Compensatory Education Programs for Youth Delayed, Deferred, or Denied Public School Enrollment

• In Event: Delayed, Deferred, Denied: Ensuring Immigrants’ Access to the Dreams and Possibilities of a Public Education

Abstract

Although not unusual in cases involving a violation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) (Oberman, n.d.; Bateman, 2007), compensatory education services for English Language Learners are rare simply because they are not often pursued (Golembieski, 2017). This paper examines how one school district chose to conceptualize and implement compensatory services for students whose enrollment had been delayed or deferred and thus were denied access to their right to a public school education.
After being cited by the state’s Attorney General for having delayed and deferred enrollment of students who were newly arrived immigrants (later identified as English Language Learners) the district signed an Assurance of Discontinuance for which one of the agreements was to provide Compensatory Education (CE) services to the students who were diverted or experienced delays in enrollment. The district was required to submit a plan detailing the services students would receive, how those services would take the form of educational enrichment beyond normal day instruction, and how those services would ameliorate the delay students experienced in their education.
In order to assess the district’s fidelity to the plan, monitors were guided by two research questions: (1) What CE program did the district implement? (2) How does the program compare with the plan the district submitted to the state? To answer these questions and ascertain areas of success and limitations of the CE program, our monitors conducted multiple interviews with the high school principal and assistant principal of the school where the CE program was taking place, the district’s superintendent, and other key district personnel over the course of eight months. Additionally, monitors conducted a focus group with students selected to receive CE services, follow-up interviews with the students from the focus group, observations of the after school tutorials, and an ongoing document analysis of student records.
Similarly to cases involving IDEA (Oberman, n.d.; Bateman, 2007), the allocation and application of compensatory services by this school district was a challenging. Although the after school tutorial fulfilled its complete run and did provide tutorials that students felt were worthwhile, the program had low student attendance and it did not match the thoroughness and rigor it intended in the CE plan. Our findings suggest the program was limited by the district plan’s disregard for the school’s capacity to implement it and by the school’s lack of commitment to ensuring the usefulness of the CE program. Overall, this case study offers important lessons for compensatory education as it is applied to remedy inequities suffered by students.

Bateman, D. (2007). Compensatory education: Case study. TEACHING Exceptional Children, 39(6), pp. 62-64.
Oberman, C. A. (n.d.). Compensatory education: What, why, when, where and how. Retrieved July 10, 2017 from The law offices of Caryl Andrea Oberman, LLC
Golembiewski, K. (2017). Compensatory education is available to English language learners under the EEOA (July 22, 2017). Alabama Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Law Review, Forthcoming.

Author

• Pamela D'Andrea Martinez, New York University