SpedPro

Exclusion forewarning

By JohnL on Jun. 19, 2006.

Somebody should have some ’splainin’ to do here.

Scores of the new, small high schools are shutting out special education students - a controversial practice federal authorities are now examining.

The boutique schools, highly touted by Mayor Bloomberg, are not required to enroll special education students during the school’s first two years. And few are equipped for teens with wheelchairs, severely limiting the students’ enrollment choices.

Ashley Anderson, an eighth-grader with cerebral palsy, said she was stunned when she flipped through the city’s high school directory last fall and discovered that page after page blared “no accessibility” for wheelchairs.

“It was like waking up on Christmas morning and there weren’t any toys,” the 14-year-old said.

According to this story entitled “Special Ed pupils in limbo” by Kathleen Lucadamo of the New York (NY, US) Daily News, students with disabilities are being excluded from special small high schools in the city. Putatively, the exclusion rule allows these not-so-special schools to ramp up to providing services; basically, it’s to save money.

Also, consider this behavior by these schools the next time you hear someone advocate for charter schools. As Liz Ditz has noted repeatedly, there’s a lot of problems with charters (see this list of her posts).

Link to Ms. Lucadamo’s story.