Issue Paper on “Continuous Enrollment” in Charter Schools

Advisory Commission on Charter Schools

Meeting of August 22, 2002

Background. Education Code Section 47612(b) states in pertinent part:

…To remain eligible for generating charter school apportionments, a pupil over 19 years of age shall be continuously enrolled in public school and make satisfactory progress towards award of a high school diploma…

In keeping with law, the State Board adopted a definition of “satisfactory progress,” which is contained in CCR, Title 5, Section 11965(b). In pertinent part, this definition states:

…[Satisfactory progress (for non-special education pupils)] means uninterrupted progress (1) towards completion, with passing grades, of the substance of the course of study that is required for graduation from a non-charter comprehensive high school of the school district that authorized the charter school’s charter, that the pupil has not yet completed, (2) at a rate that is at least adequate to allow the pupil to successfully complete, through full-time attendance, all of that uncompleted coursework within the aggregate amount of time assigned by the chartering agency for the study of that particular quantity of coursework within its standard academic schedule. If the chartering agency is not a school district having at least one non-charter comprehensive high school, the applicable high school graduation requirements and associated time assignments shall be those for the comprehensive high school(s) of the largest unified school district, as measured by average daily attendance, in the county or counties in which the charter school operates.

…[Satisfactory progress (for special education students)] means uninterrupted maintenance of progress towards meeting the goals and benchmarks or short-term objectives specified in his or her individualized education program…until high school graduation requirements have been met, or until the pupil reaches an age at which special education services are no longer required by law.

Under the provisions of Education Code Section 56026, special education students are defined, in effect, to be students who have an impairment (as defined by federal law) that requires instruction, services, or both, which cannot be provided with modification of the regular school program and who are less than 22 years of age. An exception is provided for students whose 22^nd birthday will occur during the months of January to June, inclusive, of an academic year; they are allowed to participate in a program for the whole of that academic year.

Information on the CDE’s Web site suggests that there is no maximum age limit for enrollment in a charter school provided that a pupil is enrolled in a K-12 instructional program (in contrast to an adult education program) and has not yet earned a high school diploma.

Key Issues. Reviews of charter school enrollment have indicated that significant numbers of students in some charter schools are well above the age that might be expected of students who have matriculated on a full-time basis in a customary high school curriculum since the age of 19.

Also, the specific language of the statute (…To remain eligible…) appears clearly to express the intent and expectation that a pupil be enrolled in a public school in pursuit of a high school diploma as he or she leaves 19 years of age and becomes 20 years of age as one qualification of being “continuously enrolled” for apportionment purposes.

Finally, juxtaposed with the regulatory definition of “satisfactory progress,” an inequity is created if non-special education students are eligible for apportionment-generating enrollment in charter schools at ages substantially beyond the maximum age applicable to special education students (22 years of age).

Proposed Solution. To take account of the fact that apparently some charter schools have been claiming students for apportionment purposes (1) who were not enrolled in a public school in pursuit of a high school diploma as they became 20 years of age and (2) who have not been continuously enrollment in public school after that point, adoption of a clarifying regulation is proposed to take effect July 1, 2003. With this delayed effective date, no charter school’s attendance claims would be affected in the 2002-03 fiscal year, and thus an orderly transition period would be provided. Specifically, the proposed clarifying regulation would amend CCR, Title 5, Section 11960 to read as follows:

§11960. Regular Average Daily Attendance for Charter Schools.

(a) As used in Education Code section 47612, “attendance” means the attendance of charter school pupils while engaged in educational activities required of them by their charter schools, on days when school is actually taught in their charter schools. “Regular average daily attendance” shall be computed by dividing a charter school's total number of pupil-days of attendance by the number of calendar days on which school was actually taught in the charter school. For purposes of determining a charter school's total number of pupil-days of attendance, no pupil may generate more than one day of attendance in a calendar day.

(b) The State Superintendent of Public Instruction shall proportionately reduce the amount of funding that would otherwise have been apportioned to a charter school on the basis of average daily attendance for a fiscal year, if school was actually taught in the charter school on fewer than 175 calendar days during that fiscal year.

(c) A pupil who is over the age of 19 years may generate attendance for apportionment purposes in a charter school only if the pupil was enrolled in a public school in pursuit of a high school diploma (or, if a student in special education, an individualized education program) while 19 years of age and, without a break in public school enrollment since that time, is enrolled in the charter school and is making satisfactory progress towards award of a high school diploma (or, if a student in special education, satisfactory progress in keeping with an individualized education program) consistent with the definition of satisfactory progress set forth in subdivision (b) of Section 11965.