The charter sector has historically received significant federal support through the Charter School Program, which was allocated $440 million in fiscal year 2020. However, the sector has been criticized for not serving a proportionate share of students with disabilities and being less equipped to educate them. To gain a better understanding of how…

The challenge of serving students with disabilities is familiar to both practitioners and policymakers, especially when it comes to education reform. Charter schools are often viewed as institutions that fail to serve students with disabilities well, or in the same proportions as district-run schools. Sometimes this is true, but it oversimplifies…

The National Center for Special Education in Charter Schools (the Center) is deeply committed to ensuring that students with disabilities have equal access to charter schools and that charter schools are designed and operated to enable success for all students. To accomplish this goal, the Center conducts analyses and releases a comprehensive…

Inclusion starts at the top, and when the deep commitment of school and districts leaders is absent, individual teachers' efforts to create and sustain inclusive learning environments where students with disabilities can soar risk being little more than exercises in frustration. With this premise in mind, this brief shares the voices of…

A school cannot be "good" unless it is good for all students -- including those with disabilities. In the 2018-19 school year, 14% of students in U.S. public schools received special education services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, yet effective inclusion of students with disabilities is too often an…

Charter schools' autonomy and flexibility provides them with the opportunity to find ways to close the performance gap between students with and without disabilities, but deep-seated, systemic challenges often cause individual charters to struggle to do so on their own. For cities with an established charter sector, a city-wide, collaborative…

As the charter sector has matured, its critics have multiplied. While charter schools enjoyed bipartisan and substantial public support for their first 20 years, the tide of public opinion now flows in more varied directions. Policymakers and leaders across the country are facing pressure to limit charter expansion, with public support for charter…

The Denver School of Science and Technology (DSST) is a charter network made up of eight middle schools and seven high schools. The network enrolls 5,000 students in grades 6-12 across the city of Denver, including nearly 400 at Cole High School. DSST's mission is to transforms urban public education by eliminating educational inequity and…

Charter schools--public schools that receive greater autonomy from district and state regulations in return for greater accountability--present opportunities to provide exemplary and innovative supports and services to students with disabilities. Charter schools' freedom to innovate enables them to create and offer new models and practices, much…

When public charter schools first opened in the early 1990s, each was unique and independent. But as successful public charter schools continued to grow and expand their impact beyond a single site, and as organizations developed school designs that could be implemented at multiple locations, networks of public charter schools emerged. The public…

Charter schools--public schools that receive greater autonomy from district and state regulations in return for greater accountability--present opportunities to provide exemplary and innovative supports and services to students with disabilities. Charter schools' freedom to innovate enables them to create and offer new models and practices, which…

As the charter sector grows and evolves, information regarding these autonomous public schools of choice evolves as well. Prior to 2015, only a handful of reports included information about the status of students with disabilities in charter schools. In fall 2015, the National Center for Special Education in Charter Schools (NCSECS) published a…

The National Center for Special Education in Charter Schools (the Center) is deeply committed to ensuring that students with disabilities have equal access to charter schools and that charter schools are designed and operated to enable success for all students. To accomplish this goal, the Center conducts analyses and releases a comprehensive…

Scant information exists regarding the status of students with disabilities in the charter sector. With the release of the most recent U.S. Department of Education's Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC), the National Center for Special Education in Charter Schools (NCSECS) embraced the opportunity to examine these issues across the universe of…

Scant information exists regarding the status of students with disabilities in the charter sector. While there is some understanding of several high-profile issues (e.g., enrollment gaps, counseling out, the provision of special education services, and growth of specialized charter schools), to date, little has been published to verify or disprove…