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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INTRODUCTION
PART I - DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS
Site Selection
Site Visit Procedures
Data Analysis
PART II - OVERVIEW OF VISITED SCHOOLS
Localism
Evolution
Facilities
Curriculum and Instruction
Staffing and Leadership
Students
PART III - FINDINGS REGARDING STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES
Why Parents Enroll Their Children with Disabilities in Charter Schools:
Students Attitudes Toward Enrolling in a Charter School
Pre-admission Counseling Related to Disability
How Charter Schools Serve Students with Disabilities:
Identifying Students with Disabilities
Instructional Setting
Instruction
Related Services
Transportation
Overview of Differences between Charter and Non-Charter Schools
Outcome Goals for Students:
Differences Between Goals for Students With and Without Disabilities
Assessment of Student Outcomes:
Differences Between Assessment for Students With and Without Disabilities
The Success of Charter Schools with Students with Disabilities:
Anecdotal Evidences of Success
Some Limits to Success
Integration
Facilitators of Success
Barriers to Success
PART IV - CONCLUSIONS
General Conclusions About Charter Schools
Conclusions Related to Students with Disabilities:
Enrollment Decisions
Attitudes Toward Special education and Students with Disabilities
Identifying Students with Disabilities
Academic and Related Services
Assessment and Accountability
Evidence of Student Success
Factors Affecting Student Success
APPENDIX
Excerpts of Charter School Operators' Legal Responsibilities Under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act As Amended in 1997 and the Charter School Expansion Act of 1998
List of Tables
Table 1
Distribution of selection variables in population of charter schools and Westat sample
Table 2
Characteristics of charter schools in the total population and the Westat sample
Table 3
Reasons parents of students with disabilities enroll their children in charter schools, as reported by parents and administrators
Table 4
Reasons students did or did not want to attend the charter school, as reported by students
Table 5
Differences between charter schools and previously-attended non-charter schools, as reported by parents, charter school staff, and students
Table 6
Goals for students with disabilities, as reported by parents and charter school staff
Table 7
Student assessment methods in charter schools, as reported by staff
Table 8
Factors that facilitate success for charter school students with disabilities, as reported by parents, charter school staff, and students
Table 9
Factors that impede success for charter school students with disabilities, as reported by parents, charter school staff, and students
Acknowledgments
Our work would not have been possible without the generous support of charter school administrators, teachers, parents, and students. These individuals, in 32 schools in 15 states, took time from their busy schedules to talk with us and show us their programs. They described their determined and often inspiring attempts to improve public education. Although we do not name them, we greatly appreciate their assistance.
We would also like to thank the charter school practitioners who participated in an advisory meeting during the first months of the study. The following persons helped us identify the educational, management, and policy issues most important to charter schools as they serve students with disabilities:
Anne Alpert, Side By Side Community School, Wilton, CT
Liz Ash, Cheyenne Mountain Charter Academy, Colorado Springs, CO
Sarah Begor, Chicago Preparatory Charter School, Park Ridge, IL
Ellie Boyce, Bowling Green, Sacramento, CA
Jackie Garrett, Chance Charter School, Alachua, FL
Maureen Landry, Bayou Charter School, Houma, LA
Joy N'Daou, Chicago International Charter School, Chicago, IL
Judy Olkes, Schools With No Stopping Point, Madison, WI
Marcus Sherman, North Star Academy, Springfield, MA
Johanna Thomas, Excel Education Centers, Prescott, AZ
JoAnne Woodard, Sallie B. Howard Charter School, Wilson, NC
We want in particular to thank the U.S. Department of Education Project Officers who provided thoughtful guidance throughout the course of the study. They were Kelly Henderson and Jane C. Williams of the Office of Special Education Programs and Judith Anderson of the Office of Educational Research and Improvement. And we especially appreciate the many additional Department officials and the external reviewers who provided useful feedback to drafts of this report.
In addition to the report's authors, the study team included other researchers who made valuable contributions. The following individuals conducted site visits and contributed in various ways to data reporting and analysis: Erin Cashman, Christene Tashjian, and Sandra Hopfengardner Warren of Research Triangle Institute; Susan Marks, Patricia McKenna, Kathryn Morrison, and Lynn Newman of SRI International.
Tom Fiore
Project Director
Westat
INTRODUCTION
The overarching purpose of this study of public charter schools and students with disabilities was to examine how charter school developers have used the opportunities provided by their charters to serve students with disabilities. Between March 1998 and June 1999, teams of researchers from Westat, SRI International, and Research Triangle Institute visited 32 public charter schools in 15 states. On these visits, we talked with 151 parents of students with disabilities, 196 teachers, and 164 students with disabilities, in addition to one or more administrators for each school. Five primary research questions guided this study, providing the structure for the protocols used for conducting interviews and reviewing records and providing the organization for analyzing cross-site findings:
1. Why have parents chosen to enroll their children with disabilities in a charter school?
2. In what ways do charter schools serve children with disabilities?
3. What student outcome goals have charter schools and parents set?
4. How do charter schools assess student outcomes?
5. How successful have charter schools been in meeting their outcome goals and parents' outcome expectations for students with disabilities?
This report summarizes the data collection and the analysis and reports significant findings.1 Part I outlines the procedures followed in selecting and visiting schools and analyzing the collected data. Part II is an overview of the schools visited and a general summary of school characteristics. Part III focuses more specifically on students with disabilities and summarizes findings in five sections that correspond to the five primary research questions. Part IV provides conclusions based on the overall data available to date. The Appendix includes excerpts, prepared by the U.S. Department of Education, of charter school operators' legal responsibilities under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act as amended in 1997 and the Charter School Expansion Act of 1998.
PART I - DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS
The first part of this report briefly describes the procedures used to select schools to visit, to collect data on-site, and to analyze the collected data.
Site Selection
The descriptive focus of the study and a limit on the number of site visits that we were able to conduct required selection of a purposive sample of schools. We based sample selection on variables that define important characteristics of charter schools and drew the sample from the population of 335 charter schools that were surveyed in 1997 by the National Study of Charter Schools.2 The National Study data set was the most comprehensive source of information about charter schools. We chose five selection variables that our review of previous research suggested may influence how charter schools are able to serve students with disabilities. For each variable, we established categories with ranges of expression of the variable, based on data available from the National Study. The variables were, in order of priority, (1) proportion of students with disabilities enrolled, (2) federal public charter school grant recipient status, (3) level of operational autonomy based on the extent of the schools' control over admissions and budgets, (4) grade levels served, and (5) geographic region.
We classified the 335 charter schools according to the multiple categories for the five variables. This process sorted schools into a matrix of cells, with each cell defined by a set of unique charter school characteristics. With the variables prioritized as noted above, we were able to select cells that included schools with the desired characteristics. Within each selected cell were multiple schools, from which we randomly selected the schools in our sample. We selected an initial group of 28 schools in this way. In the second year of the study, we chose the remaining four schools in a still more deliberate manner. We selected schools that were more recently opened (and thus not part of the 1997 National Study survey) or that reflected characteristics that were not adequately represented in the first 28 schools we visited. The total sample of 32 schools was distributed through 15 states.
Table 1 shows the distribution of the selection variable categories for the schools we visited and for the total population of charter schools for the 1996-97 school year, which was the population from which the initial sample was drawn. We replaced eight of the first 28 schools that we selected. A few schools refused to participate, mostly because of logistical concerns about the time of the school year planned for the visit, the availability of staff to meet with researchers, or the school's participation in other research efforts. We dropped several schools from the sample because they required additional steps for their school's internal review process or simply because they did not respond to telephone calls or written correspondence. Although we replaced the eight schools by randomly selecting a substitute from a pool of schools with similar characteristics, we do not know how the replaced schools compare in other ways to the visited schools. Thus lack of access to some schools affects the findings in ways that are not clear.
Table 1
Distribution of selection variables in population of charter schools and Westat sample.
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* Data derived from the database for the second round of the National Study of Charter Schools (Berman, Nelson, Ericson, Perry, & Silverman, 1998)
The sampling procedures ensured that we would visit some schools that serve a significant proportion of students with disabilities, defined as students receiving services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.3 Overall, 11.7 percent of the students in the visited schools were labeled as special education students. Other students with disabilities were enrolled in some of the visited schools but were not labeled or receiving special education services, as explained in Part III of this report. With the exception of a school for students with autism, the great majority of special education students in the visited schools were individuals with learning disabilities, behavior disorders, or mild cognitive disabilities. Therefore, this report focuses mainly on students with mild disabilities. The term "mild" distinguishes these students from students with low-incidence or more significant disabilities. Table 2 provides additional characteristics of the visited schools with comparable data for the total population of charter schools for the 1997-98 school year, which was the first year for site visits.
Table 2
Characteristics of charter schools in the total population and the Westat sample.
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* Data from the report of the third round of the National Study of Charter Schools (Berman, Nelson, Perry, Silverman, Solomon, & Kamprath, 1999).
** In total, 7,476 students were enrolled in the visited schools; 6,765 is the number of students for whom race/ethnicity information was available.
The sampling strategy employed for this study ensured that the visited schools reflect the wide variety of ways charter schools are serving students with disabilities. We can therefore report with confidence on the broad range of conditions under which charter schools operate, the assortment of challenges charter school operators and their clients encounter, and the ways they address these challenges. The findings provide a broad and valid picture of how charter schools in general are serving students with disabilities. The sampling strategy does not allow us to make specific, proportional generalizations to the total population of charter schools. Because we did not randomly select the schools we visited, we cannot estimate the number or relative proportion of all charter schools operating like those schools. Similarly, we can draw only the broadest conclusions about the strength of a particular finding. For example, when parents of students with disabilities at more than a third of the visited schools told us that they enrolled their child in the charter school because of the small school and class size, we can presume that this reason for enrollment is common at charter schools. And when parents at only one of the visited schools said they enrolled their child because they knew and liked the principal, we presume that this situation is rare at charter schools. We do not, however, report that parents at a specific percent of all charter schools enroll their children for these reasons.
Site Visit Procedures
At most schools, a two-person team spent two days on-site, conducting observations, reviewing student and school records, and interviewing staff, parents, and students. A set of five protocols guided data collection, although all interviews were open-ended. Site visitors prepared for visits by reading charters and other reports sent by school operators, modifying the protocols to reflect extant data and the expected on-site respondents, and reviewing information on the host state's charter school law. Interviews with the school spokesperson (usually the principal or director) took approximately 1½ hours. We conducted group interviews (focus groups) with teachers, parents of students with disabilities, and students with disabilities or other at-risk learners. The teacher and parent interviews lasted approximately two hours. We limited student group interviews to one class period or no more than one hour. The reviews of individual student records and the interviews with students were conducted only with written parent permission.
We relied on charter school administrators for the scheduling of interviews, the selection of interviewees, and other arrangements. This reliance on a school official created the possibility that we would only have contact with individuals having positive experiences with the school. To counter this possibility for parents of students with disabilities, we specifically asked administrators to invite parents to talk with us who were not totally satisfied with the school. Most parent focus groups did include individuals who voiced criticisms of the school. At a few schools where the participants in the parent group were overwhelmingly positive, we asked administrators for the names of parents of students with disabilities who had withdrawn their child from the school. We talked to these parents by phone after the site visits and included their comments in the analysis with those of the other parents.
A few schools that agreed to our visit were not forthcoming with information or access to staff, parents, or students. Therefore, we did not always have information to review before the visit and, once on-site, we discovered that a few administrators had made inadequate arrangements, and others limited our observations. At one school, the administrator declined to arrange for parent or student interviews and would not give us names of parents, although he did not tell us this until we were on-site. At the same school, the administrator declined to give us a copy of the charter. He said giving out the charter was against their board's policy because others had copied their charter and opened up competing schools. (We were able to obtain a copy of the charter from the state.) In another school, the principal would not agree to the visit until we agreed to omit the review of student records. In other schools, despite the efforts of administrators, only one or two parents or a small number of teachers showed up for interviews.
The preponderance of schools were exceptionally open and made their facilities, staff, parents, students, and records available to us with few restrictions. Most charter school operators, and the parents and students who are their clients, are quite proud of their accomplishments and more than willing to show off what they are doing. In fact, some do so with missionary zeal. Given the descriptive nature of the study, where we are not drawing inferences from the sample about the characteristics of all charter schools, the threats to the validity of the findings posed by the refusing schools are not highly significant. The purpose was to determine the range of how charter schools function in relation to students with disabilities, not to determine how specific ways of operating are proportionally represented in the total population of charter schools.
Data Analysis
We followed a multi-step data summarization and reduction process to analyze the data collected on-site. Following each visit, the site visitors wrote a narrative description of the school. This working document provided an overview of the school. It was organized under the five primary research questions and summarized the main responses across the various types of respondents. Next, for every protocol, the site visit team created a list of responses to each interview question by each respondent or group of respondents. We entered these 6,136 unique responses into a relational database that allowed us to sort responses by question, school, respondent type, content, and other categories of interest. To reduce the combined data to a more manageable volume, we sorted responses by interview question and respondent type and then coded and tabulated common responses. We prepared summaries for each respondent type for each question. From these summaries we prepared tables and descriptive text.
In preparing this report, we relied on the tables and text developed from the relational database, the individual site visit summaries, and the documents collected before and during the site visits. Using these sources, we systematically addressed the five primary research questions and each research subquestion. In writing the report, we further reduced the data by summarizing and by culling the findings to present the most notable and significant ideas, without eliminating important information.
An important consideration in analyzing the data was how to tally duplicate responses from the same respondent types at the same school. Take as an example the situation where three parents participating in a group interview said that they made the decision to enroll their child in the charter school without input from the child, two parents said they left the decision completely up to the child, and a sixth parent said she made the decision jointly with her child. We could have tallied these responses as three for parent decision, two for child decision, and one for joint decision. We chose, however, to make the school the unit of analysis rather than the individual respondent and, in coding and tallying the responses, we tallied one parent decision, one child decision, and one joint decision. Thus we coded three responses from that school, not six. We realize that this strategy, focusing on the untabulated occurrence of a response at a school, provides no indication of the strength of the response within a school. Given the descriptive nature of the study and that neither the schools nor the respondents were selected randomly, we believe this was the best strategy for capturing the range of responses and avoiding the danger to validity that would occur if we assumed that we had a true measure of the strength of a response.
We did consider the magnitude of responses across schools. But even so, we have chosen not to report the actual number or percentage of schools where a response occurred. Our reasoning, again, is that without a representative sample, it is potentially misleading to highlight the magnitude of a response in the sample of schools we visited, which we believe percentages would do. Such reporting might imply that a given response is similarly strong in the total population of charter schools. We do in some situations, however, report on the approximate fraction of the visited schools where a given response occurred. We believe this procedure for analysis and reporting is consistent with the descriptive purpose of the study, giving the reader a sense of the relative strength of responses within the purposive sample without implying proportionality for the entire population of charter schools.
PART II - OVERVIEW OF VISITED SCHOOLS
Consistent with a key tenet of the charter school movement, each school we visited had distinctive characteristics that defined the school and differentiated it from its local public school counterparts. As the sections below describe, charter schools can best be understood as products of their local settings, as fluid entities that are likely to continue to evolve, and as institutions that are unique by virtue of facilities, curriculum and instruction, staffing, or the students they serve. For the 32 schools, the variety across important school characteristics was remarkable. This part of the report describes the schools according to key issues and characteristics, which provides an overview of the schools and provides the context for how the schools serve students with disabilities. Part III addresses students with disabilities more specifically.
The description of the schools in the sections below emphasizes their uniqueness. But in contrast to the diversity, many of the 32 schools had significant characteristics in common. To illustrate, five students participating in a focus group at a high school described their school in terms that with slight modifications would apply to many of the schools we visited:
This is a small school that's made for everybody. It's based on one-on-one learning. You're more self-dependent, self-paced. You get more help. Classrooms are smaller. You get what you need for your high school diploma, and you don't have to take extra or unnecessary classes. You pick what you feel is helpful to you. The day is short. You can pick your own hours. Teachers are helpful. They help out with jobs, help you get into college, help you with a tutor. Teachers and counselors want you to succeed. And they make themselves available. They care.
Extra help from teachers, small size, low student-teacher ratios, flexibility, a focused curriculum, and caring staff are characteristics of nearly all the schools we visited, according to students, parents, and staff. But not all the schools' common characteristics are positive. Although student-teacher ratios were low, many school administrators reported having problems finding and keeping qualified staff. Cramped classrooms were common. Only a few of the visited schools had adequate libraries or adequate stocks of materials for students to use for projects. Transportation was a challenge at most of the schools. The following sections touch on the positive and negative characteristics that together distinguish charter schools.
Localism
As the charter school movement has gained momentum and spread across the country, there has been a natural tendency for researchers and policymakers to seek to evaluate the significance of charters from a macro perspective. This approach, while necessary and valuable, insufficiently recognizes the important local character of many individual charter schools. Our visits to charter schools underscored the importance of understanding the local context out of which individual charter schools emerge in order to understand their significance, as well as the outcomes they are able to achieve. Some of the findings are most interesting when viewed in relation to charter schools' responses to the local public education environment.
The majority of charter schools we visited were created in response to one of two features of the local public education environment. First, several charter schools were started as the next steps in an evolution of district reform or innovation initiatives. For example, several conversion charter schools had previously implemented site-based management or other types of systemic reform efforts. In these cases, charter status complemented and built upon these previous reform efforts. Second, many charter school founders created schools intended to provide a new educational option either not present, or of insufficient quality, in local public schools. This "market niche" analogy has many different curricular and instructional faces, as we describe in the Curriculum and Instruction section below. In each of these cases, the charter schools reported that they were filling a void by providing services that were unavailable elsewhere in the local public schools.
One of the most compelling arguments for charter schools is that market mechanisms and accountability will produce creativity and innovation that will generate results. We found charter schools to be innovative in several ways relative to local circumstances. Although we did not observe approaches to teaching and learning that could not be found in other public schools, we found instances of curricular or instructional approaches that, according to staff and parents, were not available at public schools in the immediate geographical area, as noted in the previous paragraph. Thus, their innovation was in a local rather than an absolute sense.
We also found innovations in areas other than curriculum and instruction that may contribute to student success as well. For example, students cannot reap educational benefits unless they are physically present in schools, and we found that student attendance and transportation created problems and opportunities that charter schools handled in innovative ways. Perhaps the most striking example was the intentional location of a charter school at the center of a minority community on the grounds of a defunct parochial school. Attending the regular public school required that students spend 90 minutes per day in transit. Enrollment in the charter school reduced high levels of absenteeism for many students. Another charter school purchased a fleet of school buses in order to bring students to and from school from a radius of over 20 miles. This gave parents in a wide geographical area the ability to choose such a school for their child. In contrast, another charter school required that parents bring students to school and pick them up every day. This was a strategic arrangement to boost attendance while creating opportunities for staff and parents to interact with one another more frequently and supporting the school's goals of parent involvement. In each of these cases, charter schools were able to develop an innovative solution to a local problem.
Evolution
We found numerous examples of schools in transition, especially during the first years of operation. Although the overall mission of these schools usually remained unchanged, the approaches the schools took had evolved and, in many schools we visited, were continuing to evolve. The following examples provide a flavor of the types of changes that were occurring at many of the visited schools:
· A K-12 school began with three instructional tracks: entrepreneurial, technological, and equestrian. The first director came into conflict with the board because he attempted to instill a religious focus and left shortly after the school opened. The second director shifted the school to focus on the core principles of reading, writing, and math. He believed that, although students enjoyed the three original programs, it was at the expense of literacy. He dropped the equestrian program entirely and de-emphasized the entrepreneurial program.
· In the spirit of the open-classroom philosophy outlined in the school's charter, a drop-out recovery high school opened with classroom walls that did not extend to the ceiling. By the time of our visit two years after opening, the teachers had filled in the space between the tops of the walls and the ceiling with posterboard and drapes to provide more traditional privacy. At the same school, an on-site preschool originally designed to serve the children of the school's students had become a program for at-risk children from the community whose parents were not affiliated with the charter school.
· At start-up, an elementary/middle school used Direct Instruction as the method for teaching core academic classes. The teachers quickly became frustrated with the rigidity of the approach, and its use was discontinued after the first year, except with remedial reading instruction. The school maintained a highly structured, but less programmed, approach to instruction.
· A K-12 school began as a "hands-on learning place where classrooms were noisy and [students] were learning by doing." Parents complained, feeling that the students had too much free time, and the school evolved toward more traditional learning and a back-to-the-basics theme.
· The original purpose of a school for at-risk teenagers was to provide an interim educational opportunity for temporarily expelled students. Because of limited opportunities for its students to return to traditional schools, the charter school refocused its efforts toward trying to graduate students.
Facilities
Charter school developers find space where they can. Modular classrooms are common. Auditoriums, gymnasiums, and cafeterias are rare. The schools we visited were located on busy streets, in the middle of farm fields, in strip malls, and in office buildings. A few schools were located in elegant, older school buildings purchased or leased from a district. One school was in a new facility, which had all the features of a modern school building and was specifically designed to accommodate the school's instructional approach. Two schools were located in leased space provided by a church. Two schools we visited had more than one campus-one used a former public school building as an elementary and middle school and taught high school students in the classrooms of a regional university; another had three separate locations within three regular public schools. One large conversion elementary provided a strong contrast to the norm. It operated in a beautifully groomed, 10-year-old brick building that included a gymnasium, cafeteria, library, and computer room. Every classroom had a television and VCR mounted on the wall and networked to a central studio.
Most commonly, the schools were housed in converted facilities designed for other purposes and renovated, to a greater or lesser extent, to accommodate classrooms and students. The following is a list of some of the former uses of the charter school facilities we visited:
· funeral parlor
· garage and motor pool building
· Moose lodge
· youth camp
· day care center
· textile mill
· insurance agency
· restaurant supply center
· hardware store
· parsonage
The visiting research teams did not fully evaluate accessibility for individuals with disabilities but did note the presence or absence of ramps and the availability of appropriately equipped restrooms. Approximately two-thirds of the visited schools were at least marginally accessible, meaning that no obvious physical barriers were present and one or more restrooms were at least partially equipped for individuals using wheelchairs. Only a few of these schools were designed or remodeled so that they were fully accessible and would meet current new-construction standards. Approximately a third of the visited schools were inaccessible or so limited in their accessibility that they would not be able to serve students in wheelchairs.
Curriculum and Instruction
As with facilities, the charter schools' curriculum and instruction varied greatly. Administrators in approximately half of the visited schools reported that the school curriculum was the same as or similar to the curriculum of the state or district. In some of these schools, covering the state curriculum was viewed as necessary because the students were required to take state tests, and test results were part of the school's accountability plan or were publicized by the state or district. In some schools, meeting state or district curriculum requirements was necessary for students to meet graduation standards. Administrators in many schools that followed a state or district curriculum reported bolstering that curriculum through a special emphasis or supplement. Others emphasized the strength of their teaching methods in delivering the curriculum.
Some schools adopted national models that prescribe or influence curriculum and instruction, including the following:
· Coalition of Essential Schools
· Comer
· Core Knowledge
· Direct Instruction
· Waldorf
· Montessori
· Paideia
· Reggio Emilia
At some schools, these models supplemented or supported the state or district curriculum. In other schools, these models provided the curriculum. In either case, the models were prominent in the schools' literature and in conversations with staff, and the schools using these approaches had invested in staff training and specialized materials. We did not examine the integrity of the application of the models.
In addition to the more formal models listed above, many schools had a particular curriculum emphasis. These emphases, all of which are familiar in some form to curriculum experts, were adapted by the school founders or the staff and had unique expressions at the schools. Often, they had evolved in response to the demands of educating the enrolled students. Examples of these curriculum emphases, broadly defined, include the following:
· arts immersion
· Afrocentric education
· back-to-basics
· college preparatory
· life skills
· values/moral education
· vocational education
Whether the charter schools embraced traditional or unique curricula, we found great variety in the instructional approaches they used. Some schools looked like stereotypical public schools, with classrooms arranged by age and grade level and teachers leading whole or small group instruction centered on textbooks. Many, however, used alternative instructional approaches that the staff described as follows:
· bilingual education
· computer assisted instruction
· constructivist, experiential, or hands-on learning
· cooperative learning
· diagnostic/prescriptive instruction
· interdisciplinary instruction
· multiple intelligences instruction
· multisensory/multimodal instruction
· peer tutoring
· project-based learning
· student-paced/independent learning
· thematic instruction
Within the framework of the various instructional approaches, some schools used individual learning plans for every student.
The picture of the visited schools becomes more complex, and more diverse, when considering other unique features related to curriculum and instruction. At a number of schools, major components of curriculum or instruction were structured differently than in traditional public schools. The following examples are illustrative:
· A school provides two academic tracks for students age 14 and over who have failed in regular school-one track seeks to prepare students to re-enter 9th grade at their regular high school and the other prepares students for the GED.
· A high school has a flexible schedule, double sessions (e.g., 8:00-noon, 1:00-5:00), and a self-paced, individualized program that allows some students to accelerate their progress and other students to progress at a slower, more comfortable pace and have the opportunity to hold jobs and remain in school.
· An elementary/middle school provides instruction in English and Spanish at every grade level. Students spend mornings in core subjects taught in their dominant language and afternoons in dual-language classes for project-based learning.
· A grade 6-12 school that emphasizes hands-on learning concludes each school year with an experiential learning period. Students must write up a formal request that outlines goals and objectives for a project they choose. Most students complete individual projects, lasting one to four weeks, such as job-shadowing. Some travel to places like Mexico and England to participate in study groups.
· An elementary school implemented a peer mediation and ethics program, developed by the school's director, in addition to its core academic program. The program was designed to help students develop skills in the areas of responsibility, respect, conflict resolution, and tolerance. The school also requires students to wear uniforms and has a flag raising ceremony each week to teach patriotism.
· A high school, affiliated with a youth center, requires all students to take both basic construction and keyboarding classes, regardless of whether the students are work or college bound. Students who participate in the work program go to school for one week and then are employed for a week with contractors in the field.
Staffing and Leadership
As noted previously, in contrast to their differences, charter schools we visited had in common smaller class size and lower student-teacher ratios than are usually found in other public schools. Staff emphasized the importance of their relationships both with students and parents. By almost all reports, the lower student-teacher ratios allowed for greater individual attention and greater individualization of instruction for all students.
Teacher and other staff qualifications at the schools were varied. The extent to which staff were certified was related to both the state's charter school law and the school's own requirements. Many states do not require charter school staff to meet state certification requirements. At some schools, all professional staff met certification requirements that would allow them to teach at any public school in the state or district. Other schools employed no certified staff, employed only staff who held provisional or out-of-state certification, or employed staff who taught out-of-field. Most typically, staff at a school had mixed qualifications.
Almost all of the visited schools had a traditional governance structure, whereby a charter school board had legal responsibility for the school but left school management up to a principal or director, who served at the discretion of the board. The principal or director provided on-site leadership to teachers and other staff who had varying degrees of input into the day-to-day running of the school. The board stepped in if a crisis developed or a new administrator needed to be hired. At a few schools, the principal was appointed by the superintendent or the board of the sponsoring school district, rather than by a charter school board.
A couple of exceptions to the norm of traditional governance are noteworthy. A K-12 conversion school had no administrator and was governed by an inclusive site-based management committee. Operating decisions were made in weekly site-based meetings, where all adult members of the school community could participate: teachers, librarian, teacher assistants, janitors, cook, secretary, and parents. The school staff took turns leading the meetings. Under the charter, a board had contractual responsibility for the school, but the board's role had diminished over the years. In another school, a private management company assumed the school's management and business functions after it had accumulated excessive debt. The management company became the employer for all school employees with the exception of the principal who remained employed by the school's board. The management company also made recommendations about the ways to restructure the school and its delivery of services.
Students
Approximately half the visited schools targeted specific student populations. Most of these were secondary programs that targeted at-risk students. These students included individuals who have dropped out or are at risk of dropping out or who are adjudicated, pregnant, parenting, or expelled. Other target populations included disadvantaged and Spanish-speaking children and youth. One elementary school was designed for children with autism or developmental delays with autistic features. Another targeted children with learning disabilities, although not exclusively. In general, the schools that focused on a target population did not attract other types of students.
Most of the schools that did not target specific student populations attempted to attract students by offering a special curriculum, a specific type of instruction, or a particular educational philosophy. The most obvious examples were the schools that offer established programs such as Montessori, Waldorf, or Paideia. As described previously, schools also offered a variety of alternative instructional approaches, such as project-based learning, hands-on learning, or bilingual education, or a specific curriculum emphasis such as arts immersion or Afrocentric education. Additionally, one of the visited schools promoted itself as a more traditional alternative to the local public schools. It offered a back-to-basics curriculum, teacher-directed instruction, and stronger discipline. In contrast, some of the visited schools promoted their open education philosophy as an alternative to overly structured public schools. The schools that offered special curriculum, instruction, or philosophy and those that targeted specific student populations were not mutually exclusive. In fact, most of the schools targeting specific populations tried to attract students by offering alternative instruction.
Three schools that did not target specific student populations were public school conversions, which essentially served students from their original attendance areas. One applied for charter status when it was scheduled to be closed by the district due to decreased enrollment. The school's spokesperson told us, "We're a small community already, and, without a school, we'd lose more than just a school." A fourth school, cited above in the Localism section, drew students in a similar manner. It opened in the facilities formerly occupied by a parochial school in a minority community and attracts students who walk to school as an alternative to attending a district school almost an hour's bus ride away.
A number of the schools found that their educational approach attracted in particular at-risk learners or students with disabilities. For example, the founders of a school we visited that uses the Paideia principles and has a focus on the performing and studio arts expected to attract students interested in the arts as well as those who were at-risk for dropping out. During the school's first year, enrollment included arts-oriented students and at-risk learners. Over time, many arts-oriented students left, and at-risk students enrolled at faster than anticipated rates. At another school, which did not have a target population, staff reported that they do not tend to draw average students but attract students who do not fit into the regular public schools-students who are either high or low achieving. At many schools, staff talked about students in their population who they thought had unidentified disabilities. Some complained that their standard instructional approach did not work with these or other students with learning problems or that a need to focus on discipline detracted from achievement.
PART III - FINDINGS REGARDING STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES
For this part of the report, we have organized the findings under headings corresponding to the primary research questions. Each of the five questions had multiple subquestions, which are reflected in the subsection headings below. All primary research questions and most subquestions were addressed through multiple sources, including the individuals we interviewed and the records we reviewed prior to and during site visits.
As described in Part I, in analyzing the collected data, we focused primarily on the absolute occurrence of a response at a school, as opposed to the frequency of that response within a school. For some questions, we report on the approximate fraction of the visited schools where a given response occurred. In other cases, we simply refer to responses occurring at "a few" or "several" schools. In reading this part of the report, two cautions are necessary. First, a common response across the schools was not necessarily a common response within the schools. That is, we may have recorded a similar response from at least one parent at nearly all the visited schools, but that response was not necessarily frequent within each of those schools. In fact, when parents provided contradictory responses during the parent group interview, we counted both responses from that school. This analytical procedure is consistent with the descriptive purpose of the study and our efforts to document the range, as opposed to the absolute magnitude, of responses.
The second caution is that generalizing the magnitude of findings from this study to the total population of charter schools is inappropriate. That is, responses that were common or rare at the schools we visited are not necessarily correspondingly common or rare for all charter schools. Again, the descriptive purpose of the study did not require that we make inferences about the strength of responses for the total population. Instead, the study required that we describe the range of responses applicable to the total population. The purposive sampling and the data collection procedures we used allow us to do that with confidence.
Why Parents Enroll Their Children with Disabilities in Charter Schools
Parents reported a variety of reasons for enrolling their children with disabilities in charter schools. Most fall into two categories: positive characteristics of the charter school and negative experiences with the previous non-charter school. Table 3 presents the reasons for enrollment, as reported by parents and administrators, sorted where appropriate under the two categories.
Parents of students with disabilities at more than half the visited schools identified dissatisfaction with their child's previous non-charter school as a reason for enrolling their child in the charter school. Dissatisfaction with the school in general or with the special education program in particular was cited more frequently than any other reason for transferring a child. When parents were more specific, they expressed dissatisfaction with the teachers at the previous school, they said their child was struggling academically or socially, or they said the previous school had a poor reputation. One parent said of her child's previous school, "They give up on you." Another parent said that the special education program in her child's previous school was a "glorified babysitting service." Many parents noted that switching their child to the charter school was a difficult decision because the school was new and did not have a track record. Yet they thought that the charter school had to be better than the previous situation. One parent was nearly equally disparaging of the charter school and her child's previous school, referring to the charter school as "the lesser of two evils."
Table 3
Reasons parents of students with disabilities enroll their children in charter schools, as reported by parents and administrators.
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As Table 3 shows, parents of students with disabilities also described a variety of positive characteristics of the charter school that made enrollment there attractive. At more than a third of the schools, parents mentioned the charter school's small size or the small size of its classes. A special curriculum focus or instructional approach, the quality of the staff, the school's positive reputation, and the safety of a community-like environment were each cited by parents at approximately a fourth of the visited schools.
Administrators' perceptions of the reasons parents enroll their children in charter schools were quite similar to what parents reported. Smaller school or class size, a particular curriculum or instructional approach, and improved special education services were common responses from administrators to the question of why parents of children with disabilities enroll their children in the charter school. Administrators were more likely than parents to attribute parents' motivation to the attractive features of the charter school rather than negative experiences with previous schools. Interestingly, administrators at more than a third of the visited schools cited their special education services as a reason parents enroll their children, but parents at less than half as many schools identified this reason.
Student Attitudes Toward Enrolling in a Charter School
Students at approximately a third of the schools stated that they had made the decision to attend the charter school or that they made the decision together with their parents, and students at almost two-thirds of the visited schools reported that their parent or guardian had made the decision or that they had not been involved in the decision at all. At least one parent at more than half of the visited schools reported that their child had a choice in whether to attend the charter school. Parents at some of those schools reported that while their child had a choice, they strongly encouraged or influenced that decision. Parents at approximately a fourth of the schools, most of whom had elementary-aged children, stated that their child did not participate in the decision or did not have a choice as to whether to attend the charter school.
Regardless of their role in the decision, most students we interviewed said they wanted to transfer to the charter school. Students at most of the high schools we visited wanted to attend the charter school to increase their chances of academic success and, in some cases, to have a chance to graduate. Students at some schools reported not liking their previous non-charter school, and a few admitted having been expelled or having dropped out from their previous school. Other reasons for wanting to attend the charter school included the small size of the school or small class size and the special programs, incentives, or schedules that the charter school offered that were not offered at other schools. Some students stated reasons relating to friends attending the charter schools or a high comfort level with peers at the charter school. Table 4summarizes the chief reasons students did or did not want to enroll in a charter school.
Table 4
Reasons students did or did not want to attend the charter school, as reported by students.
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Although students at some charter schools reported wanting to attend the school because of friendships, students more often stated they did not want to attend the charter school because they did not want to leave their friends at their previous school. Other students did not want to attend the charter school because of the negative reputation the school had in the community. Some students reported thinking that the charter school was for slow learners. Another reason for children not wanting to attend the charter school was the lack of sports or other extracurricular activities.
Parents corroborated the reasons that their child wanted to attend the charter school, some emphasizing their child's dislike of the previous school and others pointing to the unique programs and activities offered at the charter school. Other reasons identified by parents included children wanting a fresh start and liking the general environment or facilities of the charter school. Parents had little to say about reasons the children did not want to attend.
Pre-admission Counseling Related to Disability
Slightly less than half the visited schools routinely provided an orientation for parents or students prior to admissions decisions, according to administrators and parents. Only a few of these schools had a pre-admission orientation or counseling process specifically for parents considering enrolling their children with disabilities. Although rare, administrators at a few schools reported that they always have an interview with the parent or student with a disability to determine if the school can meet that student's needs.
Whether or not they conduct a pre-decision interview, administrators at approximately a fourth of the visited schools said that they were unable to serve certain types of students with disabilities and that they discouraged parents of some students with disabilities from enrolling their children in the charter school. The administrators asserted various reasons for discouraging a student's enrollment, mostly based on a lack of fit between the curriculum or instruction and a student's needs. We did not determine the extent to which administrators might also discourage enrollment by nondisabled students who they believed are not a good fit for their school. Most administrators saw "counseling out" as a process that is in the student's best interest. For example, an administrator in a school where two-thirds of the students have mild disabilities reported that if she feels the school lacks the services a student needs, she informs the parents because she wants the child to be placed in the best possible environment.
Usually, counseling out occurred informally during initial meetings with the parents and students, but a few schools had more formal or direct approaches for discouraging certain students from enrolling. For example, one school reported that its charter states that the school is unable to meet the needs of students with severe emotional and behavioral difficulties, and that this was also stated during initial interviews if necessary. Another school required parents to sign a Waiver of Responsibility acknowledging "that they [the charter school] are not equipped, nor do they offer, special education services." An administrator at still another charter school that enrolled three students with autism reported that she "had to be brutally honest" with the parent who wanted to enroll her child who was in a wheelchair and required catheterization. The director explained to this parent that the other three students had exhausted the school's financial resources, and the school simply could not afford to provide a large amount of assistance to another student. In another school, the principal indicated that they would accept any student and contract for any needed services. But, he explained, in the case of students with significant disabilities who needed self-contained placements, the charter school would contract with the local district to provide that service at a local public school. Thus, for those students, the charter school was not a true alternative.
In contrast to the discouraging reception administrators reported they gave parents of some students with disabilities, parents at only three schools reported that staff attempted to dissuade them from enrolling at the school because of their child's disability. And at more than half of the visited schools, parents said that they were encouraged to enroll their child with a disability or that the charter school staff did not focus on the child's disability when discussing enrollment. It is important to note that the parents interviewed were parents of students who were or had been enrolled in the charter school. The research team did not seek out parents who chose not to enroll their child at a school or whose child had been turned down by the school. The number of parents who have been counseled out of the visited schools is not known.
Interestingly, in some schools, staff expressed antagonism toward special education but encouraged enrollment of students with disabilities. The most striking example was the school that asked parents to sign the special education waiver described above. The principal's attitude toward special education was summed up when she responded to questions about special education services with the rhetorical question, "How much time do we want teachers doing paperwork?" Yet, according to parents of students with mild disabilities whose children were attending the school, neither the principal nor the other staff at this school discouraged them from enrolling their child. On the contrary, parents described the staff as quite welcoming and as expressing confidence that they could work with all children. And in interviews during the site visit, the principal and other staff consistently expressed their willingness and even eagerness to work with students with mild disabilities who, they said, had been badly served by traditional schooling and by special education.
How Charter Schools Serve Students With Disabilities
Students with disabilities were served in charter schools in each of the 15 states visited. Staff at some of the schools reported that, in starting a new charter school, they focused on special education only after other program elements were in place or after the enrollment of a student with a disability. As a result, a few of these schools did not develop a special education program until the second or third year. The delays resulted from the difficulty of starting a school, confusion about a charter school's responsibilities for students with disabilities, or negative attitudes toward special education. For example, an administrator at one school explained that in the school's first year, state officials told the school's board that they did not have to provide special education services. The school was not notified of a change in the state agency's advice to charter schools regarding special education until state officials raised concerns about the school's lack of services during an audit. As a result, the school was just developing a special education program at the time of our visit during its third year of operation.
A few of the visited schools operated without a special education program. At these schools, staff reported that they did not label or identify students with disabilities and did not have any specific services in place for them. Administrators contended that they were doing a good job with all students, and that testing and labeling would not improve a student's education in any way. They pointed to certain features of their programs, including small class size and individualized instruction, as reasons they were able to serve these students effectively. One administrator said, "Because of the nature of the [charter school's] program, it doesn't make sense to screen for special education." Another administrator reported that they trained teachers to meet all students' needs so that the students do not have to be labeled. This same administrator also said that the school had "done a lot of special education things," but they did not call it special education. As the following sections show, these attitudes were not typical. Most of the charter schools we visited had programs in place for identifying and providing special instruction to students with disabilities.
An important factor in serving some students with disabilities is accessibility. As noted previously, approximately a third of the visited schools were not accessible. The lack of accessibility is a clear obstacle to enrollment by students with physical disabilities. No charter school staff reported turning away a prospective student because he or she was in a wheelchair, but the study did not examine whether prospective applicants have declined to apply to a charter school after seeing the facility.
Identifying Students with Disabilities
Administrators reported that they usually find out about students who come to their charter school with an individualized education program (IEP) from parents or through records from the student's previous school. Obtaining this information can, however, be problematic. Some schools asked on their application or registration form whether the student had an IEP or received special education services at the previous school. But parents may not say anything about a child's disability because they want to avoid having their child labeled. According to administrators, this lack of forthrightness is found among some parents who apply to the charter school specifically because they want their child to have a fresh start. Many administrators also reported that acquiring the previous school records can be a lengthy process, often taking several months. The administrator at one school, in its third year of operation, said that they had only recently learned that they needed to send the previous school a release of information form, signed by a parent, in order to receive all of a student's records, including any special education records.
Procedures for identifying students with disabilities who enrolled in the charter school without an IEP were varied. But at most of the visited schools that provided special education services, staff described identification and IEP procedures that were consistent with practice in the state or local district. The procedures usually included teacher observation, prereferral interventions, and referral to a special educator or psychologist for testing if the interventions were not successful. Staff at more than a third of the visited schools reported that, after testing, a charter school team determined the student's eligibility for special education services. This team typically was made up of the administrator, a general education teacher, a special education teacher, a psychologist, the parent, and possibly others. Some charter schools contracted with a private company or an educational consultant to carry out the testing and, in a few cases, determine eligibility. Some schools referred students to their resident school district for evaluation.
Parents at almost every visited school reported more positive experiences with the identification and IEP processes at the charter school than they had at previous non-charter schools. For example, some parents said that their child's previous school was reluctant to test the child for disabilities or waited to provide services until the child had lost both confidence and interest in school. Additional comments indicated that the parents felt more a part of the IEP process at the charter school and that the IEP was written to meet the individual needs of the child. A few parents stated that the process is no different than it had been in the previous school, and parents at a few charter schools were negative about the school's IEP process. One parent indicated that her child's IEP had not been reviewed upon enrollment in the charter school. A parent at another charter school said, "You'll be lucky to get what's on the IEP."
Instructional Setting
Teachers and administrators at most of the visited schools reported that they used the "inclusion model" in delivering instruction to students with disabilities. Staff at approximately a fourth of the visited schools reported full inclusion for all students with disabilities. But the extent and even the definition of inclusion varied, and sometimes an administrator and teachers from the same school reported conflicting information. For example, at one school, the administrator touted their full inclusion program, while a teacher explained that, as part of inclusion, students requiring additional help are pulled out for instruction in a resource room. At some schools, inclusion simply meant that students with disabilities were in a general education classroom for some part of the day.
Half of the schools offering full inclusion to all students did so because it was their pedagogical preference, and they used their special education resources to support inclusion. At these schools, all students with disabilities were included in the general education classroom all day, every day, and that was where they received any needed assistance from a special education teacher or assistant. At the other half of these full inclusion schools, however, inclusion was the only option because financial constraints had led to a decision not to employ a special educator or because the staff believed it was inappropriate to label students with disabilities.
At one school, full inclusion was practiced in the primary grades and a pullout program was provided for middle and high school students with IEPs. At other visited schools, staff emphasized that pullout was minimal, or on an as-needed basis, and that students were out of the regular classroom for less time than was the case at their previous school. At one school, teachers maintained that in-class and pullout support were available for all students, regardless of disability status. Three schools, not counting the one we visited that exclusively served students with autism, had self-contained classrooms for students with significant disabilities. One of these schools delivered most instruction in the self-contained setting, and another pursued a strategy where students spent considerable time in general education classes with the support of aides. The third had a self-contained classroom for prekindergarten only and provided various types of settings, including full inclusion and pullout, for students enrolled in K-6.
According to data provided by the visited schools, most had at least one special education teacher. A few schools also reported having special education paraprofessionals available to work with students with IEPs. Most administrators reported that general education teachers provided some or all of the instruction for students with disabilities.
General education teachers at a few schools underscored their collaboration with the special education teacher at their school or with a special education consultant who made regular visits. A teacher at one school spoke of a "cooperative venture" between the general education and special education teacher. Another classroom teacher explained that the special education teacher helped her to modify the curriculum for students with disabilities. Teachers at other schools reported that there was not much assistance from the special education personnel. One teacher said that students with disabilities were included in the general education classroom, but that the special education teacher and assistant rarely provided the support to those students as they should. The teacher explained that the special education personnel at her school were focused almost exclusively on testing and identifying special education students, writing IEPs, and completing paperwork, rather than providing academic instruction.
Instruction
Administrator and teacher descriptions of academic instruction for students with disabilities were consonant. Teachers generally reported that they practiced instructional methods that were adopted schoolwide. At nearly half the visited schools, teachers spoke of individualizing instruction for students with disabilities, and at many of these schools, individualization was described as the norm for all students. Some teachers reported grouping students with and without disabilities together for instruction. Teachers at almost half the visited schools described using multiple modalities, such as presenting information both orally and in writing, to teach certain concepts or information. Some teachers stated that they often used computers to help students understand or master information. Others reported an emphasis on hands-on instruction or the use of peer tutoring. Teachers also described the use of specific instructional approaches that are consistent with their school's curriculum, such as methods associated with Direct Instruction or Waldorf.
The parents we interviewed tended to be knowledgeable about the instructional approach their school used and, in general, were positive about the instructional services their child with a disability was receiving. Parents at many schools could describe the school's curriculum, especially where a distinctive curriculum such as Montessori was in place. Parents at some schools were familiar with specific instructional techniques and, at least in some cases, these techniques attracted the parents to the school. For example, one parent said that the charter school taught reading using phonics, which was not the practice in other local public schools. Another stated the math curriculum was "very repetitious," which she viewed positively. Parents at several schools praised the school's no-homework policy.
At approximately a third of the visited schools, parents of students with disabilities highlighted the individualized attention their child received at their charter school. Several parents specifically referred to the value of an approach that did not expect all children to learn at the same pace. One parent described this as allowing each student to work where he or she is developmentally without trying to "hurry things along." Another parent emphasized that, unlike the previously attended public school, the charter school "had a plan" to address his child's needs.
Related Services
Most administrators reported offering related services, as needed, to students with disabilities. Almost half of the visited schools were providing speech therapy, and more than a third were providing occupational therapy. Counseling and physical therapy were less common. The school we visited for students with autism employed two full-time certified behavior specialists who acted as consultants to the teachers and worked with individual students. At some schools, staff or parents talked about better coordination of services, compared to traditional public schools. One teacher commented, "We have everyone working together on the same thing. The same plan is followed. Everyone communicates."
Although most administrators said they would arrange for services as the need arose, administrators at a few schools reported that they did not provide related services. Parents at approximately a fourth of the schools said that the charter school offered no or few related services, even when needed. One parent reported that she paid to have her son receive needed physical therapy, which is on his IEP but not provided by the school. She is not bothered by the lack of services: "There are some things that are not available here. We have an understanding that I can provide these privately. I'm willing to provide."
Only a few of the visited schools had a related service provider on staff. At most of the schools that were providing related services at the time of our visit, these services were provided by contracted employees. At other schools, related services were provided by a sponsoring district or by the district of residence for the student being served.
Transportation
Transportation issues at most of the charter schools we visited were the same for students with and without disabilities, according to staff and parents of students with disabilities. Approximately half the schools provided no transportation to any students. Where transportation was not provided, administrators reported that parents drove their children or the students took the city bus. At a few schools, students were within walking distance.
At two schools, transportation was provided only for students with disabilities. In contrast, a few schools that operated their own buses did not provide transportation for students with significant disabilities who required accommodations. One of these schools reimbursed a parent for driving her child with a disability. Another school that had buses did not provide an attendant that would enable three students with significant disabilities to ride. A parent of one of these students explained that the inconvenience was outweighed by what the school offered: "For my child, transportation is a big problem. It involves two hours a day of driving. But I would drive four hours a day to know my child was safe and happy." Parents at a few other schools also said that they were not bothered by the lack of free transportation. Several parents indicated they had not been comfortable with their child riding the bus at the previous school anyway. One parent of a child with a disability said that a parent gives up the right to transportation when they enroll their child in a charter school.
Interestingly, transportation is central to accomplishing some charter schools' missions. As described previously in the Localism section, one school eliminated a long bus ride for community children and thereby increased attendance and involvement. Another school required parents to drop off and pick up their children to promote opportunities for interaction between staff and families.
Overview of Differences Between Charter and Non-Charter Schools
Based on responses from parents, staff, and students with disabilities to a number of questions, we can describe how charter school communities view themselves in relation to traditional public schools. Parents talked about differences between the charter school and other public schools when they explained why they enrolled their child. Other questions to parents and similar questions to administrators and teachers specifically asked how the charter school's services to students with disabilities differed from services at previously attended schools. Questions to students asked what made it easier or harder for them to do well at the charter school, compared to their previous school. Respondents used these questions to highlight important differences, instructional and otherwise, between their charter school and previously attended non-charter schools. Table 5 shows the differences according to the various respondents, organized as gains and losses.
Parents' perspectives on differences. In discussing what attracted them to the charter school and in response to other questions, parents of students with disabilities readily identified important differences between their child's charter school and previous non-charter schools their child had attended. Not surprising, the attractiveness of a special curriculum or instructional approach were identified by parents at the schools that offer highly distinctive programs, such as Core Knowledge, Waldorf, or Montessori. Parents also noted important, but less prominent curriculum or instruction differences, such as arts-infusion or an emphasis on hands-on learning. Overall, parents at approximately a third of the visited schools described their charter school's special curriculum focus or instructional approach as something gained.
Individualized instruction was cited as a charter school gain by parents of students with disabilities at more than a fourth of the visited schools. This gain was the difference most commonly cited across all respondents. As noted previously in this report, at some schools individualized instruction is the norm, not a special feature of instruction for students with disabilities. Although parents of students with disabilities did not see family and parent involvement as an area of significant gain at the charter school, at many schools parents cited communication between the staff and parents as an area of gain.
Parents' reports regarding differences in special education per se were mixed. At only a few charter schools did parents say that the special education instruction was better. At approximately the same number of schools, parents said their child lost special education services at the charter school. Parents did not, however, identify the lack of pullout programs or self-contained special education classrooms as a charter school loss, although administrators at a few schools highlighted these differences. Parents also did not mention a lack of special education personnel at charter schools as a loss, but teachers did.
Table 5
Differences between charter schools and previously-attended non-charter schools, as reported by parents, charter school staff, and students.
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Most parents at most visited schools reported that their child had no need for related services and had not been receiving related services at the previous school. Parents at approximately a fourth of the visited schools reported that their child was not receiving the related services at the charter school that had been provided at the previous school, which shows as an area of loss in Table 5. In contrast, parents at about the same number of schools reported that their child received all the related services at the charter school that were provided at the previous non-charter school or reported that no related services had been available at the previous school anyway. Parents at a few charter schools said their child was receiving the same but higher quality related services than at their previous school, which shows as an area of gain inTable 5.
High academic standards or a more challenging curriculum was mentioned as a gain by parents of students with disabilities at more than a fourth of the visited schools. In some cases, this perception was specific to their own child, whom a parent perceived as unchallenged or neglected in the previous school because of a disability. In most cases, however, parents were speaking to the overall program of the school. One parent noted that the curriculum at the charter school was similar to the previous school's, but at the charter school the students really had to learn the material: "They can't just get by." Parents at a few of the visited schools said that academic standards were lower at the charter school than at their previous public school. Thus high academic standards appear both as an area of gain and an area of loss in Table 5.
Some parents said that while desirable programs, such as extracurricular activities, had been lost by attending the charter school, in many cases their child was not involved in these programs anyway because of behavior or academic problems. One parent said she would "gladly do without these things" because the charter school offered so much more. At least one parent at almost half of the visited schools reported that, overall, nothing had been lost.
Administrators' perspectives on differences. Administrators' reports of the areas of gain were similar to parents'. At approximately a third of the visited schools, administrators reported that their school offered a curriculum focus or instructional approach that was not available in non-charter schools in their locale. At approximately a fourth of the schools, administrators cited individualized instruction as something gained by attendance at their charter school. Also at approximately a fourth of the schools, administrators said they offered better or more special education and related services than did previously attended schools. Small class size was also named as a gain by nearly a fourth of administrators.
On the other hand, administrators also identified services or programs that were available to students with disabilities at previously attended schools that were not available in their charter school. Administrators at approximately a fourth of the visited schools reported that the non-charter schools offered more related services or better services. Also at approximately a fourth of the schools, administrators said that previously attended schools offered instruction in content areas that were not available in their charter school, or that the non-charter schools had more academic resources in general, including vocational classes and certain elective classes. In a few schools, administrators noted that previously attended schools offered their special education students pullout or resource programs, which were not available at their charter school. Some of these administrators also reported that their charter schools did not offer self-contained special education classrooms. A few administrators mentioned that the previously attended schools offered more extracurricular activities.
Teachers' perspectives on differences. Teachers' responses to questions about differences between their charter schools and previously attended schools focused mostly on the positive features of the charter schools. Teachers at more than a third of the visited schools reported that their charter school offered more individualized instruction than the schools their students previously attended. At more than a fourth of the schools, teachers stated that their charter school was more inclusive than previous schools. Teachers at a few schools said that the staff at their charter school held higher expectations for students with disabilities than did staff at previous schools. A few teachers noted that there was more collaboration among the teachers and related service providers at their charter school. Other gains mentioned by teachers at a few schools included smaller class size and greater family and parent involvement.
Although their main focus was on what students gained by enrolling in the charter school, teachers also identified areas where the previously attended school offered more than their school. They cited extracurricular activities and some academic courses or curriculum components. They also spoke of the losses of special education and related services and the charter school's relative lack of trained special education personnel. One teacher stated that at other schools, students with disabilities would "at least get the hours on the IEP." In contrast to these losses related to special education, a few teachers provided negative anecdotes of the services offered at regular public schools. For example, one teacher reported that at the school where she previously taught and where some of her current students previously attended, a special education student was expected to just "sit and color" all day long, and other special education students sat in the back of the class and received no attention at all. A teacher at another school said that their speech therapist had recently come from a non-charter school where her "small groups" consisted of 15-18 students.
Students' perspectives on differences. Some students at approximately three quarters of the visited schools reported that the teachers at their charter school were more caring and were more committed to student success than were the teachers at non-charter schools they attended previously. Many students also said that the teachers at the charter school made school fun. To highlight the contrast with the school she previously attended, one student said teachers at that school "didn't care" and that she was "just a zero in the grade book." Another, a 10th grader, said of her previous school, "you can always get by with a D if you don't act out and rock the boat." At almost half of the schools, students reported that the charter school's smaller class size or school size made it easier to do well. Students at approximately a third of the schools said that the individualized and self-paced instruction was a gain compared to the school they previously attended, although a few students saw the initiative required in self-paced instruction as a burden. Students at approximately a fourth of the schools reported that friends at the charter school enhanced their success. Students at a few schools also said that the charter school had better resources, materials, or facilities; they were academically more challenged than at their previous non-charter school; and the charter school offered a better special education program.
Students at a few of the visited schools said they were less challenged academically than they had been at their previous non-charter school. Students at almost a third of the schools cited the charter school's facilities, resources, and materials as being poorer than at previously attended schools. At a few schools, students said the charter school lacked extracurricular activities.
Outcome Goals for Students
Asked to state the charter school's most important goals for students with disabilities, administrators, teachers, and parents identified goals that can be classified into two broad categories: goals related to academic achievement, and goals related to interpersonal or life skills. These goals are summarized in Table 6. Interpersonal or life skills goals were more frequently cited by all respondents than academic goals. In some cases, respondents were specific about the goals they had for students with disabilities. But more commonly, responses to questions about goals were broad or vague. For example, an administrator cited as a goal "to help students with disabilities reach their highest potential and achieve their dreams." Another said her school's goal was "to help students be the best they can be." Similarly, a teacher stated a goal of students recognizing and building on their individual strengths. Only teachers mentioned individual IEP goals as particularly relevant for students with disabilities.
Parents cited outcome goals for their children that were similar to those identified by teachers and administrators. In fact, parents at more than two-thirds of the schools said that the charter school's goals for their child were consistent with their own goals for their child. Two parents said they had come to adopt the school's goals for their child. At a few schools, parents expressed dissatisfaction with the school's goals for their child, suggesting that their child was not receiving enough academic instruction.
Table 6
Goals for students with disabilities, as reported by parents and charter school staff.
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