Mystery callers try to ensure that DC charters admit special needs students

Nationally, public charter schools serve fewer students with special needs than traditional public schools do, and some charge that charters are screening such students out. But for the past three years, DC’s Public Charter School Board has been deploying a “mystery caller” program to prevent that from happening here.

Over the past couple of months, DC parents and guardians have been calling around to charter schools to get information about applying for this fall. But they’re not the only ones. Staff members of DC’s PCSB, which oversees the District’s charter schools, have been calling schools as well.

Equipped with a suggested script and a cell phone, PCSB staff pretend they’re calling about a child in their care who has an unspecified learning disability and isn’t being well served by the school she’s currently attending. They ask what they need to do to apply to the school they’re calling and whether they need to submit any information about the child’s disability.

The answers to those questions should be: apply through the My School DC website, and don’t submit any information relating to the disability or even indicate that the child has one. Nor should school personnel say anything discouraging, such as that the school across the street might be a better fit.

If school staff give inaccurate answers, they get a second call a few weeks later. If they still answer incorrectly, and if the answer seems to result from discrimination rather than ignorance, the PCSB may set in motion a process that could ultimately lead to the school losing its charter.

That hasn’t happened yet, according to Rashida Young, the PCSB’s Senior Equity and Fidelity Manager. Usually, school staff just need training or coaching to understand what the law requires. And the situation seems to be improving: out of about 100 schools called annually, the number that failed the second round of calls was ten two years ago, eight the next year, and only two last year.

“After doing this for three years,” Young said, “I think people are getting the message.”

Aside from being effective, the PCSB’s “mystery caller” program is inexpensive and easy to implement. It’s attracted attention from charter authorizers around the country, and at least one state—Massachusetts—has copied the idea.

DC has an advantage over many other areas because nearly all charter schools now participate in a common application process. That means the PCSB doesn’t have to scrutinize each school’s application form to make sure they’re not asking prohibited questions.

Charters may still discriminate after enrollment

That’s not to say DC has solved the problem of ensuring that charters are serving students with special needs. Although schools aren’t allowed to ask any questions about disabilities at the application stage, they can ask those questions when it comes time for the student to enroll. And some charge that charters “counsel out” students with disabilities after enrollment.

Federal law requires that all public schools, whether charter or traditional, provide every student with a free appropriate public education. Schools must place the child in the least restrictive environment possible.

If the school can’t serve a student well, it needs to arrange for another placement, possibly in a private school where the tuition would be paid by the District rather than by the charter itself.

The PCSB also checks for discrimination after enrollment, for example by monitoring suspensions and seeing whether disabled students are disproportionately represented. But the primary responsibility for enforcing federal law on special education rests with DC’s Office of the State Superintendent of Education.

Last school year, 12% of DC’s charter students had disabilities, as compared to 14% of students in DCPS. Nationally, the special education population in charter schools is 8 to 10%, versus 13% in traditional public schools.

But it’s not hard to find disparities between certain charters and certain DCPS schools. At BASIS DC, part of a charter network known for its academic rigor, only 5.9% of students are classified as having disabilities. At Hart Middle School in Ward 8, which serves roughly the same grades, that figure is 26.7%.

Disparities may not be the result of discrimination

Does that mean schools like BASIS are discriminating? Not necessarily. True, BASIS itself has been the subject of government investigations after parents complained it wasn’t providing required special education services, and the PCSB continues to monitor it.

And it’s undeniable that charters have strong incentives to limit their numbers of special ed students. Test scores for that subgroup are generally lower, and they count as part of the school’s overall performance—even if students have been placed in a private school because the school can’t serve them.

On the other hand, it can be tricky to compare numbers of students with special needs across schools, because some schools are more likely than others to identify students as being in that category. Plus, while all schools need to make reasonable accommodations, students with disabilities and their parents may simply prefer not to attend a school that demands a lot in terms of academic rigor or discipline.

And it may be unrealistic to expect every charter school, however small, to deal with every kind of disability, which can include anything from mild dyslexia to serious autism to uncontrolled seizures. Even DCPS, with its economies of scale, has received a low rating from the Office of the State Superintendent of Education for its special education services.

But the law requires that charter schools admit all comers, regardless of disability, and the PCSB has been inventive in coming up with a program to help ensure schools comply. Still, it doesn’t make sense to expect all charters to end up serving the same proportion of special needs students, or even to expect parity between the charter sector and DCPS.

What’s important is to ensure that children with disabilities get the best education possible, in whatever setting works for them.