Information Services - Statistical Reports

Alternative Education

As shown in Table 8, in 71 percent of all exclusions in the 2000-01 school year, students were provided with alternative education, an increase of one percentage point from the previous year. Sixty-four percent of regular education students excluded from school received alternative education, an increase of three percentage points from the prior year. Federal law requires special education students who are excluded from school to be offered alternative education. Ninety-four percent of the special education students excluded in 2000-01 received alternative education, a decrease of one percentage point from the previous year.

Of the 24 special education students who did not receive alternative education, 13 were reported as having refused or not responding to the offer of alternative education, two were reported as having been incarcerated, two had moved, and for seven students the school chose not to provide it.

Trend data show that students being provided alternative education have steadily increased over the past three years. From the 1998-99 school year to the 2000-01 school year, there was a 25 percent increase in students receiving alternative education. In addition, trend data show over the past three years that more than 80 percent of those students were being provided alternative education services via in-district alternative programs and through home tutoring programs (Table 8).

Of those student exclusion cases where alternative education was not made available, the primary reason over the past three years, schools choosing not to provide it, has remained constant. In addition, the number of exclusions in which students were reported refusing/not responding to offers of alternative education and moving/transferring, has also remained constant over the same time period. In contrast, the number of exclusions that involved the incarceration of students has decreased from 24 reported in the 1998-99 school year to 13 reported in the 2000-01 school year (Table 8).

In the 2000-01 school year, when comparing the results of the distribution of exclusions by length and by race/ethnicity (Tables 6 and 7) to the distribution of exclusion by alternative education provided and by program status, the results are similar. As shown in Table 9, the majority of the students excluded receiving services were excluded between 21 to 40 school days.

Exclusions by District

As shown in Table 10, the percent of districts that excluded students has decreased over three years from 43 percent to 34 percent in 2001. Of those school districts that excluded students, the majority had fewer than 10 exclusions.

The number of districts having 10 or more student exclusions has fluctuated. In 1998-99, there were 23 districts reporting, 16 districts in 1999-00 and 24 districts in 2000-01. In 2000-01, more than two-thirds of the districts provided alternative education to more than 50 percent of their students. Most of these districts provided alternative education to the majority of their excluded students (Table 11).

Although some districts may have excluded more than 10 students from school, they had fewer than four exclusions per 1000 students enrolled in the district due to their large enrollment. Other districts had fewer than 10 student exclusions, but had four or more exclusions per 1000 students. As illustrated in Table 12, there were 28 districts reporting four or more student exclusions per 1000 students in 2000-01 as compared to 17 districts in school year 1999-00.

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