There are many reasons why charter schools serve fewer special education students than traditional public schools. Some are troubling. Some aren’t. But the key take-away from the recent General Accountability Office study is that we need to think about charter schools as part of a larger system of public education rather than merely as competitors to traditional public schools.

Some charter schools have helped students shed their special education labels through effective instruction and individualized attention. That’s a good thing.

But many charter schools lack the infrastructure to support a full range of special education services. Sensing this, families with special needs students frequently stick with traditional public school systems (even when programs aren’t very good). For the same reason (and in some instances because charters don’t want to be saddled with the often-lower test scores of such students), some charter schools discourage students with disabilities from apply or counsel them out once they’ve enrolled. In at least two places—Washington, DC, and Louisiana—charters have countered their limited individual resources and expertise and established cooperatives to provide special education services.

While charter schools are prohibited by state laws from turning students away (they mush enroll students through lotteries if they’re oversubscribed), it’s hard to expect individual charter schools of a couple hundred students to have the special education resources of schools systems with thousands of students, a reality that argues for the consortia models in DC and Louisiana and collaboration with traditional school systems. There’s no reason why charters shouldn’t contract with public school systems to serve special student populations, and some do.

Encouragingly, a small but growing number of collaborations are flowing in the opposite direction as well. In Connecticut, for example, New Haven school officials are working with the well-regarded Achievement First charter network on a leadership training program to place potential New Haven administrators in residency in Achievement First schools for half a school year. The Hartford school system has brought in Achievement First to run two of its schools using the charter network’s effective middle school model. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, once a major funder of charter school expansion, has launched a $20-million program to promote such partnerships in over a dozen cities through District-Charter Collaboration Compacts.

Since the charter school movement’s earliest days there has been talk of the publicly funded but independently operated schools eventually replacing traditional public school systems. It’s increasingly clear, two decades into the movement, that the charter sector lacks the capacity to do that. There are about 5,600 charter schools today, educating some two million students, about 4 percent of total public school enrollment. And while charter schools have a substantial presence in some urban centers (70-plus percent in New Orleans; 40 percent in DC), too many of them have been no better than the troubled traditional schools they’ve replaced. There are too many instances of fraud and financial abuse emanating from the charter sector. And, as the new GAO study suggests, they often lack the capacity to serve students with special needs.

As a result, one can make a strong argument that the most effective way to leverage the excellence and innovation of the best charter schools and charter networks is through closer connections with traditional public school districts--a step that seemingly could serve the interests of charters, districts, and students.

Hats off to groups like the Progressive Policy Institute and others upon looking for additional ways to hold charter schools more accountable. Among all types of government-owned schools, charter schools are commonly held to the highest level of accountability, but even more couldn't hurt.

When it comes to arriving at the highest quality, greatest value and fullest efficiency, there has never been a system superior to open-market capitalism. It's an economic system that defines America -- except when it comes to all public schools which are not charter schools.

When applied to government-owned schools, there has never been a system more demanding nor more appropriate than the discerning judgment of astute parents making voluntary choices about where to educate their own children. However, it is the fundamental nature of government workers and their friends who identify themselves as "progressive" to presume they can substitute the prudent judgment of parents with their own.

It's just the way they are, and that's just the way it is.

Charter school advocates shouldn't mind too much the extra attention from well-meaning people whose experiences are substantially foreign to the world of capitalism and freedom. After all, these people say they care about children and only want the best for parents who actually know the names of these children. And I, for one, believe them -- usually.

Since everyone who cares about the quality of charter schools seems to be motivated by their concern for the children, the following suggestion has probably already occurred to someone at the big Progressive soiree, but it doesn't hurt to mention it anyway here: Before expending so much concern on ramping up accountability for charter schools (which, again, isn't a bad idea), perhaps government-workers should first consider applying similar charter-school levels of accountability to regular government-owned monopoly schools.

For example, parents might be empowered to choose their neighborhood school, or not. Parents might be given authority to take the school money being spent on their child and direct it to the school (government-owned or otherwise) that best meets the needs of their child.

Parents who see value in the tendency of charter schools to treat teachers like legitimate professionals (pay them well, and not on a fixed wage scale that rewards the worst teacher the same as the best teacher), could apply meaningful pressure to get professional teachers in their neighborhood schools, too. Parents who want special services for their kids, could demand them. If denied, they could send their kids to schools that listen, respond, and meet expectations.

Parents who think an ambitious curriculum is better than a mediocre one could pick between schools and teachers that offer one or the other. Parents who want their kids to be prepared for college could help schools that fail in this regard to wither toward extinction by voting with their feet.

If government workers truly allowed the same market forces that produce great charter schools to be applied to all government schools, all children could benefit from the superior levels of accountability that today apply exclusively to charter schools and private schools.

The most important question to ask about charter schools is "do parents want to send their kids to them?" It's the most important question to ask of regular public schools, too.

Interesting debates about charter schools persist. The GAO’s analysis is the latest of a string ofreports raising eyebrows about many aspects of charter schools’ productivity. Charter schools receive public funding but are managed by the private sector – by both non-profit and for-profit organizations. Charters began as a sort of innovative alternative option to traditional public schools, with the claim that they would outperform them. Yet, the evidence to show that this promise was kept is erratic, at best. Despite this, charters continue to operate – by design – without many of the rules and regulations applied to public schools. Somewhere a line must be drawn.

To clarify, I am not ideologically opposed to the model that charter schools represent. In fact, a number of AACTE member institutions are involved in successful work with charters. However, I do believe the deregulation that has been encouraged and facilitated for the sake of charter school innovation is unwarranted. First, charter schools are public entities that operate with precious taxpayer dollars. Why, then, should there be no standard for their operation that represents a common floor of taxpayers’ interests? As the GAO report and many others show, charters are too often failing to serve some of our highest-need students. Further compounding the issue, policies frequently allow for screening or weeding out students who are not performing well.

What has been most notably lacking is explicit transparency about what regulations charters are being allowed to waive, the reasons for those exemptions and what productivity targets and accountability measures are in place to evaluate these efforts. More simply put, how will waiving certain requirements applied to traditional public schools allow charter schools to meet specific goals? The recent law passed in Louisiana allowing uncertified teachers to teach in charter schools is one example of this lack of transparency. How will this serve students? What are the goals and accountability plans in place to report the progress of this policy waiver to the public? Further, it should be clear to the public how frameworks of the Civil Rights Act, Americans with Disabilities Act, Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and other similar landmark pieces of legislation are being integrated into the parameters around charter schools’ innovation.

I do feel that some charter schools are doing impressive work. Houston’s YES Prep Public Schools are producing results through academic achievement and college degree attainment for low-income, minority youth. The same is true of some traditional public schools such as Miami-Dade Public Schools, which leads the nation in Advanced Placement exam scores among Hispanic students. I would like to see us focus more on how to move those practices into wider-spread use and make them more systematic. For now, though, while the results of charters fail to show an overall record of solid student achievement, let’s recognize exemplars from both charters and traditional public schools for meeting performance measures. Then, let’s analyze the results and incorporate best practices in ways that ensure all student learners can reap the benefits.

Every student deserves a choice among safe options. They should not be relegated to a school that isn’t working. Let’s keep in mind, though, the foundational requirements and boundaries we hold sacred for all kids as a matter of our responsibility as taxpayers and to fellow taxpayers.

As required by federal law, charter schools serve all-comers, including students with disabilities. The recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report shed light on the extent to which this occurs, finding that charter schools educate on average a moderately lower percentage of students with disabilities than traditional public schools (8.2 percent compared to 11.2 percent). As many education specialists have noted, it is essential that all parents of children with disabilities know they have the same right as any parent to apply for and enroll their child in a charter school. The bipartisan charter school bill that the House overwhelmingly passed last September amplified this point.

As the GAO report indicated, lower rates of enrollment are partly a result of many school districts focusing on meeting particular special needs in particular schools. For instance, while a neighborhood school may be a fine option for a mildly autistic child, the family and student may instead be better served by open-enrolling in a different district school that has a great program or teacher that can help their child more. As the GAO report alludes to, school district administrators frequently encourage parents of students with disabilities to not enroll their child in a charter school because the district has non-charter schools established to specifically focus on children with disabilities, which is a more efficient delivery system for districts.

There are also charter schools that specifically cater to children with special needs, such as the Westgate Charter School in Colorado that serves "double exceptional" children who are gifted and who also have a learning disability.

As we can see, there are a variety of reasons that charter schools may serve a higher or lower percentage of students with special needs as part of a district's educational portfolio. The law continues to require every public school to meet the needs of any child who enrolls and many charter schools contract with their school districts, either by choice or compulsion, and pay for shared district services for their special education students. But the key is that every parent has the choice of the school that is best for their child.

Most of the discussion on this topic is fixated on average enrollment rates at the school level, but much more attention needs to be focused on the larger systems in which charter schools exist. Other entities share equal or greater responsibility for serving students with disabilities, yet their roles are often ignored by critics and by the entities themselves.

• When a charter school is not an LEA (and a great many are not), the LEA has the legal responsibility for ensuring all students, including charter school students, receive an appropriate education in the least restrictive environment. This is about more than money. It’s also about creating appropriate systems to evaluate students, create IEPs, deliver services, and resolve disputes. Because they have trouble serving students in their own schools, many school districts ignore their obligations for students who attend charter schools.
  
• Whether a charter school is the LEA or not, the State Education Agency is responsible for ensuring all LEAs comply with IDEA. Many SEAs do not seek to fulfill this responsibility in regard to charter schools.
  
• The authorizing agencies that approve and monitor charter schools should only approve new charter schools that demonstrate the capacity to serve students with disabilities and should monitor the admissions and educational practices of the charter schools they oversee. Many authorizers do not try to perform this function. One reason they don’t is because they do not have adequate staff.

We’ll never be able to have more students with disabilities enroll in charter schools as long as school districts, SEAs, and authorizers are ignoring these responsibilities.

Data collection efforts under the new Broad Prize for Public Charter Schools as well as under The Broad Prize for Urban Education, which is awarded to traditional school districts, have revealed that significant challenges do exist regarding the collection and interpretation of student achievement data for special education students.

Policies surrounding special education identification and assessment often differ, not only state-to-state, but also school system-to-school system. This range in experiences and outcomes warrants a closer look.

Much more information can only help inform efforts to improve all public schools.

We are pleased that new information on quantitative student outcomes and qualitative best practices found in urban charter schools operating at scale will soon be available under The Broad Prize for Public Charter Schools (http://www.broadprize.org/publiccharterschools.html).

The $250,000 Broad Prize for Public Charter Schools is a new annual award given to the urban public charter school management organization that demonstrates the most outstanding overall student performance and improvement in the country while reducing achievement gaps among poor and minority students. The inaugural Broad Prize for Public Charter Schools was awarded to Houston’s YES Prep Public Schools last week (http://www.broadprize.org/publiccharterschools/2012.html)

Later this year, we intend to make available an accessible repository of high-quality data on student achievement outcomes produced by the largest charter management organizations across the country as well as best practices that led to student gains, including:

· Summaries of analyses of student outcomes on all organizations eligible for the award

· Research-based best practice findings from a site visit to YES Prep Public Schools

· Framework upon which the site visit findings are based

This, and other information about The Broad Prize for Public Charter Schools will be available

on www.broadprize.org/publiccharterschools.html.

[The student outcomes analyses will reveal performance, improvement and achievement gap closures as evidenced by college readiness exams, graduation rates and state assessments, relative to other charter management organizations as well as relative to traditional school districts.]

[The forthcoming qualitative site visit report will reveal how the winning CMO achieved such strong student outcomes. It will be based on an analysis of organization-wide policies and practices related to student achievement, according to a site-visit framework that will be grounded in the research literature regarding school and organizational practices found to be effective in raising student achievement. The framework – which will be made public later this year – will cover three key areas: teaching and learning, leadership, and organizational structure and culture. The site visit team will gather evidence through extensive document collection and analysis, classroom visits and interviews with the management organization’s leadership, principals, teachers, staff, students, parents and community representatives.]

Stay tuned for more information this fall.

Here is a guest response from Progressive Policy Institute President Will Marshall. PPI released a new report today on improving failing charter schools.

The notion that public charter schools succeed by “creaming” is a hardy perennial among critics of public school choice. It’s too bad the GAO has lent credence to that dubious argument by claiming that charters don’t enroll their fair share of special education students.

As others have pointed out, it turns out that the evidence for this proposition is beyond flimsy. For example, GAO visited only 13 charter schools – out of 5,700 – and only three state education departments. It’s baffling that GAO would risk its reputation for impartial analysis by indicting the entire charter movement on the basis of such slender findings.

Such methodological shortcomings aside, isn’t the unceasing effort by foes to de-legitimize the entire charter school experiment a little beside the point? Charters are now in their third decade. Over two million children are enrolled, and the percentage of kids enrolled in some big cities -- New Orleans, Washington, Detroit – is reaching critical mass. Whatever you think of them, charters are here to stay.

So instead of endlessly relitigating the case for and against charters, we ought to focus on improving their quality. Who can be against that?

Today, at a National Press Club forum, PPI unveiled a new report, "Improving Charter School Accountability: The Challenge of Closing Failing Schools," by David Osborne, of Reinventing Government fame, that offers a set of tough-minded recommendations for closing failing charters. Every low-quality charter that gets shut down vindicates the promise of accountability for results that lies at the heart of the charter experiment.

In reality, however, closing low quality schools isn’t as easy as it sounds. Some authorizers lack the resources to monitor charters at all. Others lack reliable tools for measuring school quality, especially when it comes to students’ academic performance. Still others lack the political will, or believe the only test that matters is whether parents want to send their kids to a particular school, no matter how it performs.

Osborne’s study examines these obstacles and how they could be overcome. The forum this morning brought together several leading authorities on education reform and school choice, including NACSA chief Greg Richmond, the AFT’s Nancy Van Meter and Lindsey Burke of the Heritage Foundation.

On one point, charter school critics are right – there are too many mediocre and low-performing charters. The right response isn’t to insist that the charters are fatally flawed in concept. It’s to embrace a simple formula for making them better: replicate the best charter models and CMOs – the subject of a previous PPI report – and accelerate the closure of failing schools. That’s how we’ll raise the quality of the nation’s charter portfolio – and give more kids an opportunity to attend first rate public schools.

The purpose of chartering becomes lot clearer if we think about it as the process of system-change than if we think about it as the schools.

Try it this way:

The country agrees learning needs to improve.

Perhaps it will be enough to do conventional school better. But nobody can be sure of that. Surely that would be a risky bet.

It's safer to assume also that school, schooling, needs to change.

Happily, along with the need for improvement digital technology is opening the potential for new kinds of 'schooling'.

But along with the technology there has to be a process for change.

Districts resist change. (All old organizations do.)

Systems change because they're open to new models; to innovation. The states enacted chartering to open K-12 for innovation.

'To charter' is a verb. The schools created are chartered schools.

A chartered school is not a kind of school in any pedagogical sense. The laws are open as to the kind of school to be created. So naturally the chartered schools differ.

A charter is simply permission to start a public school. No student learns anything from a charter. Students learn from what they read, see, hear and do.

To evaluate a school you have to know what the school has its students reading, seeing, hearing and doing. And relate learning to that.

Research is failing. Researchers studying chartered schools seldom ask what the school has its students reading, seeing, hearing and doing.

Researching ought to be asking, first, what school models the chartered sector is generating. Then ask: Which of the school models are producing what results with learning?

Be open to new dimensions of 'quality'. The transistor radio when it appeared wasn't quality as radio-quality was then defined. It had a new quality: It was portable; cordless!

And give the innovations time to improve. The early airplanes couldn't carry people as well as the railroads. The early telephone couldn't carry messages as far as the telegraph.

Most innovations improve. Be careful what you call 'failing'.

The lower enrollment of special needs students in charter schools is a fact that’s been known for well over a decade. And, as the GAO report documents, the disparities are particularly stark in categories such as “intellectual disabilities” and “developmental delay.” This is a problem for at least four reasons: (a) the likely denial of unique opportunities to students with special needs, (b) the increased concentration of these students in non-charters, (c) funding non-comparability, and (d) results non-comparability. Further, what’s particularly troubling about the news of the GAO report was the quoted responses of charter advocates, downplaying the differences as “small” and suggesting that the cause may be over-labeling in non-charters (see http://on.wsj.com/LApPyP).

This excuse-making (whatever happened to “no excuse schools”?) is as unproductive as it is objectionable. Let me briefly walk through the four problems listed above.

1. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) includes two relevant protections: a student cannot be denied a unique educational opportunity because of his or her special needs; and students should be mainstreamed as much as possible (the preference for inclusion). Since the raison d’être of charter schools is their uniqueness, they can’t very well argue that another school could provide the same educational experience; their claimed uniqueness obligates them to admit special needs students. But counseling out and steering away of special needs students certainly occurs, and data such as presented in the GAO report consistently show lower numbers. This is a civil rights issue and should be taken seriously.

2. The IDEA’s inclusion mandate is designed to ensure that students’ special needs are met, whenever feasible, within the mainstream educational environment. Before the mid-1970s, “handicapped” children were – if they were educated at all – shunted aside into separate classrooms and schools. We have witnessed a great deal of progress has since that time, but the pressure to push these students into separate learning environments hasn’t gone away. While those separate environments are sometimes educationally rich, they often are not – and the goal of inclusion is nonetheless undermined. The enrollment patterns we see in charter schools include mission-oriented charters designed to serve a class of special needs (e.g., autistic or hearing impaired), plus a general pattern in most charters of substantially lower enrollment – averaging out to almost 30% lower enrollment overall. This means that special needs students are further concentrated in non-charter public schools.

3. That difference in enrollment has implications in terms of funding, which two NEPC reports have addressed: see http://bit.ly/LD7e8k & http://bit.ly/JsYYAB. There are two such implications I want to highlight. First, this means that charter per pupil funding includes a smaller supplement provided by state funding formulas for the enrollment of a student with special needs. If a charter enrolls one-third fewer students with special needs, then its supplemental funding for such students will generally be one-third less. Comparisons of funding between charters and non-charters should always account for allocations resulting from that difference. Second, and perhaps less obviously, in states like Colorado (where I live), the school funding law places a greatly disproportionate burden on the LEA when it comes to funding students with special needs, which means that there is a financial ‘penalty’ for enrolling these students. For instance, if a school in Denver identifies a student as having a reading disability, it would create an IEP (individualized learning plan) setting forth, among other things, the interventions and assistance that the school will provide. On average, those IEP interventions and supports cost a great deal more than the state provides, meaning that the schools must dip into other funding to make up the difference. Within such a funding system, when non-charters enroll a disproportionate number of students with special needs a corresponding financial burden is placed on those schools.

4. Finally, these differences need to be taken into account by researchers and others who attempt to compare academic outcomes between charters and non-charters. This one’s pretty obvious, but we’ve probably all seen examples of sloppy research that fails in this regard.

The evidence is powerful, but charter advocates needn’t circle the wagons over this issue. Why not acknowledge the clear and consistent facts, recognize it as something that needs to be seriously addressed, and move forward?