by Allison Hertog
Hertog
Last spring the U.S. Government Accountability Office issued a study concluding that charter schools enroll a lower percentage of special education students than traditional public schools. Some commentators have questioned this study’s methodology and conclusions, while others believe it confirms what they have seen in practice. Regardless of where you stand on that debate, charter schools have a great opportunity to increase their special education admissions and improve how well public education serves all struggling students.
Charter schools can do this by using a bottom-up model called Response to Intervention, along with the Common Core standards. Response to Intervention can be employed in any school – private, public, charter, maybe even virtual – but it is particularly well-suited for implementation and success in charter schools because of their enhanced freedom to enact school-wide reforms.
Response to Intervention (RTI) is a special education reform codified into the 2004 reauthorization of the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. It's designed to decrease the rolls of special education students. Following a dramatic rise of the number of students identified as specific learning disabled (SLD) in the 1990s, researchers from the Progressive Policy Institute and the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation suggested in a landmark 2001 paper, Rethinking Learning Disabilities, that the SLD label was a “catch-all” for low-achieving students which serves as a “sociological sponge that attempts to wipe up general education’s spills and cleanse its ills.” A 2002 report from a presidential commission on special education stated up to 40 percent of children identified for special education weren’t truly disabled, but were simply not taught to read properly. (more…)
by Allison Hertog
Mississippi recently became the first state in the nation to adopt a public and private school choice program in which state and federal monies are provided directly to schools which parents choose. Aimed at students with dyslexia, it's also the second special needs school choice program in the country designed for children with a single type of disability. (Ohio’s Autism Scholarship Program enacted in 2003 was the first.)
What makes this new program interesting is that it may be a starting point for other state legislatures where special needs voucher bills have failed due to concerns about parent accountability – Wisconsin comes to mind – or where special needs voucher laws have come under increased scrutiny due to reports of private school abuse of public money – Florida comes to mind.
Mississippi’s program morphed from a dyslexia screening and treatment bill (supported by a governor who struggled with the learning disorder) into a school choice measure during the proverbial sausage-making legislative process. It’s not as carefully or as broadly designed as it could have been. It also appears there’s currently only one school in the state which is specialized enough to meet the exceedingly specific criteria to participate. But nonetheless, it succeeds in incentivizing the growth of more highly-accountable school options for parents. (more…)
