U.S. Department of Education

January 2018
 

Making Connections 

Special education enrollment 

and classification in 

Louisiana charter schools 

and traditional schools 

Patrick J. Wolf 

University of Arkansas 

Shannon Lasserre-Cortez 

American Institutes for Research 

Key findings 

This study examined the special education enrollment gap (that is, the gap in the enrollment rate of 

students with an individualized education program) between charter and traditional public schools in four 

Louisiana educational regions from 2010/11 to 2013/14 and explored possible sources of the gap. Key 

findings include: 

•	 The gap was 2.5 percentage points (8.5 percent in charter schools and 11.0 percent in traditional 

schools) in 2010/11 and declined to 0.5 percentage point (10.2 percent and 10.7 percent) in 2013/14. 

•	 For three of the four study years the gap was largest in schools serving grades K–5, and for all four 

study years it was smallest in schools serving grades 9–12. 

•	 By 2013/14 the special education enrollment rate in schools serving grades 9–12 was higher in 

charter schools than in traditional schools. 

•	 The enrollment rate for students with an emotional disturbance was higher in charter schools than in 

traditional schools, but the enrollment rate for students with most other categories of disabilities was 

higher in traditional schools than in charter schools. 

•	 Charter school enrollment was associated with an increased likelihood of a student being declassified 

from requiring an individualized education program, though less than 1 percent of students with an 

individualized education program in both charter schools and traditional schools were declassified 

over the study period. 

 
U.S. Department of Education 

Betsy DeVos, Secretary 

Institute of Education Sciences 

Thomas W. Brock, Commissioner for Education Research 

Delegated the Duties of Director 

National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance 

Ricky Takai, Acting Commissioner 

Elizabeth Eisner, Associate Commissioner 

Amy Johnson, Action Editor 

Chris Boccanfuso, Project Officer 

REL 2018–288 

The National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance (NCEE) conducts 

unbiased large-scale evaluations of education programs and practices supported by federal 

funds; provides research-based technical assistance to educators and policymakers; and 

supports the synthesis and the widespread dissemination of the results of research and 

evaluation throughout the United States. 

January 2018 

This report was prepared for the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) under Contract 

ED-IES-12-C0012 by Regional Educational Laboratory Southwest administered by SEDL, 

an affiliate of American Institutes for Research. The content of the publication does not 

necessarily reflect the views or policies of IES or the U.S. Department of Education nor 

does mention of trade names, commercial products, or organizations imply endorsement by 

the U.S. Government. 

This REL report is in the public domain. While permission to reprint this publication is 

not necessary, it should be cited as: 

Wolf, P. J., & Lasserre-Cortez, S. (2018). Special education enrollment and classification in 

Louisiana charter schools and traditional schools (REL 2018–288). Washington, DC: U.S. 

Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Regional Educational Laboratory Southwest. 

Retrieved from http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs. 

This report is available on the Regional Educational Laboratory website at http://ies.ed.gov/ 

ncee/edlabs. 
Summary 

Charter schools are public schools authorized to operate with some independence from 

district or state public school regulations, while still being held accountable for student 

outcomes. Like traditional schools operated by school districts, charter schools are free and 

are intended to be open to all students who desire to attend. 

Serving students with an individualized education program, which entitles them to special 

education services, can be a challenge for charter and traditional schools. The special education enrollment gap nationally between charter and traditional schools was estimated 

to be 3 percentage points in 2009/10, with 8 percent of students in charter schools and 

11 percent of students in traditional schools having an individualized education program 

(U.S. Government Accountability Office, 2012). In Louisiana the gap was 2 percentage 

points in 2010/11, with 12 percent of enrollees in charter schools having an individualized 

education program compared with 14 percent of students in traditional schools (Center for 

Research on Education Outcomes, 2013; Cremata et al., 2013). 

Members of the Louisiana Charter Schools Research Alliance, as well as policymakers and 

the public, are interested in an updated and more extensive examination of the dimensions and possible sources of the special education enrollment gap between charter schools 

and traditional schools in Louisiana. Is the gap larger in the earlier or later grades? Does 

it vary across disability categories? Is it due to a tendency for charter schools to declassify 

students as requiring an individualized education program at a higher rate than traditional 

schools do? Because charter schools educated nearly 60,000 Louisiana students in 2013/14, 

charter school operators and overseers, such as the Louisiana Department of Education, 

are interested in learning more about the population of students in special education that 

charter schools in the state serve. A total of 117 charter schools operated in Louisiana 

during the 2013/14 school year (Louisiana Believes, 2013). 

This study is an exploratory analysis of special education enrollment rates in charter 

schools and traditional schools, as well as of factors associated with variations in classification and enrollment rates of students with an individualized education program across 

school types in the four educational regions of Louisiana that have three or more charter 

schools: Region 1, which includes New Orleans; Region 3, which includes Jefferson and five 

other parishes near New Orleans; Region 5, which includes Ouachita and five surrounding 

parishes in the northeast corner of the state; and Region 8, which includes Baton Rouge. 

In the 2013/14 school year, 77 percent of charter school students in Louisiana attended 

school in one of these four regions. 

The study found that the special education enrollment rate was lower in charter schools 

than in traditional schools in the four Louisiana educational regions in the study from 

2010/11 through 2013/14. However, the gap declined from 2.5 percentage points in 2010/11 

to 0.5 percentage point in 2013/14. The gap was smallest in the Baton Rouge region for all 

four years and largest in the Ouachita region for three of the four years. For all four years 

the gap was smallest in schools serving grades 9–12, and in 2013/14 the special education 

enrollment rate was 2 percentage points higher in charter schools serving grades 9–12 than 

in traditional schools. For three of the four years the gap was largest in schools serving 

grades K–5, and for one year it was largest in schools serving grades 6–8. The gap varied 

by disability category: the enrollment rate for students with an emotional disturbance was 

i 
higher in charter schools than in traditional schools, but the enrollment rate for students 

with most other categories of disabilities was higher in traditional schools than in charter 

schools. 

Charter school enrollment was not clearly associated with the likelihood of a student 

being newly classified as requiring an individualized education program. However, it was 

associated with an increased likelihood of a student being declassified from requiring an 

individualized education program. However, declassification was uncommon over the fouryear period in both traditional schools (0.58 percent of students with an individualized 

education program) and charter schools (0.62 percent of students with an individualized 

education program). The 0.04 percentage point gap in the declassification rate favoring 

charter schools over the four years of the study was too small to explain the 2 percentage 

point reduction in the special education enrollment gap from 2010/11 to 2013/14. 

Because this exploratory analysis is nonexperimental, the associations identified should 

not be interpreted as causal. Any associations between certain factors and the special education enrollment gap identified in this study may be limited to circumstances in Louisiana 

and may not be present elsewhere. Additionally, as an enrollment study, this analysis does 

not provide any information about how well students with an individualized education 

program are being identified or served in either charter or traditional schools. 

Despite these limitations, the exploratory results signal that, by the 2013/14 school year, 

charter schools in Louisiana were serving students with an individualized education 

program in grades 9–12 at a rate similar to or higher than that of traditional schools in 

the state. The findings also suggest that charter schools are less successful at attracting 

and enrolling students with an individualized education program in the early elementary 

grades. Finally, the findings are consistent with those of prior studies that have shown that 

charter schools declassify students from requiring an individualized education program at 

a higher rate than do traditional schools; nevertheless, the rate of declassification in both 

types of school remained at less than 1 percent over the four-year period of the study. 

ii 
Contents 

Summary i 

Why this study? 1 

What the study examined 4 

What the study found 

The special education enrollment gap between charter schools and traditional schools 

declined from 2.5 percentage points in 2010/11 to 0.5 percentage point in 2013/14 

Both the level and trend of the special education enrollment gap in Louisiana varied across 

educational regions 

The special education enrollment gap tended to be smaller at schools serving grades 9–12 

than at schools serving grades K–5 and schools serving grades 6–8 and at times favored 

charter schools 

The size and direction of the special education enrollment gap varied by disability category 

The association between being enrolled in a charter school and being newly classified as 

requiring an individualized education program was unclear after initial grade, which 

heavily influenced classification, was controlled for 

Being declassified from requiring an individualized education program was rare, but the 

likelihood was statistically significantly higher in charter schools than in traditional 

schools, after initial grade was controlled for 

The likelihood of being newly classified as requiring an individualized education program 

was statistically similar in charter schools and traditional schools but significantly 

higher for students who persisted in their original school for the first two years of the 

study and significantly lower for students who persisted for all four years 

The likelihood of being declassified from requiring an individualized education program 

was rare but was statistically significantly higher in charter schools than in traditional 

schools, after student enrollment persistence and initial grade were controlled for 

6 

6 

7 

7 

8 

10 

12 

13 

14 

Implications of the study findings 14 

Limitations of the study 16 

Appendix A. Literature review A-1 

Appendix B. Historical context on Louisiana and portfolio districts B-1 

Appendix C. Data, study population, and methodology C-1 

Appendix D. Detailed results D-1 

Notes Notes-1 

References Ref-1 

Boxes 

1 Key terms 3 

2 Data sources and research methods 5 

iii 
C-3 

Map 

C1 Map of Louisiana regions included in study population 

Tables 

1 Special education enrollment rates in Louisiana charter schools and traditional 

schools, by year, 2010/11–2013/14 6 

2 Special education enrollment rates in Louisiana charter schools and traditional 

schools, by region and year, 2010/11–2013/14 7 

3 Special education enrollment rates in Louisiana charter schools and traditional 

schools, by year and school grade range, 2010/11–2013/14 8 

4 Special education enrollment rates in Louisiana charter schools and traditional 

schools, by low-incidence disability category and year, 2010/11–2013/14 9 

5 Special education enrollment rates in Louisiana charter schools and traditional 

schools, by high-incidence disability category and year, 2010/11–2013/14 10 

6 Likelihood of being newly classified as requiring an individualized education program 

in Louisiana schools, by school type and grade, 2010/11–2013/14 11 

7 Likelihood of being declassified from requiring an individualized education program in 

Louisiana schools, by school type and grade, 2010/11–2013/14 12 

8 Likelihood of being newly classified as requiring an individualized education program 

in Louisiana schools, by school type and years of persistence in the same school, 

2010/11–2013/14 13 

9 Likelihood of being declassified from requiring an individualized education program in 

Louisiana schools, by school type and years of persistence in the same school, 2010/11– 

2013/14 14 

C1 Variables used in the study, by level of measurement C-1 

C2 Number of charter schools in the study population, by region, 2010/11–2013/14 C-4 

C3 Study population for research question 1, by region, 2010/11–2013/14 C-4 

C4 Louisiana charter schools and students excluded from the study population, 2010/11– 

2013/14 C-5 

C5 Study population for research question 2a, by years in special education and region, 

2010/11–2013/14 C-6 

C6 Study population for research question 2b, by years in special education, 2010/11–2013/14 C-6 

D1 Special education enrollment rates in Baton Rouge region charter schools and 

traditional schools, by year and school grade range, 2010/11–2013/14 D-1 

D2 Special education enrollment rates in Jefferson region charter schools and traditional 

schools, by year and school grade range, 2010/11–2013/14 D-2 

D3 Special education enrollment rates in New Orleans region charter schools and 

traditional schools, by year and school grade range, 2010/11–2013/14 D-3 

D4 Special education enrollment rates in Ouachita region charter schools and traditional 

schools, by year and school grade range, 2010/11–2013/14 D-4 

D5 Special education enrollment rates in Louisiana charter schools and traditional 

schools, by disability category and year, 2010/11–2013/14 D-4 

D6 Special education enrollment rates in Baton Rouge region charter schools and 

traditional schools, by disability category and year, 2010/11–2013/14 D-6 

D7 Special education enrollment rates in Jefferson region charter schools and traditional 

schools, by disability category and year, 2010/11–2013/14 D-8 

D8 Special education enrollment rates in New Orleans region charter schools and 

traditional schools, by disability category and year, 2010/11–2013/14 D-9 

iv 
D9 Special education enrollment rates in Ouachita region charter schools and traditional 

schools, by disability category and year, 2010/11–2013/14 D-11
 

D10 Complete disaggregation of students with disability frequencies by year, grade range, 


and disability category for the Baton Rouge region, 2010/11–2013/14 D-13
 

D11 Complete disaggregation of students with disability frequencies by year, grade range, 


and disability category for the Jefferson region, 2010/11–2013/14 D-13
 

D12 Complete disaggregation of students with disability frequencies by year, grade range, 


and disability category for the New Orleans region, 2010/11–2013/14 D-14
 

D13 Complete disaggregation of students with disability frequencies by year, grade range, 


and disability category for the Ouachita region, 2010/11–2013/14 D-14
 

D14 Special education enrollment rates in Louisiana charter schools and traditional 


schools, by year and severity of intellectual disability, 2010/11–2013/14 D-15
 

v 
Why this study? 

Charter schools are public schools authorized to operate with some independence from 

district or state public school regulations, while still being held accountable for student 

outcomes. Like traditional public schools operated by school districts, charter schools are 

free and are intended to be open to all students who desire to attend. 

Serving students with an individualized education program, which entitles them to special 

education services, can be a challenge for both charter and traditional schools. In response 

to concerns about a gap in the enrollment rate of students with an individualized education program between charter schools and traditional schools, Congress ordered the U.S. 

Government Accountability Office to document any such gaps across the country (U.S. 

Government Accountability Office, 2012). Nationally, in 2009/10, 8 percent of students 

in charter schools had an individualized education program, compared with 11 percent 

of students in traditional schools, a gap of 3 percentage points. In Louisiana the gap was 

2 percentage points in 2010/11, with 12 percent of students in charter schools having an 

individualized education program compared with 14  percent of students in traditional 

schools (Center for Research on Education Outcomes, 2013; Cremata et al., 2013). 

Providing special education services can be a challenge for charter schools because many 

lack the necessary administrative infrastructure to effectively serve students across the full 

spectrum of disability categories and severities (Ahearn, 1999; Hill, Jochim, & Campbell, 

2013). Charter schools are required to follow the same procedures and apply the same criteria as traditional schools for classifying a student as requiring an individualized education 

program, developing the content of that individualized education program, and declassifying a student from requiring an individualized education program. However, according to 

a recent national study, in 2010/11 charter schools received an average of 28 percent less 

revenue per pupil than traditional schools did (Batdorff et al., 2014), making the full provision of special education services an organizational challenge. The relationship between 

the population of charter school students with an individualized education program and 

the charter school funding gap remains disputed (Baker 2014; Maloney & Wolf, 2017). 

In 2013 the Louisiana Charter Schools Research Alliance of the Regional Educational 

Laboratory Southwest requested an updated and more extensive exploration of the dimensions and possible sources of the special education enrollment gap between charter schools 

and traditional schools in Louisiana. The alliance comprises representatives of Louisiana 

charter school networks, independent charter schools, charter school authorizers, state 

education officials, and university personnel.1 Charter schools have increased in number 

and enrollment in Louisiana since 2009/10, especially in the urban regions of New Orleans 

and Baton Rouge.2 Because charter schools educated nearly 60,000 Louisiana students in 

2013/14, charter school operators and overseers, such as the Louisiana Department of Education, are interested in updated information about the population of students in special 

education that charter schools in the state serve. 

A total of 117 charter schools operated in Louisiana during the 2013/14 school year (Louisiana Believes, 2013). Of these, 111 were open-enrollment charter schools that did not restrict 

admission to students by address, admissions test, or academic prerequisite. The remaining 

six Louisiana charter schools were conversion charter schools. Previously traditional schools, 

conversion charter schools were changed to charter governance to relieve them of the burden 

Because charter 

schools educated 

nearly 60,000 

Louisiana students 

in 2013/14, 

charter school 

operators and 

overseers, such 

as the Louisiana 

Department of 

Education, are 

interested in 

information about 

the population of 

students in special 

education that 

charter schools in 

the state serve 

1 
of some regulations. Conversion charter schools admit students only within the neighborhood boundaries previously assigned to them when they operated as traditional schools. 

Because students with disabilities do not attend conversion charter schools through parent 

school choice but based on residential assignment, they were excluded from this analysis. The 

responsibility to educate students with disabilities enrolled in conversion charter schools rests 

with the local education agency that authorized the charter, not with the charter school itself. 

To address the alliance’s needs for information about possible changes in special education 

enrollment patterns and gaps since the 2012 U.S. Government Accountability Office report, 

this study used data from the 2010/11–2013/14 school years to examine whether a special 

education enrollment gap existed between charter schools and traditional schools in the four 

educational regions of Louisiana with a substantial charter school presence and, if a gap was 

found, to determine whether it differed by school grade range or student disability category. 

This study addressed the needs of the Louisiana Charter Schools Research Alliance in 

several ways. It examined enrollment gaps at the regional level, rather than at the state level, 

as well as by school grade range and student disability category, in order to better inform 

any actions taken by stakeholders to eliminate these gaps. For example, in regions and in 

grade ranges where students with an individualized education program are underrepresented in charter schools, charter school leaders might seek collaborative partnerships with 

traditional schools to encourage more students with an individualized education program 

to enroll in their schools even if some of their special education services are delivered by 

traditional school officials and schools (Ahearn, 1999). Charter school leaders might be 

motivated to serve more students with an individualized education program because they 

are a substantial portion of the student population seeking education alternatives, and 

charter schools are under pressure from overseers to serve a diverse student population, 

including students with special needs (U.S. Government Accountability Office, 2012). 

Additionally, evidence-based knowledge of the dimensions and sources of any special 

education enrollment gap between charter schools and traditional schools in Louisiana 

is an important first step toward reducing such gaps. For example, the results of this study 

could suggest whether it is worth examining in greater depth the processes used by charter 

schools to determine whether a student is classified or declassified as requiring an individualized education program. 

This study also contributes to the emerging empirical scholarship on school choice and 

students with disabilities. For information about previous research on the special education enrollment gap between charter schools and traditional schools, see appendix A. For 

details about the historical context of charter schools and special education in Louisiana, 

see appendix B. 

This is the first study to compare special education enrollment rates in charter schools and 

traditional schools in different regions of the same state. Two of the educational regions 

in this study contain medium-sized cities (New Orleans and Baton Rouge). One of the 

regions, Jefferson and surrounding parishes, is suburban. The fourth region, Ouachita and 

surrounding parishes, is rural (see map C1 in appendix C). This study provides information 

about the extent to which any special education enrollment gap between charter schools 

and traditional schools varies across those different environments. Key terms used in the 

study are defined in box 1. 

This study 

examined special 

education 

enrollment gaps at 

the regional level, 

rather than at the 

state level, as 

well as by school 

grade range and 

student disability 

category, in order 

to better inform 

any actions taken 

by stakeholders 

to eliminate 

these gaps 

2 
 

Box 1. Key terms 

Charter school. A public school authorized to operate with some independence from district 

or state public school regulations, while still being held accountable for student outcomes by 

an authorizing entity. For the purposes of this study, each school campus of a charter school 

operator within an educational region was counted as an individual charter school. (This condition applied only to the region of New Orleans.) 

Charter school region. In Louisiana, any of the four official educational regions (of eight statewide) that contained at least three charter schools at any point between the 2010/11 and 

2013/14 school years. 

Disabilities that qualify a student for special education. Any of the following physiological or 

psychological conditions specified in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) qualifies a student for special education: autism spectrum disorder, deaf-blindness, developmental 

delay, emotional disturbance, hearing impairment, intellectual disability, multiple disabilities, 

orthopedic impairment, other health impairment, specific learning disability, speech/language 

impairment, traumatic brain injury, and visual impairment. 

Grade range (K–5, 6–8, 9–12). Schools are classified as serving a specified grade range if they 

enroll students in any of the grades in the range. For example, a school enrolling students in 

grades K–12 would be classified as serving the grade ranges of K–5, 6–8, and 9–12. A school 

enrolling students only in grades 4–6 would be classified as serving the grade ranges of both 

K–5 and 6–8. 

High-incidence disability. An impairment that occurs at a relatively high rate in the student 

population and tends to be less severe. The disabilities classified by IDEA as high incidence 

are emotional disturbance, intellectual disability (if not severe), other health impairment, specific learning disability, and speech/language impairment. 

Individualized education program. A document that “details the range of services to be provided” to a student with disabilities and “where a student’s education is to take place” (Palmaffy, 

2001, p. 7). Each individualized education program is developed and reviewed annually by a 

committee, including the child’s guardians and school personnel. 

Low-incidence disability. An impairment that occurs at a relatively low rate in the student population and tends to be more severe. The disabilities classified by IDEA as low incidence are 

autism, deaf-blindness, hearing impairment, intellectual disability (if severe), multiple disabilities, orthopedic impairment, traumatic brain injury, and visual impairment. 

Special education. A term used in IDEA that is defined as specially designed instruction to 

increase a student’s chances for success (Special Education Guide, 2017). 

Special education enrollment gap. The difference between the proportion of the student body 

with an individualized education program enrolled in one type of school and the proportion of 

the student body with an individualized education program enrolled in another type of school. 

Special education enrollment rate. The proportion of students enrolled in a school or school 

sector who have an individualized education program. 

Traditional school. A government-funded and -operated public school enrolling students in one 

or more of grades K–12 that is free to attend but limited to students living within a defined 

geographic area. 

3 
What the study examined 

This exploratory analysis addressed two groups of questions: 

1.	 How did the enrollment rate of students with an individualized education program 

differ between charter schools and traditional schools in the 2010/11–2013/14 school 

years, overall and by educational region? 

a.	 Did the size of the enrollment gap vary across schools serving elementary (grades 

K–5), middle (grades 6–8), and high (grade 9–12) school levels? 

b.	 Did the size of the enrollment gap vary across different disability categories? 

2.	 Was the likelihood of a student being classified as or declassified from requiring an 

individualized education program associated with charter school enrollment compared 

with traditional school enrollment in the 2010/11–2013/14 school years? 

a.	 Was charter school enrollment associated with variation in the likelihood of a 

student being classified as or declassified from requiring an individualized education program, after student grade was controlled for? 

b.	 Was charter school enrollment associated with variation in the likelihood of a 

student being classified as or declassified from requiring an individualized education program, after years of continuous enrollment in the same school were controlled for? 

The study is limited to the four Louisiana educational regions with three or more charter 

schools between the 2010/11 and 2013/14 school years. Data sources and methods are 

described in box 2. The study year range was a time of growth for charter schools in Louisiana, as charter school enrollment increased from 6 percent of all public school enrollment in the four regions in 2010/11 to 10 percent in 2013/14. 

Research question 1 explores whether there was a gap in the percentage of students with 

an individualized education program between charter schools and traditional schools and 

whether that gap varied by school year, region, school grade range, or student disability 

category. 

Research question 2 examines school and student factors associated with variations in 

the classification and declassification of students as requiring an individualized education 

program. The school factor was whether the school was a charter school, and the student 

factors were grade and years of continuous enrollment. A classification changed when a 

student was classified as requiring an individualized education program for the first time 

during the study’s four-year observation period or when a student previously classified as 

requiring an individualized education program was declassified during this period (that is, 

reclassified as a general education student). 

Continuous enrollment (research question 2b) was defined as remaining in the same 

school in which the student was enrolled during the 2010/11 school year. Students who 

left the school in which they were enrolled during the 2010/11 school year due to a 

The study year 

range was a time 

of growth for 

charter schools 

in Louisiana, as 

charter school 

enrollment 

increased from 

6 percent of all 

public school 

enrollment in 

the four regions 

in 2010/11 to 

10 percent in 

2013/14 

4 
Box 2. Data sources and research methods 

Data. This study used school- and student-level data provided by the Louisiana Department 

of Education for all public school students and schools in the four educational regions of New 

Orleans, Jefferson, Ouachita, and Baton Rouge for the 2010/11–2013/14 school years. The 

data included measures of whether each student was in a charter school or traditional school 

in a given year; educational region; grade; and whether the student had an individualized education program (and, if so, for which specific category or categories of disability). 

Study population. All K–12 public school students, in charter or traditional schools, in the four 

study regions were included in the annual study population for research question 1. The study 

population grew from 366,025 students in 2010/11 to nearly 400,000 students in 2013/14. 

The percentage of students in charter schools grew from 6 percent to 11 percent over the 

study period. 

For research question 2, the study team tracked a single baseline cohort, from 2010/11, 

across outcome years 2011/12, 2012/13, and 2013/14 for the purpose of estimating the 

hazard events of a new classification as requiring an individualized education program and a 

new declassification from requiring an individualized education program. Student grade was for 

the baseline year of 2010/11. A total of 302,631 individual students had between two and four 

years of data for the longitudinal study population used for the research question 2a analyses 

of new classification as requiring an individualized education program based on grade level. A 

total of 63,394 individual students were included in the longitudinal study population used for 

the research question 2a analyses of declassification from requiring an individualized education program based on grade level. A total of 287,608 individual students were included in the 

longitudinal study population used for the research question 2b analyses of new classification 

as requiring an individualized education program based on persistence in the same school. 

A total of 48,371 individuals were included in the study population for the research question 

2b analysis of declassification from requiring an individualized education program based on 

persistence in the same school; the longitudinal study population for this research question 

did not include students from the study population for research question 2a who experienced 

a structural move. See tables C3, C5, and C6 in appendix C for additional descriptive statistics 

regarding several of the study populations. 

Methodology. Research question 1, on the variation in the special education enrollment gap by 

region, year, and school grade range, was answered using descriptive statistics. Public school 

sector was the primary grouping variable, as special education enrollment rates were calculated 

for all charter and traditional school students in the study population in a given year, overall and 

then by region, school grade range, and student disability category. For the combined study population, the study team generated averages across the individuals in the study population, not 

averages of the rates across the four distinct regions, and then compared rates for traditional 

and charter school students. A t test for statistical significance was performed on the differences in special education enrollment rates between charter schools and traditional schools. 

Research question 2, on differences in special education classification and declassification rates by school sector, was examined using regression methods designed to deal with the 

discrete nature of the outcome and the longitudinal nature of the data. The cohort of students 

enrolled in charter schools and traditional schools in 2010/11 was tracked over time through 

2013/14, and average probabilities of being classified as and declassified from requiring an 

individualized education program were determined based on student characteristics, including 

whether the student was in a charter school. See appendix C for additional information on 

these research methods. 

5 
structural move were not included in that analysis, as the reason why their enrollment 

was not continuous was forced on them and not chosen. (A structural move is defined as 

a student changing schools due to a change of address or aging out of the offered grades.) 

The enrollment file was from the fall of the period of confirmed enrollment; thus, any 

student enrolled in a charter school in the fall who subsequently transferred to a traditional school was considered to be a charter school student for that year and vice versa. Any 

change in special education status that occurred after the start of the 2010/11 school year 

but before the October attendance count that informed the 2010/11 enrollment file did not 

appear in the data as a status change, as only the student status starting in October 2010 

was known. 

What the study found 

Charter schools had lower special education enrollment rates than did traditional 

schools in all four years of the study, across all four regions, across two of three school 

grade ranges, and across most student disability categories. Charter schools had higher 

special education enrollment rates than did traditional schools at the high school level 

in 2013/14 and for emotional disturbance in all years. The study also identified clear 

variations in the rates of declassifying students from requiring an individualized education program by school sector, student grade level, and number of years enrolled in the 

same school. 

The special education enrollment gap between charter schools and traditional schools declined 

from 2.5 percentage points in 2010/11 to 0.5 percentage point in 2013/14 

The special education enrollment rate in the four regions combined increased from 

8.5  percent in 2010/11 to 10.2  percent in 2013/14 in charter schools and declined from 

11.0  percent to 10.7  percent in traditional schools. During the study period the special 

education enrollment gap between charter schools and traditional schools dropped from 

2.5 percentage points in 2010/11 to 2 percentage points in 2011/12, to 1.3 percentage points 

in 2012/13, and to 0.5 percentage point in 2013/14 (table 1). The differences were statistically significant in all four years. 

Table 1. Special education enrollment rates in Louisiana charter schools and 

traditional schools, by year, 2010/11–2013/14 

The special 

education 

enrollment 

rate in the four 

regions combined 

increased from 

8.5 percent 

in 2010/11 to 

10.2 percent in 

2013/14 in charter 

schools, while the 

special education 

enrollment rate 

declined from 

11.0 percent to 

10.7 percent in 

traditional schools 

Year 

Charter schools 

(percent) 

Traditional schools 

(percent) 

Gapa 

(percentage points) 

2010/11 8.5 11.0 2.5** 

2011/12 8.8 10.8 2.0** 

2012/13 9.3 10.6 1.3** 

2013/14 10.2 10.7 0.5** 

** Significant at p < .01. 

a. Calculated as the rate among students in traditional schools minus the rate among students in charter 

schools. 

Source: Authors’ calculations based on student-level data provided by the Louisiana Department of Education. 

6 
Both the level and trend of the special education enrollment gap in Louisiana varied across 

educational regions 

The pattern of the special education enrollment rate in charter schools and traditional 

schools varied across educational regions (table 2). The Ouachita region had the largest 

special education enrollment gap in three of the four years, starting at 5.3 percentage points 

in 2010/11 and increasing to a statistically significant 5.6 percentage points in 2013/14. In the 

Jefferson region the gap started at 3 percentage points in 2010/11 and ended at 3 percentage 

points in 2013/14. The gap initially was largest in the New Orleans region, at 5.8 percentage 

points in 2010/11, but declined to 2.9 percentage points by 2013/14. The differences were 

statistically significant in each year for the New Orleans region, in part because it had the 

largest charter school enrollment. The gap was smallest in the Baton Rouge region, where it 

was 2.8 percentage points in 2010/11 and dropped to 1.2 percentage points in 2013/14.3

The special education enrollment gap tended to be smaller at schools serving grades 9–12 than at 

schools serving grades K–5 and schools serving grades 6–8 and at times favored charter schools 

The special education enrollment gap between charter schools and traditional schools in 

Louisiana varied across schools by whether they served students in grades K–5, grades 6–8, 

or grades 9–12. The size of the gap also varied across time and region. 

Table 2. Special education enrollment rates in Louisiana charter schools and 

traditional schools, by region and year, 2010/11–2013/14 

Charter schools Traditional schools Gapa 

Region and year (percent) (percent) (percentage points) 

Baton Rouge 

2010/11 6.3 9.1 2.8 

2011/12 5.6 8.5 2.9 

2012/13 6.6 8.4 1.8 The Ouachita 

region had the 

largest special 

2013/14 7.2 8.4 1.2 

Jefferson 

2010/11 7.4 10.4 3.0 education 

2011/12 6.5 10.3 3.8 enrollment gap 

2012/13 5.8 10.0 4.2 in three of the 

four years, and 2013/14 7.0 10.0 3.0 

2010/11 8.8 14.6 5.8** 

smallest gap in 2011/12 9.5 14.5 5.0** all four years 

2012/13 10.2 14.1 3.9** 

the Baton Rouge 

region had the 

New Orleans 

2013/14 11.2 14.1 2.9** 

Ouachita 

2010/11 6.1 11.4 5.3 

2011/12 5.7 11.4 5.7 

2012/13 6.5 11.3 4.8 

2013/14 5.8 11.4 5.6*

* Significant at p < .05; ** significant at p < .01. 

a. Calculated as the rate among students in traditional schools minus the rate among students in charter 

schools. 

Source: Authors’ calculations based on student-level data provided by the Louisiana Department of Education. 

7 
In three of the four years the largest special education enrollment gap across regions was in 

schools serving grades K–5 (table 3). The gap in schools serving grades K–5 was statistically 

significant each year and fell from 4.1 percentage points in 2010/11 to 2.3 percentage points 

in 2013/14. In 2010/11 the largest gap, 4.6 percentage points, was in schools serving grades 

6–8. The gap in schools serving grades 6–8 was the second largest in 2011/12, 2012/13, and 

2013/14, when it reached zero. In schools serving grades 9–12 the special education enrollment rate was similar in charter schools and traditional schools in the first three school 

years. In 2013/14 the special education enrollment rate was 1.7 percentage points higher in 

charter schools serving grades 9–12 than in traditional high schools serving those grades, 

a reversal of the usual pattern of the gap favoring traditional schools. 

The patterns of special education enrollment gaps by school grade range within regions were 

not always consistent with the patterns across regions (see tables D1–D4 in appendix D). In 

most years the gap in the New Orleans and Jefferson regions was most positive in schools 

serving grades K–5 and least positive or even negative (favoring charter schools) in schools 

serving grades 9–12, fitting the overall pattern, but the gap in the Baton Rouge and Ouachita 

regions was largest in schools serving grades 6–8, deviating from the overall pattern. 

The size and direction of the special education enrollment gap varied by disability category 

The special education enrollment gap between charter schools and traditional schools was 

consistently in favor of traditional schools (that is, traditional schools had a higher enrollment rate) for the four low-incidence disabilities of autism, severe hearing impairment, 

severe intellectual disability, and severe visual impairment (table 4). The enrollment rate 

Table 3. Special education enrollment rates in Louisiana charter schools and 

traditional schools, by year and school grade range, 2010/11–2013/14 

Year and school Charter schools Traditional schools Gapa 

grade range (percent) (percent) (percentage points) 

2010/11 

Grades K–5 7.8 11.9 4.1** 

Grades 6–8 8.6 13.3 4.6** In three of the four 

years the largest 

special education 

Grades 9–12 9.0 9.4 0.4 

2011/12 

Grades K–5 8.1 11.4 3.3** enrollment gap 

Grades 6–8 9.7 11.5 1.9** across regions 

Grades 9–12 9.2 9.4 0.2 was in schools 

serving grades K–5 2012/13 

Grades K–5 8.6 11.1 2.6** 

Grades 6–8 10.1 11.3 1.2** 

Grades 9–12 9.8 9.5 –0.3 

2013/14 

Grades K–5 8.8 11.1 2.3** 

Grades 6–8 11.4 11.4 0.0 

Grades 9–12 11.0 9.4 –1.7** 

* Significant at p < .05; ** significant at p < .01. 

a. Calculated as the rate among students in traditional schools minus the rate among students in charter 

schools. The value may not equal the difference between the rates displayed in the table because of rounding. 

Source: Authors’ calculations based on student-level data provided by the Louisiana Department of Education. 

8 
Table 4. Special education enrollment rates in Louisiana charter schools and 

traditional schools, by low-incidence disability category and year, 2010/11–2013/14 

Disability category Charter schools Traditional schools Gapa 

and year (percent) (percent) (percentage points) 

Autism 

2010/11 0.30 0.53 0.23** 

2011/12 0.39 0.60 0.21** 

2012/13 0.49 0.63 0.14** The enrollment 

rate of students 

with autism 

2013/14 0.59 0.67 0.08** 

Hearing impairment (severe) 

2010/11 0.02 0.04 0.02** was statistically 

2011/12 0.01 0.04 0.02** significantly higher 

2012/13 0.01 0.04 0.03** 

2013/14 0.02 0.04 0.03** 

Intellectual disability (severe) 

2010/11 0.02 0.06 0.04** 

2011/12 0.04 0.06 0.02** 

2012/13 0.03 0.05 0.02** 

2013/14 0.02 0.05 0.03** 

Visual impairment (severe) 

2010/11 0.00 0.02 0.02** 

2011/12 0.01 0.02 0.01** 

2012/13 0.02 0.03 0.01** 

2013/14 0.02 0.03 0.01** 

in traditional 

schools than in 

charter schools 

in all four years, 

and the gap 

ranged from 

0.08 percentage 

point in 2013/14 

to 0.23 percentage 

point in 2010/11 

** Significant at p < .01. 

a. Calculated as the rate among students in traditional schools minus the rate among students in charter 

schools. The value may not equal the difference between the rates displayed in the table because of rounding. 

Source: Authors’ calculations based on student-level data provided by the Louisiana Department of Education. 

of students with autism was statistically significantly higher in traditional schools than in 

charter schools in all four years, and the gap ranged from 0.08 percentage point in 2013/14 

to 0.23 percentage point in 2010/11. In all four years the enrollment rate was 0.02–0.03 percentage point higher in traditional schools than in charter schools for students with severe 

hearing impairment, 0.02–0.04  percentage point higher in traditional schools than in 

charter schools for students with severe intellectual disabilities, and 0.01–0.02 percentage 

point higher in traditional schools than in charter schools for students with severe visual 

impairment. 

The special education enrollment gap between charter schools and traditional schools 

varied across the four high-incidence disabilities of emotional disturbance, other health 

impairment, specific learning disability, and speech/language impairment (table 5). The 

enrollment rate of students with emotional disturbance was higher in charter schools than 

in traditional schools in all four years, and the gap grew from 0.2  percentage point in 

2010/11 to 0.4 percentage point in 2013/14. However, the enrollment rate of students with 

other health impairments was statistically significantly higher in traditional schools than 

in charter schools in 2010/11 (gap of 0.4 percentage point) and 2011/12 (gap of 0.2 percentage point) and statistically similar in charter schools and traditional schools in 2012/13 

and 2013/14. In 2010/11–2012/13 the enrollment rate of students with specific learning disabilities was statistically significantly higher (by 0.3–0.7 percentage point) in traditional 

9 
Table 5. Special education enrollment rates in Louisiana charter schools 

and traditional schools, by high-incidence disability category and year, 

2010/11–2013/14 

Charter Traditional 

Disability category schools schools Gapa 

and year (percent) (percent) (percentage points) 

Emotional disturbance 

2010/11 0.4 0.3 –0.2** 

2011/12 0.5 0.2 –0.3** 

The enrollment 

2012/13 0.6 0.2 –0.4** rate of students 

with emotional 

disturbance was 

2013/14 0.6 0.2 –0.4** 

Other health impairment 

2010/11 1.0 1.4 0.4** higher in charter 

2011/12 1.2 1.4 0.2** schools than 

2012/13 1.3 1.4 0.1 in traditional 

2013/14 1.4 1.4 –0.0 schools in all four 

Specific learning disability years, and the 

2010/11 2.6 3.2 0.7** gap grew from 

0.2 percentage 2011/12 2.6 3.3 0.6** 

point in 2010/11 2012/13 2.9 3.2 0.3** 

to 0.4 percentage 2013/14 3.1 3.2 0.1 

point in 2013/14 Speech/language impairment 

2010/11 2.7 2.8 –0.1 

2011/12 2.6 2.6 0.0 

2012/13 2.3 2.4 0.1 

2013/14 2.4 2.3 –0.1 

** Significant at p < .01. 

a. Calculated as the rate among students in traditional schools minus the rate among students in charter 

schools. The value may not equal the difference between the rates displayed in the table because of rounding. 

Source: Authors’ calculations based on student-level data provided by the Louisiana Department of Education. 

schools than in charter schools, but by 2013/14 there was no statistically significant difference. Traditional schools and charter schools enrolled a statistically similar percentage of 

students with speech/language impairment in all four years. 

A separate analysis of special education enrollment gaps for students with intellectual disabilities, disaggregated by severity of disability, found that the gaps tended to favor charter 

schools for students with mild intellectual disabilities but traditional schools for students 

with moderate or severe intellectual disabilities (see table D14 in appendix D). 

The association between being enrolled in a charter school and being newly classified as requiring 

an individualized education program was unclear after initial grade, which heavily influenced 

classification, was controlled for 

New classifications of students as requiring special education services occurred at a rate of 

11.67 percent in traditional schools (table 6). Although likelihood of a new classification 

was 0.73  percentage point higher for enrollment in a charter school (12.4  percent), the 

association was not statistically significant. 

10 
Table 6. Likelihood of being newly classified as requiring an individualized education 

program in Louisiana schools, by school type and grade, 2010/11–2013/14 

Factor 

Effect on likelihooda 

(percentage points) 

Predicted likelihood of being 

newly classified as requiring an 

individualized education programb 

(percent) 

Enrollment in a traditional schoolc 0.00 11.67 

Enrollment in a charter school 0.73 12.40 

Grade level in 2010/11d 

Prekindergartenc 0.00 11.67 

Kindergarten –3.56** 8.11 

1 –4.82** 6.85 

2 –4.50** 7.18 

3 –4.58** 7.09 The likelihood 

4 –3.98** 7.69 of being newly 

5 –5.13** 6.54 classified as 

6 –5.96** 5.71 

7 –6.30** 5.37 

8 –6.54** 5.14 

9 –5.92** 5.76 

10 –7.89** 3.78 

11 –8.43** 3.24 

12 –8.07** 3.60 

requiring an 

individualized 

education program 

was greatest for 

students who were 

in prekindergarten 

in 2010/11 

** Significant at p < .01. 

a. Average change in percentiles associated with the factor. 

b. Predicted likelihood based on the regression model for a student with average characteristics. 

c. Reference category. A positive value in the effect on likelihood column indicates that students in a given 

category were newly classified more often than students in the reference category, and a negative value 

indicates that students in a given category were newly classified less often than students in the reference 

category. 

d. Grade level refers to a student’s grade in 2010/11, but new classifications of a student requiring an individualized education program are measured in the three subsequent years. Thus, a student who was in prekindergarten in 2010/11 could have been identified as newly classified in grade K, 1, or 2, and a student who was in 

grade 9 in 2010/11 could have been identified as newly classified in grade 10, 11, or 12. In other words, while 

the grade in 2010/11 is not the grade when the new classification was made, it is within three years of that 

grade. 

Note: New classifications are identified starting in 2011/12 (see appendix C). 

Source: Authors’ calculations based on student-level data provided by the Louisiana Department of Education. 

New classifications were more likely to occur at the earlier stages of a student’s education 

and less likely to occur at the later stages, based on the combined charter and traditional 

school study population. The likelihood of being newly classified as requiring an individualized education program was greatest for students who were in prekindergarten in 2010/11. 

The likelihood of being newly classified as requiring an individualized education program 

was 3.56 percentage points lower for students in kindergarten in 2010/11. For students in 

grades 1–4, the new classification rate was between 3.98 percentage points (grade 4) and 

4.82  percentage points (grade 1) lower than the rate for students in prekindergarten in 

2010/11. From grade 5 on, new disability classifications ranged from 5.13 percentage points 

lower (grade 5) to 8.43 percentage points lower (grade 11). 

11 
Being declassified from requiring an individualized education program was rare, but the likelihood 

was statistically significantly higher in charter schools than in traditional schools, after initial grade 

was controlled for 

Students in charter schools were statistically significantly more likely to be declassified 

from requiring an individualized education program than were students in traditional 

schools (table 7). However, declassification was generally rare. After initial grade was controlled for, declassifications occurred to 0.62 percent of students in charter schools (62 of 

every 10,000 students), compared with 0.58 percent of students in traditional schools. In 

other words, being in a charter school had a statistically significant effect on the likelihood 

of a student being declassified, increasing it 0.04 percentage point. 

Declassification was more likely to occur at the early stages of a student’s education. Students who were in prekindergarten in 2010/11 were the most likely to be declassified, 

although the analysis does not identify what grade they were in when declassification 

occurred. The drop in the declassification rate between students in prekindergarten in 

2010/11 and students in kindergarten in 2010/11 was not as large as the drop in the rate 

of students newly classified as requiring an individualized education program between 

Table 7. Likelihood of being declassified from requiring an individualized education 

program in Louisiana schools, by school type and grade, 2010/11–2013/14 

Factor 

Effect on likelihooda 

(percentage points) 

Predicted likelihood of being 

declassified from requiring an 

individualized education programb 

(percent) 

Enrollment in a traditional schoolc 0.00 0.58 

Enrollment in a charter school 0.04** 0.62 

Grade level in 2010/11 

Prekindergartenc 0.00 0.58 

Kindergarten 

1 

–0.04** 

–0.11** 

0.53 

0.47 

Students in 

charter schools 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

–0.12** 

–0.12** 

–0.13** 

–0.13** 

–0.13** 

–0.12** 

–0.12** 

–0.12** 

0.46 

0.46 

0.45 

0.45 

0.45 

0.46 

0.45 

0.46 

were statistically 

significantly 

more likely to 

be declassified 

from requiring 

an individualized 

education 

program than 

were students in 

10 –0.11** 0.47 traditional schools 

11 –0.11** 0.47 

12 –0.12** 0.46 

** Significant at p < .01. 

a. Average change in percentiles associated with the factor. 

b. Predicted likelihood based on the regression model for a student with average characteristics. 

c. Reference category. A positive value in the effect on likelihood column indicates that students in a given 

category were de classified more often than students in the reference category, and a negative value indicates 

that students in a given category were declassified less often than students in the reference category. 

Note: New declassifications are identified starting in 2011/12 (see appendix C). 

Source: Authors’ calculations based on student-level data provided by the Louisiana Department of Education. 

12 
 

 

those two grades. The highest likelihood of declassification by initial grade—excluding 

the omitted category of prekindergarten—for charter students was kindergarten, at 

0.53 percent. Being in a grade beyond grade 1 in 2010/11 had little additional effect on 

the likelihood of being declassified during the study period; the likelihood in grades 1–12 

was 0.45–0.47 percent. 

The likelihood of being newly classified as requiring an individualized education program was 

statistically similar in charter schools and traditional schools but significantly higher for students 

who persisted in their original school for the first two years of the study and significantly lower for 

students who persisted for all four years 

Enrollment in a charter school was associated with a 1.02 percentage point higher likelihood of being newly classified as requiring an individualized education program, but that 

association was not statistically significant (table 8). Persistence of enrollment since 2010/11 

was associated with differences in the likelihood of being newly classified for students who 

did not graduate from their initial school during the four years of the study, based on 

the combined study population of charter schools and traditional schools. Compared with 

students who changed schools after the 2010/11 school year, persisting in a school for a 

second year was associated with an increase of 4.97 percentage points, from 11.67 percent 

to 16.64 percent, in the likelihood of being newly classified as requiring an individualized 

education program. Enrollment at the same school for three consecutive years was not 

associated with a difference in the classification rate, while persisting in the same school 

for all four years of the study was associated with a 3.24 percentage point decrease, from 

11.67 percent to 8.43 percent. 

Table 8. Likelihood of being newly classified as requiring an individualized 

education program in Louisiana schools, by school type and years of persistence in 

the same school, 2010/11–2013/14 

Factor 

Effect on likelihooda 

(percentage points) 

Predicted likelihood of being 

newly classified as requiring an 

individualized education programb 

(percent) 

Enrollment in a traditional schoolc 0.00 11.67 

Enrollment in a charter school 1.02 12.69 

Years of persistence in the same school since 2010/11 

One yearc 0.00 11.67 

Two years 4.97* 16.64 

Enrollment in a 

charter school was 

associated with a 

1.02 percentage 

point higher 

likelihood of being 

newly classified 

as requiring an 

individualized 

Three years –0.55 11.12 education 

Four years –3.24* 8.43 program, but that 

association was 

* Significant at p < .05. not statistically a. Average change in percentiles associated with the factor. significant 

b. Predicted likelihood based on the regression model for a student with average characteristics. 

c. Reference category. A positive value in the effect on likelihood column indicates that students in a given 

category were newly classified more often than students in the reference category, and a negative value 

indicates that students in a given category were newly classified less often than students in the reference 

category. 

Note: New classifications are identified starting in 2011/12 (see appendix C). 

Source: Authors’ calculations based on student-level data provided by the Louisiana Department of Education. 

13 
Table 9. Likelihood of being declassified from requiring an individualized education 

program in Louisiana schools, by school type and years of persistence in the same 

school, 2010/11–2013/14 

Factor 

Effect on likelihooda 

(percentage points) 

Predicted likelihood of being 

declassified from requiring an 

individualized education programb 

(percent) 

Enrollment in a traditional schoolc 0.00 0.58 

Enrollment in a charter school 0.041** 0.62 

Years of persistence in the same school since 2010/11 

One yearc 0.00 0.58 

Two years –0.01** 0.57 

Three years 0.21** 0.78 

Four years –0.15** 0.42 Charter school 

** Significant at p < .01. 

a. Average change in percentiles associated with the factor. 

b. Predicted likelihood based on the regression model for a student with average characteristics. 

c. Reference category. A positive value in the effect on likelihood column indicates that students in a given 

category were declassified more often than students in the reference category, and a negative value indicates 

that students in a given category were declassified less often than students in the reference category. 

Note: New declassifications are identified starting in 2011/12 (see appendix C). 

Source: Authors’ calculations based on student-level data provided by the Louisiana Department of Education. 

enrollment 

remained 

statistically 

significantly 

associated with 

the likelihood of 

being declassified 

from requiring 

an individualized 

The likelihood of being declassified from requiring an individualized education program was rare 

but was statistically significantly higher in charter schools than in traditional schools, after student 

enrollment persistence and initial grade were controlled for 

Charter school enrollment remained statistically significantly associated with the likelihood of being declassified from requiring an individualized education program, after persistence of enrollment in the same school and initial grade were controlled for (table 9). 

The likelihood of being declassified was statistically significantly higher in charter schools 

(0.62 percent) than in traditional schools (0.58 percent), after persistence and initial grade 

were controlled for. Compared with students who switched schools immediately after 

2010/11, students who persisted for two years were associated with a lower likelihood of 

declassification, whereas students who persisted for three years were associated with a 

higher likelihood. Persisting in the same school for the full four years of the study was associated with a lower likelihood of declassification. All of the associations were statistically 

significant. 

Implications of the study findings 

The exploratory analyses in this study provide the Louisiana Charter Schools Research 

Alliance with important data that its members can use as they continue to address the 

gap in the enrollment rate of students with an individualized education program between 

charter schools and traditional schools. While the gap fell from 2.5 percent in 2010/11 to 

0.5 percent in 2013/14, students with an individualized education program were found to 

be underrepresented in charter schools serving grades K–5 and grades 6–8 in the four state 

educational regions covered by the study. The leaders of those charter schools may want 

to learn about and replicate the programs and practices for students with disabilities that 

are attracting and keeping young students in traditional schools. In addition, they might 

education program, 

after persistence 

of enrollment in 

the same school 

and initial grade 

were controlled for 

14 
want to more actively advertise their schools’ offerings for students with disabilities. The 

enrollment gap was smallest in the Baton Rouge region in all four years and largest in the 

Ouachita region in three of the four years. Charter school leaders may want to examine 

closely the approach to special education in Baton Rouge charter schools and to sponsor 

more research to identify possible reasons for the smaller enrollment gap in Baton Rouge. 

The special education enrollment gap of 0.5  percentage point that remained between 

charter schools and traditional schools as of 2013/14 also may be driven by students with 

low-incidence disabilities, who were less likely to be enrolled in a charter school than in 

a traditional school in most years. Students with low-incidence disabilities also tend to 

be more difficult to fully include in a general education program (Chambers, Kidron, & 

Spain, 2004). Charter schools might form collaborations with each other or with local 

traditional school districts to provide customized services to students with specific low-incidence disabilities. If charter schools are able to enroll more students with low-incidence 

disabilities, those students may be less isolated, and schools might also achieve economies 

of scale that would stretch resources farther. 

In all four years of the study charter schools enrolled a higher proportion of students with 

the high-incidence disability of emotional disturbance than traditional schools did. It is 

possible that charter schools, which tend to be smaller than traditional schools, are more 

attractive and less intimidating education environments for students who are emotionally 

challenged. Traditional schools enrolled a higher proportion of students with the highincidence disability category of specific learning disability in the first three years of the 

study, but the enrollment rate of such students was similar in charter schools and traditional schools in the final year. Thus, charter schools in Louisiana appear to be becoming 

as attractive as traditional schools to students with high-incidence disabilities. 

Charter schools and traditional schools also enrolled similar rates of students with other 

health impairments in 2012/13 and 2013/14 and students with speech/language impairments in all four years. Those categories of disabilities tend to be mild in severity and 

therefore do not necessarily require the provision of separate programs and specialized 

staff (Chambers et al., 2004; Chambers, Shkolnik, & Perez, 2003), thus fitting within the 

general tendency of charter schools to seek the full inclusion of students with disabilities into their general education program. Future research with more recent data could 

examine whether the results for 2013/14 marked the beginning of a trend or were an 

anomaly, especially given the additional supports provided to New Orleans charter schools 

after the study period (see below). 

Students in the four Louisiana educational regions included in this study were newly classified as requiring an individualized education program at a statistically similar rate in 

charter schools (12.4 percent) and traditional schools (11.7 percent). New classification was 

most common for students who began the study in prekindergarten or kindergarten. This 

general pattern of new classification in the early grades is likely due to two factors. First, 

some disabilities, such as specific learning disabilities, become apparent once a child interacts with educational material in the early grades of school (Muschkin, Ladd, & Dodge, 

2015). Second, once a student has been designated as requiring an individualized education program, that student cannot be newly classified, as the data do not signal changes in 

an individualized education program, only whether the student had one in specific years. 

The leaders of 

charter schools 

serving grades K–5 

and grades 6–8 

may want to learn 

about and replicate 

the programs 

and practices for 

students with 

disabilities that 

are attracting 

and keeping 

young students in 

traditional schools 

and more actively 

advertise their 

schools’ offerings 

for students with 

disabilities 

15 
Declassification of students from requiring an individualized education program was 

uncommon, although students were more likely to be declassified if they were in a charter 

school than in a traditional school. Other research has found that such declassification is 

most likely to occur shortly after initial diagnosis, after the first program of treatment has 

been completed (Muschkin et al., 2015). Because initial diagnosis is most common in the 

early grades and much less common in the later grades, declassification also tends to occur 

in the early grades. Future research and practitioner discussions could focus on what charter 

schools and traditional schools are doing differently in terms of the education and evaluation of students with an individualized education program that has led to more Louisiana 

students with disabilities shedding the disability label while enrolled in charter schools. 

The findings in this study also contribute to a broader understanding of the scope and 

nature of the special education enrollment gap between charter schools and traditional 

schools. Previous studies of the gap in New York City and Denver (Winters, 2013, 2014) 

have reported results consistent with the findings here that the gap appears to be closing 

over time, is largest in schools serving the elementary grades, and is partly mitigated by a 

greater likelihood of declassification among students in charter schools than among students in traditional schools. The current study also shows that charter schools in Louisiana enroll higher proportions of students with an individualized education program in the 

high school grades and with emotional disturbance than do traditional schools. Both of 

these exploratory findings are new for the special education research literature. Although 

this study also finds that charter schools declassify students from requiring an individualized education program at a higher rate than traditional schools do, declassification was 

rare, and the difference in the declassification rate was only 0.04 percentage point, indicating that the higher rate of declassification explained little, if any, of the 2 percentage point 

decline in the special education enrollment gap from 2010/11 to 2013/14. 

Concrete knowledge of the dimensions and sources of any gap in special education enrollment between charter schools and traditional schools in Louisiana in the past and present 

is an important first step to guide possible remediating actions, including more research on 

the gap. 

Limitations of the study 

This study is exploratory. Although it establishes the presence of special education enrollment gaps and variations in their size and direction over time and across Louisiana educational regions and grade ranges, the study cannot conclusively determine why any gaps 

exist. Many of the results, including the finding that charter schools declassify students 

from requiring an individualized education program at a higher rate than traditional 

schools do, are subject to interpretation and could signal either a success or a failure of the 

special education classification system. 

The data for this study were limited to the 2010/11–2013/14 school years and the four educational regions in Louisiana with a substantial population of charter school students during 

those years. The proportion of the Louisiana charter school population outside the four 

sampled regions, and therefore excluded from the analysis study population, ranged from 

17 percent in 2011/12 to 35 percent in 2010/11. The data were censored in that no information was available regarding conditions prior to 2010/11 or after 2013/14. For the longitudinal analysis that addressed the research questions about classification and declassification 

Future research 

and practitioner 

discussions could 

focus on what 

charter schools 

and traditional 

schools are doing 

differently in terms 

of the education 

and evaluation 

of students with 

an individualized 

education program 

that has led to 

more Louisiana 

students with 

disabilities 

shedding the 

disability label 

while enrolled in 

charter schools 

16 
rates, changes that took place between the start of school and the fall enrollment count in 

2010 were not reflected in the data. It is possible that some of the findings from the analysis 

were particular to the conditions that students experienced in those years and regions of 

Louisiana and might not hold in other contexts. 

The examination of student individualized education program classification rates by the 

grade ranges of K–5, 6–8, and 9–12 was also limited by the fact that most charter schools 

have unconventional grade ranges that extend into two, and sometimes even all three, of 

those categories. As a result, any association between a specific grade range and special 

education enrollments is likely imprecisely measured in this study. 

Finally, in fall 2014, after the end of the period for this study, the Recovery School District of New Orleans began to provide charter schools in the city with special education 

support, including innovation grants and access to a citywide insurance fund to cover the 

costs of students with severe disabilities (Schnaiberg & Lake, 2015). The state also altered 

the funding of students in special education in all public schools in the state to account 

for variations in total weekly service minutes provided to those students within the various 

disability classifications (Dreilinger, 2014). The exploratory findings from this study do not 

reflect any results from Louisiana’s new approach to funding and managing special education across the public school sectors. 

Given the limitations of this exploratory study, policymakers and practitioners are cautioned to use this information as merely one among many sources of guidance regarding 

the patterns of special education enrollments in charter schools. 

The exploratory 

findings from this 

study do not reflect 

any results from 

the new approach 

to funding and 

managing special 

education across 

the public school 

sectors that the 

Recovery School 

District of New 

Orleans and the 

state introduced 

in fall 2014 

17 
Appendix A. Literature review 

Questions surrounding the intersection of charter schooling and special education persist 

across the United States as well as in Louisiana. They include concerns about the proportion of students in charter schools who have special education needs compared with the 

proportion of students in traditional schools who do; the extent to which those proportions vary by grade level, disability category, and school context; and whether differences 

in classification and certification practices and rates across charter and traditional schools 

explain much, if any, of the special education enrollment gap. 

Charter schools were created to provide schools freedom from regulation and subject them 

to market forces that would inspire innovative methods for schooling students (Garda, 

2012). Particularly in special education, charter schools have the potential to provide 

unique and creative models of education for students with special education needs in order 

to serve them more effectively than traditional schools can. 

However, special education is guided by a series of federal laws that create a compliance 

model of accountability that requires schools to adhere to an extensive set of procedural 

regulations, setting the stage for a potential culture clash between the vision of charter 

schooling and the demands of special education (Wolf & Hassel, 2001). 

Because of their reliance on public funding, charter schools must accept all students who 

apply. When applications exceed available seats, a random lottery must be conducted to 

determine admittance. Students with disabilities are just one of several groups who may 

find the charter school sector more or less appropriate given their education needs. Little is 

known about students with disabilities who attend charter schools and how they compare 

to students with disabilities who attend traditional schools. Review of this nascent literature highlights the contribution that this proposed study makes to the understanding of 

charter schooling and special education in Louisiana. 

Charter schools have an incentive to maximize student learning, as “for more than a 

decade, the charter school sector has become more insistent on closing schools that do not 

meet certain academic performance benchmarks” (Center for Research on Education Outcomes, 2017, p. 1). Like all schools, charter schools need to operate with limited resources. 

Considering the cost and support structures that students with disabilities require, students with disabilities have the potential to hinder these two goals of maximizing student 

achievement while minimizing the expenditure of resources (McKinney, 1996). Given that 

charter schools are required to provide special education services to enrolled students with 

disabilities, a concern of many special education advocates is the possibility that charter 

schools will discriminate against students with disabilities in enrollment decisions or discourage them from enrolling in their schools. Early research into charter schools provided some qualitative accounts of incidents in which charter school personnel may have 

“counseled” students out of the school through conversation about inappropriate matches 

between school and student (Fiore, Harwell, Blackorby, & Finnigan, 2000; McKinney, 

1996; McLaughlin & Henderson, 1998; Ramanthan & Zollers, 1999; Sullins & Miron, 

2005). 

Early descriptive studies of special education enrollment in charter schools raised concerns of a large enrollment gap for such students between charter schools and traditional 

A-1 
schools (McKinney, 1996; U.S. Department of Education, 1997). More recent studies have 

confirmed that the gap is shrinking (for example, Cremata et al., 2013; U.S. Government 

Accountability Office, 2012). 

The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) responded to the continued concern 

and lawsuits over the enrollment disparity of students with disabilities between charter 

schools and traditional schools by analyzing enrollment data from 2008/09 and 2009/10 

for 41 states with charter schools at that time (Chang, 2010). It found that nationally the 

number of students with disabilities in charter schools was increasing but that the special 

education enrollment rate was still 3 percentage points lower in charter schools than in 

traditional schools (U.S. Government Accountability Office, 2012). Variations in the 

direction and size of the special education enrollment gap existed at the state level, with 3 

states not reporting special education enrollment, 6 states enrolling a higher percentage of 

students with disabilities in charter schools than in traditional schools, 2 states enrolling 

the same percentage in both sectors, and the remaining 30 states enrolling a lower percentage of students with disabilities in charter schools than in traditional schools.4 The 

special education enrollment gap between charter schools and traditional schools in Louisiana for 2009/10 was 4 percentage points in the GAO study, 1 percentage point above the 

national average, whereas a study drawing from 2010/11 data determined that the gap for 

Louisiana was 2 percentage points (Cremata et al., 2013). The GAO report found similar 

aggregate disparities in the enrollment of students with all categories of disabilities, both 

severe and nonsevere. 

Researchers have also examined possible reasons for the special education enrollment gaps 

between charter schools and traditional schools. Rhim, Faukner, and McLaughlin (2006) 

analyzed data on the enrollment of students with disabilities in charter schools in California in 2003/04, 10 years after the state passed its charter school legislation. The gap in 

California that year was about 2.5 percentage points in favor of traditional schools. The 

researchers concluded that more than half of that disparity could be accounted for by the 

subgroup of students with disabilities receiving services in specialized settings, such as a 

separate school, residential facility, or hospital. Overwhelmingly, these students in such 

specialized settings were officially enrolled in a traditional school rather than a charter 

school when they were admitted to the specialized setting. Accounting for the much 

higher rate of such students in traditional schools compared with charter schools, charter 

schools in the state enrolled students with all other categories of disabilities at a rate that 

was within 1 percentage point of traditional schools. 

Recent research has also analyzed special education enrollment in charter schools and traditional schools in New York and Denver. Lake, Gross, and Denice (2012) analyzed special 

education enrollment in charter schools in New York State disaggregated at the elementary, middle, and high school levels, as well as by region in the state and authorizer type. 

They found that charter middle and high schools had special education enrollment rates 

similar to those that traditional schools had but that charter elementary schools in the 

state underenrolled students with disabilities compared with traditional schools. They also 

concluded that the New York charter schools that were authorized by local departments of 

education tended to enroll students with disabilities at rates much more similar to those of 

district-run schools than did charter schools authorized by other entities, namely, the New 

York State Board of Regents and the State University of New York. 

A-2 
Winters (2013) used New York City charter and traditional elementary school data, including lotteries, to track student enrollment patterns from kindergarten through grade 3. He 

found that initial enrollment differences between charter schools and traditional schools 

were partly the result of lower application rates in charter schools for students with autism 

and speech or language impairments. This gap grew as students progressed through grade 

3, because charter schools were less likely to classify students as requiring an individualized 

education program and more likely to declassify students from being in special education 

—in particular, for the disability categories of emotional disturbance and specific learning 

disabilities. 

Of the students with disabilities enrolled in charter schools in year 1 of Winters’s study, 

16.3  percent were declassified from requiring special education services by year 4, compared with 11.1 percent of students with disabilities in traditional schools (Winters, 2013). 

Although the study did not report the exact basis for the declassifications in specific cases, 

under the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), such declassifications 

are supposed to be based on a determination that important educational and behavioral 

milestones contained in a student’s individualized education program have been achieved. 

Some element of subjectivity is unavoidable in such determinations, however, particularly 

for students diagnosed with specific learning disabilities or emotional disturbance (Lyon 

et  al., 2001; Wolf & Hassel, 2001), which were the student subgroups that experienced 

the highest rate of declassification. The remainder of the gap in enrollment was caused by 

transfers into charter schools after kindergarten, who were disproportionally general education students, decreasing the percentage of enrollment accounted for by students with 

disabilities. 

Winters (2014) conducted a similar study of special education enrollment patterns in 

Denver, Colorado, but with a broader population of students in grades K–8. He reported 

that the gap in enrollment of students with disabilities in Denver charter schools started 

during the kindergarten and middle school application process and grew as students were 

declassified from requiring an individualized education program at a higher rate or newly 

classified at a lower rate than in traditional schools. 

The Winters (2013, 2014) studies on special education enrollment in charter schools have 

called attention to the question of differential special education classification rates, standards, and practices across the charter and traditional school sectors. Although rigorous 

empirical research on that question is rare, Wolf, Witte, and Fleming (2012) studied special 

education in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, a school voucher program that has 

operated since 1990. Drawing on longitudinal data involving more than 2,700 voucher students, as well as an equal number of matched public school students, they found that students who switched from one school sector to the other were statistically significantly more 

likely to be designated as requiring an individualized education program when enrolled 

in the traditional school sector than when enrolled in a private school in the voucher 

program. Although Wolf et al. did not examine special education in the charter school 

sector, it was the first empirical study to indicate that different school sectors approach the 

issue of student disability in ways that lead to differences in the rates of student disability 

certification and decertification. 

In summary, three empirical studies—conducted in New York City, Denver, and 

Milwaukee—identified gaps in the percentage of students formally classified as having 

A-3 
disabilities in schools of choice (charter or private voucher) compared with traditional 

public schools. They also uncovered descriptive evidence suggesting that most of the difference is driven by special education enrollment discrepancies in entry grades, possibly 

signaling that charter schools are less attractive to some parents of students with disabilities. Their research also suggests that differences in classification practices of students 

with disabilities might account for much of the remaining differences in enrollment rates. 

Winters (2014, p. 4) concludes the summary of the Denver results with the observation 

that “further research on the ... special education gap in other cities ... is warranted to 

determine if these factors are in fact common nationwide.” Moreover, no empirical study 

prior to this one examined the special education enrollment gap between charter schools 

and traditional schools in nonurban areas. 

A-4 
 

 

Appendix B. Historical context on Louisiana and portfolio districts 

Portfolio districts are public school organizations that provide oversight through performance contracts and support services—such as centralized enrollment lotteries, transportation, and food service—to a variety of autonomous and distinctive schools in their 

locality (Hill et  al., 2013). Some portfolio school districts, such as Colorado’s Board of 

Cooperative Education Services and California’s Special Education Local Plan Area, coordinate the provision of special education services for the students in the schools in their 

portfolio (Ahearn, 1999). 

Although the Recovery School District in New Orleans is a portfolio school district, it 

oversaw 58 charter schools as of 2013/14, which represented 81 percent of the New Orleans 

open-enrollment charter schools and 52 percent of all Louisiana charter schools in this 

study. During the period of the study (2010/11–2013/14), the provision of special education services was entirely the responsibility of individual charter schools, with no service 

coordination or funding supports from the Recovery School District (Schnaiberg & Lake, 

2015). Starting immediately after the period covered in this study, in the fall of 2014, the 

Recovery School District launched policy reforms focused on special education, including 

a citywide insurance fund to finance high-cost students with disabilities and school-level 

innovation grants in the area of special education (Schnaiberg & Lake, 2015). 

A charter school’s legal status (that is, whether it is an independent local education agency 

or part of an existing local education agency) determines how it receives funding. Federal 

funds flow to states, and states use their own funding formulas to allocate money to local 

education agencies. Many charter schools do not have a clear understanding of how federal 

and state funding are allocated to them for special education (Rhim & McLaughlin, 

2007). Charter schools that operate as their own local education agency generally receive 

100 percent of their federal and state per-pupil special education dollars. However, schools 

that operate as part of a local education agency, such as the 14 Orleans Parish School 

Board charter schools in this study, generally do not receive 100 percent of federal or state 

per-pupil special education funds because the district in which the charter school is located 

typically withholds all or a portion of the federal and state funds and provides services (for 

example, special education personnel, professional development, child find, or evaluations) 

to the charter schools in its district (Rhim & McLaughlin, 2007).5 In this study, 103 of the 

charter schools operated as their own local education agency for the purpose of special 

education funding and services, including all of the charter schools that are authorized by 

the Recovery School District. 

During the entire period of this study’s evaluation, 2010/11–2013/14, state statute in Louisiana determined the specific amount of additional state and federal funding that flowed to 

each student in a charter school based solely on the student’s disability classification. The 

Recovery School District of New Orleans recently approved a plan to change the special 

education funding formula used by its charter schools to account for variations in total 

weekly service minutes provided to special education students within the various disability 

categories (Dreilinger, 2014). That change was implemented in the fall of 2014, after all of 

the data for this study were collected; therefore, it did not affect the analysis performed for 

this evaluation. 

B-1 
Appendix C. Data, study population, and methodology 

This appendix describes the data collected to perform the analyses in this report, the analytic study population, and the methods used to answer each research question. 

Data 

The study uses both annual cross-sectional (for research question 1) and longitudinal (for 

research question 2) student enrollment data from the Louisiana Department of Education 

Student Information Systems file for the 2010/11–2013/14 school years. 

The Student Information Systems file contains individual student identification numbers 

that follow students when they transfer between school sectors and indicate their grade 

level. It also includes information about whether a student has an active individualized education program and, if so, the specific disability category assigned to the student. By consolidating enrollment and student disability data for 2010/11–2013/14, the special education 

enrollment rates in Louisiana charter schools and traditional schools could be established, 

along with the rates for students with specific disability categories. Merging the four annual 

databases enabled the study team to identify students with new disability classifications and 

those whose disabilities had been declassified during the three years after 2010/11. 

The individual-level student data from the Student Information Systems file were supplemented with school-level descriptive data publicly available from the Louisiana 

Believes website maintained by the Louisiana Department of Education (http://www. 

louisianabelieves.com/resources/library/data-center). Additional school-level variables were 

generated by aggregating the student-level data provided for the school in the Student 

Information Systems file. Data from both sources were used to answer all research 

questions. 

Table C1 lists the key variables included in the study. Although the operational definitions of most of these variables should be clear from their labels, some variables require 

additional explanation. Many charter schools vary from both traditional schools and other 

charter schools in their grade configurations. Few charter schools could be included in 

the grade-range categories if the school were required to have the precise grade configurations typically found for traditional elementary (grades K–5), middle (grades 6–8), or 

Table C1. Variables used in the study, by level of measurement 

Level and variable Range Source 

School level 

School identification number String SIS 

Charter authorizer is local school board 0,1 Louisiana Believes 

Charter authorizer is state Board of Education 0,1 Louisiana Believes 

Charter authorizer is local charter authorizer 0,1 Louisiana Believes 

Open-enrollment charter school 0,1 Louisiana Believes 

Conversion charter school 0,1 Louisiana Believes 

Serves any grade K–5 0,1 SIS 

(continued)

C-1 
Table C1. Variables used in the study, by level of measurement (continued)

Level and variable Range Source 

Serves any grade 6–8 0,1 SIS 

Serves any grade 9–12 0,1 SIS 

Initial intake grade is K 0,1 SIS 

Initial intake grade is 1 0,1 SIS 

Initial intake grade is 2 0,1 SIS 

Initial intake grade is 3 0,1 SIS 

Initial intake grade is 4 0,1 SIS 

Initial intake grade is 5 0,1 SIS 

Initial intake grade is 6 0,1 SIS 

Initial intake grade is 7 0,1 SIS 

Initial intake grade is 8 0,1 SIS 

Initial intake grade is 9 0,1 SIS 

Located in Region 1 (New Orleans) 

Located in Region 3 (Jefferson) 

0,1 

0,1 

Louisiana Believes 

Louisiana Believes 

Located in Region 5 (Ouachita) 0,1 Louisiana Believes 

Located in Region 8 (Baton Rouge) 0,1 Louisiana Believes 

Student level 

School identification number String SIS 

Student identification number String SIS 

Year 2010/11 0,1 SIS 

Year 2011/12 0,1 SIS 

Year 2012/13 0,1 SIS 

Year 2013/14 0,1 SIS 

School name String SIS 

Grade level 0–12 SIS 

Persisted in school falla 0,1 Determined from SIS 

Currently classified as requiring an individualized education program 0,1 SIS 

Newly classified as requiring an individualized education program 0,1 Determined from SIS 

Newly declassified as requiring an individualized education program 0,1 Determined from SIS 

General education consistently in database 0,1 Determined from SIS 

Classified as having specific learning disability 0,1 SIS 

Classified as having speech or language impairment 0,1 SIS 

Classified as having intellectual disability 0,1 SIS 

Classified as having emotional disturbance 0,1 SIS 

Classified as having hearing impairment 0,1 SIS 

Classified as having orthopedic impairment 0,1 SIS 

Classified as having other health impairment 0,1 SIS 

Classified as having visual impairment 0,1 SIS 

Classified as having autism spectrum disorder 0,1 SIS 

Classified as having developmental delay 0,1 SIS 

Classified as having multiple disabilities 0,1 SIS 

Classified as having deaf-blindness 0,1 SIS 

Classified as having traumatic brain injury 0,1 SIS 

SIS is Louisiana Department of Education Student Information Systems. Louisiana Believes is the Louisiana 

Department of Education website (http://www.louisianabelieves.com). 

a. Variable generated from four years of data, yielding three indicator variables for two, three, or four years of 

persistent enrollment. 

Source: Data dictionary for files provided by the Louisiana Department of Education. 

C-2 
 

 

high (grades 9–12) schools. Accordingly, the study team used a grade-range classification 

that is exhaustive but not mutually exclusive—schools serving grades 3–8 are classified 

as “1” for both K–5 and 6–8. Also, any student with multiple disabilities is classified in 

that category, and only that category, even if she or he has a primary disability that fits a 

different disability category. The state of Louisiana Department of Education subclassifies 

students with intellectual disabilities as having a mild, moderate, or severe impairment. 

For the comparison of special education enrollment based on whether the disabilities 

are high-incidence or low-incidence, the subclassifications of intellectual disability–mild 

and intellectual disability–moderate were combined into a single category of intellectual disability–nonsevere and assigned to the high-incidence category. The subclassification 

of intellectual disability–severe was assigned to the low-incidence category. Finally, the 

enrollment file was from the fall of the period of confirmed enrollment; thus, any student 

enrolled in a charter school in the fall who subsequently transferred to a traditional school 

was considered to be a charter school student for that year and vice versa. 

Explanation of sampling choices 

The four Louisiana educational regions with three or more charter schools between 2010/11 

and 2013/14 were Region 1, which includes New Orleans; Region 3, which includes Jefferson Parish and five other parishes near New Orleans; Region 5, which includes Ouachita 

Parish and five surrounding parishes in the northeast corner of the state; and Region 8, 

which includes Baton Rouge (map C1). 

Map C1. Map of Louisiana regions included in study population 

New Orleans 

Region 

Orleans Parish 

St. Tammany 

Jefferson Parish 

Region 

Assumption 

Iberville 

Iberia 

Lafourche 

Jefferson 

Plaquemines 

St. Bernard 

St. Landry 

St. Mary 

St. Martin 

Terrebonne 

Caldwell 

Concordia 

East Carroll 

Evangeline 

Grant 

Franklin 

Jackson 

LaSalle 

Lincoln 

Madison 

Morehouse 

Ouachita 

Rapides 

Richland 

Tensas 

Union 

West Carroll 

Baton Rouge 

Region 

Avoyelles 

East Baton Rouge 

East Feliciana 

Ouachita Region 

Claiborne 

Catahoula 

Note: Regional boundaries are defined by the Louisiana Department of Education. Parishes in gray shading are 

excluded from the study because they are not part of any of the four educational regions with three or more 

charter schools. 

Source: Authors’ compilation based on information provided by the Louisiana Department of Education. 

C-3 
The number of charter schools included in the study varied across the four regions and 

the four years in the analyses (table C2). The New Orleans region had the most charter 

schools, with 40 in 2010/11, increasing to 72 in 2013/14. The Ouachita region had the 

fewest charter schools, with 3 in both 2010/11 and 2011/12, increasing to 4 in 2012/13 

and 8 in 2013/14. 

Table C2. Number of charter schools in the study population, by region, 

2010/11–2013/14 

Year Baton Rouge Jefferson New Orleans Ouachita 

2010/11 10 4 40 3 

2011/12 13 4 47 3 

2012/13 16 10 65 4 

2013/14 18 13 72 8 

Source: Authors’ calculations based on student-level data provided by the Louisiana Department of Education. 

Table C3. Study population for research question 1, by region, 2010/11–2013/14 

School year and region 

All 

students 

Charter 

schools 

Students 

in charter 

schools 

Traditional 

schools 

Students in 

traditional 

schools 

Students 

in special 

education 

Students 

in special 

education 

in charter 

schools 

Students 

in special 

education in 

traditional 

schools 

2010/11 

Baton Rouge 62,282 10 2,510 94 59,772 5,579 157 5,422 

Jefferson 

New Orleans 

141,970 

59,756 

4 

40 

1,868 

15,246 

193 

19 

140,102 

44,510 

14,750 

7,860 

138 

1,344 

14,612 

6,516 

Ouachita 10,2017 3 1,285 83 100,732 11,587 78 11,509 

Baton Rouge 65,567 13 3,632 89 61,935 5,484 205 5,279 

Jefferson 143,814 4 2,173 191 141,641 14,666 142 14,524 

Total 366,025 57 20,909 389 345,116 39,776 1,717 38,059 

2011/12 

New Orleans 64,703 47 20,107 7 44,596 8,369 1,917 6,452 

Ouachita 102,629 3 1,393 83 101,236 11,630 80 11,550 

Baton Rouge 67,192 16 4,709 88 62,483 5,585 310 5,275 

Jefferson 146,692 10 2,780 180 143,912 14,580 162 14,418 

Total 376,713 67 27,305 370 349,408 40,149 2,344 37,805 

2012/13 

New Orleans 70,458 65 23,990 7 46,468 8,991 2,451 6,540 

Ouachita 103,699 4 1,629 81 102,070 11,660 106 11,554 

Total 388,041 95 33,108 356 354,933 40,816 3,029 37,787 

Baton Rouge 69,651 18 5,074 82 64,577 5,790 363 5,427 

Jefferson 149,223 13 3,761 169 145,462 14,916 250 14,666 

2013/14 

New Orleans 75,371 72 29,065 6 46,306 9,762 3,241 6,521 

Ouachita 103,855 8 2,255 80 101,600 11,698 130 11,568 

Total 398,100 111 40,155 337 357,945 42,166 3,984 38,182 

Total of all regions and years 1,528,879 330 121,477 1,452 1,407,402 162,907 11,074 151,833 

Source: Authors’ calculations based on student-level data provided by the Louisiana Department of Education. 

C-4 
All K–12 public school students, in charter or traditional schools, in the four study regions 

were included in the annual study population for research question 1. The charter school 

study population consisted of all Louisiana students enrolled in an open-enrollment charter 

school in Louisiana educational regions 1, 3, 5, and 8 (table C3). Students in Louisiana 

charter schools outside those regions were excluded from the study because they had fewer 

than three charter schools for some or all of the four years of the study. Regional Educational Laboratory Southwest’s data-sharing agreement with the Louisiana Department of 

Education specified that data could not be displayed if they were generated by fewer than 

three schools or fewer than 10 students. Students enrolled in conversion charter schools 

also were excluded from the analysis. The traditional school study population consists of 

all Louisiana students enrolled in a traditional school in Louisiana educational regions 1, 

3, 5, and 8 (the same regions that the charter school study population includes). 

The proportion of the Louisiana charter school population excluded from the study population, as a result of being a conversion charter school or being located outside one of the 

four study regions, ranged from 17 percent in 2011/12 to 35 percent in 2010/11 (table C4). 

Louisiana Department of Education officials indicated that such fluctuations are normal, 

given that the number of charter schools that open and close in each region can vary from 

year to year. 

The study population for research question 2a included all students who were enrolled in 

a charter or traditional school and had an individualized education program in 2010/11 

(table C5). 

The study population for research question 2b included all students who were enrolled in 

a charter school or traditional school, had an individualized education program in 2010/11, 

and did not experience a structural move during the four years for which data were collected (table C6). (A structural move is defined as changing schools due to a change of address 

or aging out of the offered grades.) 

Analysis methods 

The answers to research questions 1 (on how the enrollment rate of students with an individualized education program differed between charter schools and traditional schools 

overall and by educational region), 1a (on how the size of the enrollment gap varied across 

Table C4. Louisiana charter schools and students excluded from the study population, 

2010/11–2013/14 

Year 

Conversion 

charter 

schools 

Students in 

conversion 

charter 

schools 

Open 

enrollment 

schools 

outside study 

regions 

Students 

in open 

enrollment 

schools 

outside study 

regions 

Total 

excluded 

schools 

Total 

excluded 

students 

Excluded 

schools as a 

percentage 

of all 

Louisiana 

charter 

schools 

Excluded 

students as 

a percentage 

of all 

Louisiana 

charter 

students 

2010/11 5 3,341 18 9,149 23 12,490 29 

2011/12 5 3,472 10 2,414 15 5,886 18 

2012/13 6 4,309 25 11,014 31 15,323 25 

2013/14 6 4,550 29 12,133 35 16,683 24 

Source: Authors’ calculations based on school- and student-level data provided by the Louisiana Department of Education. 

C-5 

35 

17 

34 

23 

- -
Table C5. Study population for research question 2a, by years in special education 

and region, 2010/11–2013/14 

Students in special Students in special 

Years in special education All students in education in education in 

and region special education charter schools traditional schools 

One year 

Baton Rouge 2,343 133 2,210 

Jefferson 

New Orleans 

6,139 

8,408 

144 

1,398 

5,995 

7,010 

Ouachita 126 66 60 

Baton Rouge 1,847 93 1,754 

Jefferson 5,191 71 5,120 

Total 17,016 1,741 15,275 

Two years 

New Orleans 6,811 983 5,828 

Ouachita 135 45 90 

Total 13,984 1,192 12,792 

Baton Rouge 1,404 39 1,365 

Jefferson 4,162 36 4,126 

Three years 

New Orleans 5,557 690 4,867 

Ouachita 117 29 88 

Total 11,240 794 10,446 

Baton Rouge 2,768 50 2,718 

Jefferson 7,653 36 7,617 

Four yearsa 

New Orleans 10,621 659 9,962 

Ouachita 112 19 93 

Total 21,154 764 20,390 

Total of all regions and years 63,394 4,491 58,903 

Note: All students in this study population were classified as requiring special education services in 2010/11. 

a. Observations of students with a special education classification all four years were included in the denominator each year in the statistical models estimating the association of various student factors with declassification over time. 

Source: Authors’ calculations based on student-level data provided by the Louisiana Department of Education. 

Table C6. Study population for research question 2b, by years in special education, 

2010/11–2013/14 

Years in special education 

All students 

in special 

education 

Students 

in special 

education 

in charter 

schools 

Students 

in special 

education in 

traditional 

schools 

In same school one year before nonstructural move 16,202 392 15,810 

In same school two years before nonstructural move 13,836 208 12,731 

In same school three years before nonstructural move 7,437 149 6,630 

In same school four years 10,896 6 9,423 

Total of all persistence levels 48,371 755 44,594 

Note: All students in this study population were classified as requiring special education services in 2010/11. 

Source: Authors’ calculations based on student-level data provided by Louisiana Department of Education. 

C-6 
grade spans), and 1b (on how the size of the enrollment gap varied across disability categories) were obtained by generating aggregate descriptive statistics to compare special education enrollment rates between charter schools and traditional schools for the student 

populations in the four regions across the four years, at conventional grade ranges and 

disaggregated by disability category. Each comparison included each of the four regions 

combined and was disaggregated when data counts were sufficient. For the combined study 

population the study team generated averages across the individuals in the study population, not averages of the rates across the four distinct regions. 

Research question 2 (on whether the likelihood of a student being classified as or declassified from requiring an individualized education program was associated with enrollment in a charter school or a traditional school overall and after grade level and years 

of continuous enrollment in the same school were controlled for) involved the use of a 

longitudinal enrollment database to estimate Cox duration hazard likelihood models (for 

example, Howell, 2004), with results reported in tables 6–9 in the main text. The study 

team tracked a single baseline cohort, 2010/11, across outcome years 2011/12, 2012/13, and 

2013/14 for the purpose of estimating the hazard events of new classification as requiring 

an individualized education program and new declassification. Student grade was for the 

baseline year of 2010/11. Because of the censored nature of the data, any effects of factors 

on student classification or declassification likelihoods that occurred before fall 2010 or 

after fall 2013 were not captured by the analysis. 

Duration hazard models were ideal for this part of the analysis because they allowed 

explanatory variables to predict a change in condition, such as a classification as requiring 

an individualized education program, within a time series and also to predict whether the 

change tended to happen sooner or later, conditional on student baseline characteristics, 

such as initial grade. The general expression of the duration hazard model for students 

being declassified from requiring an individualized education program was 

h(t, xi

) = Pr(Dit = 0|Dit–1 = 1, xi) = F(γ + xiβ) 

where h represents the hazard of declassification over period t, given predictor variables x. 

The predictor variables in the models consistently included an indicator for being enrolled 

in a charter school. For the regression estimations that produced the results presented in 

tables 6 and 7 in the main text, a vector of indicator variables for initial student grade was 

included. For the regression estimations that produced the results presented in tables 8 and 

9 in the main text, indicator variables for years of student persistence in their initial school 

were added to the vector of indicator variables for initial student grade. Observations on 

students who graduated from their school during the time period of the study were excluded from tables 8 and 9 in the main text. They had to change schools because they completed the final grade in their school while other students who changed schools did so for 

different reasons. The sample sizes was 302,631 for table 6 in the main text and 63,394 for 

table 7 in the main text. The sample sizes dropped to 287,608 for table 8 and 48,371 for 

table 9. Specifically, that hazard is the likelihood of the disability indicator variable D for 

student i in time t taking the value 0 given that D took the value 1 for that same student i 

in period t – 1, the determination of which will be a function of a constant value γ and the 

effects, β, of predictor variables x. 

C-7 
These analytic models also were estimated using newly classified as requiring an individualized education program in place of declassified as the hazard being predicted. 

To explore research question 2a, the study introduced as the variables of interest a vector 

of indicator variables for the grade of the student, with prekindergarten as the omitted reference category, to examine the extent to which a student’s likelihood of being classified as 

requiring an individualized education program varied by the student’s initial grade at his or 

her school. To explore research question 2b, the study team added to the model the ordinal 

variable of student enrollment persistence as the variable of interest, making it possible to 

explore the extent to which a student’s likelihood of being classified as requiring an individualized education program varied by how long the student remained enrolled in his or 

her baseline school. 

The study team used standard significance tests on the coefficients of the variables of 

interest to determine which ones were consistently associated with variance in student 

disability classification or enrollment change. Given the complexity of hazard models, the 

meanings of the variable coefficients themselves were not readily interpretable. To aid in 

interpretation, the study team calculated the averaged effects of each indicator variable 

in terms of its predicted percentage change in the likelihood of being newly classified or 

declassified as requiring special education for the overall study population. 

C-8 
Appendix D. Detailed results 

This appendix reports detailed results from this exploratory study. 

Special education enrollment gap by educational region 

In the Baton Rouge region the largest special education enrollment gap between charter 

schools and traditional schools was in schools serving the middle school grades (grades 

6–8) in all four years of the study (table D1). The gap was the smallest in schools serving 

the elementary school grades, with schools serving the high school grades in the middle, 

across three of the four years of the study. The exception to this pattern was 2011/12, 

when the gap was the smallest in schools serving the high school grades. Measured as a 

proportion of the special education enrollment rate in traditional schools, from 2010/11 to 

2013/14 the gap in schools serving the elementary school grades decreased from 20 percent 

to 9 percent, the gap in schools serving the middle school grades decreased from 51 percent 

to 24  percent, and the gap in schools serving the high school grades decreased from 

29 percent to 12 percent. 

In the Jefferson region the gap varied across both grade ranges and years (table D2). The 

gap was largest in schools serving the elementary school grades in 2012/13 and 2013/14 

and smallest in schools serving the elementary school grades in 2010/11 and in schools 

serving the middle school grades in 2012/13 and 2013/14. In 2011/12 the gap was the same 

Table D1. Special education enrollment rates in Baton Rouge region charter schools 

and traditional schools, by year and school grade range, 2010/11–2013/14 

Charter Traditional Gapa 

Year and school grade range (percent) (percent) points) differenceb 

schools schools (percentage Percent 

2010/11 

Grades K–5 7.5 9.5 1.9 20 

Grades 6–8 4.9 9.9 5.0 51 

Grades 9–12 5.3 7.4 2.1 29 

2011/12 

Grades K–5 5.9 8.4 2.5 30 

Grades 6–8 5.2 9.3 4.1 44 

Grades 9–12 5.7 7.7 2.0 26 

2012/13 

Grades K–5 7.1 8.1 1.0 13 

Grades 6–8 6.6 9.2 2.6 28 

Grades 9–12 6.1 8.0 1.9 23 

2013/14 

Grades K–5 7.4 8.2 0.8 9 

Grades 6–8 7.0 9.2 2.2 24 

Grades 9–12 7.1 8.1 1.0 12 

a. Calculated as the rate among students in traditional schools minus the rate among students in charter 

schools. The value may not equal the difference between the rates displayed in the table because of rounding. 

b. Calculated as the gap divided by the rate among students in traditional schools.
 

Note: None of the gaps was statistically significant (p < .05; two-tailed t test).
 

Source: Authors’ calculations based on student-level data provided by the Louisiana Department of Education.
 

D-1 
 

Table D2. Special education enrollment rates in Jefferson region charter schools 

and traditional schools, by year and school grade range, 2010/11–2013/14 

Gapa 

Year and school Charter schools Traditional schools (percentage 

grade range (percent) (percent) points) Percent differenceb 

2010/11 

Grades K–5 8.3 11.5 3.2 28 

Grades 6–8 6.2 10.7 4.5 42 

Grades 9–12 c 8.9 c c 

Grades K–5 6.8 10.9 4.0 37 

2011/12 

Grades 6–8 6.9 10.9 4.0 37 

Grades 9–12 c 8.8 c c 

Grades K–5 5.8 10.5 4.7 45 

2012/13 

Grades 6–8 7.4 10.9 3.5 33 

Grades 9–12 c 8.7 c c 

Grades K–5 6.2 10.6 4.3 41 

Grades 6–8 8.3 11.1 2.7 25 

2013/14 

Grades 9–12 5.7 8.5 2.8 33 

a. Calculated as the rate among students in traditional schools minus the rate among students in charter 

schools. The value may not equal the difference between the rates displayed in the table because of rounding. 

b. Calculated as the gap divided by the rate among students in traditional schools. 

c. Value not available because of insufficient study population size.
 

Note: None of the gaps was statistically significant (p < .05; two-tailed t test).
 

Source: Authors’ calculations based on student-level data provided by the Louisiana Department of Education.
 

size—4  percentage points—in both schools serving the elementary school grades and 

schools serving the middle school grades. Data privacy rules governing small cell frequencies of fewer than three schools or fewer than 10 students (see appendix C) prevented the 

display of the special education enrollment rate for charter schools in the high school 

grades in 2010/11–2012/13. Measured as a proportion of the special education enrollment 

rate in traditional schools, from 2010/11 to 2013/14 the gap in schools serving the elementary school grades increased from 28 percent to 41 percent, and the gap in schools serving 

the middle school grades dropped from 42 percent to 25 percent. 

In the New Orleans region the special education enrollment gap differed across grade 

ranges with a pattern that was consistent across the four years of the study (table D3). In 

every year of the study the gap was largest and statistically significant in schools serving 

the elementary school grades, in the middle in schools serving the middle school grades, 

and smallest in schools serving the high school grades. In schools serving the high school 

grades the special education enrollment rate was higher in charter schools than in traditional schools. In 2013/14 the special education enrollment gap favoring charter schools 

over traditional schools in schools serving the high school grades was statistically significant. The high school grades in the New Orleans region are the only region–grade range 

combination in this study in which the special education enrollment gap was negative, 

indicating a higher special education enrollment rate in charter schools than in traditional 

schools. Measured as a proportion of the special education enrollment rate in traditional 

D-2 
Table D3. Special education enrollment rates in New Orleans region charter schools 

and traditional schools, by year and school grade range, 2010/11–2013/14 

Gapa 

Year and school Charter schools Traditional schools (percentage 

grade range (percent) (percent) points) Percent differenceb 

2010/11 

Grades K–5 7.8 17.2 9.3** 55 

Grades 6–8 9.5 14.0 4.4* 32 

Grades 9–12 11.5 11.4 –0.1 –1 

Grades K–5 8.4 16.7 8.3** 50 

2011/12 

Grades 6–8 11.0 14.6 3.6* 25 

Grades 9–12 12.1 10.8 –1.4 –13 

Grades K–5 9.2 16.0 6.7** 42 

2012/13 

Grades 6–8 11.4 14.0 2.6 18 

Grades 9–12 12.6 11.1 –1.5 –13 

Grades K–5 9.6 15.7 6.0** 39 

Grades 6–8 13.2 14.7 1.5 10 

2013/14 

Grades 9–12 14.3 11.1 –3.2* –28 

* Significant at p < .05; ** significant at p < .01. 

a. Calculated as the rate among students in traditional schools minus the rate among students in charter 

schools. The value may not equal the difference between the rates displayed in the table because of rounding. 

b. Calculated as the gap divided by the rate among students in traditional schools.
 

Source: Authors’ calculations based on student-level data provided by the Louisiana Department of Education.
 

schools, from 2010/11 to 2013/14 the gap in schools serving the elementary school grades 

decreased from 55  percent to 39  percent, the gap in schools serving the middle school 

grades decreased from 32 percent to 10 percent, and the gap in schools serving the high 

school grades (which involved a higher special education enrollment rate in charter schools 

than in traditional schools) increased from 1 percent to 28 percent. 

In the Ouachita region the special education enrollment gap varied across both grade 

ranges and study years (table D4). The gap was largest in schools serving the high school 

grades in 2013/14 and in schools serving the middle school grades in all other years. The 

gap was smallest in schools serving the elementary school grades in 2010/11, 2011/12, and 

2012/13 and in schools serving the middle school grades in 2013/14. Measured as a proportion of the special education enrollment rate in traditional schools, the gap in schools 

serving the elementary school grades increased from 40 percent in 2010/11 to 47 percent 

in 2013/14, the gap in schools serving the middle school grades decreased from 66 percent 

in 2010/11 to 47 percent in 2013/14, and the gap in schools serving the high school grades 

increased from 49 percent in 2012/13 to 67 percent in 2013/14. 

Special education enrollment gap by disability category 

For the entire study population the special education enrollment gap by disability category tended to be larger in the earlier years of the study and smaller in the later years 

(table D5). For example, in charter schools the enrollment gap for students with specific 

D-3 
Table D4. Special education enrollment rates in Ouachita region charter schools 

and traditional schools, by year and school grade range, 2010/11–2013/14 

Gapa 

Year and Charter schools Traditional schools (percentage 

grade range (percent) (percent) points) Percent differenceb 

2010/11 

Grades K–5 7.2 11.9 4.8 40 

Grades 6–8 4.1 12.2 8.1 66 

Grades K–5 7.0 11.7 4.7 40 

Grades 9–12 c 10.2 c c 

2011/12 

Grades 6–8 4.3 12.1 7.9 65 

Grades 9–12 c 10.5 c c 

Grades K–5 7.6 11.6 4.1 35 

2012/13 

Grades 6–8 5.3 12.0 6.6 55 

Grades 9–12 5.4 10.6 5.2 49 

Grades K–5 6.3 11.9 5.6 47 

Grades 6–8 6.3 11.8 5.5 47 

2013/14 

Grades 9–12 3.5 10.4 6.9 67 

a. Calculated as the rate among students in traditional schools minus the rate among students in charter 

schools. The value may not equal the difference between the rates displayed in the table because of rounding. 

b. Calculated as the gap divided by the rate among students in traditional schools. 

c. Value not available because of insufficient study population size.
 

Note: None of the gaps was statistically significant (p < .05; two-tailed t test).
 

Source: Authors’ calculations based on student-level data provided by the Louisiana Department of Education.
 

Table D5. Special education enrollment rates in Louisiana charter schools and 

traditional schools, by disability category and year, 2010/11–2013/14 

Charter schools Traditional schools Gapa 

Disability category and year (percent) (percent) (percentage points) 

Autism spectrum disorder 

2010/11 0.30 0.53 0.23** 

2011/12 0.39 0.60 0.21** 

2012/13 0.49 0.63 0.14** 

2013/14 0.59 0.67 0.08** 

Deaf-blindness 

b b b 2010/11 

b b b 2011/12 

2012/13 b b b 

2010/11 0.30 1.10 0.80** 

2011/12 0.30 1.20 0.90** 

2013/14 b b b 

Developmental delay 

2012/13 0.50 1.20 0.70** 

2013/14 0.60 1.20 0.60** 

Emotional disturbance 

2010/11 0.43 0.25 –0.18 ** 

2011/12 0.58 0.23 0.25** 

2012/13 0.58 0.21 –0.37** 

2013/14 0.61 0.20 –0.41** 

(continued)

D-4 
Table D5. Special education enrollment rates in Louisiana charter schools and 

traditional schools, by disability category and year, 2010/11–2013/14 (continued)

Charter schools Traditional schools Gapa 

Disability category and year (percent) (percent) (percentage points) 

Hearing impairment (severe) 

2010/11 0.02 0.04 0.02** 

2011/12 0.01 0.04 0.02** 

2012/13 0.01 0.04 0.03** 

2010/11 0.02 0.06 0.04** 

2011/12 0.04 0.06 0.02** 

2013/14 0.02 0.04 0.03** 

Intellectual disability (severe) 

2012/13 0.03 0.05 0.02** 

2010/11 b b b 

2011/12 b b b 

2013/14 0.02 0.05 0.03** 

Multiple disabilities 

2012/13 b b b 

2013/14 b b b 

2010/11 0.20 0.20 0.00 

2011/12 0.20 0.20 0.00 

Orthopedic impairment 

2012/13 0.10 0.20 0.10** 

2010/11 1.04 1.40 0.36** 

2011/12 1.21 1.40 0.19** 

2013/14 0.10 0.20 0.10** 

Other health impairment 

2012/13 1.32 1.41 0.09 

2010/11 2.55 3.22 0.68** 

2011/12 2.63 3.25 0.62** 

2013/14 1.43 1.40 –0.03 

Specific learning disability 

2012/13 2.89 3.20 0.31** 

2010/11 2.72 2.83 –0.11 

2011/12 2.56 2.58 0.02 

2013/14 3.11 3.20 0.09 

Speech/language impairment 

2012/13 2.32 2.41 0.10 

2010/11 0.00 0.00 0.00 

2011/12 0.00 0.00 0.00 

2013/14 2.38 2.33 –0.05 

Traumatic brain injury 

2012/13 0.00 0.00 0.00 

2010/11 0.00 0.02 0.02** 

2011/12 0.01 0.02 0.01** 

2013/14 0.00 0.00 0.00 

Visual impairment (severe) 

2012/13 0.02 0.03 0.01** 

2013/14 0.02 0.03 0.01** 

** Significant at p < .01. 

a. Calculated as the rate among students in traditional schools minus the rate among students in charter 

schools. The value may not equal the difference between the rates displayed in the table because of rounding. 

b. Value not available because of insufficient study population size.
 

Source: Authors’ calculations based on student-level data provided by the Louisiana Department of Education.
 

D-5 
learning disabilities declined from 0.7 percentage point in 2010/11 to 0.1 percentage point 

in 2013/14. Likewise, the gap for students with speech/language impairments was 0.1 percentage point in favor of traditional schools in 2010/11 but changed to 0.1 percentage point 

in favor of charter schools in 2013/14. Students with developmental delay were an exception to this pattern, as the enrollment gap of 0.8 percentage point in 2010/11 remained at 

0.6 percentage point in 2013/14. 

The Baton Rouge region was distinctive in that it had the lowest special education enrollment rate in both traditional and charter schools for students with many disability categories (table D6). In 2013/14 the gap that most favored traditional schools was for students 

with developmental delay, where it was 0.9 percentage point, and the gap that most favored 

charter schools was for students with other health impairments, where it was 0.2 percentage point. 

Table D6. Special education enrollment rates in Baton Rouge region charter 

schools and traditional schools, by disability category and year, 2010/11–2013/14 

Charter schools Traditional schools Gapa 

Disability category and year (percent) (percent) (percentage points) 

Autism spectrum disorder 

2010/11 b 0.4 b 

2011/12 b 0.4 b 

2012/13 0.3 0.5 0.2 

2013/14 0.4 0.5 0.1 

Deaf-blindness 

2010/11 b 

b 

b 

b 

b 

b 2011/12 

2012/13 b b b 

2010/11 0.4 1.0 0.6 

2011/12 0.3 1.1 0.8 

2013/14 b b b 

Developmental delay 

2012/13 0.3 1.1 0.8 

2013/14 0.3 1.2 0.9 

Emotional disturbance 

2010/11 

2011/12 

b 

b 

0.2 

0.2 

b 

b 

2012/13 0.2 0.1 –0.1 

2010/11 b 0.1 b 

2011/12 b 0.1 b 

2013/14 0.2 0.2 0.0 

Hearing impairment (severe) 

2012/13 b 0.1 b 

2010/11 b 0.8 b 

2011/12 b 0.8 b 

2013/14 b 0.1 b 

Intellectual disability (severe) 

2012/13 0.2 0.8 0.6 

2013/14 0.3 0.8 0.5 

(continued)

D-6 
Table D6. Special education enrollment rates in Baton Rouge region charter schools 

and traditional schools, by disability category and year, 2010/11–2013/14 (continued)

Charter schools Traditional schools Gapa 

Disability category and year (percent) (percent) (percentage points) 

Multiple disabilities 

b b b 2010/11 

2011/12 b b b 

2012/13 b b b 

2010/11 b 0.2 b 

2011/12 b 0.2 b 

2013/14 b b b 

Orthopedic impairment 

2012/13 b 0.2 b 

2013/14 b 0.2 b 

2010/11 0.7 0.8 0.1 

2011/12 0.6 0.9 0.3 

Other health impairment 

2012/13 1.0 0.9 –0.1 

2010/11 1.9 2.4 0.5 

2011/12 2.0 2.3 0.3 

2013/14 1.1 0.9 –0.2 

Specific learning disability 

2012/13 2.2 2.3 0.1 

2013/14 2.4 2.3 –0.1 

Speech/language impairment 

2010/11 2.7 2.9 0.2 

2011/12 2.1 2.4 0.3 

2012/13 2.1 2.2 0.1 

2013/14 2.2 2.1 –0.1 

Traumatic brain injury 

2010/11 b 

b 

0.0 

0.0 

b 

b 2011/12 

2012/13 b 0.0 b 

2013/14 b 0.0 b 

2010/11 b 0.0 b 

2011/12 b 0.0 b 

Visual impairment (severe) 0.0 

2012/13 b 0.0 b 

2013/14 b 0.0 b 

a. Calculated as the rate among students in traditional schools minus the rate among students in charter 

schools. 

b. Value not available because of insufficient study population size.
 

Note: None of the gaps was statistically significant (p < .05; two-tailed t test).
 

Source: Authors’ calculations based on student-level data provided by the Louisiana Department of Education.
 

The Jefferson region also was distinctive in that its special education enrollment gap was 

relatively stable across the study period (table D7). In 2013/14 the gap that most favored 

traditional schools was for students with specific learning disabilities, where it was 2 percentage points, and there was no gap for students with speech/language impairments or 

other health impairments. 

D-7 
Table D7. Special education enrollment rates in Jefferson region charter schools 

and traditional schools, by disability category and year, 2010/11–2013/14 

Charter schools Traditional schools Gapa 

Disability category and year (percent) (percent) (percentage points) 

Autism spectrum disorder 

2010/11 b 0.7 b 

2011/12 b 0.7 b 

2012/13 b 0.7 b 

2010/11 b b b 

2011/12 b b b 

2013/14 0.0 1.0 1.0 

Deaf-blindness 

2012/13 b b b 

2010/11 b 0.7 b 

2011/12 b 0.7 b 

2013/14 b b b 

Developmental delay 

2012/13 0.4 0.8 0.4 

2013/14 b 1.0 b 

Emotional disturbance 

2010/11 b 

b 

0.2 

0.2 

b 

b 2011/12 

2012/13 b 0.2 b 

2010/11 b 0.2 b 

2011/12 b 0.2 b 

2013/14 b 0.0 b 

Hearing impairment (severe) 

2012/13 b 0.2 b 

2010/11 b 1.1 b 

2011/12 b 1.1 b 

2013/14 b 0.0 b 

Intellectual disability (severe) 

2012/13 b 1.0 b 

2010/11 b b b 

2011/12 b b b 

2013/14 0.0 1.0 1.0 

Multiple disabilities 

2012/13 b b b 

2010/11 b 0.2 b 

2011/12 b 0.2 b 

2013/14 b b b 

Orthopedic impairment 

2012/13 b 0.2 b 

2010/11 0.9 1.3 0.4 

2011/12 1.0 1.3 0.3 

2013/14 b 0.0 b 

Other health impairment 

2012/13 1.0 1.3 0.3 

2013/14 1.0 1.0 0.0 

Specific learning disability 

2010/11 2.4 2.8 0.4 

2011/12 2.0 2.8 0.8 

2012/13 1.5 2.8 1.3 

2013/14 1.0 3.0 2.0 

(continued)

D-8 
Table D7. Special education enrollment rates in Jefferson region charter schools and 

traditional schools, by disability category and year, 2010/11–2013/14 (continued)

Charter schools Traditional schools Gapa 

Disability category and year (percent) (percent) (percentage points) 

Speech/language impairment 

2010/11 2.9 3.0 0.1 

2011/12 2.9 2.8 –0.1 

2012/13 2.2 2.6 0.4 

2013/14 3.0 3.0 0.0 

Traumatic brain injury 

2010/11 b 0.0 b 

2011/12 b 0.0 b 

2012/13 b 0.0 b 

2013/14 b 0.0 b 

Visual impairment (severe) 

2010/11 b 0.1 b 

2011/12 b 0.1 b 

2012/13 b 0.1 b 

2013/14 b 0.0 b 

a. Calculated as the rate among students in traditional schools minus the rate among students in charter schools.
 

b. Value not available because of insufficient study population size.
 

Note: None of the gaps was statistically significant (p < .05; two-tailed t test).
 

Source: Authors’ calculations based on student-level data provided by the Louisiana Department of Education.
 

The New Orleans region had the highest special education enrollment rate in both traditional and charter schools (table D8). In 2013/14 the gap that most favored traditional 

schools was for students with other health impairments, where it was 1.1 percentage points, 

and the gap that most favored charter schools was for students with intellectual disabilities 

or emotional disturbance, where it was 0.4 percentage point. 

Table D8. Special education enrollment rates in New Orleans region charter schools 

and traditional schools, by disability category and year, 2010/11–2013/14 

Charter schools Traditional schools Gapa 

Disability category and year (percent) (percent) (percentage points) 

Autism spectrum disorder 

2010/11 0.3 0.6 0.3 

2011/12 0.4 0.7 0.3 

2012/13 0.5 0.7 0.2 

2013/14 0.7 0.8 0.1 

Deaf-blindness 

b b b 2010/11 

b b b 2011/12 

b b b 2012/13 

2013/14 b b b 

Developmental delay 

2010/11 0.3 1.6 1.3 

2011/12 0.3 1.7 1.4 

2012/13 0.5 1.7 1.2 

2013/14 0.7 1.7 1.0 

(continued)

D-9 
Table D8. Special education enrollment rates in New Orleans region charter schools 

and traditional schools, by disability category and year, 2010/11–2013/14 (continued)

Charter schools Traditional schools Gapa 

Disability category and year (percent) (percent) (percentage points) 

Emotional disturbance 

2010/11 0.5 0.6 0.1 

2011/12 0.6 0.5 –0.1 

2012/13 0.7 0.4 –0.3 

2013/14 0.8 0.4 –0.4 

Hearing impairment (severe) 

2010/11 b 0.2 b 

2011/12 0.1 0.2 0.1 

2012/13 0.1 0.2 0.1 

2013/14 0.1 0.2 0.1 

Intellectual disability (severe) 

2010/11 1.0 0.8 –0.2 

2011/12 1.1 0.8 –0.3 

2012/13 1.1 0.7 –0.4 

2013/14 1.2 0.8 –0.4 

Multiple disabilities 

b b b 2010/11 

b b b 2011/12 

2012/13 b b b 

2010/11 0.2 0.2 0.0 

2011/12 0.1 0.2 0.1 

2013/14 b b b 

Orthopedic impairment 

2012/13 0.1 0.2 0.1 

2013/14 0.1 0.2 0.1 

Other health impairment 

2010/11 1.1 2.6 1.5 

2011/12 1.3 2.8 1.5 

2012/13 1.4 2.7 1.3 

2013/14 1.6 2.7 1.1 

Specific learning disability 

2010/11 2.6 3.9 1.3 

2011/12 2.8 3.9 1.1 

2012/13 3.1 3.9 0.8 

2013/14 3.4 3.9 0.5 

Speech/language impairment 

2010/11 2.6 3.8 1.2 

2011/12 2.6 3.5 0.9 

2012/13 2.4 3.3 0.9 

2013/14 2.5 3.2 0.7 

Traumatic brain injury 

2010/11 b 0.0 b 

2011/12 b 0.0 0.0 

2012/13 0.1 0.0 –0.1 

2013/14 0.0 0.0 0.0 

Visual impairment (severe) 

2010/11 b 0.1 b 

2011/12 b 0.1 b 

2012/13 0.0 0.1 0.1 

2013/14 0.0 0.0 0.0 

a. Calculated as the rate among students in traditional schools minus the rate among students in charter schools.
 

b. Value not available because of insufficient study population size.
 

Note: None of the gaps was statistically significant (p < .05; two-tailed t test).
 

Source: Authors’ calculations based on student-level data provided by the Louisiana Department of Education.
 

D-10 
The special education enrollment gap in the Ouachita region was the largest among the 

four regions in the later years of the study (table D9). In 2013/14 the gap that most favored 

traditional schools was for students with specific learning disabilities, where it was 1.9 percentage points, and there was no gap for students with speech/language impairments. 

Table D9. Special education enrollment rates in Ouachita region charter schools 

and traditional schools, by disability category and year, 2010/11–2013/14 

Charter schools Traditional schools Gapa 

Disability category and year (percent) (percent) (percentage points) 

Autism spectrum disorder 

2010/11 b 0.4 b 

2011/12 b 0.4 b 

2012/13 b 0.5 b 

2010/11 b b b 

2011/12 b b b 

2013/14 b 0.5 b 

Deaf-blindness 

2012/13 b b b 

2010/11 b 1.5 b 

2011/12 b 1.6 b 

2013/14 b b b 

Developmental delay 

2012/13 b 1.7 b 

2010/11 b 0.2 b 

2011/12 b 0.1 b 

2013/14 0.5 1.9 1.4 

Emotional disturbance 

2012/13 b 0.1 b 

2010/11 b 0.1 b 

2011/12 b 0.1 b 

2013/14 b 0.1 b 

Hearing impairment (severe) 

2012/13 b 0.1 b 

2010/11 b 1.3 b 

2011/12 b 1.3 b 

2013/14 b 0.1 b 

Intellectual disability (severe) 

2012/13 b 1.3 b 

2010/11 b b b 

2011/12 b b b 

2013/14 b 1.2 b 

Multiple disabilities 

b b b 2012/13 

2013/14 b b b 

Orthopedic impairment 

2010/11 b 0.1 b 

2011/12 b 0.1 b 

2012/13 b 0.1 b 

2013/14 b 0.2 b 

(continued)

D-11 
Table D9. Special education enrollment rates in Ouachita region charter schools and 

traditional schools, by disability category and year, 2010/11–2013/14 (continued)

Charter schools Traditional schools Gapa 

Disability category and year (percent) (percent) (percentage points) 

Other health impairment 

2010/11 0.9 1.3 0.4 

2011/12 b 1.3 b 

2012/13 b 1.3 b 

2010/11 1.2 4.0 2.8 

2011/12 1.1 4.2 3.1 

2013/14 0.5 1.3 0.8 

Specific learning disability 

2012/13 1.8 4.1 2.3 

2013/14 2.2 4.1 1.9 

Speech/language impairment 

2010/11 

2011/12 

3.4 

3.2 

2.2 

2.0 

–1.2 

–1.2 

2012/13 3.0 1.9 –1.1 

2010/11 b 0.0 b 

2011/12 b 0.0 b 

2013/14 1.8 1.8 0.0 

Traumatic brain injury 

2012/13 b 0.0 b 

2013/14 b 0.0 b 

2010/11 b 0.1 b 

2011/12 b 0.1 b 

Visual impairment (severe) 

2012/13 b 0.1 b 

2013/14 b 0.1 b 

a. Calculated as the rate among students in traditional schools minus the rate among students in charter 

schools. 

b. Value not available because of insufficient study population size.
 

Note: None of the gaps was statistically significant (p < .05; two-tailed t test).
 

Source: Authors’ calculations based on student-level data provided by the Louisiana Department of Education.
 

Number of students with disabilities, disaggregated by region, year, grade range, and disability category 

Tables D10–D13 present frequencies of students with disabilities for charter and traditional 

schools, disaggregated by region, year, grade range, and disability category, which can be 

presented only for ranges of schools that are greater than three and for ranges of students 

that are greater than 10, consistent with the privacy rules governing the Regional Educational Laboratory Southwest data-sharing agreement with the state (see appendix C). 

The Louisiana Department of Education provides students classified as having an intellectual disability with a subclassification depending on whether their disability is mild, moderate, or severe. Thus, the study team could examine whether the enrollment gap between 

charter schools and traditional schools varied by severity of disability, within a specific 

student disability category, and whether any variance in the gap by disability severity was 

constant or varied across the years in the study. 

D-12 
Table D10. Complete disaggregation of students with disability frequencies by year, grade range, and 

disability category for the Baton Rouge region, 2010/11–2013/14 

Category 

2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 

Charter 

schools 

Traditional 

schools 

Charter 

schools 

Traditional 

schools 

Charter 

schools 

Traditional 

schools 

Charter 

schools 

Traditional 

schools 

All special education 157 5,422 205 5,279 310 5,275 363 5,427 

Grades K–5 91 2,747 88 2,535 121 2,418 124 2,489 

Grades 6–8 21 1,246 43 1,243 77 1,261 90 1,320 

Grades 9–12 45 1,124 73 1,183 112 1,276 148 1,323 

Specific learning disability 48 1,450 72 1,418 104 1,445 123 1,484 

Speech/language impairment 68 1,753 75 1,512 100 1,401 110 1,373 

Developmental delay 11 615 10 674 15 682 17 

Intellectual disability a 482 a 478 11 500 17 

Autism spectrum disorder a 248 a 267 14 300 18 

Emotional disturbance a 112 a 114 11 90 11 

Other health impairment 18 507 22 547 47 581 56 

Hearing impairment a 80 a 92 a 90 a 

Multiple disabilities a a a a a a a a

Orthopedic impairment a 109 a 110 a 119 a 109 

Visual impairment a 25 a 27 a 31 a 

Deaf-blindness a a a a a a a a

Traumatic brain injury a 18 a 17 a 13 a 

a. Value not available because of insufficient study population size.
 

Source: Authors’ calculations based on student-level data provided by the Louisiana Department of Education.
 

Table D11. Complete disaggregation of students with disability frequencies by year, grade range, and 

disability category for the Jefferson region, 2010/11–2013/14 

Category 

2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 

Charter 

schools 

Traditional 

schools 

Charter 

schools 

Traditional 

schools 

Charter 

schools 

Traditional 

schools 

Charter 

schools 

Traditional 

schools 

All special education 138 14,612 142 14,524 162 14,418 250 14,666 

Grades K–5 99 7,585 99 7,209 106 7,144 162 7,268 

Grades 6–8 36 3,198 42 3,397 54 3,419 72 3,577 

Grades 9–12 a 3,193 a 3,218 a 3,173 14 3,143 

Specific learning disability 45 3,880 43 3,995 42 3,965 55 4,051 

Speech/language impairment 54 4,159 62 3,932 62 3,697 100 3,670 

Developmental delay a 992 a 984 10 1,083 a 1,148 

Intellectual disability a 1,527 a 1,496 a 1,452 11 1,458 

Autism spectrum disorder a 912 a 972 a 1,029 10 1,119 

Emotional disturbance a 337 a 333 a 327 a 

Other health impairment 16 1,838 21 1,835 27 1,893 46 1,947 

Hearing impairment a 254 a 255 a 235 a 

Multiple disabilities a a a a a a a a

Orthopedic impairment a 257 a 262 a 265 a 262 

Visual impairment a 90 a 96 a 98 a 

Deaf-blindness a a a a a a a a

Traumatic brain injury a 40 a 41 a 46 a 

a. Value not available because of insufficient study population size.
 

Source: Authors’ calculations based on student-level data provided by the Louisiana Department of Education.
 

D-13 

751 

536 

317 

111 

600 

81 

29 

15 

310 

257 

93 

47 
 

Table D12. Complete disaggregation of students with disability frequencies by year, grade range, and 

disability category for the New Orleans region, 2010/11–2013/14 

Category 

2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 

Charter 

schools 

Traditional 

schools 

Charter 

schools 

Traditional 

schools 

Charter 

schools 

Traditional 

schools 

Charter 

schools 

Traditional 

schools 

All special education 1,344 6,516 1,917 6,452 2,451 6,540 3,241 6,521 

Grades K–5 667 3,315 923 3,230 1,172 3,259 1,520 3,226 

Grades 6–8 418 1,382 585 1,511 767 1,491 1,018 1,541 

Grades 9–12 224 1,559 375 1,453 476 1,525 626 1,503 

Specific learning disability 397 1,755 562 1,746 751 1,798 980 1,814 

Speech/language impairment 389 1,683 525 1,574 571 1,536 730 1,489 

Developmental delay 47 715 64 746 127 788 214 

Intellectual disability 157 365 215 349 274 345 343 

Autism spectrum disorder 49 281 80 300 123 345 189 

Emotional disturbance 82 246 120 215 167 199 218 

Other health impairment 169 1,173 270 1,235 345 1,243 456 1,267 

Hearing impairment a 96 15 91 16 91 18 

Multiple disabilities a a a a a a a a

Orthopedic impairment 24 78 27 76 28 74 35 

Visual impairment a 23 a 25 11 24 14 

a a a a a a a a Deaf-blindness 

Traumatic brain injury a 16 a 11 12 11 10 

a. Value not available because of insufficient study population size.
 

Source: Authors’ calculations based on student-level data provided by the Louisiana Department of Education.
 

Table D13. Complete disaggregation of students with disability frequencies by year, grade range, and 

disability category for the Ouachita region, 2010/11–2013/14 

Category 

2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 

Charter 

schools 

Traditional 

schools 

Charter 

schools 

Traditional 

schools 

Charter 

schools 

Traditional 

schools 

Charter 

schools 

Traditional 

schools 

All special education 78 11,509 80 11,550 106 11,554 130 11,568 

Grades K–5 59 5,684 60 5,560 75 5,502 75 5,633 

Grades 6–8 10 2,711 13 2,782 18 2,804 43 2,714 

Grades 9–12 a 2,656 a 2,758 13 2,817 12 2,774 

Specific learning disability 15 4,044 16 4,205 30 4,177 50 4,130 

Speech/language impairment 44 2,183 45 2,029 49 1,913 40 1,825 

Developmental delay a 1,554 a 1,648 a 1,780 11 1,907 

Intellectual disability a 1,342 a 1,303 a 1,278 a 1,255 

Autism spectrum disorder a 393 a 444 a 460 a 489 

Emotional disturbance a 167 a 138 a 125 a 121 

Other health impairment 11 1,306 a 1,267 a 1,304 12 1,310 

Hearing impairment a 140 a 136 a 133 a 143 

Multiple disabilities a a a a a a a a

Orthopedic impairment a 143 a 146 a 141 a 155 

Visual impairment a 70 a 65 a 70 a 

Deaf-blindness a a a a a a a a

Traumatic brain injury a 48 a 49 a 45 a 

a. Value not available because of insufficient study population size.
 

Source: Authors’ calculations based on student-level data provided by the Louisiana Department of Education.
 

D-14 

777 

355 

350 

189 

87 

71 

23 

11 

74 

35 
The special education enrollment gap varied by severity of intellectual disability (table 

D14). Charter schools and traditional schools enrolled students with mild intellectual disabilities at a similar rate in both 2010/11 and 2011/12. In 2012/13 and 2013/14, charter 

schools enrolled students with mild intellectual disabilities at a statistically significant 

higher rate than traditional schools did, with a gap favoring charter schools of 0.16 percentage point in 2012/13 and 0.21  percentage point in 2013/14. The enrollment rate of 

students with mild intellectual disabilities in charter schools increased from 0.63 percent 

in 2010/11 to 0.85 percent in 2013/14. 

For students with moderate intellectual disabilities the gap of 0.11–0.16 percentage point 

favored traditional schools and was statistically significant in all four years. Severe intellectual disabilities were a low-incidence disability category. The enrollment gap for such 

students ranged from 0.02 percentage point to 0.04 percentage point and was statistically 

significant only in 2010/11 (0.04 percentage point) and 2013/14 (0.03 percentage point). 

Table D14. Special education enrollment rates in Louisiana charter schools and 

traditional schools, by year and severity of intellectual disability, 2010/11–2013/14 

Charter schools Traditional schools Gapa 

Year and severity (percent) (percent) (percentage points) 

2010/11 

Mild 0.63 0.67 0.04 

Moderate 0.19 0.34 0.15** 

Severe 0.02 0.06 0.04*

Mild 0.72 0.70 –0.02 

2011/12 

Moderate 0.23 0.34 0.11** 

Severe 0.04 0.06 0.02 

Mild 0.82 0.66 –0.16** 

2012/13 

Moderate 0.19 0.34 0.15** 

Severe 0.03 0.05 0.02 

Mild 0.85 0.64 –0.21** 

Moderate 0.20 0.36 0.16** 

2013/14 

Severe 0.03 0.05 0.03*

* Significant at p < .05; ** significant at p < .01. 

a. Calculated as the rate among students in traditional schools minus the rate among students in charter 

schools. The value may not equal the difference between the rates displayed in the table because of rounding. 

Source: Authors’ calculations based on student-level data provided by the Louisiana Department of Education. 

D-15 
Notes 

1.	 Core Alliance members represent Andrew H. Wilson Charter School, Audubon Charter 

School/L’Ecole Franco-Americaine, Benjamin Franklin High School, Cypress Academy, 

Eastbank Collaborative of Charter Schools, Einstein Elementary Charter School, Hynes 

Charter School, International School of Louisiana, Lake Forest Elementary School, Louisiana Association of Public Charter Schools, Louisiana Department of Education, Lusher 

Charter School, Morris Jeff Community School, New Beginnings Schools Foundation, 

New Orleans Charter Science and Mathematics High School, Robert Russa Moton 

Charter School, School Leadership Center of Greater New Orleans, Tulane University, 

University of New Orleans, Warren Easton Charter School, and Xavier University. 

2.	 Since 2012/13, Louisiana has operated a statewide private school voucher program 

(Mills & Wolf, 2017). A total of 412 students with an individualized education 

program were awarded a voucher in the first year of the program, compared with more 

than 5,000 students without an individualized education program (Tuchman & Wolf, 

2017). Louisiana also has a voucher initiative called the School Choice Program for 

Certain Students with Exceptionalities, which is limited to students with an individualized education program covering developmental delay, other health impairment, 

specific learning disability, autism, mental disability, emotional disturbance, and traumatic brain injury. The program enrolled 342 students during the 2015/16 school year 

(EdChoice, 2017). Since enrollment in both of these private school choice programs is 

modest, it is unlikely that private school options for Louisiana parents are substantially 

affecting the special education enrollment gaps described in this report. 

3.	 The special education enrollment gap for the entire study population, 0.5 percentage 

point, is lower than the rate for any of the four regions. Although this may seem mathematically impossible, the special education enrollment gap in the entire study population is not the weighted average of the gap for the four regions; it is the special education 

rate for the entire study population in charter schools minus the special education rate 

for the entire study population in traditional schools. Charter school students came disproportionately from regions, like New Orleans, with relatively high special education 

enrollment rates, while traditional public school students came disproportionately from 

regions, like Baton Rouge, with relatively low special education enrollment rates. 

4.	 New York, Tennessee, and Utah did not report special education enrollment. Counting 

the District of Columbia as a state, in order from largest charter school enrollment advantage for students with disabilities to largest charter school deficit, in percentage points, the 

states were Virginia, +11; Iowa, +6; Wyoming, +4; Ohio and Pennsylvania, +2; Nevada, 

+1; Minnesota and New Mexico, 0; North Carolina, Texas, and Wisconsin, –1; Arizona, 

Hawaii, Idaho, Georgia, Maryland, and Mississippi, –2; Colorado, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Massachusetts, Michigan, and Rhode Island –3; Alaska, California, 

Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, Oregon, and South Carolina, –4; Arkansas and Missouri, –5; 

Kansas, New Jersey, and Oklahoma, –6; New Hampshire, –7; Delaware, –8; Illinois, –13. 

5.	 Only public entities are allowed to receive federal funds under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Public charter schools that are operated directly by a for-profit education management organization, absent an independent board of trustees, are 

not permitted to receive those funds (Office of Inspector General, 2004). Because the 

Orleans Parish School Board charter schools are operated by education management 

organizations, the district itself receives all of the special education funding and provides special education services to students with disabilities in Orleans Parish School 

Board charter schools. 

Notes-1 
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Ref-4 
The Regional Educational Laboratory Program produces 7 types of reports
 

Making Connections 

Studies of correlational relationships 

Making an Impact 

Studies of cause and effect 

What’s Happening 

Descriptions of policies, programs, implementation status, or data trends 

What’s Known 

Summaries of previous research 

Stated Briefly 

Summaries of research findings for specific audiences 

Applied Research Methods 

Research methods for educational settings 

Tools 

Help for planning, gathering, analyzing, or reporting data or research