Giving Compass' Take:

• Texas' first district-charter special education partnership, built around personalized learning, leads to 41 percent fewer suspensions and statewide interest from educators. 

• What can other school districts and teachers learn from this innovative partnership? 

• Here's another example on special education learning.

Every school system has students whose disabilities, mental health needs, or behavioral issues are intense or unique enough that they need to attend school in a segregated facility. Often, this is to ensure the student’s safety — and sometimes to safeguard others.

In the worst settings, it can be a one-way trip for a disruptive student the system has given up on, who will mark time in a prison-like setting until dropping out. But sometimes, it’s a transformative juncture, where a student is exposed to adults who’ve been there and doesn’t have to put on a “normal” face in a regular classroom.

Educators don’t talk a lot about these schools, out of concern for student privacy, and also out of a sense that swaths of the public will see the herculean lift often required to meet these children’s needs as throwing good tax dollars after bad.

When Superintendent Pedro Martinez arrived at the San Antonio Independent School District three years ago, he was struck by how little support was available to the 50,000-student district’s small and fluctuating population of kids with severe emotional and behavioral disorders.

Read the full article on special education by Beth Hawkins at The 74