When Charters Enroll Students with Disabilities « Diane Ravitch's blog

When Charters Enroll Students with Disabilities « Diane Ravitch's blog:

Denial as a Reform Strategy

by dianerav

Reformers constantly deny any evidence that contradicts their narrative.
They insist that our public schools are failing, despite the clear evidence in the national assessments that test scores have never been higher for every group tested.
They insist that merit pay is necessary, even though it has never “worked,” in any sense of the word, not in raising test scores or in making teaching more attractive as a profession.
They insist that charters are better than public schools, even though study after study shows this is not true.

When Charters Enroll Students with Disabilities

by dianerav

Bruce Baker has studied charter enrollments in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Houston, and New York City.
Matthew DiCarlo observed that the GAO report actually understated the disparity in charter enrollments of students with disabilities, by comparing charters to the nation, instead of to the district where they are located. Urban districts have higher rates of students with disabilities than the national rate.
Bruce Baker notes that some charters inflate their numbers of special education students by taking only those with the mildest disabilities:

A really big issue which I’ve been able to explore only in a few contexts is the breakout of children with Do Charters Serve the Same Students? No. by dianerav I posted previously about Bruce Baker’s study of charter schools in New York City and Houston. It is such a clear and concise analysis of which students enroll in charters and how much charters spend, I am posting it again here. Charters in these two cities do not enroll the same proportion of students with disabilities and students who are English language learners as public schools. Charters in these cities tend to spend more per pupil, in some cases, significantly more than public schools. Please read it.  This information is drawn from public sources. Why charter advocates continue to insist that charters enroll the