Alternative Ed: Segregation or Solution?

Chicago Reporter, The, Nov-Dec, 2001 by Brian J. Rogal, Cyril Mychalejko, Micah Holmquist

Next spring, Tenesha Anderson will leave high school with two things she was not sure she would ever get: a diploma and a career.

After graduating from Aspen Alternative High School in south suburban Robbins, the 19-year-old senior will study at Moraine Valley Community College, in Palos Hills, to be a medical technician.

"I kind of got kicked out," she said of her old school, Dwight D. Eisenhower High School in nearby Blue Island. "I was getting in trouble all the time." But the smaller class sizes and closer supervision at Aspen has kept Anderson focused.

This January state officials will implement the Alternative Learning Opportunities Law, a new measure they hope will serve more youth with similar challenges.

Currently, alternative schools serve students like Anderson who have not succeeded in traditional classrooms--those who've been expelled, chronic truants, dropouts and pregnant girls. But the new law will allow districts to get state approval to place children defined as "at-risk of academic failure" in alternative programs.

Critics said the law is a radical expansion of alternative education and part of a troubling trend of separating struggling students from their regular classrooms. They also warn that the law is vague, and was developed without the help of advocates and parents, which they find even more worrisome, given that one of the biggest changes to state education policy is just over the horizon. Governor George H. Ryan has assembled a task force to overhaul the Illinois School Code, the body of law that governs 4,290 public schools and more than 2 million students statewide.

Although parent advocates and other groups said they were belatedly invited to advise Ryan on the school code, Julie Woestehoff, executive director of Chicago-based Parents United for Responsible Education, said the effort is "top-loaded with [education] providers and lawyers" and "not a whole lot of representatives who advocate for children and families."

The new law has also sharpened an ongoing debate over the direction of alternative education, The Chicago Reporter has found. The law is one of a series, including the 1995 Alternative Public Schools Act, that have diverted alternative education from its original mission, according to school reform advocates, parents groups and civil rights organizations. They fear that, rather than helping students with special needs, the new programs or schools could result in segregation.

"It just all seemed like another convenient tool for [the] discarding of more and more children at a very young age who were considered too needy, or troubled, or, worse yet, troublesome," said Michelle Light, an attorney with the Children and Family Justice Center at the Northwestern University Legal Clinic. "And, of course, those children would be mostly poor and minority."

Others discount the threat of segregation. "I don't accept that," said Martin L. Barrett, regional superintendent of schools for downstate Champaign and Ford counties. He chairs the Alternative Education Coalition, whose 46 members, mostly school superintendents, state officials and alternative education providers, came together to draft the original legislation.

While the new law gives local districts more control, Barrett and other state officials said it offers schools an opportunity to craft programs for students who might otherwise fail behind, and possibly drop out.

But research has shown minority students can be misidentified. According to a 2001 study on special education, which is meant to serve students with disabilities, by the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University, black students in Illinois were three times more likely to be identified as "mentally retarded" and twice as likely to be categorized as "emotionally disturbed."

Months of wrangling over the legislation between the Illinois State Board of Education and activists have also raised questions about how education policy is put together.

Opponents said they did not find out about the legislation until the first round of votes had been taken in the state House.

But an alarm went off "once someone bothered to read it and understand the implications," said Laurene Heybach, director of The Law Project of the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, which advocates for homeless schoolchildren.

"In hindsight we should have involved those [advocacy] groups from the beginning," said Sheila Radford-Hill, division administrator of the state board's Alternative Learning Partnership Division, which oversees state-funded alternative education.

After protests, legislators made changes to the original bill that they say will help protect poor and minority students from being unfairly segregated.

As the debate continues, Aspen's Anderson has clear advice for both school officials and activists. "They should ask [students], 'Do you want to go to an alternative school?' If a student says they want to stay [in their old] school, [they] should give them a chance."

Classmates agreed. Melissa Sineni, an 18-year-old senior with sandy blond hair, was nine months pregnant when she talked with the Reporter in late October. She came to Aspen after missing too many days at her previous school. "I don't think they should just throw them out," she said.