Since the Massachusetts school law of 1647 marked the beginning of American public education it took to the end of the 19^th century before the battle for the common public school had been won in every state. Across America students learned much the same things. Despite the fact that different educational philosophies have waxed and waned in popularity and educational buzz words from the whole-language approach, to experiential to differential to multi-aged education have come and gone little has changed from the beginning to the end of the 20^th century.

In 1922 Oregon law require all children not only to attend school but to attend public schools. A group of nuns challenged the law before the Supreme Court. The court ruled in favor of the nuns and protected the private interest of families in educating their children. This decision balanced public and private interest by protecting a private sphere of educational choices. The public educational sphere attempted to provide a standardized education (Smith, 1998).

The 20^th century has seen a tremendous population growth in the United States of people from different cultures and religions, as well as, a tremendous growth in technology. David Tyack contends that public education at the end of the 20^th century is both too homogeneous and too heterogeneous. Public education is too homogeneous in that schools teach the same curriculum in the same ways with the same textbooks, yet too heterogeneous in that educational resources and the quality of schooling vary greatly from district to district and from school to school (Smith, 1998). Families and children that do not fit into the mainstream are at a disadvantage in public education. Their only alternative was private education at their expense.

Charter schools offer an alternative. Charter schools expand the types of choices of delivering public education. The charter school movement was designed to provide charter schools with greater institutional autonomy over issues such as curriculum, teaching methods and day-to-day management in order to increase student achievement, expand choices and encourage continuous improvement in "regular" public schools.

Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) wrote:

Charter schools offer children one of the best available opportunities to succeed —

A charter school is a public school operated by charter or contract between those who form the school, parents, teachers and/or community members who collaboratively determine the school’s structure and the state (Russo, Massucci, 1999). In 1988 Budde, a professor of school administration brought the concept of charter schools into the public dialogue. Albert Shanker former president of the American Federal of Teachers further advanced the charter schools idea. Shanker maintained that charter schools could increase school choice within the public school without undermining it. Also in the late 1980s Minnesota researchers Kolderie and Nathan actively promoted the charter school concept (Vergari, 1999).

It is not surprising that Minnesota adopted the first charter school law in 1991 and opened the first school in 1992. Today 37 states plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have charter school laws. The 1999 school year saw more than 1,700 charter schools opened in 32 states and the District of Columbia enrolling about 350,000 students (Manno, Finn, Jr., Vanourek, 2000). In Connecticut 16 charter schools are in operation with 2,260 students (www.uscharterschools.org).

As a public school, a charter school is open to all who wish to attend regardless of their race, religion or academic ability. It is paid for by tax dollars so there are no tuition charges for the families but it differs from a district or "regular" public school. A charter school can be created by almost anyone from educators to parents to community groups. A charter school is attended by students and families that choose to be there and staffed by faculty that choose to work there and it risks being closed for not producing satisfactory results. Teachers previously employed by a school district retain leave protections such as seniority and retirement benefits if they choose to return to the district within a specified period of time. The charter school is exempt from most state and local regulations making the charter school autonomous and self-governing in its operations. However freed from state and local rules, they must obey federal laws including the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the 1990 American with Disabilities Act (ADA) and "Section 504" of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) which guarantees a free, appropriate public education (FAPE) to students with disabilities. Charter schools and special education is a bit of a paradox as charter schools seek to reduce bureaucracy to provide students and their families with an appropriate educational program, special education seeks to ensure a free and appropriate education for all students through legislative regulation.

Charter schools have attracted attention from both the left and right side of the political spectrum. President Clinton in his 1997 State of the Union address called for 3,000 schools to be opened by the year 2000 (Charter Schools and Students with Disabilities, 1998). While they have not grown to that proportion as yet, it is apparent that charter schools are growing in popularity. Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) sponsored the first federal Charter Grant Program, which provided $75 million to help new charters defray their burdensome startup cost. He co-sponsored along with Senator Dan Coats (R-IN) the Charter School Expansion Act which was signed by President Clinton to increase the funding grants to $100 million (www.senate.gov/member/ct/lieberman/general/r120398a.html).

While parents may view this tuition-free choice within the public schools as a win-win situation the money to educate charter school students is for the most part taken out of state aid to the districts in which the student lives (Molnar, 1996). The end result, some experts believe, is the "best" students and the most involved parents will flee neighborhood schools for charter schools. Neighborhood schools will have difficulty sustaining such a loss (O’Neil, 1996). As they lose low-cost students to charter schools they are required to do more with less. The "regular" school system will be left with the mostly costly students to educate and with cut resources to serve the majority of students.

In Michigan’s "school choice" program, the state gives students up to $6,000 to attend a charter school. One article, "Michigan Schools Choice Leaves Special Education Kids Behind," (www.specialednew.com, 1999) maintains that charter schools in an effort to keep their cost down are recruiting students who cost the least to educate. Although federal rules require charter schools enroll every student who applies, the state does not police charter schools’ marketing and recruiting activities. In the 1997-98 school year 75 percent of all charter schools offered no special education services at all. On average they spent about one percent of their operating budget on special education services.

Michigan is also one of the states that allow charter schools to operate for-profit. Out of 15 charter schools, for-profit corporations managed 11. Cutting expenses is part of the for-profit strategy with results in transportation, special education and the socioeconomic mix of students (Dykgraaf & Lewis, 1998). In 1994, the Michigan legislature passed a law that changed the funding of public education. It discontinued transportation dollars and bundled it into the annual per pupil allotment. Only one of the 11 for-profit charter schools provides transportation. A "regular" public school district may spend six percent of their budget on transportation.

In 10 of the 11 schools studied special education students accounted for only three percent of the total enrollment. Many of these students received only minimal services. One management group sends out a representative to talk to parents about waiving their child’s entitlement to special education services.

The absence of free busing has sociological effects. It limits poor students choices of schools. None of the schools are located in the inner city.

Similarly in Arizona, which has 46 charter schools operating only four percent of students enrolled in the schools were receiving special education services and evidence suggested that charter schools were trying to avoid serving students with disabilities. Arizona’s charter schools spend less than 1.4 percent of their budgets on special education compared to the slightly over 10 percent of district public schools budgets (Garn, 1998).

It is reports such as these that are making many experts in the special education field take a close look at charter schools. Charter schools offer students with special needs both the promise of alternative education and the perils of discrimination. Charters have responded to parent and student demands for smaller schools, small class sizes, higher standards and specially tailored school curriculum. These are often the recommendations made on special education students’ Individual Educational Plans (IEPs) and so charter schools are appealing to parents with children with disabilities. Charter school must be viewed as schools of choice but parents of children with disabilities may not be able to decide where their child attends school within a school district as the IEP team must first determine whether that school can provide appropriate programming.

The good news is that charter schools are educating underserved and special education populations. According to a Center for Education Reform (CER) survey in the 1998-1999 school year, 27 percent of the 298 responding schools target at-risk students, 20 percent special education students and 20 percent children from diverse backgrounds (Cosmos, 2000). In a report funded by the U.S. Department of Education (1998), a review of existing data showed that one author estimated 12.6 percent of the students in charter schools were students with disabilities. Rather than excluding students with disabilities many charter schools specifically target these students.

In March 1997 Ohio’s only full-time school for children with autism was founded. The Model Community School opened serving 29 children (www.feat.org/search/news.asp). Eight frustrated parents whose children were not getting the education they needed in the public schools, labored to bring this school into existence. They have four certified teachers, 13 paraprofessionals and two part-time therapists working with these 29 children. Under special legislation passed by the General Assembly, the school receives a lump sum of $604,000 a year, which equates to about $21,000 per student. That is about $5,000 more per year than the "regular" public school would receive for an autistic student. This funding expires June 30, 2001 so the General Assembly elected in November will decide whether to continue the funding. The school draws nothing but praise from professionals in the field and Model has a waiting list, which means the need is critical.

The bad news is that Larry Searcy, a special education expert with the Center for Law and Education in Washington, DC reports he has heard from parents who have complaints about charter schools. They are excluding or not serving properly students with disabilities. They are discouraging parents from enrolling their children with disabilities. Searcy are also claims that many charter schools are being set up in inaccessible building in violation of the American with Disabilities Act. In a study where the researchers visited 32 charter schools in 15 states in 1998 and 1999, the researchers found a third of the schools were inaccessible to wheelchairs (Cosmos, 2000).

The principal of an Arizona charter school said (McKinney, 1996), "We tell parents that the public schools provide the special education. We can’t be set up for everything." Within the first six months of charter school operation in Arizona three separate complaints from parents of children with disabilities were filed. Two of the complaints happened when two parents supplied copies of IEPs to the charter school after the students were admitted. One parent was told, "We don’t do IEPs." Charter schools are school of choice. When there is not a good match between a student and a charter school, the assumption is that the student will leave.

Each state has established their own laws for charter schools, so the implications for special education programs vary greatly from state to state. Some states have laws that are considered strong because they allow these schools to operate as legally independent entities with a high degree of autonomy. In contrast weak charter school laws grant charter schools little more autonomy than other public schools (Molnar, 1996). While Connecticut was not rated in Molnar’s article, Connecticut’s charter schools operate independently from school districts and are accountable directly to the state department of education. While this would place Connecticut as having strong charter laws they have several other laws, which are considered weak charter laws. The extent of a charter school’s operational autonomy will have an impact on how special education programs are implemented. Since Connecticut’s charter schools operate independently from the local public district, the charter school is responsible for providing special education services. However Connecticut is one of four states that addressed the issue of who bears the excess cost if the per-pupil allotment for a special education student is insufficient to cover the expense of appropriately educating that student at the charter school. Connecticut places this ultimate responsibility on the student’s district of residence (Fiore & Cashman, 1998).

In an analysis of charter school legislation related to students with disabilities Thomas Fiore and Erin Cashman (1998) revealed that none of the states include provisions related to goals, accountability, or assessment for students with disabilities. Few states directly address the issue of who is responsible for providing educational services for students with disabilities. Some states promote the targeting and enrollment of special populations, provide special education funding and address transportation. Connecticut requires that charters register as non-profit organizations. Their employees are employees of the charter school but teachers must be certified. Connecticut also has statutes that protect the sponsor (state) from liability relating to any acts of omission of the charter school. While Connecticut requires charter school students to participate in state standardized assessments, they make no specific reference in relation to students with disabilities. Charters unfamiliar with special education exemptions or accommodations regarding standardized assessments may have a challenge if their accountability goals are tied to statewide assessments.

In an interview with one of the co-founder of a Connecticut charter school located in an inner city, she explained how special education was handled. They have 11 students with IEPs which represent six percent of the total enrollment of 170 students. This is lower than the nearly 10 percent in the local district. All of the students are learning disabled with the exception of one who is physically disabled (wheelchair bound). The charter school is located on the fifth floor of a building that ounce housed a community college. The building meets ADA guidelines and a fire safety plan is in place for the physically handicapped student. While 11 students had IEPs, this administrator felt more may have had IEPs in their previous schools. Records, she found, were hard to get from the regular district so unless the parents choose to identify their student as having a disability, the school would not have known. The school has entered into an agreement with the local "regular" public school to supply specialized services. All students are fully included in the curriculum but an itinerant special education teacher is available for part of the day to offer pull out services to those identified students. Similarly a report on Colorado’s charter schools’ response to special education issues, reported that school representatives expressed a willingness to meet educational needs but other than inclusion for learning disabled students, there was little understanding about the full range of special education services (McLaughlin & Henderson, 1998). All assessments toward the students meeting established goals in their IEPs are handled by the special education teacher, as is the scheduling of Planning and Placement Team (PPT) meetings. This administrator admitted that she would be unprepared to handle these legal special education requirements if it were not done by the "regular" public school district.

This administrator has also received state approval to open another charter school in this inner city in September 2001. This new charter school will be an elementary school. While she hopes to maintain a good working relationship with the "regular" public school, she already has a special education teacher on board as an employee of the charter school.

In January of the preceding year she visit each middle school in the local districts surrounding the charter school. She has the opportunity to speak with students, parents, teachers and counselors about the charter school and its mission to provide a college preparatory curriculum. Applications are made and a lottery is held to fill the open seats by The League of Women Voters. Approximately 40 seats are open each year for which they receive over 200 applications. After the student has been enrolled, parent and students are interviewed. During this interview, she will ask if the student has any special education needs or was pulled out of the classroom for any remedial services. Since the interview is held after enrollment, students are not excluded or discouraged due to any disabilities. As long as the student plans to attend college after high school they are welcomed. She has had numerous visits from special educators from neighboring "regular" public schools trying to determine if this charter school could be an appropriate placement for their special education students.

This charter school has also entered into an agreement with the "regular" public school for transportation. The local district provides bus services for students within their district. The charter school has purchased two vans and picks up the students who reside in neighboring town, one of which is the physically handicapped student.

In another interview with a special education director and an assistant superintendent from a urban district without any nearby charter schools, they indicated that they would be willing to supply specialized services in a charter school if the cost was equal to the cost they would spend for educating that child within the "regular" public schools. They noted that they currently send speech and language pathologists, occupational, and physical therapists out to private preschools and private religious elementary schools. Only when the cost to educate the child in the charter school exceeded the cost of educating the student within the "regular" public school would the team consider overriding a parent’s choice and begin looking at the appropriateness of placement. This urban district currently has agreements with neighboring public schools where they can each send special education students to the other district without cost if they have an appropriate program. This has helped all towns involved pool resources to offer different programs without great cost. These administrators would not be opposed to adding a charter school into such an agreement. They would be supportive but fully expect the charter to be knowledge in special education procedures and requirements.

According to the U.S. Department of Education review of existing data on Charter Schools and Students with Disabilities (1998), parents chose charter schools following dissatisfaction with the regular public school, including dissatisfaction with the bureaucracy and the stigma attached to special education. In a survey given to parents of students in all of Minnesota’s charter schools (Lange & Lehr, 2000) 95 percent of the parents who reported their child had a disability rated each of the following as being important or very important in choosing a charter school:

• Class size
• Staff members
• Academic programming
• Special education services
• Philosophy
• Discipline policy
• School safety
• Special needs of the child
• Number of students enrolled.

Slightly fewer than half of the parents that responded chose the charter school because of the special education services offered. At least 90 percent reported being satisfied or very satisfied with the charter school. When asked to compare the special education services at the charter school to those at the child’s previous school 72 percent reported more satisfaction with the special education services provided at the charter school. It is surprising that parents believed there was greater availability of special education services at the charter school when directors reported that fewer services were actually available. The physically handicapped student at the Connecticut charter school was interviewed about how he felt about the special education services available to him at this charter school. He responded by indicating that because of the supportive faculty, he did not require the same amount of services. When he began at the charter school, he was sent by his district with a one-to-one aide to assist with mobility. With the smaller student enrollment and all on one floor, he found he could navigate the surrounding himself. He developed more upper body strength and was able to shift himself from the wheelchair to the toilet in the teachers’ bathroom without assistance. The aide is no longer assigned to him. He said he has gained more self-confidence and feels able to tackle new and different environments.

Parents seemed to find the educational philosophy of the charter school, including the school’s curriculum, instructional methods and discipline policy to be an asset. However other comments reported on the survey commented on the lack of programs offered including team sports.

In the interview with the charter school administrator, she said the school offered a no-frills college preparatory syllabus with one hour and 20 minutes long classes in math, science, English, foreign language and history. They do not have the room for physical education classes so they have an outdoor educator on board who takes the students on fieldtrips camping, fishing and hiking. They also run a mentor program where they match each student with a professional in the field they feel they will pursue following college. The mentor program begins in the student’s junior year and continues through the senior year. They meet usually two times a month and the student gets to shadow the mentor and learn about the career. The only extracurricular activity offered is an inter-district choir.

As with the administrator interviewed from the Connecticut charter school, many charter school operators are unfamiliar with the funding process and were not prepared to provide assessments or recommend services. They are frequently unprepared for the cost of providing special education because they assume the "regular" public district would meet the need. The Charter Friends National Network has identified special education as one of the top three concerns facing charter schools and has set up a Charter Friends Initiative on Special Education (www.charterfriends.org).

A study of California charter schools pointed out that charter school accountability focused diligently on financial accountability and less rigorously on academic outcomes (U.S. Department of Education, 1998). In Manno, Finn and Vanourek’s (2000) on-going study of charter schools they found that 94 percent of the accountability was on school finances, 88 percent was on state and federal regulations, 87 percent on student achievement, 81 percent on student attendance, 63 percent on instructional practices, 56 percent on school governance, 47 percent on school completion and 44 percent on student behavior. This appeared to be true with the Connecticut charter school where an administrator was interviewed. The administrator, when questioned about what was needed to show accountability mentioned financial records, flow charts of organization, student records, attendance records, teacher evaluations and parent input. When asked specifically if they needed to show an increase in CAPT scores. She replied, "No, our scores have remained fairly constant." She went on to point out that while the "regular" public school in the district where the school is located has nearly a 50 percent drop out rate, they have a 98 percent graduation rate. In the last school year, one student did not reach the requirement for graduation but did attend school daily. They graduated 38 seniors and 35 of them went on to college while one chose to enter military service.

Many charter schools began because the directors wanted to create a school with a positive learning environment but lacked the training as educational administrators or small business owners. Each charter school must have a governing board. However there is no requirement as to the qualifications of the members of the board. The Connecticut administrator interviewed has included or her board for the school opening in September 2001 a nurse, an attorney, a local business owner, an accountant, parents and teachers.

Lasley & Ridenour (1999) describe the late 1990s as the time of the Great Education Disruption. In response to America’s concerns over competitiveness and the school’s ability to educate students to deal with national and international demands, educational policies are changing. Charters are influencing the way the public schools do business. Several years ago the corporate sector began restructuring and dispensed with middle management and top-down control. Likewise, public schools once considered invincible are beginning to experience a chipping away of their centralization and bureaucratic control. As legally and fiscally autonomous entities, charter schools enjoy the freedom to make their own decisions. Charter school may then be in a better position to foster excellence in terms of both teacher performance and student achievement.

Lasley and Ridenour further report on research of William Sanders, who during the 1990s concluded that teachers are the single most important influence on student progress. Teachers make a real difference in what students learn. Teachers at charter schools appear to possess a level of professional ownership for personal practice that enables them to explore their skills and the students’ abilities. Excellent teachers make excellent schools and Lasley and Ridenour contend they are more likely to emerge out of schools that foster flexibility and autonomy available in the charter schools.

Charter schools have failed; 59 charter schools or about four percent of all charter school ever opened have closed (Manno, Finn & Vanourek, 2000). Reasons for their closure vary. The Edutrain charter school in Los Angeles was the first to close for fiscal mismanagement. The school was one million dollars in debt when they were shut down. Likewise The Marcus Gavey Charter School in Washington, DC was closed after a scandal and mismanagement. Connecticut also has one charter school closed due to misappropriation of funds. Georgia’s Midway Elementary School did not have its charter renewed in part because of its lack of educational innovation. And a Minnesota charter school for at-risk Native American students was closed after the school failed to produce satisfactory result and had a high absenteeism rate. However charter school closures can be seen as an achievement of the charter school movement. Charter schools were closed because they did not demonstrate appropriate accountability. "Regular" public education schools do not have this same penalty for failure.

Molnar (1996) maintains that the lack of a common education vision keeps the charter school movement about economics and not educational ideas. Central to the logic of charter schools is the idea that competition will force public schools to improve or lose students and funding as parents choose to send their children to better schools. Unfortunately how competition will result in better teaching and student performance is never specified.

Munno & Finn (1998) however contend that charter schools may be the most vibrant force in American education today. While they are not the answer for every problem that the American school system faces, they are a positive force for change. They are innovative and serve a large proportion of minority and special need students. They offer new professional opportunities for teachers and meet the needs that families voice the most such as; safety, high standards, smaller class size and committed teachers.

Educators touch the future, but they do it one child at a time. Charter schools are worth doing for this child even if it works for just a short time.

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Interviews with:

Co-founder and assistant administrator of a Connecticut charter school located in an inner city.

Male high school junior with a physical disability enrolled in an inner city Connecticut charter

school.

Joint interview with the Director of Special Education and the Assistant Superintendent of a urban Connecticut school district without a charter school.