I believe that most school systems do get more money for disabled kids. But kids that do their homework, pay attention in class, etc. cost a lot less to educate than a kid who isn't really interested in learning--even without any disabilities.
To your point about charter schools, there is a strong argument to be made that when parents have a choice where there kids go, public schools will have to make sure they are providing more academic opportunities if they don't want to risk losing the academically minded families (and their money). That seems like it would be a good thing for everyone.
Kids with special needs are statistically less served by charter schools - significantly.
This means a greater burden on the non charter schools with the same budget (charter school students don't pay more) - and special needs kids aren't paid by federal funds (where I live it's mostly local tax).
Also they statistically perform equally or more poorly compared to public schools.
I listed a lot more than just special needs. I'm talking about students that need remedial lessons, more support for problems at home, too. These are all things that will be more expensive and charter schools can decline for.
The charters in my district absolutely support special needs children. I even know a couple special needs teachers at the big charter network. I can't say how their program compares to the public school system's but there it's not empty so I figure it can't be that bad.
> the result is that all the "cheap" i.e. wealthy students (books and technology readily available at home, familial support for their studies, financially able to engage in more expensive educational opportunities outside the classroom) end up in one school while those without these privileges, or with disabilities, end up in the other
I don't understand - are charter schools allowed to refuse to admit disabled students?
When my daughter was diagnosed with autism three weeks plenty of for profit options. We ended up putting her in a charter school because it was far more flexible and attentive to our needs than public school was, where all decisions seemed to revolve around what was best for the school, not our child.
Charter schools typically don't offer special education programs and have selective admissions. They are looking for kids who get high test scores on standardized testing. With special education you want the least restrictive environment and that involves special education support in as normal a school environment as possible (aka regular classes).
Dig deeper and you will find that while this is the law, it is not necessarily reality. Hence why I structured the question the way I did rather than focusing on the legal requirement.
A new government report shows that charter schools are not enrolling as high a portion of special-education students as traditional public schools, despite federal laws mandating that publicly financed schools run by private entities take almost every disabled student seeking to enroll.
We already have that kind of a model in public schools. The difference between the two is money.
Public schools have special education teachers, and sometimes have entire sub-schools within existing schools just for special education kids. (My mother was a special education teacher.)
Since your school was a boarding school, I imagine it also cost significantly more per-child than we currently spend in public school. A lot of the gain from your experience, I think, was probably from having good instructors trained in how to teach students with those particular disabilities, and probably a good teacher-to-student ratio. If we were willing to pay public teachers more, public schools could attract the same experts, and if we were willing to employ more public teachers in total, we could achieve a similar ratio. We could then achieve the same thing in public schools as in the boarding school.
> Charter schools throw a wrench into this as they typically don't support special needs kids, but still get district funding. This causes other schools in the district to look "worse" because their test scores aren't as balanced as before.
This is probably state-dependent, in California charters have the same obligations (with two different organizational ways of addressing them, either as if they were their own district or as part of the local district) as other public schools with regard to special education.
While some vouchers are based on this data shared elsewhere in this thread indicated that most are not. Outsourcing disabled kids to a specialized school has a number of disadvantages and is not a program I would broadly support. I think the most notable is that it reduces the interaction of the typical student populace with disabled students causing them to be less aware of the challenges and issues they may face. A lot of education is exposure to different peoples and perspectives. I had a disabled child in one of my classes at a young age and think that experience helped develop my empathy for people who had a different experience of life than my own. If the benefits to disabled students are sufficiently large they may outweigh the gains to the broader student body but designing systems to be insular rather than reflective is something that should be done with an abundance of caution.
Given the large difference in cost between average students and expensive students (ESL, special needs, behavioral issues, ADHD) I expect that charter schools will find creative ways to ensure they minimize the latter. (Similar to how health insurance companies compete for young, healthy participants.)
Every private school I ever went happily took and cared for disabled children. My impression was that they had a pretty great experience compared to my years in public school, where all disabled children were in the same classroom regardless of grade and basically were babysat and not educated all day.
And we had plenty of braindead but normal kids too. Their parents paid out large donations to get their useless children passed through school and at least an attempt to educate them.
The question should not be who gives greater returns to society but the allocation based on need.
It is probable that children with learning disabilities will always need more care (and hence money). I think the real issue is that we are falling short of stimulating our brightest children. That doesn't justify taking from children with specific needs for support.
My kids go to a charter school. Wife works there. They have a number of people with severe disabilities. A few require multiple staff members per kid. It’s a huge burden as they don’t get nearly as much money as regular school. they only get state money, not local county money.
This is a language immersion school. Kids with IQ of 50 and lower are getting no benefit.
But siblings go there to so the parent doesn’t wanna make two stops.
My wife’s class was mostly shutdown for 6 months because she got six special needs kids and her kindergarten class at the beginning of the year. A mix of non verbal, Violent and or extreme low IQ.
It took that long to go through all the legal processes to get them moved to the proper rooms. She had quite a few injuries from it all. Lot of parents were unwilling to admit that kids had any issues.
Plus a lot of these issues were not caught in preschool since the pandemic had those shut down.
To your point about charter schools, there is a strong argument to be made that when parents have a choice where there kids go, public schools will have to make sure they are providing more academic opportunities if they don't want to risk losing the academically minded families (and their money). That seems like it would be a good thing for everyone.
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