At the Classical Academy in Colorado Springs, a group of nearly 20 teachers, resource staff, former teachers, principals, school psychologists, ad parents showed up for my daughter’s final IEP meeting. That meeting was a celebration of her progress through special education and her return to general education. As a principal, I have attended many such meetings. I know that teaching and leading at a charter school is mostly a labor of love. I suspect that a few teachers in charter schools are “paycheck pros” who take an acceptable wage and deliver uninspiring service. But I’m certain that most of the teachers, tutors, assistants and administrators who staff over 4,000 charter schools around the country do so because they find value and significance in nurturing children. Witness the growing number of charter schools aimed specifically at students on the autism spectrum. These students can be tough to teach and emotionally draining—but we love them. The parents who start such schools, the principals who lead them and the teachers who staff them are noble idealists. Their kind have been represented on every school staff since we started ringing bells and gathering at the front door.
The difference with charter schools is that there is a higher concentration of student-focused, customer-oriented, principle-driven adults than in a normal school. You will not find any “rubber rooms” or “reassignment centers” in charter schools. In part, this is because you rarely find a thriving union at a charter school. Charter schools may struggle to attract and retain the most experienced professionals, but thanks to excellent professional resources and the flexibility of RtI, they have many ways to help special needs students be successful. Traditional schools don’t always know what to do with twice-exceptional students. They don’t typically have a neat program that maximizes these students’ abilities while scaffolding their deficits. Charter schools don’t have a program either, but they are much more likely to have an intimate relationship with a parent who is making a specific choice to bring a challenged child to a public school. That parent has a lifetime of insights—and access to school staff who are eager to hear them.
In full fairness, there are parents who have had bad experiences with special needs education at charter schools. There are parents who disagree with my perspective or level of service. But those parents have had many hours over many years to press their case with me and others. They have aired their concerns and got most or all of what they felt their child needed. We who have poured our best into the charter school movement are motivated to be resourceful, responsive, optimistic, and diligent. We are exactly like the pioneers who settled the American West. We cannot afford to ignore the gift and potential of a child or her family just because they come intertwined with learning challenges and struggles. We want to succeed together, and every solution we develop prepares us to attract and serve the students we need to mature and thrive. Parents, by partnering with us to serve your child, we are both strengthened—and strengthened schools and parents are good for all students…especially the most special among us.
3 comments:
Interesting article. Special education today has some serious struggles. We, special education teachers, have too much paperwork, too many students in a class, too many students on our caseloads and not enough time to TEACH. It is just sad!
Teddi
special education resources
I am a special education teacher in an inner-city public school. I work with a group of caring, hard-working teachers and administrators who care deeply about the students they teach and who spend countless hours and personal funds in the effort to help our students learn.
I am getting very tired of this public school vs. charter school dichotomy. There are good and bad examples of each, there are good and bad teachers at each. Public schools are not uniform any more or less than all charter schools are identical. Just as there are a variety of students, there needs to be a variety of models of ways to educate those students.
I am also tired of unions being blamed for the problems of school systems that are top heavy with administrators but still can't seem to be able to manage their resources or personnel. Unions did not create rubber rooms or reassignment centers, administrators did because they are unable or unwilling to process teacher discipline matters in a timely fashion.
Blaming teachers for the problems of the modern school system is ridiculous on the face of it. Teachers, parents and students are all essentially powerless when it comes to making decisions, setting policy or allocating resources. Instead of butting heads with each other or engaging in name-calling and blame-gaming, we should be working together to make sure all students are getting the best possible education, even if it does not involve schools at all.
Deven, you have special insight and because of your role you deserve our respect. So far as the dichotomy disrespects teachers, I would agree with you—but there is a difference between disrespecting teachers and disrespecting teachers' unions.
In the public school world, there are at least three categories: 1)Preferred Schools, 2)Less Preferred Schools, and 3)Not Preferred Schools.
When parents have choices, they assign schools to one of those categories by their choices. You may be weary of the dichotomy, but a lot of us who want to choose who to trust with our special needs children are weary with having a single choice and having no way to secure better support. At least with charter schools, parents can abandon schools that overpromise & underdeliver and the market sends a message about what parents prefer.
The assertion that administrators won't take action is disproven by the behaviors of principals when freed from the constraints of overly aggressive and overly protective unions. (As at charter schools) As you know, there are dozens if not hundreds of teachers who deserve to be fired by any standard, and nearly all of their teacher colleagues agree.
Some of us who are parents, teachers, administrators, (or all three) are so frustrated with the traditional system that we are predisposed to find fault with any element of that system. Charter schools transcend, diverge, escape, (pick your direction) from the traditional system. The charter ecosystem will develop its own dysfunctions, but along the way it will reveal, by contrast, what is wrong with the current system.
Here's the test for you Deven, Given the option—if you had equivalent resources, would you take your school, your students, your hard working teachers and administrators and strike out on your own without the overhead of a "top-heavy" system? If you can see the possibility of answering yes, you are seeing the promise of the charter movement. We who live in that world are part of a voluntary association. We are bound not by rules of tenure, unions, or bureaucracy, but by a shared desire to serve students and their families.
I agree with your last line—especially if we can replace the word "schools" with "teachers", "principals", "unions" or whatever needs to be stripped away to improve learning.
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