- D.C. charter school board to start investigating special education practices [Maya Angelou Public Charter School and Friendship Public Charter School mentioned]
- DCPS should have to pay rent using the $3,000 per pupil facility allotment [FOCUS mentioned]
- Will Obama's Budget Recognize Charter Schools? [KIPP mentioned]
D.C. charter school board to start investigating special education practices [Maya Angelou Public Charter School and Friendship Public Charter School mentioned]
The Washington Examiner
By Rachel Baye
March 26, 2013
D.C. charter schools' special education programs will be investigated if the schools appear to discriminate against students with disabilities, under a new policy announced Tuesday. Eleven criteria can trigger an audit under the DC Public Charter School Board's new policy, including whether schools expel or suspend students with disabilities more frequently than other students, whether students with disabilities leave schools midyear more frequently than other students, or whether students with disabilities make up at least 7 percent of enrollment.
The charter board initiated the change following a large number of questions about charter schools and their abilities to serve students with disabilities, said Naomi Deveaux, the board's deputy executive director.
The change is a necessary step, said Judith Sandalow, executive director of the Children's Law Center.
Though some schools provide strong programs for students with disabilities and shouldn't have to undergo audits, Sandalow said she has heard more negative stories than positive. "There are schools that subtly and not so subtly turn kids away who have disabilities," she said. "A parent will ask about a school, and they will say, 'Now, I don't think we're well-equipped to help your child. ... What they are saying is, 'We aren't willing to accommodate your disability,' which is a very clear violation of the law."
Legally, charter schools, like all public schools, are required to give a student with any type of disability the services necessary to make sure the student gets the same quality education as a student without a disability, Sandalow explained. That means a school needs to provide a student with speech therapy for a language-based learning disability if that is what the student needs. Deveaux said the charter board has not identified any specific problem areas or schools to be audited.
However, charter schools have come under fire recently for discipline policies that cause a large number of students to be suspended or expelled. Students with disabilities are not exempt from these policies.
Data the board submitted to the D.C. Council show that some schools have suspended large numbers of students with disabilities. For example, Maya Angelou Public Charter School's Evans Campus suspended 29 students with disabilities in the first half of this school year. Friendship Public Charter School's Technology Preparatory Academy suspended 31 students with disabilities in the same period.
The charter board could not provide data showing what portion of students with disabilities these numbers represent.
The Examiner
By Mark Lerner
March 27, 2013
I read with interest yesterday’s article by the Washington Post’s Emma Brown about the District of Columbia spending $120 million to replace Ballou Senior High School in Anacostia. The reporter points out that “Fewer than one-quarter of Ballou’s students are proficient in reading and math, according to the city’s standardized tests, and half graduate within four years. Chronic truancy is also a problem: 46 percent of Ballou students missed at least a month of class in the past school year.” Yet, the city has made the decision to allocate an astonishing amount of public money to the 800 student body.
A charter school this size could never aquire this quantity of funding to renovate a building. At $3,000 per child the maximum it could obtain, if it were extremely fortunate, is a commercial bank loan for perhaps 20 percent of this amount. But with the academic results detailed above, even borrowing a dime would most likely be impossible.
Imagine what would happen if DCPS had to operate utilizing the same facility allotment that charter schools do. This would solve a major political problem. Instead of the Chancellor making decisions as to which underutilized traditional schools need to be closed, the future survival of sites would be dependent on whether the student enrollment would support the market-based rent. If a school did not have an adequate number of students in attendance to afford the monthly expenditure it would have to close or consolidate with another. No longer would there be parent protests or law suits. All judgments regarding which campuses would be allowed to continue accepting students would be based solely upon the same economics that charters have had to follow since their inception.
FOCUS has argued for years that the per pupil funding for instruction should be uniform for charters and traditional schools. Now it’s time to extend the same principle to facilities. Maybe then the Mayor will come to the conclusion, as charter leaders have done long ago, that the entire financial system regarding classroom space does not work and is not fair.
Will Obama's Budget Recognize Charter Schools? [KIPP mentioned]
The Wall Street Journal
By Nina Rees
March 26, 2013
President Obama will soon release his federal budget for 2014, and a top priority is likely to be early-childhood education, particularly for the poor. But will the proposal seek much funding for the growth of charter schools—at least more than the paltry 0.4% of federal education spending that currently supports these exciting and demonstrably successful schools?
Last month, the respected private firm Mathematica Policy Research published a multiyear study of students enrolled in KIPP (the Knowledge Is Power Program), a network of 125 charter schools serving 41,000 students in 20 states and the District of Columbia. The study found that after three years students in the KIPP program were 11 months ahead of their traditional-public-school peers in math and eight months ahead in reading. Also after three years (or four for some children in the study), KIPP students were 14 months ahead in science and 11 months ahead in social studies.
These gains are substantial. For every three (or four) years they spend in the program, KIPP students are benefiting from almost a full year of greater learning growth than they would if they remained in traditional public schools. This success is even more remarkable given that KIPP draws from some of the most disadvantaged communities in the country. Some 96% of KIPP students are black or Hispanic. More than four of five come from households with annual incomes low enough to qualify for subsidized school lunch. What's more, the typical incoming student at KIPP scores in the 45th percentile in district-wide reading and math exams. That initial achievement level is much lower than for the typical student entering the traditional public school system.
Other studies have found similar results. In a report released last month on charter schools in New York City, Stanford University's Center for Research on Education Outcomes found that after just one year, charter-school students had gained one more month of learning in reading and five more months in math, compared with their district-school peers. More than a fifth of New York's public charter schools post significantly larger learning gains in reading than do their traditional counterparts—and nearly two-thirds of charters outperform traditional schools in math.
KIPP runs 10 schools in New York City, but it also has competition. In 2012, 87% of students in the Uncommon Schools charter network—which operates 15 New York City schools serving 3,900 kids—scored advanced or proficient in math. That is 27 percentage points above the city average. In English, more than half of Uncommon's kids were advanced or proficient, beating the city average by eight percentage points.
What is the key to the success of schools like KIPP and Uncommon? For starters, as independent public schools, charters aren't weighed down by onerous regulations that stifle innovation. Administrators and teachers have the freedom to develop new and creative teaching methods. Charter schools have also attracted a new generation of talented, motivated teachers, school leaders and entrepreneurs through the promise of a new approach to educating underserved children.
Policy makers should encourage such educational entrepreneurship. One way they can do so is by eliminating state caps on charter schools, which currently apply in 21 of the 43 states (including Washington, D.C.) that have charter laws. With over 600,000 students on waiting lists to attend charter schools nationwide, this should be an easy task. Legislators at the state and federal levels should also strive to attract new entrepreneurs to the charter-school space. Schools like KIPP and Uncommon succeed in the cities where they operate, but other geographic areas may demand different approaches. The next great public charter school may deploy a digital learning model or a hybrid of several models. Officials should be open to such experimentation.
At the same time, all charters should be regularly and rigorously reviewed. Those that consistently fail to meet achievement standards should be closed. The federal government, meanwhile, should make sure that charters receive their fair share of funding. The current pot reserved to finance startup, replication and expansion of charter operations has just $254 million in it, or less than 1% of federal education spending. That share should grow.
The data are in. Charters can—and do—deliver top-notch education even to the most disadvantaged of American students. The White House, Congress and policy makers in state capitals must do their part to support successful charters, promote their replication, and encourage new entrants to adapt their best practices.
Ms. Rees is the president of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.
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