On June 1st, the House Education and Workforce Committee – Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary and Secondary Education led by Chairman Duncan Hunter (R-CA), held a hearing focused on charter schools during which witnesses largely testified on the merits of these non-traditional, public schools.
Dr. Elizabeth Purvis, Executive Director of the Chicago International Charter School (CICS), and former special education teacher in Maryland and early interventionist in Tennessee, shared information about how charter schools serve students with disabilities. Dr. Purvis noted that 14% of students served in CICS have disabilities, further noting that most of these disabilities were high incidence disabilities such as ADHD and learning disabilities. It has been a concern of CEC that studies have shown that students with disabilities – particularly students with low incidence disabilities – are underrepresented in charter schools nationally.
Ms. DeAnna Rowe, Executive Director of the Arizona State Board for Charter Schools, called charter schools “an integral part of a complex system,” adding, “Not only do the schools provide an alternative for families to find the environment that will allow each student to reach his or her full potential, but they have proven to be a tremendous source of innovation, providing all schools with new tools and methods of improving student achievements.”
Dr. Gary Miron, Professor of Evaluation, Measurement, and Research at Western Michigan University, reinforced some of CEC’s other concerns with charter schools when he stated, “A growing body of research as well as state and federal evaluations conducted by independent researchers continue to find that charter schools are not achieving the goals that were once envisioned for them. Involvement of local persons or groups in starting charter schools is shrinking, replaced instead by outsiders, particularly private education management organizations (EMOs), which steer these schools from distant corporate headquarters. Claims that EMOs can make charter schools more effective have not been substantiated by research.” EMOs are private entities that manage public schools under contract.
CEC has recommended that Congress ensure that students with disabilities are represented in charter schools at the same proportion as the surrounding traditional schools. Furthermore, CEC has advocated for charter school policies that reinforce existing IDEA law which mandates a free appropriate public education provided in the least restrictive environment, and that charter school authorizers plan for how students with disabilities will be identified and served once in a charter school.
Read CEC’s Charter School Policy
More information on the hearing.
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