charter schools, such has Achievement First Bushwick, which received a shortened renewal in part because of its struggles, have hired English as a Second Language teachers specifically to serve larger numbers of ELL students that live in the district.

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  • Clay

    As was recently shown, Merriman is deceptive and full of it. Maybe he should e-mail Klein and tell him exactly what he wants.

  • Michael Fiorillo

    Moskowitz’s arrogance, and her certainty that she can manipulate the levers of power behind the scenes, is so great that she can’t even be bothered to pretend that she’ll follow toothless recommendations. In her Orwellian universe, admitting ELLs in numbers representative of the communities where her schools are located is equivalent to the failures of the system she simultaneously maligns and cannibalizes.

    As for Merriman’s statement that, “They (immigrant communities) want to make sure as a community that their students will be served well,” and thus avoid charter schools: are we to take that as an admission that immigrant communities avoid these schools because they recognize their children are unwanted by charter operators?

  • Anonymous

    “Special education has been used, unfortunately, sometimes as a tool for discrimination against African American males, as a way to isolate them in self-contained classrooms,” he said.———–Is he really saying that NYC is purposely labeling African American students special needs for the purpose of segregating them from the schools population?–I”m sure the public will want PROOF

  • http://twitter.com/juniper9119 R

    So let me understand…

    “special education enrollment targets could run the … risk [of]
    incentivizing schools to identify students as having disabilities
    excessively” and “Charters should not be forced to replicate the dysfunctions of the district”.

    So the charter movement is admitting that if it is held responsible for enrolling its share of special needs students it cannot be trusted to honestly evaluate and educate its ELLs and special education students. 

    There is a simple solution to this problem: once the children test out of special ed or ELL, enroll more special ed and ELL students. 

  • Tim

    From the state’s charter school law:

    “Admission of students shall not be limited on the basis of intellectual ability, measures of achievement or aptitude, athletic ability, disability, race, creed, gender, national origin, religion, or ancestry; provided, however, that nothing in this article shall be construed to prevent the establishment of a single-sex charter school or a charter school designed to provide expanded learning opportunities for students at-risk of academic failure or students with disabilities and English language learners; and provided, further, that the charter school shall demonstrate good faith efforts to attract and retain a comparable or greater enrollment of students with disabilities, English language learners, and students who are eligible applicants for the free and reduced price lunch program when compared to the enrollment figures for such students in the school district in which the charter school is located.”

    The solution is pretty simple: every charter school can easily determine the percentages of special ed, free-lunch eligible, and ELL students in its home district. Every school can tailor its admissions process to give preference to these at risk students (SUNY would streamline the process by which schools seek permission to do this). 

    Once the enrollment targets are met or exceeded, everything’s fine: if charters are genuinely moving kids from ELL to non-ELL and mainstreaming special ed kids, they certainly should not be penalized for it. But too few charters are STARTING with populations that are at a stark remove from that of their home districts, and contrary to what Ms. Sedlis says, being asked to mirror those enrollments is not the same as being asked to replicate district dysfunction, it is adhering to state law and one of the requirements for charter autonomy. 

  • Mr. Flerporillo

    How are students identified as students with “disabilities”?  Is that a determination that can be made at any time during a school year?  And who makes the determination — staff within schools?

  • Tim

    ^^^edit: too *many* charters are starting with populations that are at a stark remove . . . ”

    (didn’t go to a charter school, obviously)

  • NYCmom

    I believe that enrolling a comparable special needs and ELL population in K and 1 (the grades with which Success starts off its new schools) is a must and would satisfy both Success’ claims to want to educate kids out of being at risk and also the community’s best interest (not to have substantially larger populations of kids with greater needs at regular public schools than at charters in the early years).  

  • Mr. Flerporillo

    How do you conclude that these enrollment targets would be “recommendations”?  It’s my impression that they’d be mandatory.   

  • NYCparent

    “Our goal is that they learn English, that they perform at the highest levels, and that they graduate from high school college ready and are successful in life.”
    …. as long as … they do it at some other school, so we don’t have to be bothered with them slowing us down on our road to riches.

  • Lllllk

    Since when do CHOOSE which children to educate? That is a true sign of NOT caring about the children. This is what the NYC DOE is promoting? As a parent I am disgusted by such policies in which these schools will be left to make a “good-faith” effort. You know that they won’t. Thanks Bloomberg and Walcott for another great idea. Children First? More like Money First! Let’s not forget the millions of dollars already stolen by these corporations.

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

    I was there when he said it…that was my exact reaction.  Please get that statistic, then get it to the public and me!

  • Ellen Mc Hugh

    “Special education has been used, unfortunately, sometimes as a tool for
    discrimination against African American males, as a way to isolate them
    in self-contained classrooms,” he said.———–Is he really saying
    that NYC is purposely labeling African American students special needs
    for the purpose of segregating them from the schools population?–I”m
    sure the public will want PROOF ”
    There is proof.  NY SED has targeted the over representation of black and latino children in the NYC public school system as a major issue for NYC.  The City has to report the to NYSED on its work to reduce that over representation regularly.  Unfortunately, there hasn’t been much change.  last I heard over 90% of the students receiving special education services in NYC public schools were black or latino or another minority.  There are approximately 180, 000 students with IEPs in the City, according to those stats, less than 10% of the students receiving special education services are white.  If that isn’t over representation I am not sure what is.
    It may not be purposeful, but it is surely can be viewed as segregation.

  • Ellen Mc Hugh

    “That is a major problem in this city,” said the spokeswoman, Jenny
    Sedlis. “Charters should not be forced to replicate the dysfunctions of
    the district.”

    Nice going Ms. Sedlis, charters don’t take kids who are high needs, public school do, ergo, public schools are at fault. 
    The only other way her rationale works is to say that the children are at fault for having special needs.  She must be quite a hoot at parties.

  • AJ

    I have a very good idea. Since Success Charter Academy is unwilling to accept the same number of E.L.L. and Special Education students which we in the public schools accept, and since they make all kinds of legal arguments which make sense to some, maybe they should just call it what it is. Meaning that the select students who have all the cards lined up properly and are emotionally and academically ready to do the work which they are suppose to at a certain age, can apply. Those who have been incarcerated, those who need extra help, those who need counseling and health services. The invitation is open to you, when and if you find a way to help yourself, but we will not be the first to help you. I for one want to be the first to help exactly those students, my students.Who do count regardless of what society thinks about them or Charter Schools do or say
    A.H. Steinfeld

  • Mr. Flerporillo

    Blacks (and others) are overrepresented in special ed classrooms all over the country, and I’m sure NYC is no different.  Some chalk this up to reactions to behavioral problems and other cultural differences that teachers either don’t understand or don’t want to deal with.  When people talk about institutional racism in education, this is one of their main exhibits.  

    Depending on your point of view, Merriman’s comment may be a cop-out, a cheap shot, or simply glib, but it’s hardly an outlandish statement on its face.  The overrepresentation of minorities in special education is well-documented.  At this point it’s probably conventional wisdom. 

  • Anothermom

    Good point. The state should be stringent about requiring charters to have  populations of special ed and ELL students in K and 1. Then if those same children are still on the rosters but no longer need ELL or special services in later years, that may be considered a success.

  • guest

     Schools CHOOSE which children to educate every day in this city. Ask the parents who are waiting to hear next week which middle school is accepting their child. Children very often must interview, apply, won’t be accepted if they don’t tour or rank the school as their first choice, must have 3s or 4s and high attendance rates–and these are PUBLIC, non-charter schools. Do the research!

  • Anonymous

    but thats not what he said-his comment was it is a “TOOL” for discrimination to isolate——-and that is a policy statement

  • Mr. Flerporillo

    If I wanted to take this deep into the weeds, I would note that “sometimes us[iung]” something “as a tool for discrimination” does not sound like a policy.  And Merriman doesn’t specify who’s acting — he certainly doesn’t say it’s the “city” that’s acting.  Taking his words at face value, I would conclude that Merriman is saying some educators have intentionally used special education as a way to get certain black students out of their classrooms.

    But I take your point.  I’d put what Merriman’s doing in the categories of “cheap shot” and “glib.”  People love to play in the gap between intent and effect, and flip back and forth between them when it suits their purposes.  It’s like when the more strident ranters here say stuff like, “the central goal of the ed deform movement is to destroy local communities.”  This kind of discourse is a club, not a scalpel. 

      

  • Copernicus

    Talk to your mayor, he’s the one that initiated that tomfoolery.

  • Copernicus

    Students are evaluated by the School Based Support Team, which is a team of specialists trained to do the proper testing and evaluation of the results.  Meetings are held to inform the parents about the results and an Individualized Education Plan is created to meet the student’s needs.
    By actively and specifically excluding these children until the present charter schools have posted better than average test results.

  • Copernicus

    At least until MoskowitzBloombergKleinCanada find a way to buy their way out of the requirements.

  • Copernicus

    Well, well, well, looks like the chickens have finally come home to roost.  And Mama Moskowitz is about to lay a big old egg!!!!!
    She must be slightly concerned now that she is about to lose her BloomKlein connection.

  • Tiredofyou

    Children went to their neighborhood school and never had to apply in any way until Bloomberg took over and changed the game. Today the game has changed and it has nothing to do with research. I worked for 40 years and taught all children but this charter system is definitely racism based on so many factors. You cream off the top and leave what is left over for public schools. You can call it what you want but public school teachers know what to call it.You don’t have to do any research all you have to see what happens everyday.

  • Lllllk

    It was a rhetorical question. If you think that any of those “choices” that you mentioned actually mean anything in high need areas, then you need to come out of your bubble. Hopefully you are not involved with any children that really need an education because from your attitude you would not be able to or wish to provide.

  • Tiredofyou

    Sorry he is here just to stir the pot and he really doesn’t care. He’s great at research so why didn’t he just look it up.

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

    Wasn’t this panel supposed to be about the legal issues surrounding co-location?  Did they ever mention this topic?

  • guest

    The argument is absurd. Accepting a certain number of ELL and students with IEPs does not require the schools to keep them from eventually getting to a state of not longer needing special services.  Actually, that would be an easy thing to calculate — and it would really show their results.  Why are they afraid of that?  

  • CarolineSF

    This is a widely discussed issue, but it ignores the research correlating adverse childhood experiences (traumas) with poor physical, emotional and behavioral health. If more low-income African-American children are identified as having asthma than privileged white kids, do we claim that’s racist and call for refusing to diagnose and treat the African-American children?  Special education is, as this post indicates, about providing SERVICES. So withholding needed services from African-American children is the answer? That’s harsh. 

  • Kelly

    Success Academies have recently gone thru public hearings to change their lottery preferences – they have now bumped ELL up to the head of the list and are aiming at enrolling 20%.  

  • Tired of Being Blamed

    A huge percentage of my school’s students are ELLs and students with special needs. We’re also one of the schools that’s being shut down for turnaround for alleged “poor performance.”

    The irony I see in this is that as the charter schools continue to poach the best and brightest from public schools, their scores go up while ours go down, furthering the illusion that they’re providing a better education than we are and making the mantra of public schools being “warehouses for failure” a self-fulfilling prophecy.

    If charters want public funding, they need to play by the same rules public schools do. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. Accept the same challenge my colleagues and I do every day doing our best to educate the most difficult, needy cases.

  • CarolineSF

    Jenny Sedlis’ comment needs to be called out as an outrage: “Charters should not be forced to replicate the dysfunctions of the district.” So teaching children with disabilities and English-language learners is a “dysfunction”? They’re children, not “dysfunctions,” Ms. Sedlis. That’s beyond shameful.

  • Tim

    To be fair, I don’t believe this is exactly what Jenny was saying. It is her belief that the district schools either do a bad job of mainstreaming special ed/ELL students, or have an incentive for special ed/ELL students to retain those statuses for as long as possible. She provided a statistic (Geoff–confirmed? Not confirmed?) showing that the Success Academies transition ELL children to non-ELL at a rate twice that of the district. 

    And that’s great, but it doesn’t solve the central issue, which is that virtually none of the higher-performing charters educate the same percentages of ELL, special ed (esp MRE), and free-lunch eligible (not free + reduced) students as their home districts. The good-faith efforts have failed, and it’s time to try something different to help these schools follow the law and their charters. 

  • Kingbasillamus

    The lack of reading comprehension here is almost mind boggling.  What they are saying is that if it is state mandated that (picking a number out of… hat) 10% of your students have an IEP or are ELLs, but in a few years they test out of that condition – no longer falling behind in whatever areas they needed help in, your enrollment rate has now dropped below 10% and you’ll be expected to somehow pick up more students to fill the gap.  They are not saying that they do not want or refuse to teach these students.  Instead, they are saying that enforcing a percentage is not the way to go about it as it is not a metric that tells you anything.  If a school takes nothing but IEP/ELL students but not one of them passes a state test after 7 years are we supposed to praise them for the hard work they’re doing to help the underprivileged?  This isn’t about results, this is about numbers.  The state wants to mandate the numbers, not the results. And that is what they are objecting to.

  • limpia

    There is a large populationof sspecial education students who will always need the services, and these are not even the kids who are mentally retarded or significantly on the autistic spectrum. these are kids who are borderline IQ(low, but not retarded). These kids ,also, will not be fulfilling  grade level material , but just with some ‘extra help’. If the elite believe that all of special ed or most of special ed kids fit a description other than this, they are sadly mistaken.Forcing them to use grade level texts and take grade level tests, but with accomodations is a disservice to them, and a joke.This guarantee they wont be able to catch up. I wonder if these are the special ed kids in the charters?i do know that these are the kids in the many schools that have become turnaround schools. 

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