Archived Information

Charter Schools and Students with Disabilities: Review of Existing Data - November 1998

Due Process and FAPE

Charter school students with disabilities are entitled to the same due process protection as their peers attending other public schools. As charter schools become more established, parents are beginning to exercise their due process rights in an effort to establish quality special education programs in the schools. In Boston, a recent complaint to the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) resulted in an OCR directive to the Renaissance Charter School (OCR finds, 1997) ordering the school to provide the claimant with special education services by qualified staff and to change its disciplinary policies to include provisions for students with disabilities as established in IDEA. In addition, OCR directed the school to submit its policies regarding least restrictive environment, discipline, and grievance. In the case that led to the OCR investigation, the student's parents had declined evaluations to determine special education eligibility. But, because the student had a previously documented disability, OCR was obligated to review the case and the school's entire special education program. Charter school advocates have complained that this case illustrates the difficulties of a joint venture between special education and charter schools, thus provoking controversy in the charter school community over the ability of charter schools to be free of "micro management" (Manno & Vanourek, 1997).

In their case study research in five urban districts offering choice, McKinney and Mead (1996) uncovered a number of potential challenges related to maintaining compliance with federal special education statutes while providing parents with school choice. The central issue identified by the researchers is how states and districts can offer parents choice when federal statutes require that placement and instruction decisions be made by a multi-disciplinary team during the IEP development process. They concluded that local educators needed to acknowledge the continuing FAPE obligation, design choice programs such that all choices are consistent with individualized determinations of FAPE, determine which special education interventions are services (and thus potentially portable) and which are programs (site-bound), and develop clear rationales for maintaining site-bound programs.
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