Charter schools should revamp their discipline practices to create better learning environments for “ALL students” — especially children with special needs, a range of education and civil rights advocates said today in a joint statement.
The groups, which include the main national charter school association, the association of charter school authorizers, the Black Alliance for Educational Options, and a legal advocacy group for special needs students — say they reject “a return to ‘one-size-fits-all education'” but want charters to rein in suspensions and expulsions of children with learning disabilities and other special needs.
The public charter school sector has demonstrated great potential to create safe, caring and orderly schools that have good reason to be proud of the academic growth of their students. However, some charter schools are criticized for their student discipline practices — including suspension, expulsion, and other actions resulting in the removal of students from the classroom — that disproportionately exclude and impact students with disabilities.
Exclusion of students with disabilities, in particular those with emotional or behavioral disabilities, does not foster a positive school climate, nor does it help create the opportunity for a high quality education. Sacrificing the educational welfare of some children to achieve the academic progress of others is the wrong paradigm: the academic success of all children should be our priority.
Some students with special needs, especially those with more serious challenges, may find a home at specialized schools (some of them charters). But what about the large numbers who choose schools outside that niche?
Robin Lake of the Center on Reinventing Public Education looks at the way some charter-heavy school systems have overhauled their discipline policies while respecting charter schools’ operational freedom.
In D.C., leaders have boosted transparency and leveraged public scrutiny of high discipline rates in all public schools by issuing School Equity Reports, which show suspension, expulsion, student exit, and mid-year enrollment data by school. Especially high rates in charter schools prompt conversations with their authorizer, the DC Public Charter School Board, to find constructive solutions.
In New Orleans, both charter and district public schools must abide by common, agreed-upon standards for expellable offenses. An office operated by the state-run Recovery School District reviews and approves proposed expulsions according to those standards and works to ensure students continue to receive appropriate educational placement after they are expelled.
In both cities, discipline numbers are declining (New Orleans saw big changes in expulsion, for example, but suspensions, which are far more common, remain outside the centralized system). More importantly, from the perspective of school and government leaders, meaningful conversations are underway about how students’ needs can be better met. Leaders in both cities acknowledge these policies are just a step in creating broad, meaningful school-level change in the use of suspension and expulsion, but an important one.
This is part of an underappreciated dynamic in national charter school circles. Advocates and associations don’t just promote charters. They often push them to improve.
