So it turns out that one big reason why New York City charter schools have fewer kids in special education is that a child at a charter is more likely to escape special ed than one attending a traditional public school. They do a better job getting kids out of it, and of keeping at-risk kids from falling into it.
And never mind that this means they lose the added resources that any school gets for branding a child as in need of special education.
That’s absolutely not how Marcus Winters, the author of a new Manhattan Institute study that leads me to that conclusion, would put it. His write-up is all careful social science, as it should be. I’m adding some informed non-scientific interpretation and opinion.
Winters looked at an issue long raised by enemies of charters: the fact that charters enroll fewer special-ed children than “normal” public schools. On top of his new insights, his work confirms that the main reason is that fewer parents of special-ed kids even try to get their kids into charters.
It’s very easy to see why this is so — because anyone who tries to get into a charter is likely to fail. By law, entry is by lottery — and last year some 50,000 kids didn’t get the golden ticket.
If your child has any sort of special need, you have decide where to to focus your efforts. Many parents won’t want to bother with the lottery, especially if their child has already been designated as needing special ed and they’ve been pointed at some other hope for help.
Then, too: Do you need to set your special-ed kid up for another disappointment? The most heartbreaking scenes in “Waiting for ‘Superman’ ” are of the childen whose hopes get dashed when they lose in the charter lottery.
Anyway, Winters also looked into the critics’ charge that charters try to “dump” special-education students — i.e., encourage them to transfer out. The numbers don’t back that up: More special-ed kids transfer to charters than out of them, he found.
Yet the discrepancy nonetheless grows with each passing class — that is, where in kindergarten charters have 6.9 percentage-points fewer kids in special ed than do the city’s traditional public schools, by 3rd grade it’s 8.3 percentage points.
And most of the reason for that (about 80 percent, Winters’ analysis shows) is this: 1) A special-ed kid at a charter is more likely to be classified out of special education than one in the “regular” system. And 2) Kids at charters are less likely to be put into special education than are students at traditional public schools.
Winters notes that the variation comes entirely in the “soft” diagnoses — that is, the difference doesn’t come among children with autism or other relatively “objective” special needs, but those labeled as having a “Special Learning Disability,” a more subjective category.
Leaving Winters’ science behind, again the explanations seem obvious. Basically, it comes down to two facts:
1) If a charter school is bad, it gets closed down; that’s the law. Not so, a failing public school. (Mayor Bloomberg and his team have made major efforts to close consistently bad “regular” schools, but they don’t win every battle against the vested interests. And Bill de Blasio has promised to stop closing bad schools altogether.)
Even at a bad school, there may still be a great teacher who can make the difference to get your child out of special ed (or keep the kid from falling to that level), but the battle’s even more uphill than it has to be.
2) If a charter teacher isn’t measuring up, he or she probably won’t stay a charter teacher for long. In the regular schools, the United Federation of Teachers does an amazing job of something that’s important to any union, namely protecting the jobs of its weakest members. Unfortunately, that means more kids get stuck with bad teachers.
Bottom line: A child who’s marginally qualified for special education — that is, one who has a real chance to get out of it — is a more likely to escape it at a charter than at the average traditional public school.
Mind you, some traditional schools do an excellent job with these kids — but some don’t.
In other words, it’s same story as with charters vs. traditional schools generally: The regular schools have lots of dedicated, hard-working educators. But if you want to avoid the real lemons, you’re better off with a charter.