I came across this biting criticism of charter schools and children with disabilities recently on the Education Week website. The part that caught my attention was that the editorial was written by the former Director of The US Department of Education’s Office of Special Education Programs under former President Bill Clinton. It’s not uncommon to see this type of criticism of charter schools (usually for very good reason) but the author’s credentials created enough curiosity for me to read the piece.
The interesting part of this debate is that Special Education services do, almost by definition, require additional funding and spending by schools. This is less because the Special Education students are so expensive to educate than it is that the schools are simply not set-up and prepared to teach them.
As I’ve pointed out before it’s maddening how many programs, supports or “interventions” used in Special Education programs around this country are stuck away in the Special Ed rooms when, if they were rolled out to more students in the school, they could be such powerful tools for ALL children. If this were to happen the economies of scale involved would quickly reduce the cost of many of these tools and interventions and would ultimately reduce the cost of educating many of these students.
Of course for that to happen, schools would have to see their role as truly being responsible for EDUCATING ALL students in their schools instead of using their special education programs to silo many of the kids that have been pre-determined to not be WORTH the effort.
The saddest part of this debate is that while the public schools love to launch blistering accusations against the charter schools for dumping these students, it always seems to me that their frustration is less that the charter schools are “dumping” and more that they can’t do it too.
But I digress …. enjoy the editorial then please tell me what YOU think.
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