'Whose Choice are We Talking About? The Exclusion of Students with Disabilities from For-Profit Online Charter Schools'

Abstract

By examining the history of special education law against the emergence of the for-profit and online education movements, this paper explores the development of charter school policy from a consumer law perspective. It aims to explain why much of the current debate over test scores, “accountability,” and teacher evaluation obscures other systemic faults that implicate the very reasons we have a public education system in the first place. In the last fifteen years, information technologies have fostered the emergence of a new kind of school: the fully-online “cyber” or “virtual” charter. These schools, operated almost exclusively by for-profit, publicly-traded companies, are growing rapidly. As in the consumer finance industry, where the development of derivatives moved faster than the ability of regulators to ensure their safety, the virtual education world is largely unregulated. Over the past decade, clear and convincing evidence has emerged that for-profit charter schools are not adequately maintaining their fiscal and educational responsibilities to students with disabilities. Online schools are both knowingly and unknowingly discriminating against students with severe disabilities. The profit motive at online schools incentivizes them to do whatever they can to avoid serving the students who cost the most to educate. This kind of discrimination is broadly illegal and threatens the development of the American public school system as a whole. Unless we make a conscious effort to holistically reform the public education system, we will not be able to adequately uphold the democratic principles on which American education is based.