A New Look at Charter Schools’ Supposed Weakness

A recent study offers a new look at charter schools’ special education performance. The Michigan findings show that special education students performed better in charter schools than in traditional public schools. This finding is significant because teachers unions and Democrats have frequently insisted that special education performance is charter schools’ Achilles heel.

Education newsletter The 74 recently covered the Jan. 12 release of a study from the National Center for Research of Education Action and Choice. NC REACH examined the records of 1.7 million Michigan K-8 students who had switched from district to charter schools between 2013 and 2018.  

Based on this analysis, The 74 wrote: “The nonprofit concluded that while students with disabilities spent more time in general-education classrooms and received less intensive services than their peers in traditional public schools, their standardized test scores increased along with those of their classmates who didn’t qualify for special ed.”

Specifically, the Michigan data showed that “children who receive special education services do well academically with fewer supports when they enter charter schools.” The REACH study found that “after charter enrollment, students are more likely to be enrolled in less intensive and less costly programs such as resource programs.” In addition to “a decrease in the use of special education programs and services,” students with disabilities also had improved attendance and academic performance – as did general education students who switched to charter schools. After three years in charter schools, both students with disabilities and general education students experienced “large improvements in test scores.”

The 74 points out that the Michigan study findings “match a similar study in Boston, which revealed that children with disabilities who were accepted at a charter school through a lottery system were more likely to meet college-ready benchmarks than special education students in traditional public schools.”

What makes these findings so significant is that charter schools’ enrollment of students with disabilities has trailed public schools’ enrollment in the past. This is due to the perception of charter schools’ mixed record with these students.

The 74 reports that recently, a charter school in Chicago and another in Maryland have been charged with noncompliance with their states’ special education laws, while one in Indianapolis has been found to suspend students with disabilities at three times Indiana’s average.

Teachers unions have long claimed that charter schools’ record with special education is poor. Just last year in New York City, teachers unions called on state lawmakers to act against charter schools on this basis. Wrote Chalkbeat New York: “New York City’s charter schools tend to enroll a smaller portion of students with disabilities, English language learners, and those in temporary housing than neighboring district schools, despite a state law that requires charters to aim to serve comparable shares of high-needs students. The union, which has long cited that disparity as one reason for some charters’ above-average test scores, is pushing lawmakers to toughen … law by adding penalties for schools that fall short of the targets.”

Of course, there is another reason that teachers unions do not like charter schools: Charter school teachers rarely unionize. Just one in nine charter school teachers (11%) are members of unions, compared to nearly seven in 10 in traditional public schools.

In addition to charter schools taking students away from traditional public schools (where teachers unions’ members are) they also take away dues going to teachers unions. So, despite teachers unions having been early supporters of charter schools (in 1988 Albert Chanker, national president of the American Federation of Teachers called for “schools of choice”), that support long ago disappeared.

The money – and the opposition to charter schools – does not stop with the teachers unions. According to Open Secrets: “Even more than most labor unions, [teachers unions] have little use for Republicans, giving Democrats at least 94 percent of the funds they contributed to candidates and parties since as far back as 1990, where our data begins.” Not only do teachers unions give overwhelmingly to Democrats, they have also greatly increased their political giving: From 2004 to 2016, teachers unions’ political contributions jumped from $4.3 million to over $32 million. By 2024, political contributions hit $47.7 million and skewed even more, with 98.5% going to Democrats.

So, not only have teachers unions opposed charter schools, but states with strong Democrat majorities have restricted them. A recent article in Education Next by Joshua Goodman and Abigail Francis on Massachusetts enrollment shifting from public to non-public schools notes that the expansion of charter schools is “restricted by Massachusetts law, which caps both the number of charter schools statewide and the share of each district’s funds that can flow to charters.”

Democratic politicians in Massachusetts were hardly alone. An article last summer in Education Next noted: “When charter laws have passed, Democrat-aligned interest groups have lobbied state legislators to underfund them and limit their growth. Last year, while charter schools in New York City were approaching capacity and the number of students on wait lists for entry exceeded 173,000 statewide, Democrats in the state legislature blocked appeals from parents to raise the cap on the number of charters allowed to open. In 2022, President Joe Biden proposed regulations that would make it more difficult to open charter schools and threatened to cut start-up funding for new charters.”

All this brings us back to the Michigan study of special education students’ performance in charter schools and its potential importance. America’s K-12 education system is in crisis. We need every innovative approach for reform to be in play. Charter schools are – and have always been – just such an innovative option; it’s what they were originally designed to be decades ago.

Reappraisal of their performance in special education, especially that they could be judged by results and not simply judged by a tabulation of hours, could help remove one of the charter school critics’ most potent charges – and give America one more tool for achieving the education innovation it desperately needs.