Comparison of Enrollment Patterns of Students Receiving Special Education in Urban Neighborhood and Charter Schools

• In Event: 49.037 - Closing Neighborhood Schools and Opening Charter Schools: The Restructuring of Public Education in Chicago

Abstract

This study addresses a critical and contemporary policy issue for students receiving special education: their enrollment in charter schools. We present a longitudinal analysis of enrollment patterns of students receiving special education in urban neighborhood and charter Chicago Public Schools (CPS). We attend closely to within group diversity, examining enrollment patterns across disability and racial categories, social class and grade spans.
While the number of charter schools continues to increase, advocacy groups, parents, neighborhood associations, state officials, and professional organizations have raised concerns about whether charter schools appropriately serve students receiving special education. One of the main problems has been the low proportion of students receiving special education in charter schools (GAO, 2012). This is an important issue as charter schools are expected to follow the same federal laws that protect and give rights to students with disabilities in traditional public schools. Not only do these laws ensure that all students are provided with a free appropriate public education (FAPE) and that they are taught in the least restrictive environment (LRE), but they also prohibit any form of discrimination and exclusion (Ahearn, et al., 2001). Therefore, any systematic differences in provision of education to students with disabilities have potentially serious legal and civil rights implications for the expansion of charter schools.
Research has documented that, since their inception, charter schools have enroll lower proportions of students receiving special education when compared with traditional public schools. Despite this emerging research, some key issues remain unaddressed. For instance, students with disabilities are conceptualized as a monolithic and homogenous group, which has resulted in little research that accounts for within group diversity. This is problematic as students with disabilities are a highly heterogeneous group. Emerging scholarship from special education and disability studies points to the importance of attending to the intersections of markers of students’ difference (e.g., ability/disability status, race, class, gender, age). Because students are simultaneously part of various membership group, they experience marginalization and/or privilege on the bases of two or more markers of difference. Thus, understanding complex equity problems for students with disabilities such as their enrollment (or lack of) in charter schools requires examining how the enrollment of students with the same disability diagnosis may vary across racial and age groups and socioeconomic status.
Using multilevel longitudinal data analysis methods we examined annual school enrollment and demographic reports from the CPS district and data from the Special Education Funding and Child Tracking System (FACTS) from the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE). Specifically, these analyses compared special education enrollment trends for neighborhood and charter schools taking into account variability in enrollment for each school across an eight year period. Our findings indicate that the proportion of CPS students receiving special education in charter schools has increased over recent years, reaching the proportions of students receiving special education in neighborhood schools by 2013-14. However, enrollment disparities emerge when accounting for disability category, grade span, race and social class. We provide recommendations for policy and advocacy groups.

Authors

• Federico R. Waitoller, University of Illinois at Chicago

• Daniel Montagne Maggin, Vanderbilt University

• Joshua L. Radinsky, University of Illinois at Chicago