Giving Compass' Take:

• Researchers found the top charter schools that are best serving students with disabilities and provide recommendations on how other schools can replicate these efforts.

• What role can donors play in strengthening support systems for students with disabilities?

• Read about strategies that are currently working to serve students in special education programs.

For parents of children with disabilities, finding a school where the adults not only care about what your child needs but are capable of providing it can be life-changing.

Over the last 12 months, researchers at the Center on Reinventing Public Education and the National Center for Special Education in Charter Schools fanned out across the country. We visited 30 charter schools in 13 states. We interviewed dozens of teachers, administrators and school leaders.

Along the way, we met students who had worried about bullies but found schools where they felt safe.

In the most promising schools we studied, leaders committed to meeting every student’s individual needs. Teachers blurred the lines between special and general education, and they worked together to solve problems. Parents were full partners in setting learning goals for their children.

In this way, our latest study builds on ideas we at CRPE have developed for 26 years. Charter schools have the flexibility to create coherent organizations that do not trap special education in an isolated silo.

They can hire staff that share their leaders’ commitment to educating students with disabilities effectively, in the same classrooms as their peers. They can elevate the role of parents, who have chosen to enroll their children, to serve as full partners in the education of students with disabilities.

For nearly 30 years, the charter school movement has used these advantages to raise expectations for low-income children of color and committed to helping them reach college at the same rates as their more affluent peers.

We believe more charter schools must similarly rise to the challenge of closing an achievement gap that does not get the attention it deserves: the gap between students with disabilities and those without disabilities.

Read the full article about charter schools serving students with disabilities by Bethany Gross and Robin Lake at The 74.