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Archived Information
Review of Charter School Legislation Provisions Related to Students with Disabilities, September 1998
General Prohibition of Discrimination |
Prohibition of Discrimination in Admissions |
No Specific Statement |
| California Colorado Florida* Illinois Louisiana* Nevada New Hampshire New Jersey* Pennsylvania* South Carolina Wyoming |
Arizona Colorado Connecticut Delaware Florida Louisiana Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Nevada New Jersey North Carolina Ohio Pennsylvania Rhode Island South Carolina Texas Wisconsin |
Alaska Arkansas Georgia Hawaii Kansas Mississippi New Mexico |
* Indicates those states that include a general nondiscrimination provision that does NOT specifically reference students with disabilities.
Aside from prohibitions against discrimination, other statutory provisions related to charter school admissions may affect enrollment of students with disabilities. Statutes in some states allow a charter school to establish enrollment criteria that are consistent with the school's mission or scope, or to limit enrollment to a specialized area or focus. With even greater potential impact, a few states specifically permit use of academic achievement criteria for admissions decisions.
For example, the New Hampshire statute states that "charter schools may select pupils on the basis of aptitude, academic achievement, or need, provided that such selection is directly related to the academic goals of the school." The Texas statute governing the state's campus charter schools states that consideration may be given to a student's "academic credentials in general or in specific areas, as necessary for the type of program offered." These provisions raise the question of whether schools that set high academic standards as criteria for admission may exclude students with disabilities who are not capable of performing at that level. The Rhode Island statute appears to address this question in its provision: "A charter public school may establish reasonable academic standards as a condition for eligibility for applicants which are in accordance with current state law and practice in existing public schools, and which do not discriminate against otherwise qualified individuals with a disability." Similarly, the Wyoming statute declares that "admission to a charter school shall not be determined solely on academic abilities or achievements, including minimum test scores or intelligence quotient scores." Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, and Pennsylvania go further to address this issue by asserting in their charter school statutes that charter schools cannot limit enrollment on the basis of intellectual or academic ability or measures of aptitude or achievement.
Five states (Arkansas, Georgia, Hawaii, New Mexico, and Mississippi) do not address the issue of admissions in the charter school statutes. Each of these states only allows public school conversions, and the schools are not granted much freedom to operate independently from their districts. As noted in regard to other issues, legislators may have assumed that provisions related to other public school admissions continued to apply to these conversion schools.
Emphasis on target populations. Eight states include target population provisions in their statute's statement of legislative intent, making clear that a primary purpose of the charter school legislation is to provide increased learning opportunities for special populations (see Table 6). Target populations are variously defined. The Illinois and Louisiana definitions of the target population includes students with disabilities. California, Colorado, Florida, New Hampshire, North Carolina, and Rhode Island do not include a specific description of the target populations in their statutes, using instead general terms such as "academically low-achieving" or "at-risk." Whether the target population in the six states using general terms includes students with disabilities is likely to vary from state to state. We did not search other state statutes to determine whether the terms used for target populations have specific definitions in state education law.
Primary Purpose of Statute Is to Increase Learning Opportunities for Special Populations |
Chartering Authority Gives Preference to Schools Designed to Increase Educational Opportunities for Special Populations |
Charter Schools May Give Preference to or Exclusively Enroll Special Populations |
Charter Schools Must Serve a Certain Proportion of Special Populations |
| California Colorado Florida Illinois Louisiana New Hampshire North Carolina Rhode Island |
California Colorado Delaware Illinois North Carolina Rhode Island Wisconsin |
Connecticut Delaware Florida Nevada New Hampshire Ohio |
Louisiana New Jersey North Carolina Rhode Island |
* The term "special population" does not necessarily include students with disabilities.
Also to provide an emphasis on increased opportunities for special populations, seven states include in their charter school statutes a statement that the chartering authority in the state will give preference to applications for charter schools that are designed to increase the educational opportunities of specific populations (see Table 6). The California statute, for example, provides that "the school district governing board shall give preference to petitions that demonstrate the capability to provide comprehensive learning experiences to pupils identified by the petitioner as academically low achieving." The Illinois statute contains a slightly different provision that requires the local board to give chartering preference to "proposals that are designed to enroll and serve a substantial proportion of at-risk children." In Illinois, the focus of the chartering preference is not only on schools that are able to serve at-risk students, but on schools that seek to serve a large portion of those students. Colorado and Illinois expressly define the scope of the preferential population to include students with disabilities.
Relatedly, some statutes give charter schools the right to limit enrollment exclusively to target populations. The third column in Table 6 shows the six states with charter statutes including this type of provision. Statutes in two of these states, Florida and Nevada, expressly include students with disabilities as a population that schools can enroll exclusively.
State charter school statutes include a variety of other provisions that may have an impact on the enrollment of students with disabilities. For example, as shown in Table 6, Louisiana, New Jersey, North Carolina, and Rhode Island statutes include provisions designed to ensure that a certain proportion of special populations are enrolled in charter schools. Louisiana requires schools to have the same percentage of at-risk students as the local district and allows up to 15 percent of that percentage to be composed of special education students. New Jersey states that a charter school's admission policy must (to the maximum extent possible) seek the enrollment of a cross-section of the community's school age population, including racial and academic factors. North Carolina requires that, within one year of start-up, the racial and ethnic composition of a school serving a special population reasonably reflects the composition of the same population in the local district. Rhode Island requires that the combined percentage of a charter school's special education, at-risk, limited-English-proficient, and free-or-reduced-lunch students must at least equal the combined percentage of these students in the local district.
Other provisions that demonstrate an increased focus on target populations include Colorado's requirement that a certain number of charter schools focus on target populations and the provision in the Texas charter school statute that relaxes restrictions on the total number of open-enrollment charter schools for schools focusing on target populations. In addition, three state statutes (California, Connecticut, and Massachusetts) specifically require reports with respect to special populations within their charter schools.
Transportation. Fifteen states specifically include transportation provisions within their charter school statutes. In some states, particularly where schools operate within a local district, the district automatically provides transportation services. In other states, the charter school receives, as part of its funding, a transportation allocation. The charter school may then either provide transportation services itself, or contract with the district or a third party to provide transportation. Only three statutes focus on special populations when addressing transportation. Colorado and Illinois specify that charter proposals must include a plan for meeting the transportation needs of students, including academically low-achieving students. Delaware states that if the charter school is to provide transportation to its students, the district in which the child resides must pay the charter school an amount for regular or special education students to enable the school to provide transportation within the district where it is located. Additionally, the Florida statute makes a reference that may have an impact on special education when it states that transportation must not be a barrier to equal access to the school. Other legislative elements. Charter school statutes include additional provisions that may affect special education and students with disabilities. For example, the Michigan charter school statute provides for the establishment of chartered educational clinics that are "specialty public school academies" that "only serve public school pupils during hours outside the pupil's normal class hours by providing special assistance for up to 3 hours per week." Students who are in educational difficulty or who are at risk of falling seriously behind other students may be served by a chartered educational clinic. The Nevada charter school statute includes a provision regarding the discipline of students with disabilities in charter schools. Specifically, the statute states that "a pupil who is participating in a program of special education (other than gifted and talented) may, in accordance with the procedural policy adopted by the governing board of the charter school for such matters, be: (1) suspended from the charter school for not more than 10 days, or (2) suspended from the charter school for more than 10 days or permanently expelled from school only after the governing body has reviewed the circumstances and determined that the action is in compliance with IDEA."
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