How Have Charter Schools Affected Students with Special Education Needs
On February 20, 2018, the LAUSD School Board put the proposed Holding GHCHS Accountable to Their Charter on the agenda of their Committee of the Whole meeting. The following is the written statement that I provided to the Board:
Honorable LAUSD Board Members:
This is Chanda Smith. She was an LAUSD student with special education needs who fell through cracks in the system. In 1993, lawyers from the ACLU filed a class action suit under her name. The result of that suit is a consent decree that the District is still struggling to comply with 22 years after it was signed.
Around the same time that Ms. Smith’s lawyers were filing their paperwork, California began its experiment with charter schools. Since charters claimed that this would give parents more choice, the LAUSD embraced these new types of schools and became the largest charter authorizer in the country. Did those in charge consider the effect on students like Chanda Smith? Were these students given more choices or were they left behind?
Granada Hills High School was not converted to a charter because the school was not performing well. In fact, it was “one of the highest-achieving schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District”. Instead, some saw it as a way to end the district’s practice of diverting their Title I funds to schools with needier populations and to end the practice of busing students from downtown and the East Valley into “their” school. This conversion took away access to a high performing LAUSD school for children like Chanda Smith and provided less opportunity for choice.
At the time of the conversion, 6% of Granada’s students identified as African American. By 2012, African Americans represented only 4% of the school’s population. This seems to contradict the Charter School Division’s (CSD) assertion “that GHCHS has generally increased its diversity over time.”
When it comes to those who are English Language Learners (ELL), the CONTINUE READING: How Have Charter Schools Affected Students with Special Education Needs
Big Education Ape: Special Education in California - https://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2013/01/special-education-in-california.html