Dive Brief:

• In Denver, a unique partnership between the district and the city's charter schools is seeing special ed students placed in charters for instruction while the district pays for their teachers, resources, admin, and transportation.
• The partnership is possible because, Education Week reports, "all charter schools are authorized by the school district, and as the local education authority, the district is responsible for making sure students receive adequate services as required by federal disability law."
• Inside the city’s charters, the percentage of significantly disabled students rose from 0.1% in 2010 to 0.7% in 2015.

Dive Insight:

In general, charter schools serve much fewer students with disabilities than traditional schools nationwide.

Critics like Lauren Morando Rhim, executive director of the National Center on Special Education in Charter Schools, says the creation of special education centers within charter schools might serve to further isolate disabled students. That’s a problem because “…inclusion is a major goal of both special education advocates and federal law,” Education Week reports.

But similar to traditional schools, at charters, special ed students only spend some of their time in special-ed specific learning centers. They also take general ed classes with the larger student population.

Yet Denver’s model — which is aided by the district serving as the authorizer of charter schools, in additon to being funded in part by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation — might catch on. It reportedly serves a three-fold purpose by ensuring access to charters for disabled students, serving a need for “specific types of centers,” and coming up with innovative solutions for serving special ed students.