Special Education Charters schools vs.General Charters schools Inclusion Debate

In the Education Weekly  

December 13.2014 

Special Education Charters Renew Inclusion Debate

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2014/09/17/04specialneedscharters.h34.html

In this article it talks allot about the difference between a Specialized Charter School vs. General Charter Schools. After reading this I think I had more questions then I did when I started, I think for me the questions stem more about the inclusion debate. As I have shared in past posts I am all about giving each student what THEY need to became a better student. I have always been a strong believer in the inclusion component over segregation. As I read through this article I find parts such as the quote  "The worry is that we will move back into a separate environment, and there's a fear that separate is not equal," Ms. Jones said. "It's a complicated discussion because parents are choosing it [the special charter school] where it exists." that is shared in this article that scares me.  A small portion of the article:

Parents go to great lengths to meet the special and often demanding needs of children with disabilities. In Diana Diaz-Harrison's case, that meant opening a charter school in Phoenix for her son, who has autism—and for other students like him—when she felt his needs weren't being met in regular district-run schools."For my typical daughter, we chose a charter school that specializes in the arts … that meets her needs," said Ms. Diaz-Harrison. "So for my little boy with autism, what can meet his needs? A school that can help him with his communication, ease his anxieties, help him move forward and make academic progress. We didn't have a school like that—now we do."The school that Ms. Diaz-Harrison opened this year—the 90-student Arizona Autism Charter School—is among dozens of charters nationwide that focus on serving students with disabilities. Such schools help counter the long-running criticism that charters don't serve enough of those students.But they also renew questions about the best educational environment for students with disabilities: Is it a specialized school or a more mainstream setting with general education students?While parents of students with disabilities often push for special charter schools, some experts call those efforts misguided. They point to federal law and related research that prescribe that such students be integrated as much as possible with typically developing peers."Within the special education community, there's a concern about these schools—a worry that they're concentrating kids with learning disabilities into one school, and they're not interacting enough with other kids," said Paul T. O'Neill, the co-founder of the National Center for Special Education in Charter Schools, in New York.

After reading this I think you will have a lot more questions as well and this is not a bad thing. The more questions we have the more we will do to seek out the answers and then we will be able to help more people / families.