Executive Summary
Nearly fifty years after the initial passage of the law now known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), students with disabilities experience profound inequities and opportunity gaps in public education. Finding solutions to these challenges requires balancing two aims that lie at the heart of the charter school sector: autonomy and accountability. In exchange for closer scrutiny of outcomes, charters are provided added flexibility to explore new models in staffing, instructional delivery, school finance, and fundamental elements of school design.
This report focuses on how charter schools and Charter Management Organizations (CMOs) can systematize the benefits of their autonomy, drawing on it to construct teaching and learning systems that are equity focused, address the learning needs of students with disabilities, and identify the factors that shape their success. This study is grounded in a purposive sample of 29 schools and CMOs that were selected for their use of one or more equitable practices designed to meet the needs of students with disabilities, and includes interviews with 59 school leaders, teachers, technical assistance providers, paraprofessionals, and parents.
Both charter schools and CMOs featured in the study use their autonomy not only to implement different teaching and learning practices, but to push forward the systematic supports that make those practices successful and sustainable. Participants noted that their schools use strategies like combined evidence based models for instructional differentiation like Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and co-teaching with increased collaboration time, direct support for the intellectual and emotional needs of staff, carefully considered hiring practices, and staff cultures that expect high levels of collaboration and joint accountability.
They also articulated the tradeoffs of scale: while being part of larger networks like CMOs and LEAs can provide the means to deliver support services, it can also restrict some site-level autonomy.
Conscious connections between general educators and special educators help participating schools erode the “firewall” that has long pushed students with disabilities to the periphery. Improving educational outcomes for students with disabilities requires improving teaching and learning strategies for all students and understanding that students with disabilities can and should be included in those efforts: that is, ensuring students with disabilities can meaningfully access the general educational settings, standards, and instruction that research indicates will lead to greater academic success.
Key Findings
- Participating schools mix multiple instructional strategies into unique models that support the assets and needs of their school populations. While none of these strategies is unique in itself, what distinguishes these schools are implementation details that prioritize including students with disabilities in general education settings and otherwise “de-siloing” them from school-wide practice.
- Participating leaders use rigorous teacher hiring and strong teacher retention practices as valuable levers for building a staff culture focused on equitable and inclusive practice for students with disabilities. Hiring practices emphasize fit with equity-oriented mindsets, while leaders provide ample professional development opportunities and personal support to ensure hired teachers can become part of a common culture and focus on underserved students.
- Operating within a CMO or a traditional district Local Education Agency (LEA) provides both advantages to scale and challenges in reduced autonomy. Charter schools affiliated with CMOs or operating within a district LEA often have access to additional supplemental services and expanded professional development. Some schools worry, however, that these affiliations may limit their ability to quickly implement new practices and processes in a responsive way.