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Before we can discuss charter schools and special education, we need to understand the what makes a school a charter school. What do you think they are? After reading the NPR statement, did your initial predictions match the definition of a charter school? Are they the same thing as a private school?

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We're all familiar with the term "hidden in plain sight." Well, there may be no better way to describe the nation's 6,900 charter schools.

These publicly-funded, privately-run schools have been around since the first one opened in St. Paul, Minn., in 1992. Today, they enroll about 3.1 million students in 43 states, so you'd think Americans should know quite a bit about them by now. But you'd be wrong.

"Most Americans misunderstand charter schools," was the finding of the 2014 PDK/Gallup poll on public attitudes toward education. The survey found broad support for charters, but also revealed that 48 percent of Americans didn't know charter schools were public. Fifty-seven percent thought they charged tuition. And nearly half thought charters were allowed to teach religion.

Now that the Trump administration has made school choice a cornerstone of its education policy, we thought it would be worth exploring how charter schools work, who runs them, how they're funded and whether they work better than the traditional public schools they're often competing against.

We asked three charter experts to help us out with a survey course. Welcome to Charter Schools 101, your professors are:

Ted Kolderie, a former journalist and senior fellow at the University of Minnesota's Hubert Humphrey School of Public Affairs. He helped create the nation's first charter law in 1991 and helped 25 states design their own.

Greg Richmond, president and CEO of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers. NACSA represents people and organizations that approve and oversee charter schools in 43 states.

Nina Rees, head of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, an advocacy group that lobbies on behalf of charter schools.
What do we mean by "charter" school?
Kolderie: The term "charter" really refers to the decision by states to turn public education into a two-sector system. One is a traditional school district, centrally managed. The other, charter schools, are independent, not owned by a central school board. Both are public, but they're organized in radically different ways.

People have to understand, chartering laws don't create schools. It is enabling legislation that sets up a process for people to create schools. The charter sector was supposed to encourage innovation - pedagogical laboratories that would push new ways to teach, even if it was disruptive.

The charter sector [operates on] limited contracts. Their renewal is subject to performance. Charters are authorized by [groups] defined in state law. In New Jersey and Massachusetts, for example, the state is the only authorizer. Some states have created separate boards that authorize charters. Authorizers are usually non-profits and include universities but in most cases, local school boards authorize charter schools.

Rees: A local school district does not tell charters when to open or close their doors, what kind of curriculum to use, what company to contract for food or paper. Charters have the freedom to hire teachers without a union contract.
What does an authorizer do?

Richmond: They receive and evaluate proposals then decide if a charter school should come into existence. If a charter is approved, the authorizer monitors the school's performance. Typically, five years later, the school's charter comes up for review and the authorizer decides if the school should stay open. None of the 43 states with charter school laws permit an authorizer to be a for-profit entity.
Can teachers open a charter school? Wasn't that the idea when the concept was first seriously considered in the 1980s?
Kolderie: Yes. The first charter opened in East St. Paul, Minn. It was started by a workers' cooperative organized by teachers. Minnesota may be the only state where a teachers union can authorize charter schools.
But a charter school can be for-profit right? Fifteen percent of the nation's 6,900 charters are for-profit.
Richmond: A charter school can hire a for-profit company to manage its school. Only one out of six charters in the U.S. are run to make money. In Michigan, 80 percent are for profit, more than any other state. Some states, like New York, prohibit charters from contracting with a for-profit management company.
Are charters funded the same way traditional public schools are, with a mix of local, state and federal dollars?

Richmond: In a couple of states, charters don't get local money. But, in most cases, these [three funding sources] are common. Private donors are less common but also important.
The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools says charters get less money. Is that true?

Rees: On average, charters receive 30 percent less per pupil, per year compared to traditional public schools. That gap is due in large part to the fact that charters don't have access to the same funding streams [like school construction bonds] that traditional school systems have to build schools.

Transportation is another issue. [Charters] draw students from all over but we have to provide our own transportation, or parents rely on public transportation, because school districts do not make their buses available to charter schools.
Ted Kolderie, do you agree that charters get 30 percent less money?
Kolderie: Yeah, I've heard that figure. Its cited often by charter advocates. But the method and level of financing charter schools varies widely state to state, from "pretty good" to awfully weak.
Do charters get the same amount of federal aid from IDEA, the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, and Title I, which targets low income students?
Rees: Technically yes. But its hard to track how the money is distributed. If a charter operates under a school district, the funding gets opaque.

Richmond: Each state has its own laws and regulations for distributing that money to districts and individual schools.

The only federal money that I know of that flows directly to charter schools is "start-up" money from the U.S. Education Department to help charter schools open. That began under president Bill Clinton.
What kind of kids enroll in charter schools and do charters take all comers like traditional public schools?
Rees: Charter schools have to accept all students. If they get more than they have slots for, the school has to conduct a lottery.

Kolderie: Traditional district schools don't take everybody. Superintendents talk as if they do, but they only have to take the children of families who can afford to live in their district. There are all kinds of charters enrolling all kinds of kids. The strongest support for charters has been among parents who had never gone beyond a high school education. That's where the strongest preference remains.
Aren't charter schools often accused of "creaming," not taking kids with special needs?
Rees: Charters cannot pick the students they want. They have to accept kids with disabilities and ELLs, English language learners. Right now, charter schools are tilted to serve low-income kids. Over 50 percent [of students in charter schools] are from black and Latino households, mostly in inner cities.

Kolderie: The charter sector is still a public system. It has to be free, open. No tuition, no teaching religion, no picking and choosing kids.
Are states consistent in how they evaluate charter schools and are they held to the same performance standards as traditional public schools?
Richmond: In general, they're evaluated based on test scores, graduation rates, finances - the same as traditional public schools. But there's great inconsistency state-to-state in how well that's done. We need better oversight of charters. Charter supporters don't want a lot of oversight. The good news is that we know what good oversight looks like in terms of balancing autonomy with accountability.
Who is responsible for making sure "bad" charters are shut down? And how much time do they have to show they're doing well?
Rees: Charters, on average get 3-5 years to ramp up. Research indicates that charter schools that start out strong continue to do well and those that start weak do not get better over time. A failing school should be closed immediately or turned over to another charter school operator.

Kolderie: When a charter school is not doing well, if the authorizer fails to act, the state has to step in. Most closures are due to financial reasons and poor management.
What about online charters, or "cyber schools"?
Richmond: Cyber schools have not done a good job for most kids. Many studies have evaluated their performance and I have yet to find one that's shown they're good. ... Taxpayers are paying an enormous amount of money to those operators and kids are being shortchanged.

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We're all familiar with the term "hidden in plain sight." Well, there may be no better way to describe the nation's 6,900 charter schools. These publicly-funded, privately-run schools have been around since the first one opened in St. Paul, Minn., in 1992.

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Every Student Succeeds Act and its impact on special education in charter schools

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Every Student Succeeds Act and its impact on special education in charter schools

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These are the slides from a webinar  in July 2016 presented by the National Center for Special Education in Charter Schools. You can watch the webinar on YouTube if you would like to get more detail. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-e2UreRulBc
Presentation: What Every Student Succeeds Act provisions will impact special education in the charter sector?
Your thoughts: Do you think the provisions will benefit students with special needs in charter school environments?

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This website has links to each states charter school policies. Look at the policies for Utah and at least 2 other states. What similarities and differences do you see in the policies? Are there any gaps in the policies you think should be included?

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by Elaine Mulligan With special thanks to Eileen Ahearn of the National Association of State Directors of Special Education (NASDSE) for her content expertise and advice
November, 2011 | Resources updated, May 2013

Charter schools are fairly new in public education, and they've generated a lot of interest and inquiry. For many families and educators, charter schools offer more options for how students will be educated. For others, charter schools are confusing - Why, for example, are some charter schools not open for enrollment to students who live nearby? And what about students with disabilities? May they go to charter schools? If so, is special education available in charter schools?

In this short document, we answer 10 commonly asked questions that families and educators of students with disabilities have about charter schools. We also offer links to state-specific resources that can help you better understand how charter schools work in your individual state.

What is a Charter School?

Charter schools are public elementary and secondary schools, just as traditional neighborhood schools are. Charter schools have existed in the United States for about 20 years, beginning with state legislation in Minnesota in 1991. In the 2010-2011 school year, there were 5,275 authorized charter schools nationwide.

Each state has the authority to include charter schools in its state law as a way of offering students a public education. Most states have done just that and have written state charter laws that guide how charter schools operate.

How Do Charter Schools Differ From Traditional Public Schools?

Important differences exist between traditional public schools and charter schools, including:

The School's Purpose or Mission

People start charter schools for a variety of reasons. According to the first-year report of the National Study of Charter Schools, the three reasons most often mentioned for starting a charter school are to:

-realize an educational vision

-gain autonomy

-serve a special population

Perceived Benefits

Families and teachers choose charter schools for a variety of reasons. Charter schools are considered 'schools of choice' that give families more options for their children's public education. Charters claim high academic standards, small class size, and innovative approaches to teaching and learning.On average, charter schools serve about 300 students.

Lack of Funding for Facilities

Charter schools typically do not receive funding from their school districts to purchase, lease, or improve facilities. Securing financing for the facility can be problematic for a charter school because some schools lack tangible assets and an operating history that lenders use when evaluating a mortgage loan application.

The U.S. Department of Education's Credit Enhancement for Charter School Facilities Program provides grants to absorb some of the risk of making loans to charter schools. The State Charter School Facilities Incentive Grant program provides competitive grants to help states establish and enhance or administer "per-pupil facilities aid" for charter schools. Arizona, California, Colorado, the District of Columbia, Florida, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Utah have a per-pupil facilities law in place, and Indiana and Hawaii have statutory language for a per-pupil facilities program.

Do Charter Schools Have to Meet the Same Accountability Standards as Traditional Schools?

State laws often grant charter schools some freedom from meeting certain state or local education regulations or policies. However, charter schools follow all federal laws that apply to any other public school.Currently, this includes ensuring that charter school data are included when reporting to the federal government every year on student progress. Data are broken out by race, ethnicity, gender, grade, and disability status, as required by the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 2001.

Public charter school data about students with disabilities are also included in the IDEA data reports submitted by State Education Agencies (SEAs) each year to the Office of Special Education Programs at the U.S. Department of Education. These data include counts of children, educational environments, reasons for exiting special education, assessment participation and performance, personnel, dispute resolution, and discipline.

Are Charter Schools Required to Provide Services to Students with Disabilities?

Yes. The responsibility to make a free appropriate public education (FAPE) available to all students with disabilities applies to ALL public schools under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Charter schools are public schools; therefore, they bear the same responsibility.

Who is actually responsible for ensuring that special education services are available to students with disabilities in a charter school? The answer depends on how the charter school is legally identified in the state.

If a charter school is considered to be an independent Local Education Agenc y (LEA) under its state's law, that charter school bears the exact same legal requirements for providing special education services as any other LEA (or district).

If a charter school is considered part of an existing LEA, the LEA (or district) retains most or all of the responsibility for special education in the charter school. The charter school is considered a school within that LEA and is responsible for following LEA policy.

How Are Charter Schools Funded?

Much like traditional public schools, charter schools are primarily funded by a combination of federal, state and sometimes local funding, based on the number of students they enroll or on total enrollment (census formula). The flow of funding to charter schools for special education varies based mainly on the LEA status of the charter school as follows:

1. If the charter school is an LEA, federal and state funding for students with disabilities enrolled in that school flow from the state to the school.

2. If the charter school is a school within a traditional LEA, the flow of funding varies greatly by state and may depend on the specific arrangement between the charter school and the district. The district retains responsibility for special education for the charter school's students, but the way special education is provided can vary from all services being delivered by LEA staff in the charter school, to all services being arranged by the charter schools with the charter school being reimbursed by the LEA. In some states there are negotiated arrangements that result in a variety of practices related to funding of special education services while in other states, funding procedures are the same for all charter schools.

Which States Have Charter Schools?

It might be easier to ask which states do not authorize charter schools as a option for public education in the state (yet)! Forty-one states and the District of Columbia have laws authorizing and governing charter schools. Only Alabama, American Samoa, Guam, Kentucky, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, South Dakota, Vermont, Washington, and West Virginia do not have charter schools (as of August, 2011).

Are Charter Schools Required to Allow Students with IEPs to Enroll?

According to IDEA, yes. As was said above, the responsibility to make FAPE available to all students with disabilities applies to ALL public schools under federal law. Charter schools are public schools; therefore, they bear the same responsibility.

However, if more students apply to the school than the charter can serve, the charter may use a random selection system to determine student enrollment. In this scenario, many charter schools use a lottery system.

Are Certification Requirements for Teachers the Same for Charter Schools as for Other Public Schools?

Guidance from the U.S. Department of Education asserts that ALL students should be taught by a highly qualified teacher.However, state charter laws control local certification requirement s. In some states, the answer is a simple yes or no, while others have more complicated rules. For example, New Jersey requires that all charter school teachers be certified, while Georgia does not. New York's policies are more complicated; in New York, a charter school may employ:

uncertified teachers with at least three years of elementary, middle, or secondary classroom teaching experience;

tenured or tenure-track college faculty;

individuals with two years of satisfactory experience through the Teach for America program; and

individuals with exceptional business, professional, artistic, athletic, or military experience.

New York's guidelines, however, limit how many noncertified teachers with the above qualifications may be hired. The total number may not be more than 30% of the teaching staff of the charter school, or five teachers, whichever is less.

Wondering what your state's certification requirements are for teachers in charter schools? Visit the Education Commission of the States. You'll find a helpful chart of what different states require: http://mb2.ecs.org/reports/Report.aspx?id=93

Are Charter Schools Responsible for Providing Transportation?

In some states, yes, charter schools are responsible for providing students with transportation to and from school. In other states, the district in which the school resides may be responsible for providing transportation.

To find out whether charter schools in your state are required to provide students with transportation, see the section just below called "What's My School's Charter School Policy?" Find your state, click on the link, and you'll go to your state's charter school law, which will include the specifics of your state's transportation policies for charter schools.

What's My State's Charter School Policy?

Visit your state Department of Education's charter school page for specific information about charter schools in your state. As we mentioned earlier, 41 states and the District of Columbia have charter school laws. Below are links to each state's charter school information pages:

Alaska: http://www.eed.state.ak.us/Alaskan_Schools/Charter/

Arizona: https://www.azed.gov/charterschools/info/

Arkansas: http://www.arkansased.org/divisions/learning-services/charter-schools

California: http://www.cde.ca.gov/sp/cs/

Colorado: http://www.cde.state.co.us/cdechart/index.htm

Connecticut: http://www.sde.ct.gov/sde/cwp/view.asp?a=2681&q=320438

Delaware: http://www.doe.k12.de.us/infosuites/schools/charterschools/default.shtml

District of Columbia: http://osse.dc.gov/service/public-charter-school-financing-and-support

Florida: http://www.fldoe.org/schools/school-choice/charter-schools/

Georgia: http://www.doe.k12.ga.us/External-Affairs-and-Policy/Charter-Schools/Pages/default.aspx

Hawaii: http://www.hcsao.org/

Idaho: http://www.sde.idaho.gov/site/charter_schools/

Illinois: http://www.isbe.net/charter/Default.htm

Indiana: http://www.doe.in.gov/charterschools/welcome.html

Iowa: http://educateiowa.gov/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=487&Itemid=1334

Kansas: http://www.ksde.org/Default.aspx?tabid=449

Louisiana: http://www.doe.state.la.us/divisions/charters/default.html

Maine: http://www.maine.gov/education/charterschools/index.html

Maryland: http://www.marylandpublicschools.org/MSDE/programs/charter_schools/

Massachusetts: http://www.doe.mass.edu/charter/

Michigan: http://michigan.gov/mde/0,1607,7-140-6530_30334_40088-,00.html

Minnesota: http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/Academic_Excellence/School_Choice/Public_School_Choice/Charter_Schools/index.html

Mississippi: http://www.mde.k12.ms.us/docs/policy-manual/1900.htm?sfvrsn=2

Missouri: http://dese.mo.gov/divimprove/charterschools/

Nevada: http://www.doe.nv.gov/Charter_Schools_Resources/

New Hampshire: http://www.education.nh.gov/instruction/school_improve/charter/index.htm

New Jersey: http://www.nj.gov/education/chartsch/

New Mexico: http://www.ped.state.nm.us/charter/index.html

New York: http://www.p12.nysed.gov/psc/

North Carolina: http://www.dpi.state.nc.us/charterschools/

Ohio: http://www.ode.state.oh.us/GD/Templates/Pages/ODE/ODEPrimary.aspx?page=2&TopicRelationID=662

Oklahoma: http://www.ok.gov/sde/oklahoma-charter-schools-program

Oregon: http://www.ode.state.or.us/search/results/?id=124

Pennsylvania: http://www.portal.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt/community/charter_schools/7356

Rhode Island: http://www.ride.ri.gov/commissioner/charterschools/default.aspx

South Carolina: http://tinyurl.com/a55egmn

Tennessee: http://www.tn.gov/education/fedprog/fpcharterschls.shtml

Texas: http://www.tea.state.tx.us/charters.aspx

Utah: http://schools.utah.gov/charterschools/

Virginia: http://www.doe.virginia.gov/instruction/charter_schools/index.shtml

Wisconsin: http://dpi.wi.gov/sms/csindex.html

Wyoming: http://edu.wyoming.gov/Programs/schools/charter_schools.aspx

Bottom Line

A charter school is a public school. There are state-specific rules around who can start a charter, who oversees the charter, and how the funding flows, and they are responsible for serving students with disabilities in keeping with state law and the charter school's status as an LEA or a school of an LEA. If you have issues or concerns, get to know your state's charter school law.

Helpful Websites

Center for Education Reform's Choice & Charter Schools page: http://www.edreform.com/issues/choice-charter-schools/

Education Commission of the States: http://www.ecs.org/html/issue.asp?issueid=20

National Alliance for Public Charter Schools: http://dashboard.publiccharters.org/dashboard/schools/page/overview/year/2010

National Association of Charter School Authorizers : http://www.qualitycharters.org/index.php

National Charter School Resource Center: http://www.charterschoolcenter.org/

U.S. Department of Education's Office of Innovation and Improvement's Welcome to Charter Schools Program: http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/oii/csp/index.html

U.S. Department of Education's Questions and Answers on NCLB and Charter Schools: http://www2.ed.gov/nclb/choice/charter/charter-faq.html

References

9 | Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004. 20 U.S.C. § 1400. Retrieved from http://idea.ed.gov/explore/view/p/%2Croot%2Cstatute%2C

10 | Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004. 20 U.S.C. § 1400. Retrieved from http://idea.ed.gov/explore/view/p/%2Croot%2Cstatute%2C

13 | New York State Education Department. (n.d.). Laws of New York, Article 56, Section 2854. Retrieved August 19, 2011 from: http://public.leginfo.state.ny.us/LAWSSEAF.cgi?QUERYTYPE=LAWS+&QUERYDATA=$$EDN2854$$@TXEDN02854+&LIST=LAW+&BROWSER=EXPLORER+&TOKEN=12661339+&TARGET=VIEW

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The Facts on Charter Schools and Students with Disabilities

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by Elaine Mulligan With special thanks to Eileen Ahearn of the National Association of State Directors of Special Education (NASDSE) for her content expertise and advice November, 2011 | Resources updated, May 2013 Charter schools are fairly new in public education, and they've generated a lot of interest and inquiry.

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Are charter schools better at inclusion in the general classroom than public schools? Why or why not is this the case?

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collaborative for equity and justice in education

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Charter Schools and Inclusion for Special Education Students

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http://ceje.uic.edu Federico Waitoller, PhD, assistant professor of special education at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Education and faculty researcher with the Collaborative for Equity and Justice in Education, discusses how charter schools practice inclusion of special education students in general education classrooms.

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This note from the June 2017 issue of the Columbia Law Review discusses legal considerations for charter schools regarding special education. Are charter schools held as accountable as traditional public schools with regard to policies and procedures concerning students with special needs? Why?

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Leaving Students with Special Needs Behind

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Leaving Students with Special Needs Behind

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Are charter schools "killing public schools" and leaving students with special needs behind in the process?  Is this a national issue or a state to state issue?

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At first, Rosalba Naranjo was thrilled that her two daughters were attending Richard Merkin Middle School, a charter school located near downtown Los Angeles. After all, the Pico Union neighborhood school, which is operated by Alliance College-Ready Public Schools, offered relatively small class sizes and the promise of a good education. And her son, who is now in high school, had previously attended the school.

Naranjo, a 42-year-old Mexican immigrant, was looking forward to being involved in her daughters' education and playing a role in the school community. But when she became concerned over several issues, including what she described as a high teacher-turnover rate, she says the school wasn't interested in hearing from her and other parents.

"Over time I've come to find out that we as parents don't have any participation in the schools," Naranjo says in Spanish, speaking through an interpreter during an interview with Capital & Main. "When they talk about charter schools they always say they are the best and that they want what's best of our kids and are here to help us. It makes me feel very sad because my daughters aren't getting the kind of help I want and it's a challenge. I've tried to be involved - at this school, they don't allow that to happen." (Capital & Main repeatedly asked Alliance Schools to respond to this article but received no reply.)

Among other things, Naranjo says that she has been warned not to ask questions in front of other parents and has been pressured to take a stand against a campaign by teachers for unionization. To be sure, Naranjo has positive things to say about the school. "The education is good a lot of the time, from what I can tell," she says. "But sometimes I do feel there is not enough being done - and we are not allowed to ask questions about that to administrators."

Naranjo's claims are typical of those made by other parents against charter schools at a time when philanthropist Eli Broad, the Walton family and many others are seeking to dramatically increase the number of charters operating in Los Angeles.

The issue exploded publicly last September after the Los Angeles Times obtained a copy of a 44-page memo that outlined a proposal spearheaded by the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, under which one-half of all Los Angeles Unified School District students would be enrolled in charter schools within eight years. Currently, about 16 percent of the students in LAUSD attend charters. The proposal notes that since 2004, the Broad Foundation has invested more than $75 million to support Los Angeles charter schools. This funding has helped fuel the growth of several large charter operators, including Alliance, which is the largest provider of charter schools in Los Angeles, with 27 charter high schools and middle schools serving about 12,000 public school students.

Charter school supporters, such as Broad and the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA), argue that the schools provide a superior education and give opportunities to children in poor neighborhoods. For that reason, they say, it makes sense to increase the number of charters in Los Angeles and elsewhere.

"If you have schools doing really well that are making an impact on student learning, you should expand them," Jason Mandell, a Los Angeles-based spokesman for the CCSA, says in an interview. "People are desperate for schools that are helping kids learn. I would encourage all of us to not forget the reason we are here - which is student learning."

However, interviews with educators, charter school proponents and opponents, and a review of respected academic studies, show that some highly motivated students benefit from charters while others do worse; that the growth of charters places a huge financial burden on traditional public schools that send them into a tailspin and that charters may increase racial and economic segregation. Furthermore, the percentage of total LAUSD charter school students with severe disabilities is less than one-third the percentage of students with disabilities in LAUSD public schools.

""Sometimes I do feel there is not enough being done - and we are not allowed to ask questions about that to administrators.""

"Charter schools are inherently a 'some kids,'" model says Steve Zimmer, who was elected to the Los Angeles United School District (LAUSD) Board of Education in 2009 after 17 years as a high school teacher and counselor, referring to his belief that certain children do well in charters and others do not. "There's no doubt that some kids have been served well by charters. I think there is an inflation of outcome celebration with charter schools, but I also want to give credit where credit is due, there has been some very good instructional quality and instructional outcome from some of our charter partners."

But charters don't merely claim that, as in any other school, some students excel while others fail. Rather, they boast higher rates of academic achievement - a claim for which there seems to be no hard evidence.

"The student that we know is going to be served by well by most charter schools are students who do well in small environments," Zimmer continues. "They tend to be highly competitive and more stable in terms of the support systems that are around [them]."

Zimmer, however, cautions that there are several types of students that are typically losers under the charter model.

"Students who have fairly substantial special education needs," he begins, referring to students with significant learning and other disabilities. "Students who do not come from a stable home environment. Students who have ongoing behavioral problems. Students who have persistent academic weaknesses for which interventions have not been successful. Those are the students who typically do not do well."

""What we find is that once a district loses six to seven percent of its students to charter schools, the traditional public schools go into a downward spiral.""

Gary Miron, a professor in the College of Education at Western Michigan University, says that children with engaged and supportive parents, and who handle rigor well, generally do well in charter schools - as they probably would do in any school. But, he says, "I don't think this is what's best for the population as a whole."

One problem, Miron and others say, is that the traditional public schools often go into a steep slide once charters enroll a substantial percentage of motivated students with engaged parents. As a result, traditional public schools are left with a disproportionately high percentage of children with disciplinary problems, as well as with severely disabled students, who are expensive to educate.

"What we find is that once a district loses six to seven percent of its students to charter schools, the traditional public schools go into a downward spiral," he says. (Again: Charter students comprise 16 percent of the LAUSD.) "You lose resource-rich families first [and] those who are highly-engaged. Between the lost [state] money and the loss of families [that are] most engaged, it will be harder to compete and the schools will go into a negative cycle."

Bennett Kayser, a former LAUSD school board member who was defeated for re-election last year after charter school proponents spent heavily against him, puts it more bluntly.

"Charter schools are killing the public schools," Kayser says in an interview. "They take kids away [from traditional public schools]. They don't necessarily do anything better. I don't think the kids get a better education. The public schools lose money [by losing attendance numbers], meaning they have to cut back and provide a diminished educational experience."

The problem is made worse by the fact that "charter schools discriminate against kids with special needs, who they refer to [traditional] public schools. So not only are there fewer students within LAUSD but more expensive students in LAUSD as well."

Ana Martinez, the single-mother of a 15-year-old daughter with a learning disability, believes she experienced such discrimination after she enrolled her daughter at Alliance Morgan McKinzie High School, a charter school in East Los Angeles. She says she chose the school because she felt its small size would be good for her daughter and because it was close to her home.

"When I spoke to the principal the first time, I specifically told him that she had a learning disability and needed a lot of special help," Martinez says in Spanish during an interview at her home. "He told me not to worry because they had the help and she will be received like any other student."

But according to Martinez, her daughter was pushed out on the first day of school, following a two-week summer session during which she had problems with the homework and was being bullied by other students. On the first official day of school this year, Martinez says, she was called to attend a meeting at which school officials told her that her daughter could not attend the school after all.

"I arrived and the principal and teacher were there. They began to tell me her academic level was too low for the school," Martinez recalls. She claims the school official told her they could not offer her daughter the help she needed and would have to be enrolled in a school that could offer such help.

"They discriminated against her because she has a learning disability and they cannot assist a student with a disability," Martinez continues. "I was in shock. I walked out crying. I wanted them to see my daughter as a normal person. She does not have a physical disability. She has a learning disability. That's the only thing that holds her back from her goals. By not allowing her to stay, they gave her an understanding that she cannot go far in life. They did not think about that, but that is what they did."

(As with Rosalba Naranjo's story, Alliance did not respond to requests for comment.)

Such examples are not atypical, and have a financial as well as human cost.

Traditional public schools generally have a higher percentage of students with disabilities, and spend more on special education costs, resulting in an uneven and unfair distribution of costs. This is particularly true for students with severe disabilities, who are far more expensive to educate than students with no or mild disabilities.

In a presentation to the LAUSD board committee in January, Megan Reilly, LAUSD's chief financial officer, explained that special education funding is based on a uniform rate per student without regard to severity of disability, and that traditional public schools serve a disproportionately higher share of severely disabled students than charter schools.

In 2013-2014, 3.8 percent of LAUSD's enrollment was made up of students with severe disabilities. That's more than triple the 1.2 percent of disabled children in charters within LAUSD.

What's more, LAUSD spent $9,888 for every student with a disability, while charters spent $1,291 per student with a disability - the ratio of special education spending between LAUSD and charters was a highly significant 7.6 to 1 per student.

"As a result, the district bears disproportionally higher costs for students with disabilities than charter schools," Reilly and an LAUSD colleague state in a PowerPoint presentation prepared for the school board. The presentation examined the fiscal impact of LAUSD becoming an all-charter district.

None of that surprises Gary Miron. Traditional public schools, he says, have a "higher concentration of children with disciplinary problems and lower performing children. When we look at severe disabilities there is a higher concentration in traditional public schools because they have to take them." The problem is that this creates an unfair system, in which district schools are forced to take money from other programs to fund programs for the severely disabled, he says.

"That's what's going to happen in Los Angeles," he says. There will be a bigger burden on district schools and a higher concentration of children with severe disabilities and the traditional public schools will become "a dumping ground for children with disabilities and disciplinary problems."

Charter schools, according to Marshall Tuck, a former president of Green Dot charter schools, have recently been enrolling a higher percentage of special education students, though not necessarily the most expensive severely disabled students. He suggests that parents of those students simply believe that LAUSD schools are best able to serve their children.

Tuck concedes that if the traditional public schools are taking on a disproportionate financial burden, steps should be taken to make things more equitable.

"There's work to be done," Tuck tells Capital & Main. "I don't believe in two separate systems. If district [schools] have a higher financial burden" for severely disabled students, "that burden should be shared," by charters and traditional public schools under a unified policy.

Another area where significant differences exist between charter schools and traditional public schools revolves around the ways in which schools discipline students, and the relative lack of rights for students at charters. Bruce Baker, an education professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey, says that, overall, charter school students have fewer rights than their counterparts in traditional public schools.

"When privately managed charter schools adopt rigid disciplinary policies, students tend to [suffer from] loss of rights," Baker says in an interview.

A study released earlier this year by the University of California, Los Angeles' Center for Civil Rights Remedies, looked at school discipline records for the nation's more than 5,250 charter schools and concluded that "a disturbing number (of charters) are suspending big percentages of their black students and students with disabilities at highly disproportionate rates compared to white and nondisabled students. The analysis was based on data from the 2011-2012 academic year, the first time charter schools were required by the federal government to report discipline data.

Among other things, the analysis showed that nationwide more than 500 charter schools suspended black charter students at a rate that was at least 10 percentage points higher than that of white charter students, and 1,093 charters suspended students with disabilities at a rate that was 10 percentage points higher than that of students without disabilities.

In Los Angeles, Kim McGill, an organizer with the Youth Justice Coalition, which helps run a charter school intended to give a second chance to students who have been expelled or suspended from traditional public schools and charters, says she has "a lot of concerns" about the way that some charters are quick to push out students for relatively minor infractions.

She says that students in charters have been expelled or suspended for such relatively minor infractions as wearing black beanies, refusing to take off baseball caps or to give up cellphones.

"Anybody that doesn't fit within the Board of Education superstar category and doesn't guarantee charters solid attendance - those are the people pushed out," she says.

Jason Mandell, the CCSA spokesman, disputes critics who say charter schools have less accountability, transparency and oversight than traditional public schools.

"There's an increasingly thorough review process," he says. "If a charter school isn't meeting standards, the charter can be shut down. When you know you're going to be scrutinized and people are watching, you better perform. [Charters] have more autonomy in exchange for greater accountability. I don't think there's anything [wrong] with nonprofits that know how to run schools."

Even those who have serious concerns about charter schools say that some charters do an excellent job.

"I have a charter school in my district that serves highly at-risk students and does an outstanding job at it," says LAUSD board president Zimmer. "It's called the APEX Academy. We also have a charter school that does a full inclusion model for special education. That's WISH - Westside Inclusive School House. Then there's a charter school network called Camino Nuevo that does an outstanding community schools education model that is excellent. There are exceptions, but the large box charters - KIPP, Alliance, Aspire - for the most part they do very well at serving largely stable, academically successful students."

Adds John Rogers, a professor of education at the University of California, Los Angeles: "To make the argument that charters are the boogeyman is clearly wrong-headed." Rogers, however, also takes issue with charters being run like private businesses. "Public education is supposed to be a public service," he says. "The ideal of public education argues against having a small handful of plutocrats having undue influence."

Even if many charters perform well, there is an overarching problem with a system that entrusts much of its public education to private institutions, say some critics, including Kevin Welner, director of the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

"Charters decrease the publicness of public schools," says Welner. "They are not under democratic control."

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How Some Charter Schools Leave Special Needs Students Behind

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At first, Rosalba Naranjo was thrilled that her two daughters were attending Richard Merkin Middle School, a charter school located near downtown Los Angeles. After all, the Pico Union neighborhood school, which is operated by Alliance College-Ready Public Schools, offered relatively small class sizes and the promise of a good education.

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I wanted to share this clip in response to Kelsey's article, "Just What is a Charter School anyway?" This clip gives further support to the article.

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Are Charter Schools Better Than Public Schools?

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What exactly are charter schools? Are they good for students? Watch this video and decide for yourself if they help or hurt public education. Donate today to PragerU! http://l.prageru.com/2ylo1Yt This video is part of a collaborative business and economics project with Job Creators Network. To learn more about JCN, visit www.jobcreatorsnetwork.com.

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One parents experience with Charter schools

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One parents experience with Charter schools

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I'm curious to see what people think about this. I am in shock that these students were treated badly in the charter school system. I liked that this parents said that we have to focus on the students rather than the scores.

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Charter schools and kids with special needs

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This article is from the Utah Board of Education's charter school information page. I thought it helped to clarify some important questions individuals may have.

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This video talks about rumors regarding creaming and weeding out difficult kids. I think this has been brought up in multiple responses from multiple people and I think it's an important concept to talk about. What do you think the answer is? Is creaming existent and to what level?

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Should Charter Schools Be Allowed to Push Out Difficult Kids?

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Do charter schools-publicly funded schools that are freed from many state-and-local regulations-routinely push out difficult kids? Does this undermine their overall mission and purpose? Or is it a legitimate way to ensure a better education for more students?

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Should Charter Schools Be Expected to serve all students?

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Should Charter Schools Be Expected to serve all students?

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I really like this article in that it discusses plainly how charter schools help students with disabilities.

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Charter schools nationally serve far fewer students with disabilities-8 to 10 percent of their students on average-than district schools, which serve 13.1 percent. Some state funding formulas encourage charter schools to enroll students with disabilities, while in other states there are clear financial disincentives. In a few states, expenses for special education delivered by charter schools are paid by the local districts, or the services are delivered by special education teachers employed by the district. As a result, enrollment figures vary widely from state to state. On average, however, the disabled students charter schools enroll tend to have disabilities that are less severe and less costly to remediate than those of students in district schools.

Yet charter schools are public schools, supported by taxpayers and considered open to all students. If they market and recruit broadly from their communities, their population of students with disabilities should be comparable to that of district schools. But it isn't. Why not?

Some charter school officials have suggested that official records undercount their enrollments of disabled students, because the parents of some students who would qualify as "disabled" have deliberately avoided the label or even obscured its previous use. Research evidence to support this hypothesis is limited, but it deserves further investigation.

State evaluation reports and other research have shown that most charter schools do not actively market to or recruit students with disabilities and their families. The 50 to 60 U.S. charter schools that focus primarily or exclusively on children with disabilities and do actively recruit them are the exception.

Some families might consciously choose against sending their children with disabilities to charter schools. Charter schools are expanding their reliance on scripted instruction, which is less viable for students with disabilities, who benefit from more student-centered approaches. The expansion of networks of college-prep-oriented charter schools, which do not aim to serve a broad population of students, may also indicate to parents that charter schools are not the right choice for their disabled children.

There is considerable evidence that charter schools actively discourage families from enrolling disabled children and counsel them to leave when they do manage to enroll. The largest study on this topic was commissioned by the U.S. Department of Education, with the report published in 2000. That study found a pattern of charter schools systematically counseling out students with disabilities rather than making accommodations and providing the required services and supports; administrators at one-fourth of the charter schools in the study reported having advised parents that the school was not a good fit for their disabled children.

While conducting nine evaluations of charter school reforms for state education agencies between 1997 and 2007, I learned of numerous cases in which families were counseled out and told that it would be some time before the charter school could offer special education supports. Parents can fight-and some do-but these parents are already overextended and tired.

Charter schools might understandably find it challenging to accommodate students with disabilities. Special education and charter schools would not seem to mix easily: charter schools were designed as deregulated and autonomous schools; special education is the most highly regulated component of public education, subject to state as well as federal oversight.

Charter schools lack economies of scale. School districts, with their larger numbers of students with disabilities, can distribute special education staff more efficiently and can concentrate some services at specific schools rather than provide all services at all schools. Districts spend a lower percentage of their total revenues on administration than charter schools do but still have larger central administrations that can more efficiently deal with special education's extensive regulation. Charter schools, meanwhile, may find it especially difficult to recruit special education teachers, especially if they only wish to employ them part time.

Still, charter schools ought to enroll more students with disabilities, for several reasons:

Charter schools are public schools, required and expected to serve all families who seek them out. Regardless of where they are enrolled, children with disabilities are protected by the same federal laws and regulations guaranteeing a free and public education delivered in the least restrictive environment.

Charter schools that do not serve special needs students also can place unfair burdens on district schools. College-prep-oriented charter schools with selective entry and exit processes leave surrounding district schools with higher-than-expected concentrations of students requiring additional resources: students with disabilities, particularly moderate to severe disabilities; English language learners; and students with disciplinary problems or those who could not handle the rigor of the college-prep charter schools. With special education already not fully funded, the burden on district schools is that much greater.

Requiring charter schools to enroll more students with disabilities would benefit society and charter schools alike.

First, having special education staff in charter schools will make these schools more accommodating for every student. The presence of special education teachers can help balance and complement the teacher corps. Furthermore, practices developed for special education students over the years have proven helpful for nondisabled students as well.

Second, repeated studies, including two national studies conducted in 2010 by the Civil Rights Project and the National Education Policy Center, have shown charter schools are accelerating the resegregation of public schools by race and ethnicity, social class, language of instruction, and special education status. By serving more diverse populations, charter schools would enrich the experience of all their students, exposing them to the diverse range of people in our communities and thus better preparing them for both work and citizenship. After all, nearly everyone at some time will require special attention or supports due to disabilities, illness, or emotional duress. Disability is not an issue that should separate us.

Third, charter schools could find it in their best interest to enroll more students with disabilities: it would qualify them for additional public revenue and allow the schools to hire additional special education teachers. Several studies have confirmed that, on average, charter schools receive 20 to 23 percent less in public revenues than traditional public schools, leading charter school advocates to complain that charter schools are shortchanged. In a 2010 study for the National Education Policy Center, however, I found that most of the difference reflects the district schools' higher spending on special education and student support services-spending made possible because those schools qualified for categorical funding based on the number of children with disabilities served and the costs for remediating their particular disabilities.

Charter school leaders who believe charter schools should receive equal funding ought to be willing to recruit and enroll their fair share of students with special needs. Policymakers can help by fully funding special education so that charter schools might be more willing to take on this responsibility. Charter school networks and authorizers can facilitate collaboration among charter schools to share special education staff and more efficiently distribute these human resources. The federal government should update its guidance on civil rights regulations for charter schools and include provisions to promote diverse or inclusive student bodies. State education agencies and charter authorizers can also support inclusion of students with disabilities by requiring-or giving preference to-charter applications with diversity considerations. At a minimum, however, it's time to expect charter schools to live up to the premise under which they were established, as alternatives within the public school system, by requiring them to recruit from all segments of the community, including the special education population.
This article is part of a forum on special education in charter schools. For another take, please see "The Key Is Innovation, Not Regulation," by Robin J. Lake, or "School Quality Matters Most, Whether District or Charter," by Pedro A. Noguera.

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Charters Should Be Expected to Serve All Kinds of Students: Special Ed

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Charter schools nationally serve far fewer students with disabilities-8 to 10 percent of their students on average-than district schools, which serve 13.1 percent. Some state funding formulas encourage charter schools to enroll students with disabilities, while in other states there are clear financial disincentives.

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Here is the charter application and bylaws for a local charter school that is in Enoch.

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Click the following links to view and download the charter documents for Gateway Preparatory Academy

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Get ready to be shocked...or maybe not.

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I liked this video, it sounds like this could be a good resource for teachers working in a charter school in the DC area. Would be great to model in other areas as well

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The DC Special Education Cooperative | Promoting Student Achievement through Innovation and Collaboration

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The DC Special Education Cooperative was founded in 1998 by a group of charter school leaders, teachers, special education experts and local chartering authorities, and is the first of its kind in the nation.

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I thought it was interesting to look at how to improve outcome for students with disabilities. After Kelsie's post on leaving students with special needs behind, I wanted to focus on preventing the problems occurring in charter schools.

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While the relationship between districts and charter schools admittedly remains contentious in some locales, the two governance models are nevertheless collaborating effectively in communities across the country-much to the benefit of students. The Center on Reinventing Public Education has studied district and charter collaboration extensively and found that effective collaboration generally focuses on "shared resources, shared responsibility, shared effort to build trust and collegiality, and shared work to ensure equal access to high-quality schools for all students in the city." In Boston, for instance, the traditional district, charter schools, and Catholic schools formed a compact in 2011 to "bring district, charter and Catholic school educators together in order to provide equitable access to high-performing schools and excellent instruction to all students." In St. Louis, the district provides the nonprofit Knowledge Is Power Program, or KIPP, charter schools with free rent in surplus buildings, and in return, KIPP provides district leaders with access to the charter management organization's, or CMO's, successful leadership development program.

This report provides a brief overview of special education policies and outcomes and explores the potential of district and charter collaboration. There have been numerous examples of charter schools that have struggled to ensure equitable access for students with disabilities. The district and charter school collaboration efforts described in this report in Colorado's Denver Public Schools, California's Los Angeles Unified School District, and between Rhode Island's Blackstone Valley Prep Mayoral Academy and Central Falls School District build opportunities to:

Collaborate to better serve students with disabilities in charters

Ensure access to innovative schools for students with disabilities

Create cost-effective solutions for districts and charters

The examples highlight the opportunities-and challenges to overcome-for districts and charter schools to collaborate to improve the education of students with disabilities. The report concludes with actions that the federal government, states, charter authorizers, districts, and charter schools can take to facilitate collaboration that will benefit students with disabilities, no matter what type of public school they attend.

Authors' note

We are grateful for the opportunity to interview Josh Drake from Denver Public Schools, or DPS; Kaci Coats from STRIVE Preparatory Schools, or STRIVE Prep; Jeremy Chiapetta and Jennifer LoPiccolo from Blackstone Valley Prep; Edda Carmadello from Central Falls School District, or CFSD; Sydney Quon from Los Angeles Unified School District, or LAUSD; Katie Dammann from KIPP: LA; and Gina Plate from the California Charter Schools Association, or CCSA, by phone in order to learn about collaboration between school districts and charter schools on special education programming. We would also like to thank all of our interviewees who were generous with their time in providing additional data and responding to follow-up questions via email. Data and quotes not otherwise cited in this paper come from these personal interviews and email exchanges. Author Jessica Sutter conducted these interviews in June, July, and August 2016.

Since the authorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, in 1975, the national approach to not only ensuring access but also providing quality special education and related services has been a work in progress. According to key metrics, the nation's schools are making gains in terms of students accessing the general education curriculum, modest improvements in key student achievement measures, and increases in graduation rates that slightly outpace overall improvements. (see Figures 1-3)

However, there remains much room for improvement. Public schools-both traditional and charter-are struggling to consistently provide a high-quality education to students with disabilities, as evidenced by special education students' relatively low graduation rates and limited postgraduation opportunities, as well as the persistent achievement gap between general and special education students and the disproportionate share of students with disabilities in juvenile detention facilities. Recent data released by the U.S. Department of Education regarding states' implementation of IDEA documented that fewer than half of the states nationwide are meeting federal performance targets for special education.

High-quality instruction in the general education environment is the first and most critical element of ensuring that students with disabilities achieve at high levels, but many students with disabilities also need high-quality and highly individualized special education and related services, such as visual impairment teachers and audiologists. To address the challenge of developing and sustaining quality special education programs, states and districts across the country have developed structures-frequently referred to generically as education service centers or education services agencies-to pool expertise; share potentially high costs from low-incidence disabilities; target resources; and assist districts in educating students with a wide range of disabilities. Given the costs and documented shortages of qualified specialists, these structures can be critical to ensuring that districts can reliably access specialized personnel to provide their students with key services. For instance, Massachusetts districts partner to form special education collaboratives to aggregate resources, pool risk, and develop technical expertise that would be nearly impossible for individual districts-much less schools-to develop. Similarly, in Colorado, districts join Boards of Cooperative Educational Services, or BOCES, in order to pool resources and access special education expertise. In Michigan, intermediate school districts provide critical support to district special education programs by geographic region. Such partnerships allow schools, especially in small districts, to plan and budget for potentially variable costs and develop and sustain the capacity required to provide a full continuum of quality services and placements to students with a diverse array of disabilities, as required by the IDEA.

Collaborative relationships between district and charter schools have significant promise, but their potential hinges on both districts and charters recognizing that collaboration can support their mutual interests in order to overcome inherent challenges. As the charter sector grows-and, in some locations, makes up a significant, if not majority, representation of public school enrollment-charter school administrators and state policymakers must identify strategies to build and sustain charters' capacity to serve students with disabilities. Meanwhile, these administrators and policymakers must maintain the autonomy central to the charter construct and avoid bureaucratic structures that can undermine many efforts to create effective learning environments.

The federal and state laws and associated regulations that guide how educators teach students with disabilities, ranging from mild learning disabilities to significant cognitive or physical impairments, grew out of the civil rights movement. While students with disabilities had historically been largely segregated from their peers and provided with little if any educational opportunities, the equal protection clause of Brown v. Board of Education provided the foundation for key federal laws that frame special education practice in U.S. public schools today: Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the Education of all Handicapped Children Act of 1975-which evolved into IDEA-and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.

Students identified as having one of 13 disabilities are eligible for special education and related services identified under the federal IDEA. Public schools are required to provide students with disabilities with a free appropriate public education, or FAPE, in the least restrictive environment, or LRE, appropriate for their needs and to provide parents with explicit rights to ensure that states and districts comply with the statute. In practice, students eligible for special education are provided accommodations and modifications that enable them to access the general education curriculum and make academic progress. While the special education and related services that students with disabilities receive under IDEA are a key component of improving outcomes for these students, these individualized services are still only a part of what must be a broader approach to serving students with disabilities-and all students. Students with disabilities need high-quality, effective instruction in inclusive settings, and they should have access to differentiated services and supports as soon as a need is identified.

Shoring up high-quality instruction for all kids, including students with disabilities, is critical, as 95 percent of the students eligible to receive special education are enrolled in traditional district schools and spend significant time in the general education classroom. While there is significant variation between states, on average, 63 percent of school-age students with disabilities spend 80 percent or more of their day in the general education classroom, and another 19 percent spend at least 40 percent of their school day in the general education classroom.

Providing highly individualized supports to students in compliance with federal and state regulations is one of the most complex areas of education. Special education policies and structures-designed to enable students with disabilities to access the general education curriculum alongside their peers-vary across states and districts; are regulated by federal and state laws; and are supported by federal, state, and local revenues. In addition, as described above, students with disabilities are supported and protected by various laws and programs, which, unfortunately, are not always easily aligned. For example, while a student with disabilities is afforded all of the protections under IDEA, schools must also afford them the supports and opportunities required by the Every Student Succeeds Act. The body of laws and related regulations are nuanced and can be daunting to new charter school operators, many of whom may have limited experience navigating the complex web of administrative requirements that shape so much of special education in public schools.

Special education challenges

Twenty-five years into the charter sector, there is ample documentation that charter schools have struggled, to varying degrees, to ensure equitable access for students with a diverse range of disabilities and to amass and sustain the capacity to provide high-quality services. The factors contributing to the challenge are myriad and have even included reports of some charters discouraging students with disabilities from enrolling. First, while funding is a perennial challenge for all public schools, charter schools' small size, prohibition from raising revenues through taxes that are potentially available to traditional districts, and general inability to realize economies of scale critical to providing a full continuum of special education services is problematic. Second, charter authorizers have historically not devoted adequate attention to clearly articulating roles and responsibilities associated with educating students with disabilities or developing metrics to track their success. Finally, states, districts, and charter authorizers have struggled to retrofit regulatory structures developed before charter schools were created and in states where charter schools operate as part of a local district, in order to operationalize how they share responsibility for provision of special education within these structures.

Due process and legal actions

Parents' ability to file a grievance when they are concerned that a school is not fulfilling its obligations to provide FAPE is a key avenue to protecting their children's rights. During the 2012-13 school year, parents or advocates submitted 16,980 due process complaints related to compliance with IDEA. The majority of these complaints-11,164 representing 65.8 percent-were resolved without a hearing. Yet the complaints provide insight into how often parents and schools-traditional districts and charters alike-clash regarding special education. Charter schools have been the focus of due process complaints as well as complaints submitted to the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights, or OCR, and the Department of Justice's Office for Civil Rights. While there is no national repository for individual parent due process complaints, public reporting of complaints submitted to the respective offices for civil rights provide insight into how some of the challenges are translating to formal grievances and the collective understanding of how relevant laws are being applied to autonomous charter schools. Since October 2013, the Department of Education's OCR has issued 71 letters stemming from complaints against charter schools.

Examples of OCR complaints related to educating students with disabilities in charter schools

In 2014, the OCR investigated a complaint filed against a CMO in Texas alleging significant underrepresentation of students with disabilities-2.7 percent in the CMO compared with 7.3 percent in the local districts-and English language learners-11.5 percent compared with 22.5 percent-stemming from discriminatory enrollment and discipline practices. The complaint was resolved with a resolution agreement outlining specific steps, such as adding nondiscrimination statements regarding students with disabilities on recruitment materials, the CMO was required to take to ensure compliance with relevant federal and state statutes.

In 2014, parents filed a complaint against a charter school in North Carolina alleging violation of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 stemming from the school's refusal to provide services to a student after an evaluator determined that the student qualified to receive them. After determining that the school had violated Section 504 by failing to have appropriate policies and procedures in place to serve qualified students, the OCR developed a resolution agreement that required the school to fulfill specific actions to demonstrate compliance with the law.

In 2014, a complaint was filed with the OCR alleging violation of Title II of Section 504 regarding access to facilities, programs, services, and activities for English language learners and students with disabilities in charter schools in Wisconsin. As the authorizer, the school district was the defendant in the complaint. The district entered into a resolution agreement with OCR that involved the district ensuring that these subgroups of students would have equal access to the charters. The schools would also provide parents with information about how to access the schools and ensure that the schools were physically accessible to students with disabilities.

In 2016, a cohort of parents filed a complaint with the OCR against a CMO in New York that alleged discrimination against students with disabilities stemming from the failure to identify students as eligible for special education or to provide accommodations; illegal discipline practices; and inadequate communication with parents regarding their rights associated with accessing special education and related services. The complaint has yet to be resolved.

Special Education in the Charter Sector

In June 2012, the federal Government Accountability Office, or GAO, released a nationwide analysis of enrollment data; the report was spurred by public concerns that charter schools were not serving their fair share of students with special needs as required by law. The GAO reported that in 2008-09, the share of students with disabilities enrolled in charter schools was 7.7 percent, compared with traditional public schools at 11.3 percent. In the 2009-10 school year, the GAO found that 8.2 percent of all students enrolled at charter schools were students with disabilities, compared with 11.2 percent observed in traditional public schools. As result of these findings, the GAO urged charter schools to examine how their practices affected special education enrollment and recommended that the department conduct deeper research on the factors that influence enrollment. In November 2015, the National Center for Special Education in Charter Schools, or NCSECS, released a comprehensive report using the 2011-12 Civil Rights Data Collection, or CRDC, maintained by the department and found that, nationally, students with special needs made up 10.4 percent of total enrollment in charter schools compared with 12.55 percent of all students in traditional public schools-a 2.15 percent gap. Based on the GAO data and that reported by the NCSECS, the enrollment difference between the two types of schools has been dropping over time: from 3.6 percent to 3 percent to, most recently, 2.15 percent. Analysis of the recently released 2013-14 CRDC will provide additional insight regarding this apparent recent trend.

Concerns regarding special education in the charter sector

Currently, 43 states and the District of Columbia have charter school laws, and there are approximately 6,800 charter schools operating across the country that serve an estimated 2.9 million students. While the charter school model has undoubtedly captured the imagination of policymakers, parents, and school leaders, the schools and policies have also generated criticism and critiques. Since the inception of the charter sector in 1991, critics and scholars have questioned the extent to which charter schools welcome and provide adequate services to students with disabilities. Research has documented that while many charter schools have struggled to amass the requisite expertise to effectively service students with disabilities, there are ample examples of charter schools creating successful special education programs. For instance, CHIME Institute in California has developed a national reputation for creating a dynamic and wholly inclusive environment for students with significant disabilities. Another example comes from Massachusetts' UP Education Network and its methodical approach to moving students from self-contained to inclusive classrooms as part of its focused school turnaround work, which has demonstrated notable improvements in outcomes for students with disabilities.

While autonomous charter schools have unique opportunities to innovate, they can struggle to leverage the opportunity for students with disabilities given practical financial and staffing limitations. However, collaborating with districts has the potential to optimize both district systems and expertise and charter autonomy to improve the quality of education for students with disabilities in both. In particular, new charter schools, small charter schools, and-more importantly-the students with disabilities who elect to enroll in them stand to benefit from collaborative relationships with school districts that have established special education expertise. Those districts that function as authorizers may be uniquely positioned to encourage collaboration by virtue of an explicit shared interest and the valued district resources that they can make available to their authorized charter schools.

The collaboration in Denver, described in detail below, is tightly connected to the allocation of facilities and capital improvement expenses. Charter schools need access to facilities and construction funds to appropriately serve students with significant disabilities. Denver Public Schools, as the district, controls access to excess facilities, and state facilities bind funding and can allocate them to charters, which agree to house center programs. Not all district authorizers are as sophisticated as Denver in their portfolio management of schools; however, Denver's management highlights the opportunity for high-quality district authorizers to leverage resources as an incentive for charter collaboration.

Districts that do not serve as authorizers may also see the benefits of collaborating with charter schools, and the relationship would be arguably simpler absent the oversight role that is central to authorizers. However, these collaborations would most likely require some explicit incentive or apparent mutual interest in order to occur given historical tensions between the two entities.

While many charter schools have created special education programs that enable students with disabilities to succeed, many more students would benefit from support and access to technical expertise to improve programs for students with disabilities. Collaborating with districts that have additional scale and established expertise builds opportunities to:

Collaborate to better serve students with disabilities in charters

Ensure access to innovative schools for students with disabilities

Create cost-effective solutions for districts and charters

District-Charter Collaboration on Special Education: Denver Public Schools

Background

Denver Public Schools wanted to increase the number of students with significant disabilities who are educated in district-authorized public charter schools. Using facilities allocation authority, capital dollars for retrofitting space, and a collaborative decision-making process, DPS has begun placing specialized center programs for students with severe to profound disabilities in charter schools. DPS will continue to expand the number of such programs until charters reach parity with traditional district schools in terms of the proportion of students with significant disabilities served.

DPS serves more than 91,000 students, including 17,000 attending charter schools under district authorization. Both sectors serve a student population in which approximately 9 percent have mild to moderate disabilities, and these students are served in inclusive classrooms alongside their peers. Approximately 1.5 percent of DPS students have severe to profound disabilities, and based on the level of specialized services they require, they are placed in center programs within schools distributed across the district. While less restrictive settings are always the goal, for some students, their individualized education plan, or IEP, teams have determined that a separate center program setting outside of the regular classroom is the least restrictive environment appropriate. These decisions are made on an individual basis. In the 2015-16 school year, charter schools had increased the number of students enrolled with more significant disabilities, but these students still made up just more than 0.5 percent of their student population. DPS was concerned that the lack of specialized programs in charter schools was limiting access for students with more significant disabilities.

As part of Denver's well-known school choice process, parents of students with disabilities are sent official notification of the school to which their child is assigned based on the needs and services documented within their child's IEP. Notification is sent prior to the start of the choice process for a given school year and includes a list of other schools, both district and charter, which offer similar services to the assigned school. This is similar to the process for all other students in the district, in which they are assigned to their neighborhood school and then have the option to enter the choice process to enroll in other district or charter schools. While parents may select a school of their preference, not all schools have center-based programs; not all centers have excess space available; and the district does not provide transportation for schools of choice. Providing additional center programs in charter schools is an effort to address both choice gaps and geographic needs for the district.

In 2010, the district and its charter schools signed a Gates Foundation District-Charter Collaboration Compact, securing $4 million to facilitate collaborative work between the two sectors. Among other commitments, the compact specifically called out access to district facilities for charter schools and a need for charter schools to equitably serve all students with disabilities. This compact provided a common set of expectations and an opening for conversations about collaboration with DPS-authorized charter schools. Collaboration in Denver has taken many forms, but the two special education collaborations have focused on improving compliance and support services to charter schools and placement of center programs in charter schools.

Collaborating to better serve students

Historically, DPS only notified district or charter schools about the planned opening of additional center programs each May, when the center program would need to open in August of the same year. Some charter schools, including STRIVE Preparatory Schools successfully pushed for changes to this short timeline that they felt was not good for teachers or students. Kaci Coats, the senior director of student services for STRIVE Prep, shared in a phone interview, "The district was telling us to do something at a certain time without clear criteria for center placement and no clear channel for decision-making." Coats called the process reactive and contrasted it with the more proactive planning of STRIVE Prep, noting, "We like to have our ducks in a row." As a result of this request and following the example of how charter schools plan for opening their own schools, DPS now gives all schools-both charter schools and district-run schools-a planning year, or "Year 0," to allow for adequate planning, training, and staffing of new center programs before they open.

Josh Drake, executive director for exceptional students for DPS, noted in a phone interview that facilitating sustainable collaboration is difficult, but his staff-and the charter schools they partner with-remain excited about hard work that leads to better outcomes for students. Clear communication and collaborative connections between staff have helped facilitate this work. For example, DPS has created a Center Program Plan that acts as a touchstone for schools to refer to and addresses the common questions that schools need to answer, as well as details that are helpful to planning for the operation of specific disability programs. Coats has also worked very closely with the DPS district support partner assigned to STRIVE Prep. This role used to simply ensure compliance with special education requirements and rarely reached out unless the school made a mistake. But according to Coats, she is now in daily communication with her DPS counterpart about questions and concerns from special education leads at each STRIVE campus and the larger collaborative initiatives. Coats said there is now "a trust that we are both coming at this from a place about what is right for and best by kids and families."

Ensuring access for students with disabilities

As of spring 2016, there were 16 center programs with 100 students in charter schools. At that time, DPS schools housed 109 programs serving 1,400 students. The district expects that there will be 40 center programs serving 350 students in charter schools by spring 2019. DPS is aiming to be the first school district to reach parity in its percentage of students with significant disabilities served in charter schools. DPS sees clear benefits to being able to maintain specialization via additional center programs sited in charter schools around the district. "We have a coherent whole," Drake said of the structure. He added that charters can balance the capacity of the district to provide services and to minimize travel for kids.

As the collaboration on center programs grows, DPS is working on more transparent principles and criteria, including a formal process for identifying center program sites. The process must consider the needs of the student population, the geographic distribution of programs, and the siting of programs in schools that offer a high-quality education to all students-both general and special education.

District-Charter Collaboration on Special Education: Los Angeles Unified School District

Background

The Los Angeles Unified School District wanted to encourage authorized charter schools to return to the district's special education local plan area, or SELPA, after a significant number of charter schools joined an all-charter SELPA organized by another county. The district created options for charter schools to be part of LAUSD's SELPA that offered different levels of service provision, support, and autonomy. Nearly all of the charters have returned to the LAUSD SELPA, while also creating a number of specialized programs for students with disabilities.

In California, all traditional school districts and county offices of education are local educational agencies, or LEAs. These LEAs are also members of a special education local plan area, a regional consortia created in 1977 to provide a full continuum of special education services to meet the needs of all children residing in the geographic area. Charter schools in California may be part of the LEA which authorized them or may serve as their own LEA. If a charter is part of its authorizer's LEA, it is automatically part of the LEA's SELPA. If it elects to be its own LEA, it must apply for membership in a SELPA. There are 135 SELPAs in the state, but only 25 currently accept charter school members.

In 2007, charter schools were frustrated by the lack of SELPA membership options available to them, which limited the potential to act as independent LEAs for special education purposes. In response to this frustration from charter schools, the California State Board of Education requested recommendations for a regional approach to charter SELPAs. A task force drafted recommendations for charter schools to gain membership to SELPAs-including those not within their own geographic region.

Losing such a large number of charter schools hurt the LAUSD SELPA. It resulted in a loss of funds to the SELPA itself, and LAUSD also lost control over the special education services provided to charter LEAs they authorized that were located in their geographic area. Consequently, LAUSD wanted to find a way to retain as many charter schools within their SELPA as possible and convince those that had left to return. This became the impetus for the reorganization of the LAUSD SELPA and the collaboration with Los Angeles charter schools. In January 2011, the LAUSD Board of Education voted unanimously to restructure the existing LAUSD SELPA to include the Charter Operated Program, or COP, with three options for membership. Since the creation of the options, nearly all of LAUSD's authorized charters have returned to membership in the LAUSD SELPA.

Creating cost-effective solutions

All charters authorized by the district may select one of three SELPA membership options. (see Table 1) While a "school of the district" option, Option 1 in LAUSD, is required in California statute, the small number of charter schools that have chosen Option 1 is a result of both an interest in greater autonomy by charters and a deliberate effort on the part of the district to encourage this autonomy.

More than 40 percent of charter schools select SELPA membership under Option 2, which provides some direct support from LAUSD. Option 3 offers the greatest autonomy for charter schools and is also the deepest level of collaboration with the district. All charter schools selecting Option 3 send representatives to a coordinating council that meets monthly for information sharing and professional development. In February 2012, Sydney Quon joined the staff of LAUSD as the director of charter operated programs. She is an employee of the school district, but Quon's position is primarily funded by the Option 3 charter schools within the LAUSD SELPA.

Leaders from 39 charter school organizations elect nine voting members to serve on the executive council board, which approves the budget for spending the "shared budget" funds and determines the recipients of program grants given to charter schools. Overall, 86 percent of the funds in the shared budget that charter schools pay into goes directly back to schools. Some of the funds are used for COP staff at the LAUSD SELPA; some funds support nonpublic school placements for students with severe needs; and other funds are used to provide grants that charters may use to start programs to serve students with more moderate to severe disabilities. Interviews highlighted that the membership of authorized charters in the LAUSD SELPA has allowed charters to build special education capacity while maintaining autonomy, to contribute financially to the collective work of serving students with disabilities in LAUSD, and to leverage the SELPA relationship with the district as a means of better serving students.

Collaborating to better serve students

In Los Angeles, KIPP LA's experience highlights the potential for autonomy and collaboration under Option 3. The autonomy and freedom to innovate within Option 3 aligns with KIPP's own value of "Power to Lead." KIPP LA had previously been a SELPA member under Option 2, but struggled to support students with significant needs. Kim Dammann shared in a phone interview, "There was some truth to the district saying 'you're not serving these kids,' because we were sending them back to the district for placement." KIPP LA tried a pilot of Option 3 with one of its midsize campuses, motivated by the desire to try and create a program that could serve an enrolled very young student with an intellectual disability. Under Option 3, KIPP LA applied for a program grant. The grant provided KIPP LA with three years of funding, which decreased each year as the CMO worked to internalize the cost of the new programming. In partnership with LAUSD, KIPP LA staff observed schools with model programs and worked to build a program that included an itinerant provider who served students across KIPP campuses and whose excess time could be made available to other charters with similar student service needs. KIPP LA now operates seven specialized programs. Two of these programs are fully developed and have been replicated: a program for students with intellectual disabilities and a program to assist students with transitioning from district special day programs to an intensive inclusion setting with blended learning support. The CMO is also working with LAUSD to build a third distinct program, a therapeutic alternative to a nonpublic school serving elementary and middle school students with intensive socioemotional needs. KIPP LA shared that through this work they now have 75 staff focused on special education across their 13 schools and specialized programs. Each of the specialized programs now operated by KIPP LA was directly made possible by the seed funding from, partnership with, and expertise of the LAUSD team members.

Ensuring access for students with disabilities

Both Quon and Dammann highlighted in interviews the important successes of the options approach and the opportunities they create for collaboration that directly and tangibly benefits students with disabilities. A recent report from LAUSD's Office of the Independent Monitor commended charter schools for continuing to increase the enrollment of students with disabilities. According to the report, general enrollment at charter schools increased 2 percent in the 2015-16 school year, but the enrollment of students with disabilities increased nearly 10 percent. The monitor noted that the "increase in [students with disabilities] enrollment is evidence that the changes to the policies and practices for servicing [students with disabilities] have resulted in a positive outcome."

Charter schools are noticing a variety of benefits from their partnerships with the district to improve students with disabilities' access to high-quality services. Dammann said, "The communication is really the win. The resources are great, but the improved communication is key." She credited the district with embracing this opportunity to work with charter schools and says, "Our relationship with LAUSD has really improved from where it used to be." She also expressed pride at what charter school organizations such as KIPP LA have been able to accomplish through this collaboration with the district. Dammann shared: "We are owning that all of these kids [with disabilities] are our kids-mild, moderate, or severe-and we're going to keep them all and serve them the best way we can." LAUSD's Quon praised Option 3 schools in her interview for using their autonomy to "think outside of the box and be more creative to move forward" the practices used to serve kids.

District-Charter Collaboration on Special Education: Central Falls, Rhode Island, and Blackstone Valley Prep Mayoral Academy

Background

As Blackstone Valley Prep Mayoral Academy, or BVP, grew, the organization's leadership recognized a need to have dedicated administrative leadership for special education. As part of a wider collaboration effort, BVP developed a partnership with Central Falls School District to provide special education administration, professional development, and provision of some specialized services for BVP students. This partnership has enabled BVP to benefit from the deep expertise within CFSD in a cost-effective manner that is also beneficial to the district.

Central Falls School District, or CFSD, is located 10 miles north of Providence, Rhode Island, and serves 2,900 students in six schools. The student body is a diverse mix of Latino, African American, white, and multiracial students; 81 percent of CFSD students qualify for free or reduced lunch. CFSD students receive English language learner, or ELL, services-23 percent-and special education services-22 percent-at a higher rate than the state average, at 7 and 15 percent, respectively.

Collaborating to better serve students

Opened in 2009, BVP serves more than 1,500 students from kindergarten through 11th grade across six schools. Approximately 14 percent of its students are eligible for special education services, a rate slightly lower than both the state and the CFSD average. As BVP grew as an organization, adding more schools and more grades, it also worked to grow its administrative infrastructure for special education.

From the establishment of the first elementary school in 2009 until the opening of the high school in 2014, BVP contracted with two retired special education administrators who each, in turn, served as part-time special education administrator for the organization. While each campus has a full-time special education chair and dedicated special education teachers, there was no one, LoPiccolo explained in a phone interview, devoted full-time at the network level to supporting the "building of a system that would ensure compliance procedures and connections with both families and the state was as good as it could be, and could do what it was intended to do." As BVP contemplated further growth, it sought a full-time special education administrator.

Chiappetta noted that, for special education, "The best talent is actually found at the district." Even before the district-charter collaboration began, CFSD had been working to augment its own internal capacity to deliver high-quality special education and related services, specifically focusing on opportunities to return students from private placements back to the district. This capacity made CFSD the natural choice for BVP to turn to in its search for a new full-time special education administrator. BVP entered into a six-month trial memorandum of understanding, or MOU, with the district, under which CFSD served as the special education administrator for BVP and provided BVP with access to special education services at an efficient scale. The MOU also included consulting hours from a CFSD expert to coach BVP school leaders and work to build internal capacity around special education.

The key to the implementation of the work under the MOU is a former special education director and current chief academic officer at CFSD, Edda Carmadello, who also serves as BVP's special education administrator under the MOU. In this role, she participates in BVP leadership meetings as a member of the organization's cabinet; meets monthly with each head of school; and checks in with school-level special education and grade level chairs regularly throughout the year. While special education chairs at each campus are still the day-to-day managers of special education services for students, they can now access real-time coaching from Carmadello, an experienced special educator.

For her part, Carmadello highlighted specific interactions between BVP and CFSD staff as early evidence of success. The co-planning of secondary transition opportunities for students is one such interaction. Carmadello shared that CFSD has begun planning opportunities to expose middle and high school students to postsecondary opportunities but is still working to document the variety of opportunities students can access for career and life planning. During the 2015-16 school year, staff from BVP and CFSD spent Thursday mornings before school in a joint professional learning community, or PLC, reviewing best practices from around the state and crafting concrete opportunities for students from both systems to prepare for postsecondary transition.

Chiappetta and Carmadello were also proud of the trust and relationships that have been built across organizations as part of the collaboration. According to staff survey responses, "our special educators feel supported," said Chiappetta. "There's been really strong acclaim from both educators and leaders on this relationship." Carmadello noted that BVP has no areas where it has fallen out of compliance, largely due to the way "we have risen as a team" to work through mediation hearings and difficult IEP meetings.

The developing relationships have also benefited CFSD staff. Carmadello identified getting district staff into BVP schools and classrooms to see the strength the CMO has around curriculum and instruction as having a "bilateral benefit" that has led to a "trickle of collaboration into other things, like math curriculum work." She said that BVP sets high expectations for students and it "helps us to see this and be reminded of the need to maintain high expectations and rigor, too."

Creating cost-effective solutions

Carmadello described in her phone interview that the first six months of the collaboration were a "getting to know you" period, during which she conducted a "deep dive into the practices at BVP." Carmadello echoed what Chiapetta and the BVP already believed to be true-as the organization grew, it had not grown its systems for special education administration, and it benefited from sharing the already established systems within CFSD. After the initial trial period, CFSD and BVP signed a 12-month MOU in July 2015 to continue and deepen the collaboration on special education. The elements of the MOU remained the same, facilitated by a few key structural factors of both districts. One pillar of the BVP model is a longer school day and a longer school year. While CFSD employees end their contractual hours at 2:30 p.m., the BVP school day ends at 4 p.m. for students and 4:30 p.m. for staff. This daily difference allows CFSD employees-including service providers such as psychologists, bilingual speech-language pathologists, occupational therapists, physical therapists, and adapted physical education teachers-to work with BVP students and be compensated without conflicting with their CFSD contracts. Summer hours at BVP are also a time when CFSD are not covered by their 185-day contract and can work on planning and professional development with the CMO.

The MOU covers the 40 percent of Carmadello's time as both a special education administrator and expert consultant, as well as hourly billing of direct services provided by CFSD staff. The former is billed at a rate of $6,650 per month, not to exceed $80,000 per year. The latter allows for three to five CFSD staff to provide services outside of contractual hours at the rate of $100 per hour for up to 100 hours per year. The pricing was set by CFSD and based on the community standard. The fact that BVP is an independent LEA means that all IDEA and state funds come directly to the CMO and it can then determine how to allocate them to serve students. Both the management contract with CFSD and some of the direct services are paid for using BVP's state operating funds; other services are Medicaid reimbursable and processed by BVP and a third-party biller.

Chiappetta noted that, as the collaboration continues to evolve, BVP will work with CFSD to "brighten the line between direct services and management [and] consulting services." He said that, for the collaboration to be valuable to the district, it must be a "profit center for CFSD" and a way for the district to maximize the time and talent of their staff, while BVP benefits from the knowledge and expertise of that staff. The extended school day and year at BVP make the partnership financially viable for both systems, allowing CFSD staff to work as consultants in addition to their salaried roles at the district and providing BVP access to special education talent in the region without having to compete with the district. LoPiccolo stressed the importance of this benefit, noting that the BVP special education team has "varied levels of experience and the mentoring they get from Edda [Carmadello] is really building their capacity."

Managing Challenges to Successful Collaboration

Focus on serving needs of kids

When the charters in Denver pushed back against the district's original timeline for siting center programs, DPS' Drake shared that there was a feeling among some within the district that the charter schools just didn't want to have to serve the kids. Being able to come to a common table and listen authentically to why the charters pushed back was essential to the final outcome of a planning year prior to siting center programs in district or charter schools. Drake acknowledged that, while the district has deep expertise in special education, charter schools' strong planning expertise led to the longer planning horizon for all schools, enabling both of these entities to better prepare to serve students. STRIVE Prep's Coats shared that the task forces have worked because "everyone is coming to the table to figure this out."

Establish clear processes and responsibilities

While the collaboration options in Los Angeles have led nearly all of LAUSD's authorized charter schools to remain or rejoin the LAUSD SELPA, the process of collaboration has not been without challenges. Plate recalled challenges in developing the options solution. Initial discussions included a large group of charter leaders with a variety of interests. Narrowing down the number of voices in the room to make decisions was seen as important to the process, as was strong leadership from within the district. CCSA's Plate credited then-Superintendent Ramon Cortines in her interview with efforts to move the COP proposal forward to board approval. LAUSD's Quon added praise in her interview for Sharyn Howell, the former executive director of LAUSD's division of special education, with making a crucial decision to getting buy-in from charters-to not discuss the cost of each option upfront, instead focusing on the levels of support that would be provided with each option.

While any collaboration can expect challenges, BVP's LoPiccolo shared that most of the difficulties experienced in Rhode Island have been overcome. There were early hurdles such as confusion about whom staff could call for support and about all of the new faces in the BVP buildings. BVP and CFSD also needed to address a number of logistical challenges such as where to house people and whether BVP staff or CFSD staff would hold on to students' special education files. CFSD's Carmadello said that she feels good about how all of the early challenges were able to be addressed but would like to "get over the hurdle" of having her service providers work with BVP only after the CFSD school day.

Know your audience

Voluntary participation can provide a solid foundation for collaboration. Somewhat paradoxically, offering LAUSD charter schools options to rely on the district or to act as an LEA for special education purposes led to many charter schools seeking autonomy and then approaching the district as a valued, expert partner. The charter schools felt strongly about maintaining autonomy but were very comfortable with learning from and sharing with other schools. In offering a range of options that reflected their desire for autonomy and capacity for innovation, the LAUSD SELPA convinced nearly all of their authorized schools to become members and to innovate and build their capacity.

Build effective relationships

In Denver, DPS' Drake was proud of the dramatically improved relationship between the special education department and the charter sector and credits the individual relationships between the liaisons and the charter school staff. "There a number of arrows pointing in the right direction in Denver to help us get going in the right direction," Drake noted. Publicizing what is possible could therefore help other districts as they make efforts to evaluate how they support charters to serve all kids. Coats from STRIVE Prep echoed Drake's comments on the progress thus far but was also eager to see how the partnership could be expanded. "Our collaboration can get better," she said. "We can get far more accomplished when charters and districts work together." That said, Coats expressed concern that there is also a need to be open to new ideas. For instance, Coats reflected that separate center-based special education programs are "a 40-year-old concept. Can we move away from this and think about how we fund kids, not programs?" She was eager to work closely with the district to "navigate the waters ahead" and do things differently.

Emerging collaborative efforts focused on special education: The Boston Compact

In the fall of 2011, the superintendent of the Boston Public Schools, the chair of the Boston School Committee, leaders from the Boston Alliance of Charter Schools, and the mayor of Boston signed the Boston Compact, a document that outlined plans for the traditional and public charter school sectors to collaboratively address issues that affected the quality of education available to all of the city's children. This compact had grown out of local conversations between education leaders and national interest from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in cultivating cross-system collaboration. By the spring of 2012, the Archdiocese of Boston also joined the effort and signed on to the compact's four main goals:

1. A common enrollment calendar for all schools

2. Cross-sector professional development strategies

3. Common accountability metrics

4. Better use of vacant city-owned school facilities

The compact work attracted more than $4 million dollars in financial support from the Gates Foundation and local philanthropies. This funding helped support both the issue-focused work and the operations of such a complex collaboration. A cross-sector steering committee with tri-chairs governs the compact, now entering its fifth year, and two full-time staff coordinate and facilitate meetings and provide administrative and communications support for the work.

While special education was not one of the original elements of the compact work, it emerged as one of six key initiatives outlined by the steering committee as part of a Gates Foundation grant proposal. Framed as an initiative to support practitioners in their work with students with disabilities, the compact committed to review legal and regulatory obligations of traditional and public charter schools; develop a system for securely sharing student records between schools across sectors; and analyze student data to identify and share exemplary practices for serving students.

In a recent report on the compact, School & Main Institute identified the overall return on investment of the Students with Disabilities, or SWD, Initiative as "moderate, with potential for greater impact in the future." This moderate impact is largely the result of two practical benefits of the initiative. The first benefit is student data sharing. The trust-building work of the compact led to five of the sixteen compact charter schools signing nondisclosure agreements with BPS and sharing all student-level data. While fairly straightforward, this was a big step forward in a city with significant student mobility and difficulties with student records transfer. A second benefit of the initiative grew out of the data sharing. Analysis of the student data identified classrooms within schools in both the traditional and charter sectors where "students with high levels of need were thriving in inclusive settings." Teachers from all compact schools have been invited to observe in four schools where these best practice classrooms are located.

While the compact is moving forward with a revised structure that no longer calls out the SWD Initiative specifically, the collaborative efforts on special education are expected to continue as part of the compact's teaching and learning subcommittee. It is worth watching the forthcoming work of the Boston Compact to see what additional collaboration around serving students with disabilities may emerge.

Providing consistently high-quality supports and services to students with a diverse range of disabilities requires pedagogical, technical, and administrative expertise. Over the course of the charter sector's 25 years, enrolling and effectively educating students with disabilities has consistently been identified as a challenge. District and charter collaboration has the potential to benefit students with disabilities in both sectors as charter schools can leverage district expertise and districts can leverage charter autonomy to explore new and potentially innovative practices. However, tension between the two sectors significantly limits the extent to which they have optimized opportunities to collaborate. In particular, lack of trust, unclear expectations, and inadequate planning can undermine efforts to effectively collaborate. The successful collaborative efforts highlighted in this report demonstrate where districts and charter schools can collaborate specifically for the purpose of improving the quality of services provided to students with disabilities in both sectors. Of note, private philanthropy and practical fiscal realities played a key role in catalyzing collaboration in all three examples. Furthermore, the collaborative efforts relied heavily on interpersonal relationships that are difficult if not impossible to create or sustain via policy mandates. While requiring collaboration could backfire, there are policy actions at multiple levels that could encourage more districts and charters to pursue these collaborations.

Based on a review of the literature regarding district-charter collaboration and the examples described above, the Center for American Progress and the NCSECS developed a set of recommendations that can facilitate positive collaboration that will benefits students. Maintaining a wall between the two sectors is neither prudent nor cost-effective.

Federal opportunities to encourage collaboration

Provide incentives in the Charter School Program to encourage districts and charter schools to collaborate explicitly for the purpose of improving services for students with disabilities. For example, the Department of Education could give competitive preference points in the state charter school grant competition to states where state education agencies and authorizers are encouraging meaningful collaborations between traditional districts and charter schools.

Research and develop technical assistance to aid in the establishment of successful collaboration initiatives. The National Center on Special Education Research within the Institute of Education Sciences should fund research on effective models of collaboration.

State opportunities to encourage collaboration

Ensure charter schools are able to access and leverage expertise clustered in existing education services centers and agencies-such as boards of cooperative educational services, collaboratives, or intermediate school districts-to build their capacity and to facilitate development of collegial relationships between districts and charter schools. For instance, in some states there is notable variance in the extent to which the intermediate entities support charter schools and state agencies can collect data and issue guidance to ensure these entities are supporting all public schools.

Offer technical assistance to education service centers and agencies, districts, and charters to highlight how collaboration initiatives can be established with clear roles and responsibilities to benefit students with disabilities. NCSECS published a brief in 2015 describing how the Kent Intermediate School District in Michigan proactively supports both traditional and charter public schools and fosters development of collegial relationships across the two sectors.

Provide incentives, such as financial support, to encourage districts and charter schools to collaborate explicitly for the purpose of improving services for students with disabilities. These incentives could be part of a subgrant process to distribute federal charter school funding or to support efforts similar to those profiled in this report.

Develop and implement mechanisms-for example, authorizer performance metrics-to hold charter schools accountable for provision of special education, thereby creating tangible external pressures to catalyze charter schools' commitment to collaborative opportunities.

Charter school authorizer actions to encourage collaboration

Develop guidance and provide support to facilitate district-charter collaboration for the purpose of developing charter school special education capacity. This is especially important for existing district authorizers to adopt. For instance, the National Association of Charter School Authorizers can encourage authorizers that participate in their leadership training and authorizer development work to explore opportunities to collaborate.

Privilege charter applications that propose substantive collaborative initiatives between district and charter special education personnel. As part of their effort to ensure that all students have equal access to charter schools equipped to offer high-quality special education services, authorizers can encourage applicants to pursue innovative collaborative relationships by identifying such arrangements as evidence of capacity.

Target resources to support collaborative partnerships between charter schools and districts that develop innovative special education programs to disseminate emerging best practices. Authorizers can pursue grants from federal competitions such as the Department of Education's Charter School Program or new Education Innovation and Research Program to document and disseminate information about effective collaborations.

Secure external resources, including state or foundation grants, to support collaboration for the purpose of improving services for students with disabilities. Local, regional, and national foundations committed to improving outcomes for students with disabilities or expanding school choice for all students have invested in developing collaborative efforts.

District and charter school actions to facilitate district-charter collaboration

Identify and articulate mutual interests and tangible benefits to ensure collaborative partners understand the explicit potential value of collaborating. Regional "harbor masters," such as the Donnell-Kay Foundation in Denver and The MindTrust in Indianapolis, support multifaceted transformation efforts across districts and charter schools. These types of organizations are positioned to facilitate district-charter collaboration through identification of shared goals and provision of targeted resources.

Leverage both district and charter school leadership bully pulpit to foster buy-in to collaboration by faculty and staff. For instance, district efforts to improve the school leadership pipeline through introduction of training initiatives such as Leading Educators in Kansas City, Missouri, and Washington, D.C., that enroll both district and charter school leaders in cohorts create opportunities for school leaders to identify mutual interests and then use their position to foster collaboration.

Offer open and inclusive professional development and technical assistance opportunities that enable district and charter school personnel to interact as professionals. Partnerships facilitated through nonprofits supporting special education in charter schools, such as the collaboratives in New York City and Washington, D.C., are positioned to host such collegial opportunities.

Collaboration between traditional school districts and charter schools offers the potential to improve the effectiveness of special education and related services for students with disabilities. The examples in this report highlight how collaboration helped to better serve students with disabilities in charter schools; how these efforts improved access to innovative schools for students with disabilities; and how collaboration created opportunities for cost-effective solutions for both districts and charters. With a focus on building strong relationships and establishing clear processes and responsibilities, policymakers and education leaders across the country have an opportunity to encourage this type of collaboration in their communities.

The authors sought to identify examples of district and charter collaborations that focused on improving services provided to students with disabilities receiving special education and related services. While approximately half of the charter schools in the nation operate as part of a local district as stipulated in state charter law, we were interested in identifying collaborative partnerships that went beyond simply required negotiations between authorizers and school operators. Rather, we sought examples rich with information that would highlight innovative or proactive approaches to leveraging district expertise to build the capacity of charter schools to serve students with disabilities. District-charter collaborations in Denver; Los Angeles; and in Central Falls, Rhode Island, serve as examples that other districts can learn from. While each example is shaped by its unique local context and, therefore, is arguably not generalizable to all schools, the descriptions are nonetheless instructive as they illustrate what is possible if districts and charter schools are willing to collaborate for the benefit of students. In each city, we reviewed relevant documents and interviewed at least two stakeholders to understand the following questions:

What factors catalyzed the development of the collaboration?

What district policies, structures, or practices can help charter schools improve their special education and related services?

What actions can state policymakers and authorizers take to further promote development of collaborative relationships between districts and charter schools that will benefit students with disabilities?

All interviews were conducted by phone and additional questions and clarifications were handled via email communication or follow-up phone conversations.

Lauren Morando Rhim is a researcher, consultant, and advocate for children. She has spent the past 25 years striving to identify strategies to create and sustain high-quality public schools for all students. She co-founded and serves as executive director of the National Center for Special Education in Charter Schools where she leads efforts to conduct critical research, facilitate collaboration between special education and charter school advocates, inform policy, and provide targeted technical assistance. Rhim has a bachelor's degree from the University of Vermont in psychology, a doctoral degree in education policy from the University of Maryland, and has published extensively about school reform-specifically, issues related to equity in the charter sector. She has consulted extensively with federal, state, and local policy leaders, as well as practitioners.

Jessica Sutter is president of EdPro Consulting, LLC, a small, woman-owned business in Washington, D.C. Jessica founded EdPro in 2013 and has worked with a variety of clients both in the District and nationally. She has managed projects for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, New Schools Venture Fund, and the DC Public Charter School Board, as well as conducted research for the National Center for Special Education in Charter Schools, the Center for Reinventing Public Education, and Whiteboard Advisors. Jessica previously served as a program officer at the Office of the State Superintendent of Education and senior policy advisor to the deputy mayor for education in the district. She began her career as a middle school teacher. Jessica holds a bachelor's degree in political science from Loyola College in Maryland and a master's degree in education policy studies from the University of Maryland, where she is currently a doctoral candidate.

Neil Campbell is the Director of Innovation for the K-12 Education Policy team at American Progress. In this role, he focuses on issues such as personalized learning, charter schools, and the effective use of student data. Prior to joining American Progress, Campbell was the director, next generation at the Foundation for Excellence in Education, where he oversaw policy work related to personalized learning, course access, education funding, and student data privacy. He also worked at the U.S. Department of Education-first as a special assistant and later as chief of staff in the Office of Planning, Evaluation and Policy Development-was the director of strategic initiatives at Education Elements, and was a consultant with The Boston Consulting Group.

The Center for American Progress is grateful for the opportunity to collaborate with the National Center for Special Education in Charter Schools on this paper. The NCSECS is dedicated to ensuring that students with disabilities have equal access to charter schools and that public charter schools are designed and operated to enable all students to succeed.

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Improving Outcomes for Students with Disabilities - Center for American Progress

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While the relationship between districts and charter schools admittedly remains contentious in some locales, the two governance models are nevertheless collaborating effectively in communities across the country-much to the benefit of students.

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I found this little document super interesting. This is from the United States Department of Education and tells about the rights for students with disabilities is charter schools under Section 504 as well as IDEA. Although I know there are lots of documents to explain rights for parents and students, I found it interesting that they had this article just for charter schools What do you all think about it?

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This is a toolkit to help charter school authorizers meet the needs of students with disabilities. It covers a wide spectrum of crucial details, but pay close attention to pages 6 and 48-50 and tell me your thoughts.