Opinion
School Choice & Charters Letter to the Editor

Don’t ‘Scapegoat’ Charters For Failing Students With Disabilities

February 16, 2016 1 min read
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

To the Editor:

After presidential candidate Hillary Clinton stated in a town-hall meeting in South Carolina that “most charter schools ... don’t take the hardest-to-teach kids. Or if they do, they don’t keep them," there was a media flurry regarding whether charters enroll and retain such hard-to-teach students, including students with disabilities (“Would Hillary Clinton Be an Anti-Charter-School President?”).

Consider the irony of this narrative, that charters are a scourge because they underserve students with disabilities as part of those hard-to-teach groups. This assumes that traditional public schools are consistently providing a quality education to students with disabilities, which is hardly the situation.

We are 25 years into the evolution of charters, and they are growing for a reason: Parents want options. Not all charters have embraced their responsibilities to students with disabilities, and data also demonstrate that many regular public schools are also failing these students.

However, wide variability in these data tell us that we can do better. There are good and bad schools in both sectors. The variability in student outcomes is the problem that we need to address, not whether charters accept hard-to-teach students.

Advocates committed to students with disabilities can’t afford to pass up opportunities to innovate. The autonomy extended by state charter laws is just that, an opportunity. Politics can oversimplify complicated issues. But students with disabilities seeking a quality education don’t benefit from the scapegoating of charters. Rather than exploiting incidents of discrimination as a weapon to rally opponents against charters, I urge those concerned about students with disabilities to focus on developing thoughtful policies and practices that will ensure equal access and quality programs—two constructs that are intricately connected, regardless of educational setting.

Gross generalizations about school quality may play well for politics, but they fail to advance the important dialogue about promoting excellence and equity for all students.

Lauren Morando Rhim

Executive Director and Co-Founder

National Center for Special Education in Charter Schools

New York, N.Y.

Related Tags:

A version of this article appeared in the February 17, 2016 edition of Education Week as Don’t ‘Scapegoat’ Charters For Failing Students With Disabilities

Events

Artificial Intelligence K-12 Essentials Forum How AI Use Is Expanding in K-12 Schools
Join this free virtual event to explore how AI technology is—and is not—improving K-12 teaching and learning.
Federal Webinar The Trump Budget and Schools: Subscriber Exclusive Quick Hit
EdWeek subscribers, join this 30-minute webinar to find out what the latest federal policy changes mean for K-12 education.
This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Curriculum Webinar
End Student Boredom: K-12 Publisher's Guide to 70% Engagement Boost
Calling all K-12 Publishers! Student engagement flatlining? Learn how to boost it by up to 70%.
Content provided by KITABOO

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

School Choice & Charters Another Judge Rules Against Private School Choice. Here's Why
Utah's education savings accounts violate the state constitution by giving public funds to schools that exclude students, a judge ruled.
6 min read
Judge gavel on law books with statue of justice and court government background. concept of law, justice, legal.
iStock/Getty Images Plus
School Choice & Charters Texas Is Poised to Create a Massive Private School Choice Program
The bill’s passage represents a major shift in the state.
budget school funding
iStock/Getty
School Choice & Charters Trump Admin. Tells States, Schools How to Use Title I for School Choice
A letter sent to state education chiefs pointed to two portions of Title I where states and schools can "provide greater flexibility."
4 min read
Image of a neighborhood of school buildings, house, government buildings, and a money symbol in the middle.
Trodler/iStock/Getty
School Choice & Charters Trump's Order Kicks Off His Efforts to Expand Private School Choice
Trump is directing several federal agencies to look into expanding school choice offerings—a push that continues from his first term.
3 min read
President Donald Trump talks as he signs an executive order giving federal recognition to the Limbee Tribe of North Carolina, in the Oval Office of the White House, Thursday, Jan. 23, 2025, in Washington.
President Donald Trump talks as he signs an executive order giving federal recognition to the Limbee Tribe of North Carolina, in the Oval Office of the White House, Jan. 23, 2025. Trump on Jan. 29 signed an executive order that would mandate a federal push for school vouchers.
Ben Curtis/AP