Dataset

The dataset used for this paper includes all preK-12 public school students in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, collected, maintained, and made publicly available by the Massachusetts Department of Education from 2002-07 (the most recent complete 5-year span available); it includes information on roughly 25,000 students in 60 charter schools, and nearly 1,000,000 students in 1,876 traditional public schools. This paper examines school- and district-level demographic and student attendance data for students attending schools in urbanized areas. Students in the dataset are sorted in two ways; first, by charter and traditional school attendance; second, by geographic location. The paper then considers two distinct subsets: (1) charter school students in urbanized areas throughout Massachusetts; and (2) traditional school students in urbanized areas throughout Massachusetts. For this analysis, the definition of an 'urbanized area' is from the U.S. Census Bureau, and includes any city or town with a total population of greater than 50,000 residents, and a population density equal or greater than 1,000 persons per square mile; such areas are of ongoing academic and policy interest within the field of public education.

There were 13 cities and towns in Massachusetts, with charter and traditional schools operating by the 2006-07 academic year, that met these criteria; unfortunately, the structure of the dataset complicates comparisons of charter schools with traditional schools where the charters did not span the full k-12 grade range. This analysis, then, examines only those cities where charters existed with full gradespans, including: Boston, Cambridge, Lowell, Malden, Somerville, Springfield, and Worcester, MA. Data analyzed represent 12,562 out of 14,813 students enrolled in urban charters statewide (84.8%).

The primary question predictor is school type — charter or traditional. The outcome explored is classroom placement of students with disabilities; following MDE guidelines, student placements are defined as "robust access" (IEP services are provided outside the general education classroom less than 21% of the time), "partial access" (that IEP services are provided outside the general education classroom at least 21% of the time but no more than 60% of the time), or "substantially separate" (IEP services are provided outside the general education classroom for more than 60% of the time). The terminology used in Massachusetts to describe disability categories does not always match the federal terminology; this paper uses the federal categories to avoid reader confusion.

Limitations

One of the major stated purposes driving the development of charter schools was that they could develop innovative (and, in some cases, site-specific) school practices (Nathan, 1998). This paper faces a common challenge encountered by all other studies of charter schools: such schools almost by definition have different missions, educational philosophies, and approaches to student instruction. This paper aggregates school- and district-level data into city- and statewide datasets; an approach that risks collapsing schools with different missions, strategies, and student bodies into a single dataset. However, at this point in time, given that so little is known about the attendance and inclusion of students with disabilities within charter schools, the analysis here represents a necessary compromise.

Even though charter schools are legally distinct entities, and deserve consideration individually on a wide range of criteria, this paper can help to shed some light on the extent to which students with disabilities have been able to access regular charter school classrooms. None of the work here precludes the need for additional research exploring practices within individual schools that are able to demonstrate success, whether charter or traditional. Readers should also note that the analytic technique presented here precludes an ability to comment on the condition of special education within any single school — or between any number of particular schools that may have different missions or educational approaches.

In any case, aggregation of urban charter schools into a single category may be a less severe limitation than it first appears. Although charter school advocates have often stated the goal of creating 'laboratories of innovation,' in Massachusetts many charter schools have remarkably similar missions, focused on similar groups of students. Massachusetts charter school law codifies a preference for replicable programs, along with minimum quotas (three per year) of charter schools located in underperforming areas, and caps (one per year) on charter schools in successful areas. Many (if not most) of the missions described by charter schools to be aggregated in this analysis are more similar than different, particularly in the City of Boston, where the most charter schools and students are located.

Perhaps surprisingly, there appears to be more variety in the mission statements of traditional schools across Massachusetts cities. Though completely nonscientific, a glance at the missions for many of the charter schools in this study reveals remarkable uniformity; virtually all mention college preparation and success. For example: "Our mission is to prepare each student for college" (Boston Collegiate Charter School); "Excel Academy Charter School prepares middle school students to succeed in high school and college;" "Our mission is to help our students achieve success in college and beyond" (MATCH school); "Edward W. Brooke Charter School is a public school committed to preparing all of its students for college;" and "Roxbury Preparatory Charter School… prepares its students to enter, succeed in, and graduate from college."

Enrollment

Current research reveals complexity in determining the extent to which charter schools may or may not be fully inclusive. One aspect of inclusivity is found in overall enrollment, or access to schools — and another in the educational settings within schools, such as access to regular classroom instruction (Heubert, 2002; McLaughlin, Henderson & Ullah, 1996). Although this paper focuses on classroom placement — the differences in where students with disabilities go to class within schools — readers should keep in mind that regular classroom access is just one (important) component of a larger whole.

Notably, previous studies have documented that charter schools in various locales often enroll proportionately fewer students with disabilities than their traditional counterparts — and very few (if any) students with disabilities that require extensive special education supports, such as intellectual disability and emotional disturbance. Here in Massachusetts, a study by this author found that urban charter schools enrolled significantly fewer students with disabilities overall than urban traditional schools from 2002-07 (Wilkens, 2009a). That paper found that the percentage of enrolled students with disabilities in urban charter schools, 7.2%-12.9% (n = 12,562), was significantly lower — roughly half — compared to the percentage attending urban traditional schools, 15.2%-24.3% (n = 136,587) for 2006-07.

It also found that enrollment of students with disabilities in specific disability categories varied considerably by school type; no urban charter school enrolled any students who were deaf-blind in 2006-07; several cities' charter schools also had zero enrolled students who were deaf, who were blind, who had physical or orthopedic impairments, who had multiple disabilities, who had autism, or who had traumatic brain injury. Additionally, significantly fewer students were enrolled in urban charter schools who had intellectual disability, emotional disturbance, specific learning disabilities, autism, or developmental delays. The findings presented in this paper must be interpreted in light of such overall numbers — urban charter schools educate substantially fewer students with identified disabilities, proportionally, than do urban traditional schools. Therefore, the regular classroom access rates discussed below include only those (comparatively and significantly fewer) students with disabilities who gain access to charter schools in the first place.

Robust Access to Regular Classrooms

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts (and the U.S. Department of Education) defines classroom placements as 'full inclusion' when students with disabilities are educated in regular classrooms for at least 80% of the school day. Though this definition of 'full inclusion' does not match current practice in the field, it is used in this paper on some tables for simplicity's sake; true 'inclusion' is not a classroom placement, but an educational philosophy regarding how schools, classrooms, families, and students can work together to provide robust support and opportunity for all learning types (Gruner, 2002; Hehir, 2005). This paper uses the term 'robust access' to regular classrooms interchangeably with the Commonwealth's 'full inclusion' classroom placement. Integration into regular classrooms has been associated with a large number of positive outcomes for students with disabilities (Wagner et al., 2006), and rising rates of regular classroom access (independent of additional outcomes) have been seen as evidence of success for some in the various disability communities (Hehir, 2005). The first data analysis was conducted with the intent to determine whether there were differences between urban traditional and charter schools in the extent to which they provide students with disabilities robust access to regular classroom instruction.

The story of access to regular classrooms for students with disabilities in urban districts in Massachusetts, as presented in Table 1, appears to be about variability by city, perhaps more than school type. For example, during 2006-07, just 6.6% of students with disabilities attending traditional schools in Somerville had robust access to regular classes — a rate far below the national mean of 54.2% (STD 10.3; NCES, 2007, Table 49). Just over the Somerville city line is the City of Cambridge; its students with disabilities attending traditional schools had robust regular classroom access rates a full order of magnitude higher: 78.2%. Regular classroom access rates also varied widely in charter schools, by city. For example, Springfield charter schools reported very low rates of robust access (17.9%), while charter schools in Malden and Cambridge reported 100% regular classroom placement for students with disabilities in 2006-07.

Though variation in access by city was large — there were also noticeable differences by school type. Urban charter schools in Boston, Malden, Somerville, and Worcester had significantly higher rates of regular classroom access during 2006-07 than their traditional counterparts — while charter schools in Springfield had significantly lower rates of regular classroom access than the city's traditional schools. The outlier status of Springfield charter schools also raises a question: if the other urban charter schools, generally speaking, have higher rates of full inclusion than their traditional counterparts — what's different about Springfield? The educational approach? The students? Something else entirely? Future comparative, qualitative work should include a focus on Springfield charter and traditional schools to clarify.

A look at the aggregated traditional and charter school student placement rates over the past four years — shown in Figure 1 — illustrates that there appears to be a large, and growing, gap in the rate at which students with disabilities are accessing regular classrooms in charter and traditional schools. Though both traditional and charter schools have substantially increased access rates for students with disabilities over the past four years, the rate difference between them has grown over time; as of 2006-07, urban charter schools educated 74.3% of students with disabilities in predominantly regular classroom placements, while urban traditional schools reported a comparable rate of just 40.3%.

Both the current rates of regular classroom access, and the trends over the past four years, are encouraging. It is important to remember that students with disabilities gained robust access to public education just over thirty years ago; access to regular classes has come even more recently (Hehir, 2002). Here, gains in regular classroom access rates at both urban traditional and urban charter schools in Massachusetts are encouraging, and hint at the policy and implementation commitments made at a variety of levels — not least of which the individual school level — that can make real differences in the lives of children with disabilities. That this paper focuses on differences by school type should in no way overshadow the improvements taking place in cities across the Commonwealth, or within schools by committed teachers and school leaders.

However, the above patterns of inclusion do raise serious questions: why do regular classroom access rates vary so much between school types? Why do they vary so much between cities? Partial answers lie below, in examinations of substantial separation and disability types — but clearly much room remains for more comprehensive reviews of special education programming within districts, and within individual schools.

Substantial separation

Substantial separation of students with disabilities is a placement defined by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts as education in regular classrooms less than 40% of the school day. Substantial separation matters, because it is a placement that typically involves special classes, exclusively for students with disabilities, taught by special education staff. Substantially separate placements mean that students have minimal or no contact with regular education teachers, curriculum, or nondisabled peers. Substantial separation has been associated with fewer positive school outcomes among graduates, relative to less restrictive placements — including poor attendance, detrimental behaviors, and lower academic performance on exams and schoolwork — and as such, high rates of substantial separation are cause for concern (Lipsky & Gartner, 1997). Rea, McLaughlin, & Walther-Thomas (2002) found specifically that higher rates of separation were associated with lower grades, lower scores on standardized tests, more behavioral infractions, and more missed days of school (see also McDonnell, McLaughlin & Morison, Eds., 1997).

Table 2 shows relatively wide variation in substantially separate placement rates, by city, among traditional schools; Cambridge public schools placed just 15.0% of all students with disabilities in substantially separate environments, while just across the Charles River, Boston public schools reported a separation rate three times higher: 45.8% of all students with disabilities (2006-07 school year). With the exception of Cambridge and Lowell, all cities' rates of substantial separation were above the national mean rate of 16.7% (STD 5.8). These are large student numbers in Boston — 4,756 students out of 56,774 total (8.4% of all students in the district).

Urban charter schools showed clear differences from their traditional counterparts on rates of separate placements. Table 2 shows that students with disabilities in urban charter schools were significantly less likely to be placed in substantially separate environments for their education. In fact, only two cities — Boston and Springfield — had charter schools reporting any substantially separate placements, and both cities' charter schools were collectively almost two standard deviations below the national mean rate.

High rates of substantial separation in most cities' traditional schools are a cause for concern — and relatively low rates in all cities' charter schools potentially indicate progress. However, before too much stock can be placed in the relative difference, it is worth considering (below) why such contrasts may be appearing.

Students with 'high-inclusion' and 'low-inclusion' disabilities

The educational needs of students with disabilities vary widely; some special education interventions have lent themselves relatively smoothly to provision within regular classrooms — such as notetaking, or the use of audio texts — while others have not. This has meant that, nationally, some students with disabilities have had greater access to regular classrooms than others. For example, 88.7% of students nationally with speech or language impairments are fully included in regular classrooms, while just 14.1% of students with intellectual disability are fully included (U.S. Department of Education, 2007b). The most recent available national-level data (2004-05 school year) indicate that students with learning disabilities, speech/language impairments, other health impairments, visual impairments, and developmental delays have access to regular classes at rates above the national mean, while students with intellectual disability, emotional disturbance, multiple disabilities, autism, deaf-blindness, and traumatic brain injury seriously lag their peers in regular classroom access. Additionally, students with these latter disabilities are much more likely to be placed in substantially separate placements than their peers.

Table 3 indicates that roughly two-thirds of the enrolled students with disabilities in both urban traditional and urban charter schools have 'high-inclusion' disabilities. Though there are major total enrollment differences between school types (see Wilkens, 2009a), Table 3 indicates that, within schools, both appear to have similar proportions of students who are relatively straightforward to include in regular classrooms. This finding is perhaps surprising, given the overall differences demonstrated in regular classroom access (Tables 1 & 2). If both types of schools have large majorities of students whose disabilities appear to lend themselves to special education provision within regular classrooms — why do we see such stark differences in rates of access to regular classes?

Table 4 provides at least part of an answer: it is in the proportional enrollment of other disability types that major differences appear between urban traditional and urban charter schools. Table 4 shows that urban traditional schools, in 2006-07, enrolled much higher percentages of students with intellectual disability, emotional disturbance, multiple disabilities, autism, deaf-blindness, and traumatic brain injury, compared to urban charter schools. Between 5.1-8.2% of all students in traditional schools were classified as having one or more of the above disabilities; charter schools in the same cities all enrolled significantly fewer students with such disabilities, between 0.6-3.3%. The numbers of these students were not small. In Boston, for example, 6.6% of all students — 3,750 (out of 56,774) for 2006-07 — were so classified, while Springfield and Worcester each had roughly 2,000.

Students with disabilities such as intellectual disability and emotional disturbance have not historically proven simple to include in regular classrooms; several authors have suggested that inclusion of such students is one marker of a truly inclusive educational environment (Baker, Wang & Walberg, 1994; Fuchs & Fuchs, 1995; Power-Defur & Orelove, Eds., 1997; Stainback, & Stainback, Eds., 1996). Notably, some traditional public schools in Massachusetts have demonstrated sustained success in providing inclusive education for such students — including the Mary Lyon School in Brighton, the Patrick O'Hearn Elementary School in Dorchester, and the Samuel W. Mason School in Roxbury. As such, Table 4 raises serious questions about the extent to which urban charter schools are welcoming and able to educate such students.

Significantly lower enrollments of students not easily included in each city's charter schools may explain at least some of the urban charter schools' relatively higher overall inclusion rates, compared to traditional schools. In Boston, for example, charter schools in the city enrolled only half the expected number of students with intellectual disability, emotional disturbance, multiple disabilities, autism, deaf-blindness, or traumatic brain injury. Charter schools in all other studied cities did worse: Worcester charters enrolled just one-quarter the expected numbers, while Springfield charters enrolled one-fifth, and Cambridge charter schools a mere eighth.

These enrollment differences by school type for students not easily included are stark, and lead to a range of questions about what it means for schools to be inclusive — and what sorts of educational innovations are (or can be) expected from charter schools. To begin with, why aren't urban charter schools enrolling students that have historically proven difficult to include in regular classes? Are charters failing to recruit such students? Steering them elsewhere? Failing to retain them? Failing to offer services, or provide services of comparable quality as in traditional schools? What implications do such enrollment patterns have for the education of all students, both in charter schools and in traditional schools?

This latter finding, that urban charter schools do not enroll many students with disabilities not easily included, provides perhaps the clearest and most direct area in need of policy improvement. Students with these disabilities typically require specialized approaches to instruction; their relative absence in urban charter schools may serve to reinforce gaps in either the willingness or the ability of charter schools to serve such students in the future. Such enrollment gaps appear to be legally problematic, as well; all charter schools are public schools, subject to antidiscrimination law, and it is difficult to understand why such a relatively large group of students would have such limited access to charter schools without some barrier at work (U.S. Department of Education, 2000).

Enrollment gaps of students with disabilities are morally troubling, and practically disappointing, as well: after all, charter schools were originally approved with the idea that they could deliver innovative approaches that would improve public education — particularly in urban areas of the state. Instead, what appears to have happened over the past thirteen years is that many students, historically not well integrated into regular classrooms to begin with, have been left even farther out on the margins. To the extent that charter schools have not been successful at improving the delivery of education to these students, they cannot be considered successful (Betts & Loveless, 2005; Wells, 2002). Another area of potential policy improvement may lie in data reporting. Though beyond the scope of this paper, it is entirely reasonable to ask how well students with disabilities are doing in urban charter and traditional schools. Graduation rates are a helpful guide — but charter schools in the Commonwealth are often sufficiently small that results obtained by students with disabilities are unavailable.

Future approaches to the assessment and improvement of charter schools in Massachusetts should include consideration of students with disabilities, especially those whose disabilities have made them difficult to include in regular classrooms. The Commonwealth's Department of Education is fortunate, in that it is the sole authorizing agency for charter schools in the state, and oversees all of their operations — including the 5-year renewal process and funding. Both of these are major levers for reform. The Massachusetts Department of Education would do well to consider carefully what sorts of incentives currently exist for enrollment and inclusion of students with disabilities — and how best they can manage those incentives to move urban charter schools towards increasingly inclusive approaches for students with disabilities.

It is challenging to draw any broad conclusions about the inclusion of students with disabilities in urban Massachusetts charter schools, except perhaps that charter schools appear to be educating a different population of students with disabilities than urban traditional schools. For those students with disabilities that do have access to urban charter schools in the state, most urban charter schools have demonstrated high levels of regular classroom access for students with disabilities; this is to be commended. Also praiseworthy is the low rate of substantial separation reported by urban charter schools across Massachusetts. Although it is impossible to say whether such placements result from inclusive education or are artifacts of low and differential enrollment of students with disabilities, neither need be sacrificed to policy changes that help charter schools improve access in the future. Instead, future policy and regulatory work ought to focus on preserving urban charter school's approaches to inclusive education, while helping them minimize substantial separation — whether through increased teacher training, the development of special education collaboratives for charter schools (or encouraging charter school participation in traditional school collaboratives), or other approaches promoted by the schools themselves.