A few weeks ago, elected officials, educators, researchers, teachers, students, and parents discuss the state of special education in Texas before the Senate Education Committee.  I attended the hearing, and it was inspiring, compelling, heartbreaking, and invigorating all at once. It’s overwhelming to see the depth of passion that educators and parents in Texas have for students who have special needs.

The TSCA had representatives from three of our member schools on hand to provide public testimony.  They waited through five hours of testimony to share their important messages.  Talk about commitment to charter education!

-          Dr. Laura Middleton, the Chief Academic Officer of Focus Learning Academy, testified about the unique struggles Focus Learning Academy faces as a charter school with a particular mission of serving special education students.  She discussed the challenges inherent in being held accountable to a monitoring system that doesn’t take into account the unique charter mission and student population. 

-          Dr. Tom Wilson, Founder of Life Schools, spoke about his experience with his grandson, who has Autism Spectrum Disorder and who is a student at one of the Life Schools campuses.  He shared his grandson’s positive developmental and academic progress as a result of being a Life Schools student and the best practices from his school district that he feels have most aided growth.

-          In her testimony, Dr. Cheryl Washington, the Founder/CEO of Shekinah Learning Institute, expressed her gratitude to everyone in the room for the productive dialogue and emphasized the effectiveness of Shekinah Learning Institute’s inclusion program, which features data-driven monitoring of student progress every three weeks and heavy parent involvement at all levels. 

Before public testimony, five panels of experts from various state and national organizations testified, with charter schools, specifically those with a core mission to serve students with disabilities, strongly represented in the first panel.

I wanted to share some of the things that were said because I felt that they represent excellent best practices for charter schools focused on serving students with special needs.

Lauren Morando Rhim, President of LMR Consulting and co-author of Unique Schools Serving Unique Students: Charter Schools Serving Students with Special Needs, made the point that charter schools present an opportunity to rethink education for SPED students.

“As we looked at these six schools, we were able to identify several factors that emerged at each school that we believe contributed to their success.  First, and overwhelmingly, the leadership and teachers at our six case-study charter schools demonstrated a commitment to inclusion.  In addition, the schools’ staff viewed IDEA as a starting point from which to build on, not just something to comply with.  Across the board there was strong support for teachers’ professional development, a normalization of individualization, and a very purposeful culture of respect.  It was “family” oriented, and there was no tolerance for teasing or disrespect at any of the schools,” Rhim said. 

Rhim also explained that the environment in Texas was less restrictive regarding the creation of SPED-dedicated charter schools because some states strictly forbid them, and Texas does not.

After Rhim’s testimony, Ilene Lainer, Founder and Board Member for the New York Center for Autism Charter School, provided a description of the charter school she founded in Harlem that is devoted specifically to students with ASD.  The New York Center for Autism Charter School’s students are entered by a lottery that is specific to students with moderate, moderate to severe, and severe cases of ASD.

By borrowing space inside a Harlem public school, the charter school is able to provide its students with access to typically developing peers through a peer mentoring program that, according to Lainer, the high school students clamor to be a part of.  They spend a semester learning about and researching ASD, present their findings to their typically developing classmates, and subsequently earn a place as a tutor inside the charter school’s halls.      

“We use an evidence-based model with good behavioral intervention.  We discretely teach what they need to learn and track their progress weekly.  Each student’s education plan is modified by his or her teachers on a weekly basis,” Lainer explained.

Lainer also cited strong family involvement, home visits, partnerships with local universities, highly qualified teachers and a commitment to continuing the education of the faculty as necessary ingredients for success.

The Senate Education Committee was able to hear about some amazing things that charter schools across the country are doing to serve students with disabilities, and I hope they will look at charter schools like the New York Center for Autism Charter School as models of how to effectively serve special education students. 

Do you know of any schools that are doing amazing things for students with autism or other special needs?  Please comment and tell us about them!  We want to hear about the best practices out there that didn’t necessarily get air time at this particular hearing.

- Lindsey Windham

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 13th, 2010 at 7:36 pm and is filed under Advocacy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.