Center on Reinventing Public Education

According to national averages, charter schools serve fewer students with special needs, leaving them open to charges that they are exclusionary. Charter leaders counter that when special education enrollment rates are lower, it is often because charter schools are less likely to identify a child as needing special education services and more likely to address the child’s learning or behavior so that she or he can participate fully in the regular classroom environment.Rather than rhetoric-fueled battles, we need quality conversation about the complexity of the issue. To start that conversation, the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE), with the support of the Walton Family Foundation, teamed up with researchers across the country to launch a new research agenda devoted to students with special needs in charter schools.
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