The Albany Times Union last Sunday published an article by education reporter, Scott Waldman, that contrasted the relatively low percentage of special education students in charter schools with the higher percentage in Albany district schools.

Waldman's piece is balanced in terms of quotes from both sides, though the article appears to be a put-up job by the Albany district. The teachers union also weighed in as NYSUT president, Richard Iannuzzi, (who represents New Covenant Charter School teachers) offers one of his typically vacuous, anti-charter school quotes. The district and union arguments on special education have become familiar soup, and increasingly discredited: that is, charter school test results are supposedly not what they seem since they have lower percentages of students with disabilities.

The article was focused mostly on head-counts of special education students, but fails to examine if the differences in the percentages of special education students affects the test score comparisons between charter and district schools.

Charters Still Outperform District 'General Ed' Students
In fact, the exclusion of test scores from students with disabilities by including only scores of "general education" students does not materially alter the Albany school district's results on state tests. District scores are still generally lousy and, in most cases, remain below the results of charter schools in Albany. For example, the percentage of the district's general education students meeting or exceeding state standards ranges between two and nine percentage points above the overall district results. Charter schools still have higher outcomes for most grades, especially in mathematics.

For example, for 2007-08, Albany's 3rd and 4th grade math results--excluding special education students--respectively had 79 and 75 percent of students passing; while both the Brighter Choice Charter School for Girls and the Brighter Choice Charter School for Boys had a higher percentage of students passing this exam in each grade. The Boys' school, in fact, exceeded the district's general ed results by 18 and 20 percentage points, respectively.

The KIPP Tech Valley Charter School exceeded the district's general education student test results in both English and mathematics for 7th grade; Albany Preparatory Charter School had higher math results for both 6th and 7th grade; and so on.

The upshot is that when comparing charter school test scores with district general education students doesn't change the fact the charters still mostly outperform the district.

Albany Needs To Do Better by Special Ed Students
The real concern regarding special education, unmentioned in the Times Union, is the poor job Albany has done for students with disabilities as it is one of only 17 school districts statewide identified by the state Education Department as a "District in Need of Assistance." This designation, under the federal Individuals with Disabilities Act, is the most severe classification due to Albany's low academic performance of students with disabilities. Even worse, Albany has been given this dubious distinction for the third straight year.

The district's Director of Special Education, Debbie Sharpe-DeFries, assures us in the article that it takes its responsibilities "extremely seriously." Swell. With this federal designation shared by only 2.5 percent of the state's school districts, these are just words.

Rather than obsessing about charter schools, districts like Albany should improve its education of special education students getting out from under the "District in Need" designation, and reexamine the suspect percentage of students its labeling as special education.

Better yet, evidence suggests if Albany did a better job of educating all students, it would have far fewer special education students, as we'll examine next.

Peter Murphy
for The Chalkboard