Special Education and Potential Exclusionary Enrollment Practices in Arizona Charter Schools: A Correlation Study

This quantitative correlation study attempted to determine what relationships exited between the disproportionate enrollment of students with disabilities, the Arizona Instrument to Measure Standards (AIMS) assessment scores, and exclusionary enrollment practices towards students with disabilities in Arizona Charter Schools. The problem was the under-enrollment of students with disabilities in charter schools as charter schools have reported challenges with meeting academic performance goals due to disabled student low performance on statewide assessment systems, and past researchers have reported concerns that charter schools participated in exclusionary enrollment practices and discriminated against students with disabilities by dissuading these students from enrolling or counseling them out. The target population was the 597 Arizona public Charter Schools in operation during the 2013-2014 academic school year, and the sampling frame included the 116 charter schools that enrolled grades kindergarten through eighth grade. A purposeful sampling method was used to gather a final sample size of 71 archival records on students with disabilities enrolled in Arizona charter schools, AIMS results, and withdrawal data from the Arizona Department of Education data management department. Data analysis employed SPSS 22 for Spearman's rho nonparametric correlation and logistic regression analysis. A weak positive relationship was found between enrolled SWD and AIMS scores (p<.05); however, results of logistic regression indicated that AIMS scores and exclusionary enrollment practices were not significant predictors of the criterion variable, enrolled SWD and null hypotheses 1, 2, and 3 could not be rejected. Recommendations for practice included: ADE officials should (a) create support structures and funding policies that make it possible for charter schools to serve all students effectively; (b) a unified application process among public school, and (c) provide technical assistance to current and new charter schools in the area of enrollment procedures and the special education process. The recommendations for future research were: (a) a replication of this quantitative correlational study with an expanded sample, and (b) a quantitative comparison study to compare enrolled SWD in charter schools with traditional public schools to determine whether differences exist between outcomes.