In the beginning of the 1990's, political pressure began to increase the demand for public school choice. Our public school system suffered from a lack of initiative, some said, and our students were falling behind other industrialized nations in terms of academic performance and test scores. These and other political pressures were forcing school systems to improve standards, cut costs and increase accountability for students' performances. In 1992, the President of the United States issued a directive, known as "Goals 2000", for the nations schools to begin to achieve higher standards and performance levels. From the top down, states began to create their own answers to the President's directives. Some states, such as New York, immediately set about to increase the level of public education for all by erecting a set of standardized curriculums, exams, and inclusive classrooms. Other states responded in a more conservative fashion by beginning to privatize educational services in order to cut costs and budgets, by demanding quantitative improvement in standardized test scores, and by breaking the perceived negative effects of the teacher's unions. Out of this particular conservative pressure the charter school arose as the paradigm of reform advocated by the political right.

A Charter School is a "non-sectarian, public school of choice" which operates under a contract or charter; essentially a set of goals by which the school will be run (http://www.uscharterschools.org/gen_info/gi_main.htm). Most times a school's charter is drafted in regards to raising standardized test scores, or guaranteeing higher graduation rates. State laws vary, but in most cases the state's education department, or other school governing body, must first approve an application for charter status. Once a charter has been approved, most states demand that a school's charter be reviewed at certain intervals, usually once a year. If, upon review, the school has not fulfilled the terms set forth in the charter, the charter will be revoked.

Charter schools operate as either a fully public school or as a "public" school managed by a private corporation. At present there are seven private corporations that operate charter schools in the United States (Flam & Keane, 1997, pg. 155).One of these, Sabis International, is a foreign owned corporation based in Lebanon (Zollers & Ramanathan, 1998). In districts with private charters, the local school board contracts out the operation, administration and staff of a particular public school to the private company. The local school board essentially relinquishes all authority, from curriculum to maintenance, to the private company that initiates the charter. The only authority the local board holds over the charter school in this situation is the annual review of its charter.

In a study of charter schools in Massachusetts, Zollers and Ramanathan found that corporations are finding the charter school movement very attractive, with "a steady flow of public money, combined with the exemptions from costly government regulations and school board requirements such as collective bargaining" (1998).

In addition to the ability of charter schools to be under the management of a private corporation, they also possess another unique ability; a charter school may exist as a public school within a district, thus falling under the governance of the local school board, or it may, in some states, function as it's own district. In such a circumstance, the charter school is free from all public interference and beholden only to the parameters of its charter. According to the Second Year Report of the National Study of Charter Schools (1998, pg. 17), seventeen states and the District of Columbia have legislation which "identifies charter schools as independent entities, corporate entities, or non profit organizations". Although they are still beholden to federal and state laws, such as the Americans with Disabilities Act, these privately owned and operated autonomous districts are freed from any influence of the local district. If, for instance, a teacher's union contract with a district lays out a specific starting salary for new teachers, this contract would have no effect on an independent charter, even though the school may physically exist within the district and receive district funds.

It is important then to understand the motivations behind the drive for privatization. According to Flam and Keane (1997, pg. 69), the National School Boards Association report of 1995 stated that the most cited benefits of privatization include: (1) improved learning,(2) increased efficiency, (3) reduction of response time, (4) cost avoidance, (5) enhanced teacher/learning environment, (6) reduced employee absenteeism and (7) increased community involvement. These benefits, when posed next to the crumbling inner city school systems, make charter schools appear to be the ideal context through which to achieve them.

In 1991, Minnesota was the first state in the country to approve a charter school law. In 1992, California became the second state to approve such a law. By 1999 the number of states with charter school laws had increased to 36, as well as the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico (http://www.uscharterschools.org/gen_info/gi_main.htm).

According to the First Year Report of the National Study of Charter Schools, the three most often cited reasons to create a new charter school were reported as being: (1) to realize an educational vision, (2) to gain autonomy and (3) to serve a specific population(http://www.uscharterschools.org/gen_info/gi_main.htm). The first situation has also been the catalyst for such institutions as the magnet school, or the vocational school. The second situation has also been the catalyst for the issue of school vouchers. The fulfillment of the first situation is the reason for initiating a charter. The realization of this situation would be best measured by how well the third situation, that of serving a specific population that "chose" the school to begin with, is performed by the charter school.

One specific student population which charter schools claim to be able to serve better than the traditional public schools is students with disabilities. Most charter schools offer to educate students with disabilities using an "inclusive" model of education, similar to New York State's model of inclusion, in which these students learn alongside their peers in a regular classroom situation (Zollers & Ramanathan, 1998). In states that do not already posses inclusive models of public education, the charter schools that offer this model have become quite attractive to parents of children with special needs.

As the motive for profit begins to creep into the school system, this model of inclusion begins to fade. In Massachusetts, each of the for-profit charter schools serves a substantially lower population of students with disabilities than the local district (Zollers & Ramanathan, 1998). It was also found that these for profit-charter schools serve a "far lower percentage of students with complicated disabilities" , who require enormous expenditures of time and money, than do the local districts (Zollers & Ramanathan, 1998). One might ask why, with such an ideal model of education for parents and students to take advantage of, are these schools not flooded with students with special needs, leaving the public schools wondering where everyone has gone.
In the case of Massachusetts, it was found that the special education directors of the charter school are "counseling out" students with disabilities. Upon choosing the inclusive model of education offered by the charter for their child, parents are informed that their children will be better served in the public schools. Some parents, when looking for alternatives for their child's education, were not even offered the choice of a charter, public or private.

For those few special needs children who do find their way into the charter schools, it does not seem that the last 25 years worth of progressive reform has followed them in. Countless documented testimonies of parents and children have shown a disheartening, even gruesome, picture of the reality of the situation. According to Zollers & Ramanathan, for profit charter schools, in some instances "refuse to provide required services to a child with a behavioral disability, use inappropriate disciplinary procedures, segregate the child in a 'separate classroom', and eventually attempt to counsel him or her out of the school" (1998). These practices, on the part of the charter schools, violate state and federal special education laws, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (Mckinney, J.R., 1996). It seems that this is the point in which the profit motive takes hold. The costly Individual Educational Programs (IEP's) of students with disabilities begins to become a drain on the profits of the management company. Again, in order to maintain the schools charter, substantial gains must be shown in test scores. Under these circumstances, students with disabilities become a liability in the pursuit of that goal. It is therefore clear that as according to Mckinney, evidence "nationwide demonstrates that children with disabilities do not have equal access to charter schools" (1996).

It is also important to note that the charter school movement has also eminated from pressures for increased choice in education. This issue of choice is an extremely important one to parents of children with disabilities.The classically high percentage of students with disabilities in lower income urban districts increases the level of concern for choice in schools in these areas, but those who have shown the most discontent with the inner-city schools and the most interest in charter schools, or other schools of choice often times "find it difficult to provide transportation or to deal with the bureaucratic requirements for signing up their children for the school" (Bomotti, S. 1998).The pursuit of the best possible education for a student with a disability, then, often times leaves a parent with no choice but to return to the same inner city or rural school suffering from lack of funding from which they chose to leave.

Some solutions have been discussed addressing the abhorrent circumstances students with disabilities have found themselves in regarding charter schools. It has been proposed that in states where charter schools are separate districts, the charter schools must make cooperative agreements with local school districts that possess special education delivery systems. This would involve a fair funding system allowing children with disabilities to take advantage of the charter schools. In districts where the charter school is part of the local district, it has been proposed that the district create special education delivery systems and regulate compliance on the behalf of the charter school. It is also important that states monitor charter schools for compliance with special education laws. All of these solutions, however, are seen by the operators of the charter schools as a fundamental intrusion on their ability to make a profit. Additionally, these proposed solutions ultimately fail to confront the systemic problem at the root of the problem: an exrteme lack of funding for existing public schools, which only stands to grow if forced to bail out the problematic charter schools.

Upon the investigation of the issue of charter schools and their performance in regards to a specific population, there are a few points that become clear. It is obvious that the public has called for an improvement in the situation of our school system, consequently causing a rush from the states of a myriad of solutions, one of which is the movement for charter school education. It is evident that private companies have jumped at the charter movement, and the chance to extract a profit from it. It is also indisputable that this profit is being extracted at the expense of an extremely vulnerable population, and through the violation of education law. It is unmistakable that , as alternatives in education are encouraged, "the chance of a market creating a multitude of options for all parents...is so small as to be nonexistent" (Molnar 1996).

 

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Bomotti, S. (1998). Pondering the Complexities of School Choice (Case Study of How School Choice Works). Phi Delta Kappan, 80(4), 313-316

Flam, S. & Keane, W. (1997). Public Schools, Private Enterprise. Lancaster, PA: Technomic Publishing Company, Inc.

Mckinney, J.R. (1996) Charter Schools: a New Barrier for Children With Disabilities (New Options for Public Education). Educational Leadership, 54(2) 22-24

United States Department of Education Office of Educational Research and Development (1998). A National Study of Charter Schools: A Second Year Report. Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office.

U.S. Charter Schools. (2000). Overview of Charter Schools. Retrieved April 13, 2000 from the World Wide Web: http://www.uscharterschools.org/gen_info/gi_main.htm

Zollers, N.J. & Ramanathan, A.K. (1998) For Profit Charter Schools and Students With Disabilities: the Sordid Side of the Business of Schooling. Phi Delta Kappan, 80(4), 297