Charter School Students With Disabilities Disciplined Twice As Often As Peers

In the 2013 to 2014 school year, charter schools disciplined students with disabilities twice as often as their peers, with 12.3% of students with disabilities receiving suspension, compared to about 5.9% of students without disabilities. In traditional public schools, about 11.6% of students with disabilities had been suspended, compared to 4.8% of those without disabilities during the same school year.

These findings were reported in “Key Trends in Special Education in Charter Schools: A Secondary Analysis of the Civil Rights Data Collection 2013–2014” by Lauren Morando Rhim and Shaini Kothari with the National Center for . . .