When Indiana and other states first considered approval of charter schools, critics warned the schools would cherry-pick students, enrolling only the best and brightest.
That hasn’t come to pass in any large measure, but a new federal study confirms that charter schools, indeed, educate fewer special education students.
Civil rights data collected by the National Center for Special Education in Charter Schools find that, on average, charter schools enroll proportionally fewer students with disabilities than traditional public schools. That holds for Indiana schools, where 14.86 percent of students in traditional public schools have disabilities, compared with 12.9 percent of charter-school students.
Some states have an even greater imbalance. New Jersey’s traditional public schools have an average special education enrollment of 15.4 percent, compared to charter enrollment of 9.15 percent.
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