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California charter schools: Including students with disabilities
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California charter schools: Including students with disabilities
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CALIFORNIA CHARTER SCHOOLS:
INCLUDING STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES
Copyright 2002
by
Myra Martin Booker
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(EDUCATION)
August 2002
Myra Martin Booker
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UMI Number: 3094305
UMI
UMI Microform 3094305
Copyright 2003 by ProQuest Information and Learning Company.
All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against
unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code.
ProQuest Information and Learning Company
300 North Zeeb Road
P.O. Box 1346
Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346
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UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
The Graduate School
University Park
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90089^1695
This dissertation , w ritten b y
Myra Martin Booker_______________
Under th e direction o f h.ex.. D issertation
C om m ittee, an d approved b y a ll its m em bers,
has been p re sen ted to and a ccep ted b y The
Graduate School, in p a rtia l fu lfillm en t o f
requirem ents fo r th e degree o f
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
o f G raduate S tu d ies
D ate
DISSER TA nO N C O M M IT T
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DEDICATION
To Richard, Sheriden, Meredith and Myrtle, my staunchest supporters.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I wish to extend a special note of appreciation to my dissertation committee-
Professor Priscilla Wohlstetter, Professor Peter Robertson, and Professor Guilbert
Hentschke—for their patience and support in providing guidance for my research.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
DEDICATION ....................................... ii
ACKNOW LEDGEMENTS............................................... iii
LIST OF T A B L E S.................................. v
LIST OF FIGURES ......................... vi
A B S T R A C T .............................................................................. vii
CHAPTER I: IN TRO D U C TIO N .............................................................................. 1
Special Education
Purpose of Study
CHAPTER II: REVIEW OF THE LITERA TU RE....................................................12
Open Systems
Charter Schools as Open Systems
Summary of Literature Review
CHAPTER III: RESEARCH METHODS . ........................................................... 43
Background
Sample Selection
Data Sources
Data Collection and Analysis
Summary
CHAPTER IV: RESULTS.......................................................................... 52
Charter School A
Charter School B
Charter School C
Charter School D
Summary of All Charter Schools
CHAPTER V: DISCUSSION AND IM PL IC A T IO N S........................................... 99
REFEREN CES.................................................................................. 108
A PPEN D ICES.............................................................................................................
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LIST OF TABLES
Page
Table 1: Sample of Charter Schools . ....................................... . 46
Table 2: Interviews: Respondents by Charter School .................47
Table 3: Summary of Qualitative Findings: Technologies . . . . . . . 93
Table 4: Summary of Qualitative Findings: Strategies . . . . . . . . . 95
Table 5: Summary of Qualitative Findings: Structures ...........................97
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LIST OF FIGURES
Page
Figure 1: Open Systems and Environmental Contingencies . ....................13
Figure 2: A Charter School Open System .......................... 24
Figure 3: Coding Categories .......................... 49
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ABSTRACT
The purpose o f the present study was to investigate how charter schools
comply with the legislative mandate for educating students with disabilities, using an
open systems approach as a theoretical framework. Research questions guiding the
study included: What are the curricular and instructional services that charter schools
provide to achieve their goal of educating students with disabilities? What are the
strategies that charter schools employ to organize their activities for educating students
with disabilities? What are the governance and decision-making structures used by
charter schools that support the education of students with disabilities?
This was an exploratory study conducted on a purposefully selected sample of
four charter schools authorized by the Los Angeles Unified School District, the local
education agency. Data sources, which were qualitative in nature, included interviews
with charter school personnel and parents, a review of archival documents, and
observations of special education activities at school sites.
The study results showed similarities and differences in the approaches charter
schools employed to achieve special education goals. To a large extent, school
structures for making decisions were similar; charter schools created teams of staff
and parents to decide on students’ individualized education programs. On the other
hand, differences were evident in the strategies used by the charter schools to ensure
the provision o f special education. The charter schools in the sample had various
funding arrangements, and personnel structures varied as well.
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Emerging from the data were findings suggesting that the hallmarks of charter
schools—regulatory autonomy, self-governance, active parental involvement, and
accountability—were compatible with the strategies and structures employed by the
schools in the sample to provide special education services to students with
disabilities.
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CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION .
The charter school movement has been a dynamic initiative at the top of the
educational reform agenda during the past decade. It is based on the belief that the
school is a significant place in which teaching and learning occurs for all students.
And schools that effectively promote student progress have goals that do not depend
on external regulations or on past practices that often idealize the traditional “grammar
of schooling” (Tyack & Cuban, 1995, p. 9).
While charter schools are public schools, they are unique because of their
charter that serves as a contract with a state or local agency allowing the schools
regulatory flexibility to determine innovative ways of educating their students while
holding the schools accountable for improving student performance. “The charter is, in
effect, a declaration of independence that enables schools to try to become more
effective, free of the restrictions of many local or state regulations” (Wohlstetter,
1994, p. 139).
Just as charter schools are freed from bureaucracy to choose ways of reaching
their goals, parents are also accorded their own freedom to choose one charter over
another. Such parental choice creates a strong incentive for charter schools to
respond to the individual needs of all their students and to strive for improved student
performance. And since the number of charter schools continues to increase, they
have steadily become a popular alternative chosen by many parents who seek
meaningful options for increasing the educational outcomes of their children (Little
Hoover Commission, 1996; Paige, 2001; Whitmire, 1999).
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The concepts underlying charter schools—regulatory flexibility, autonomy for
decision-making, parental choice, and performance-based accountability— spur the
development o f schools that “consumers” favor and create competition to recruit
students. It has been noted that the market-driven system of charter schools can also
encourage the closing or revamping of charter schools that have programs with little or
no public support (Chubb & Moe, 1990; Walberg, 2000). Supporters point out that
charter schools ensure their survival by motivating their teachers to strive for
improving student performance, becoming educationally innovative, and serving as
laboratories for meaningful reform for all other schools (Little Hoover Commission,
1996; Paige, 2001; Riley, 1999).
Charter schools have also been perceived as a way of compelling other public
schools to compete for students by improving their facilities and curriculum or face
declining enrollments (Little Hoover Commission, 1996; Riley, 1999; see also,
Manno, Finn, Bierlein, & Vanourek, 1998; Wohlstetter & Griffin, 1998). In a
national study that examined the relationship between charter schools and the districts
in which they are located, it was found that the charter schools have influenced these
districts to make changes in the way they conduct their district operations and the
educational programs they provide (RPP International, 2001),
An assumption of the charter school movement is that schools can achieve the
goal of promoting student learning in various ways based on teachers, parents, and
administrators participating in local decision-making about community needs and
expectations for education programs and being accountable for the outcomes of
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student performance. As such, the charter concept is closely linked with other popular
school reforms such as public school choice, site-based management, deregulation,
and high stakes accountability (Chubb & Moe, 1990; Koppich, 1997; Molnar, 1996;
Riley, 1999; Wohlstetter, 1994).
There is significant political support for the charter school idea that has come
from both ends of the spectrum. Republicans have embraced the concept that charter
schools offer greater school choice along with private-sector concepts such as
competition to increase school improvement. Democrats have endorsed charter
schools because they remain within the bounds of free public education and provide a
unifying experience for the diversity of citizens in this country. And because charter
schools fit within the existing framework for public education, they are considered by
many to be a viable alternative to private school voucher proposals (Little Hover
Commission, 1996)..
The first charter school law was passed in 1991 by the state of Minnesota, then
by California in 1992 (Little Hoover Commission, 1996). Currently, 2,372 charter
schools have been established nationwide and are serving approximately 576,000
children (Center for Education Reform, 2001). The majority of charter schools have
been newly created with a median enrollment of about 150, while the remainder
comprises conversions of pre-existing schools. Grade configurations in charter
schools have tended to be non-traditional such as kindergarten to 12, kindergarten to 8,
and ungraded (RPP International, 2000).
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Although charter legislation varies considerably from state to state, they all
grant charter schools some degree of autonomy from state and local regulations that
allows the schools to operate outside the bureaucratic rules and structures of other
public schools and focus on improving student outcomes through decision-making that
is site-based (McKinney, 1998). The assumption is that a school will be more
responsive to student and parent needs if those who work most closely with the
students, are empowered to make decisions about school and classroom policy (Izu et
al., 1998; see also Wohlstetter, Mohrman, & Robertson, 1997; Wohlstetter, Van Kirk,
Robertson, & Mohrman, 1997).
In spite of their regulatory freedom, charter schools must still comply with
certain state and federal regulations in the same manner as other public schools. In
addition to being accountable as a public body, charter schools are required to be in
compliance with health and safety laws, non-sectarian, and tuition-free (Fiore &
Cashman, 1998). Charter schools also have a legal responsibility to ensure that
students have an equal opportunity to enroll in their programs (Manno et al., 1998;
Mickelsen, 1997; Nathan, 1998).
Special Education
Federal special education law, the Education of the Flandicapped Act of 1975
and since renamed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act or IDEA,
guarantees a free, appropriate public education (FAPE) for all students with
disabilities. It provides regulations to ensure that every state provides FAPE in the
least restrictive environment and establishes performance goals for students with
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disabilities consistent, to the extent possible, with those established for other students
(Aheam, 1999; Council for Exceptional Children, 2001; Lange, 1997). The
regulations also require that students be assessed and identified as having one or more
specific disabilities defined under the IDEA and that the disabilities are determined to
have an adverse impact on the students’ educational achievement (Aheam, Lange,
Rim, & McLaughlin, 2001; McKinney, 1998).
The basis for providing FAPE is the entitlement of students with disabilities to
an individualized education program (IEP) within a continuum of instructional settings
designed to address all levels of learning needs. The IDEA requires that the IEP be
developed by a team of school staff and parents to include: a) evaluation of a student
referred for a suspected disability; b) determination of eligibility for special education;
and c) individualized instruction and services. If a student is to receive services within
a general education setting, a general education teacher is required to participate on
the IEP team (Aheam et al., 2001; Council for Exceptional Children, 2001).
Two other federal disability laws, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of
1973 and Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act o f 1990, are civil rights laws
that protect individuals with disabilities from discrimination. Both mandates mirror
most of the substantive and procedural requirements of the IDEA, although the
provisions of Section 504 and Title II are more extensive in the types of disabilities
they cover and the class of individuals they protect. More narrowly, the IDEA is
focused on whether students with disabilities, from birth through age 21, require
special education defined as specially designed instruction (Aheam, 1999; McKinney,
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1998). While Section 504 and the ADA have no provisions for fiscal resources, the
IDEA provides limited funding to defray the costs to public schools for complying
with special education mandates (Rhim, Aheam, Lange, & McLaughlin, 2001).
Since no state can grant waivers of federal mandates, students with disabilities
do not leave their special education rights at the charter school doorstep upon
enrolling. The 1997 amendments to the IDEA call for states and local education
agencies (LEAs) to ensure that students with disabilities attending charter schools are
served in the same manner as other students with disabilities in other public schools.
To verify implementation of all IDEA requirements, the U.S. Department of
Education regularly monitors the states and their obligation to oversee the compliance
of their LEAs (Aheam, 1999).
Accordingly, state charter school laws are guided by the IDEA in establishing
the responsibility of charter schools for special education, given the status of charter
schools within each state’s public education system (Heubert, 1997). Most states
require every charter school to be designated as either: a) a LEA receiving funding and
being responsible for providing its own services for special education; or b) a school
operating within a LEA that is responsible for the provision of special education
(Aheam, 1999; McKinney, 1998).
For charter schools pre-existing as public schools, special education
programming and services usually have already been established. Thus, there is often
more assurance that these schools can adhere to special education mandates, since
their staff in place with experience in meeting the needs of students with disabilities.
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However, over half of the charter schools nationwide are newly created and all require
newly designed special education programs (RPP International, 2000).
Compared to 11 percent o f the students enrolled in traditional public schools
nationwide who were receiving special education, charter school students receiving
special education comprised only 8 percent of the total enrollment nationwide
according to a study by RPP International (2000). The data also suggested that the
unofficial number of students with disabilities in charter schools was higher, since
many charter schools reported that they did not formally identify students because of
insufficient financial incentives and the personalized instruction already provided to
their students. At the same time, Horn and Miron (2000) found that charter schools
enrolled fewer students with disabilities than other public schools, and that those
students served in charter schools had milder disabilities that required fewer services.
California
California, where the present study was conducted, has legislation mandating
the entire state as the potential enrollment area for a charter school. It requires that
charter schools not discriminate against any pupil on the basis of ethnicity, national
origin, gender or disability. The statute also regulates special education at charter
schools by requiring that their charter petitions include a general statement about their
commitment to comply with federal disability statutes. Moreover, the California State
Board of Education is mandated to exercise a preference for approving charters that
provide comprehensive learning environments and experiences to students who are
identified by the petitioners as achieving at a low academic level (Flanagan, 1999).
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When compared to many other states, California charter schools are accorded
higher levels of authority for self-governance than many other states and operate free
of the State Education Code to make decisions about their school operations,
especially issues related to personnel, curriculum, and expenditures. Yet California
charter schools, as public schools, are mandated to employ certified teachers, conduct
pupil testing for statewide performance standards, and comply with all disability laws
(Fiore & Cashman, 1998).
Special education governance and funding in California flow through the
state’s 109 special education local plan areas (SELFAs) to their member LEAs and
then to the schools within each LEA. Some LEAs, such as the Los Angeles Unified
School District, are large enough to be their own SELPAs, although most are
comprised of multiple LEAs. A SELPA develops its own plan for special education to
ensure its compliance with mandates, describe services and programs, and develop an
annual budget for its LEAs (Aheam et al., 2001).
In California, charter schools are most often authorized to operate by the LEAs
in which they are located. A 1999 amendment to the state’s charter law provides that
a charter school may choose the manner in which it will receive its special education
funding. One option is for a charter school to become a LEA in a SELPA and receive
funding for providing its own special education services, while having all the usual
fiscal and legal responsibility required of other LEAs operating under federal and state
mandates (Aheam et al., 2001).
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If the charter school chooses not to become a LEA for special education, then
it is to be considered a public school of the LEA that authorized its charter petition.
Under this arrangement, the charter school can either: a) deliver all of its own services
using mandated funding allocated by the LEA; b) receive all services from the LEA in
lieu of mandated funding; or c) receive a combination of both mandated funding and
services from the LEA (Flanagan, 1999).
A study of California charter schools (Powell, Blackorby, Marsh, Finnegan, &
Anderson, 1997) found that 8 percent of all students enrolled in the state’s charter
schools received special education services, compared with the 9 percent identified
within the state’s total public school population. Although the percentages were
comparable for charter and traditional schools in the study, special education was an
area marked by uncertainty for many charter schools and authorizing agencies due to
the complexity of special education regulations. The charter schools reported
difficulties obtaining special education information from the California Department of
Education, with most of them contracting for special education services through their
LEA or county authorizers. A few schools did not provide special education,
reporting that student needs were addressed by means of small classes and
personalized instruction within the general education program.
Purpose of Study
Although the charter school movement has burgeoned, and even more charter
schools are being encouraged through public support and legislation, there has been
very little guidance on how to address the legal requirements for educating students
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with disabilities in charter schools, while also promoting the autonomy and innovation
accorded charter schools.
Despite political support nationwide for charter schools, Manno, Finn and
Vanourek (2000) observe that charter schools are in the same special education
“regulatory straitjackets” used for traditional public schools. They argue that charter
school compliance with special education laws stifles “innovation and improvement”
for the program (p. 739; see also McLaughlin, Henderson, & Ullah, 1996). Moreover,
a Special Educator article opined that “trying to fit charter schools into the regulatory
structure of the IDEA.. .is compared by some to putting a square peg in a round hole;
it just won’t make a perfect fit” (“Charter Schools and Special Ed Law,” 1997, p. 8).
Moreover, the study by Powell, et al. (1997) of California charter schools
revealed that their uncertainty about special education stemmed from their difficulty in
determining how their educational programs and the waivers of the charter school law
fit in with the IDEA legislation and regulations (Powell, et al., 1997). Based on an
examination of special education enrollments at charter schools, Good and Braden
(2000) conclude that some “...charter schools are in serious violation of federal
legislation” and call for “...meaningful examination of special education... at the
school level” (p. 748). Nationwide, attention has been focused on how charter schools
can comply with the top-down, legal mandates of special education—one of the most
heavily regulated and monitored arenas in all of public education—while still retaining
their regulatory flexibility and authority for self-govemance (Fiore, Warren, &
Cashman, 1998; Heubert, 1997).
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The purpose of the present study was to investigate how charter schools
comply with the legislative mandate for educating students with disabilities. Four
charter schools authorized by the Los Angeles Unified School District were
purposefully selected to participate in the study. The study used qualitative research
methods. Data were collected from interviews with the special education staff and
parents of each school, reviews of archival documents such as charter school petitions
and special education records, and observations of school activities at the school sites.
The data were analyzed to identify themes that explained how charter schools educate
students with disabilities with suggestions for improving special education services in
charter schools.
This case study report is comprised of five chapters. The next chapter, Chapter
2, reviews the literature concerning organizational theory and how it can be applied to
the operation of charter schools. Chapter 3 describes the research methods for the
study. Chapter 4 presents the results of the qualitative data analysis. Finally, in
Chapter 5 the results of the investigation are used to answer the research questions and
discuss the implications of the findings.
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CHAPTER II: REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE
As explained in the previous chapter, the intent of the present study was to
investigate how charter schools comply with the legislative mandates for educating
students with disabilities. The purpose of this literature review is to summarize the
theory and research of two key areas related to this investigation. First reviewed is the
perspective of organizations as open, social systems adapting to the environmental
influences and resources. Second is a review of investigations involving charter
schools as open systems operating as market-driven organizations that respond to
consumer demands for accountability in improving student performance.
Open Systems
Research supports the definition of an organization as a group of people who
work together to pursue a goal by obtaining resources from the environment. As such,
the organization uses these resources to accomplish tasks and apply technologies to
achieve effective performance of its goals, thereby receiving additional resources. The
organization deals with any uncertainties associated with this process by developing
strategies to achieve its goals and establishing structures of assignments and divisions
of responsibilities that support its strategies (Hanson, 1991; Rainey, 1997).
In the past century, a major trend among organizational theorists has been to
distinguish between closed systems and open systems. When organizations are
viewed as systems, they cannot be considered completely open or closed. If fully
closed, the systems would not receive inputs of demands and resources from the
environment nor distribute products. If fully opened, the systems would not be able to
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eliminate superfluous data and raw materials from the environment. Thus,
organizations are viewed as systems that exhibit varying degrees of being open and
closed, contingent on environmental inputs that influence the manner in which they go
about achieving their goals (Hanson, 1991; Rainey, 1997).
Katz and Kahn (1978) have described the open systems approach as a broad,
heuristic framework that portrays an organization as a social entity adapting to
environmental influences both outside and within its system, such as consumer
expectations and government regulations, to achieve a goal. The organization
interacts with its environment by employing strategies to pursue supports and
resources such as creating consumer demand, seeking governmental action, or
defining how people perceive its goals. Strategies also help to establish structures that
divide responsibilities and make assignments for accomplishing tasks. These
interactions create a cycle of interlocking technologies, strategies, and structures that
transform inputs into outputs leading to feedback and subsequent inputs for continued
operation of the organization as illustrated in Figure 1 (Daft, 1995; Scott, 1998).
Figure 1:
Open Systems and Environmental Contingencies
EN V IR O N M EN T
I
Inputs: D em ands/Expectations
Inputs: Supports/R esources
Inputs
EN V IR O N M EN T
^ _______
SO CIAL SY STEM
T ransform ation o f Inputs
(W ithin-puts o f Technologies,
Strategies, & Structures)
EN V IRO N M EN T
Outputs: Product
Outputs: Services
Outputs
t
EN V IR O N M EN T
- FE E D B A C K *
E N V IR O N M EN T EN V IR O N M EN T
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The degree of uncertainty and complexity of an organization’s internal and
external environmental contingencies is at the core of its technical functioning.
Thompson (1967) noted that, “coping with uncertainty.. .is the essence of the
administrative process” (p. 159). And since uncertainty influences the predictability of
goal achievement, an organization continually strives for what Cyert and March
(1963) called “uncertainty avoidance” (p.l 19) by determining strategies and
responsibilities that support its technologies.
Technologies
Technology is concerned with an organization’s work processes for converting
its raw materials and resources into products and services. It includes production
methods, workflow, and equipment. Research provides definitions of technology that
usually involve the interdependence required by the work and the routineness of the
work. Technical interdependence involves ways in which the different parts of a
technology are related. Technical routineness refers to the amount of information
processing and decision-making required during task execution (Cummings & Huse,
1989; Rainey, 1997).
Thompson (1967) viewed an organization’s technical core as contingent on the
type of interdependence that the work requires among individuals and groups, based
on their needs for exchanging information with each other to perform their assigned
tasks. He conceived of some technologies as sequentially performed tasks similar to
an assembly line that requires a specific job to be completed before passing it on to the
next phase for task completion. Plans and schedules become important coordination
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tools for these technologies. Thompson considered other technologies as complex
because of their interdependent tasks in which individuals and groups regularly
communicate, participate in meetings, and make mutual adjustments for
accomplishing tasks. Research has found that technologies with such reciprocal
patterns of interdependence were less likely to have standardized work procedures (see
Rainey, 1997).
Just as tasks with high interdependence for processing information and making
decisions during performance are difficult to plan and routinize, technologies found in
simple, stable environments involving repetitive tasks with clear steps for exceptions
and minimal communication are viewed as routine. As environments become
complex and uncertain, technologies employ non-routine tasks that are less predictable
in their outcomes, involving exceptions and on-going analysis as well as mutual
adjustments between individuals and groups (Rainey, 1997).
Perrow (1973) assigned two dimensions to technologies: a) predictability of
tasks that involve a significant number of exceptions and variations that can be
anticipated; and b) analyzability of tasks or degree to which requirements for the
performance of the task can be determined. Perrow concluded that routine
technologies had more predictable requirements with fewer exceptions that could be
completed through rules and procedures with formal, centralized structures.
Technologies that were non-routine, because of exceptions or variations and thus
difficult to analyze, required more flexible structures of assignments and
responsibilities and called for on-going communication for the completion of tasks.
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Strategies
Since environments provide the needed resources, information, and settings for
an organization to accomplish its technologies, the organization must maintain
effective relationships with appropriate environments in order to achieve effective
performance o f its goals and to attain additional resources. Consequently, an
organization formulates strategies for managing environmental constraints and
contingencies, and for taking advantage of environmental opportunities. Furthermore,
it strives to influence its environment in favorable directions through strategies such as
political lobbying, advertising, and public relations.
Organizational strategy refers to purposeful decision-making behavior that
emphasizes the assessment of general goals, strengths and weaknesses, and external
threats and opportunities to be faced in deploying resources to best advantage in
pursuit of goals. This is organized into a plan of action that defines how resources
(whether human, economic, or technical) will be used to apply and accomplish
technologies for productivity. In so doing, an organization identifies external elements
and forces (e.g., suppliers, customers, competitors, regulators) in its environment that
affect the attainment of its goals (Cummings & Huse, 1989).
Choice of strategy includes decisions about domain—what products and
services will be offered, what customers served, what technologies used, and what
work locations established. When strategic choice results in an environment that is
highly dynamic (changing and uncertain), an organization tends to have low
formalization of its technology, structure, evaluation system, human resource system,
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and culture in order to support flexible and innovative organizational behaviors.
When the choice o f strategy involves a static environment, an organization tends to be
more mechanistic and formalized to support a more standardized organizational
behavior (Lawrence & Lorsch, 1967; Thompson, 1967; Mintzberg, 1983).
The literature shows a variety of approaches used by organizations to develop
and manage strategies that include: a) stakeholder management that is accountable to
key stakeholder expectations (e.g., consumers, suppliers, regulators); b) issue
management that identifies and resolves critical issues for achieving objectives; c)
competitive analysis that examines major forces (e.g., consumers and market
competition) for gaining competitive advantage; d) negotiation management that treats
decision-making as a highly political process requiring constant bargaining; and e)
resource management that analyzes and deploys the resources allocated across
organizational units and levels (Bryson, 1995; Nutt & Backoff, 1992).
Although the survival of an open system is contingent on its capacity to change
along with a changing environment, an organization also ensures its effectiveness and
efficiency by controlling or reducing the levels of environmental uncertainty without
having to modify its technical core of tasks. Bozeman (1987) noted that the ability of
an organization to buffer itself from changes induced by environmental demands and
stresses depended on its strategies in dealing with the “political authority” and
turbulence of its environment (p. 88). Research has shown that organizations deal
with the uncertainties associated with their work processes by organizing their tasks
into strategies to ensure the achievement of goals (Hanson, 1991).
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Ultimately, the process for building and implementing strategies links the
organizational environment, goals and values, structure, technologies, and people in
seeking effective performance of goals. As such, the relationship that exists between
strategies and goals works both ways: major goals and values influence strategies, and
strategic processes develop and shape major goals and values (Rainey, 1997).
Structures
An organization supports the implementation o f its strategies by establishing a
structure comprised of a division of responsibility and assignments achieved through
such means as hierarchies of authority, rules and regulations as well as specialization
of individuals and groups. The division of responsibility within the organization’s
structure separates its goals into components for various tasks that are assigned to
different groups and individuals (Rainey, 1997). Even though some organizations are
more open and loosely structured than others, they share commonalties. For instance,
they all have a degree of centralization for governing decision-making and levels of
formalized rules and regulations for responsibilities and assignments— characteristics
of hierarchy that are derived from an emphasis on rationality and a more closed-
system perspective (Scott, 1998).
Organizations also have varying complexity of labor differentiation both
horizontally across sub-units and individuals and vertically between hierarchical levels
(Rainey, 1997). Horizontally, organizational components may be assigned by
specialization of the individual or group (e.g., teacher, teaching assistant, volunteer) or
by product or service (reading, mathematics, science), or by some combination of
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both. Vertically, an organizational structure may be tall and include many managerial
levels (e.g., governing board, administrators, committees, teams, and teachers) or they
may be relatively flat (Cummings & Huse, 1989).
One of the central themes of organizational theory is that a formalized,
centralized structure performs well enough in a simple, stable environment, where it
can take advantage of specialization and clear patterns of communication and
hierarchy of authority. But if the environment is complex and uncertain, strict rules,
job descriptions, and chains of command become cumbersome and cannot process
information rapidly enough within the organization. If the environment becomes more
complex, an organization must reflect such change in its own structure, giving the
people in the units that confront these changing environmental segments the flexibility
and authority they need to respond to the unstable conditions they encounter (Rainey,
1997).
Along the same line, Lawrence and Lorsch (1967) concluded from their
empirical study of 10 organizations that when different types of organizations face
different kinds o f environments, such as uncertain to certain or homogeneous to
diverse, each organization resulted in having a different type of structure. For
example, those organizations with an uncertain and diverse environment were
comprised o f many differentiated work groups because each group confronted a
different type o f task posed by the environmental diversity.
Daft (1995) similarly noted that when environmental demands and support are
more complex, open systems usually have more differentiated work groups with
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flexibility of rules and assignments that employ lateral communication within groups
to independently resolve various problems simultaneously. Differentiation also serves
to seal off the effect of a breakdown in one part of the organization and prevents it
from spreading throughout the structure.
Organizational structure is also concerned with integrating and coordinating
the assigned tasks of differentiated groups within the organization to ensure a “tight
coupling” o f effort and the achievement of overarching goals of the organization
(Cummings & Huse, 1989; Rainey, 1997; Weick, 1976). Structures such as rules and
regulations and hierarchies of authority are used to integrate assigned tasks through
specification of rules, procedures, goals, and plans that direct the organizational
behavior (Cummings & Huse, 1989).
In their study, Lawrence and Lorsch (1967) concluded that the need to
integrate and coordinate the work of groups within the organization was critical for
achieving unity of effort within a system, and that such an integration o f the structural
components was achieved by means of task forces, liaison officers, and committees.
Similarly, Mintzberg (1983) identified various ways that organizations integrated their
differentiated activities by means of: a) mutual adjustment for informal work
coordination; b) standardization of work content and procedures; c) quality control of
output through standardized testing; and d) professional training to emphasize
organizational norms. And for school organizations, Monk (1990) found that a
common organizational approach for integrating differentiated group activities
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towards achievement of mutual school goals was the emphasis on accountability
through evaluation of work processes and outputs of productivity.
Overall, open systems respond to complexity and uncertainty in their work
processes and environments by adopting more complex and flexible structures for
processing information and making decisions about their changing needs. If the tasks
of organizations are to be changed or buffered against change, information is needed
to know how they are performing, detect and control deviations from their goals, and
adapt their tasks to changing environments (Galbraith, 1995). Daft (1995) found that
open systems responded to complex information by pushing the governance for
decisions down their organizational structures to allow workers with relevant
information to have the authority to make decisions about work processes.
Decision-making issues are an integral part of an organization’s governance
structure, since governance determines who has authority to make decisions. While
decisions can be viewed as the judgments that influence courses of action, the process
of decision-making is the manner in which decisions are made. Thus, the members of
organizations engage in decision-making to determine strategies for pursuing
organizational goals and accomplishing technologies that respond to the imperative for
differentiation and coordination of individual and group activities (Hanson, 1991).
When an organization’s operational structure has both high goal agreement and
the technical knowledge for achieving the goal, its decision-makers can rationally
select the one that would maximize (over all other possible alternatives) the goal and
the desired end after considering all alternatives of a decision. A strictly rational
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decision-making process would involve: a) defining the relevant goal; b) establishing
criteria by which solutions can be evaluated as acceptable; c) defining and collecting
data on each alternative; d) selecting and implementing the best alternative; and e)
evaluating the results (Hanson, 1991; Rainey, 1997).
A basic assumption of rational decision-making is that complete data are
available and the end result of selecting one or the other o f the alternatives can be
known. These strict conditions are seldom met except in the most simple of situations
that depend on a direct link between an organization’s operational activities to its
goals and policies. This requirement specifies that the goals must be precise enough to
give definite direction to organizational events. Because such a rational approach
would require almost unlimited resources as well as the time and ability to read the
future, an organization most often makes decisions and initiates action within a limited
perspective of reality (Hanson, 1991; Simon, 1957).
Many organizational environments involve too much uncertainty for such a
structured, rational approach and require more complex intuitive decision-making in
which organizations may accept, with or without that intent, a simplified view of
reality (Daft, 1995; Thompson, 1967). March and Simon (1958) pointed out that
“most human decision-making, whether individual or organizational, is concerned
with the... selection of satisfactory alternatives” rather than the best alternative
(p. 140). Simon (1957) had also reasoned that the impact o f some decisions are so
unique and in the distant future that it would make it difficult to determine what would
be the best or even satisfactory alternatives.
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Under conditions of doubt such as these, Lindblom (1959) noted that
organizations frequently turn to committee decision-making as a way of giving
validity to the selection of an alternative, based on the thinking that the best decision
would be the one to which everyone on the committee agrees. In such situations, there
may also be incremental decision-making regarding existing circumstances of more
limited scope within the larger context of decisions already made for broader and
long-range goals (Etzioni, 1986; Quinn, 1990). Organizations might even engage in
bargaining or political maneuvering when there is no clear consensus on goals or
means for achieving them (Cyert & March, 1963; Daft, 1995; Thompson, 1967).
Charter Schools as Open Systems
Public schools have traditionally responded to interventions from higher levels
of authority seeking to direct and control school tasks by imposing top-down rules and
structures. As a result, many public schools have evolved into highly structured
bureaucracies that tend to be closed to environmental demands and consumer input for
meeting the needs of students (Hanson, 1991; Manno et al., 1998). This classic view,
some reformers argue, is being replaced by the market-driven aspect of charter schools
as open systems interacting with their environments to increase consumer choice,
produce student outcomes that attract consumers, and gamer public support (Chubb &
Moe, 1990; Little Hoover Commission, 1996).
To pursue their goal, charter schools transform environmental inputs (e.g.,
legislation, human resources, values community expectations and supports) with
technologies (e.g., instructional methods, teacher interventions) organized by
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strategies (e.g., instructional program, outsourcing for services), establish structures of
assignments and responsibilities (e.g., committees, rules, regulations) that support the
strategies, and export products (e.g., student achievement, graduates) to the
environment (e.g., home, college, business). In return for their productivity, they
receive more resources and support (e.g., students, budget increase) for continuation of
the cycle as illustrated in Figure 2 (Monk, 1990; Wirt & Kirst, 1997).
Figure 2:
A Charter School Open System
Public A gencies A dvocacy Groups
Structures Structures
Strategies Strategies
Legislation,
School Goals,
C om m unity
Values,
Parent
Expectations,
Students,
Funding, etc.
T echnical r
> Core:
Technologies
Outputs
Inputs
Strategies Strategies
Structures Structures
A uthorizing LEA C om m unity Groups
Graduation,
Learning
O pportunities,
Social Skills,
A cadem ic
A chievem ent,
L iteracy,
Jobs, etc.
O
u
T
P
U
T
S
FEED B A C K
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Technologies
Charters schools are provided the freedom to determine how they will use their
resources to apply technologies for curricular and instructional services that
consequently lead to improved student performance, especially for those students who
are considered at risk of academic failure (Nathan, 1998). In particular, charter
schools can apply technologies that are tailored to meet the needs of particular
students, as contrasted to the approach of most traditional public schools to apply the
same technology to meet the needs of all students (Chubb & Moe, 1990; Manno,
1996).
Charter school technology involves recruiting and educating students, along
with subsidiary technologies for instruction and school administration. Several
qualitative investigations found that charter schools performed technologies that
included budget management, personnel issues, curriculum development, instructional
services, student assessment, school safety, and purchasing. These investigations
revealed that charter school staff personnel generally perceived many o f these
technologies, whether administrative or instructional as: a) lacking standard
procedures; b) requiring continual interaction amongst staff; and c) and resulting in
unique resolutions o f problems (Izu et al., 1998; Manno et a l, 1998; Powell et al.,
1997; Wells, 1998).
In their survey of California charter schools, Powell et al. (1997) found that the
schools applied a variety o f technologies for instruction and services. For example,
many of them used team teaching for: a) sharing instructional tasks for the same group
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of students; b) experimenting with unique instructional approaches; and c) specializing
in a narrower range of tasks for instruction (see also RPP International & University of
Minnesota, 1997). In their study of charter schools in Los Angeles, Izu et al. (1998)
also identified a wide range of instructional technologies that included: a) cooperative
learning; b) experiential learning; c) co-teaching, d) curriculum modification; and e)
differentiated instruction.
A study of Colorado charter schools (McLaughlin et al., 1996) showed diverse
approaches to curriculum and instruction ranging from a structured academic focus to
experiential student-directed learning and even a specific subject matter. Similarly, a
nationwide survey of 305 charter school (Center for Education Reform, 2001)
revealed the application of various curriculums, some emphasizing specific disciplines
(e.g., math and science or the arts) and others focusing on the future interests or plans
of their students (e.g., college preparation or school-to-work). Survey data showed a
tendency for charter schools to specialize in their instructional technologies more so
than other public schools that use similar technologies as other schools.
Within a charter school’s technical core of tasks are requirements for referring,
evaluating, identifying, and providing special education to students with disabilities.
For a student determined eligible, an IEP is developed to detail current levels of
performance and annual goals that, with accommodations and modifications, will most
appropriately allow the student to participate and progress in the general curriculum
(Council for Exceptional Children, 2001). The schools are not restricted to any
specific technologies for delivery of instruction or services, although an IEP must
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include how the student’s disability affects the student’s involvement and progress in
the general curriculum. IEP technologies are usually complex tasks calling for
frequent communication between individuals and groups to monitor student
performance in preparation for annual reviews conducted by IEP teams (Lange, 1997).
There are also other IDEA mandated technologies involving procedural tasks such as
providing parental notice for consent and involvement in all aspects of the IEP process
(Aheam, 1999; see also Fiore et al., 1998).
Strategies
Since charter schools are accountable for improved student achievement in
exchange for their regulatory freedom and opportunity for self-governance, they often
describe in their charter petitions their proposed strategies for attaining and deploying
their resources to best advantage in pursuit of their goal. Although the legislative
requirements vary from state to state, charter contracts usually set forth a mission
statement, school governance procedures, the education program o f the school, student
admission criteria, and the means of assessing student performance (Hubley & Genys,
1998; Wohlstetter, 1994). Powell et al. (1998) found that charter documents in
California varied from detailed descriptions of every aspect of a school’s operation to
a simple broad outline of the school’s plan (see also Little Hoover Commission, 1996)
In terms o f charter school strategies for special education accountability,
Aheam et al. (2001) determined from their cross-state analysis that charter schools
were basically required to submit the same enrollment data and programmatic and
financial reports as other public schools. But the findings revealed variability as to
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what types of special education data schools were required to report. For instance, the
results revealed that Colorado required information on both student enrollment and
service delivery models, whereas Minnesota required no data. Powell et al. (1998)
found that California law requires charter schools to participate in state accountability
systems by using the same tests for its students as other public schools, which includes
special education populations as required by the IDEA (see also Aheam et al., 2001).
In a national survey of over 1,000 charter schools (RPP International, 2000),
the majority of charter operators rated funding as the most important resource as well
as greatest challenge for the establishment and operation of their schools. Similarly,
the nationwide survey results of 305 charter schools (Center for Education Reform,
2001) indicated that the respondents perceived inadequate funding as the primary
obstacle to the progress of their schools.
From a study of 17 California charter schools, Wells (1998) found that the
schools continually devised methods for increasing their share of available public
dollars. The data from this qualitative research indicated that every school in the study
vied for funding from the California state government, and also relied heavily on
supplemental private resources such as the business community and foundations.
Some schools even employed business managers connected with the non-profit
community and others had grant writers whom they employed or obtained as
volunteers (see also Scott & Jellison, 1998).
Although federal funds are allocated to support compliance with the IDEA
requirements, it does not cover all costs incurred by school districts and local schools
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in providing mandated services (Aheam, 1999; Bierlein & Fulton, 1996). Urban and
Stewart (1994) found that some Minnesota charter schools lacked sufficient funds to
conduct assessments or provide specialized services, such as vision therapists, and
assumed that the school district would meet the need. Fiore, Harwell, Blackorby, and
Finnegan (2000) recently investigated special education issues at 32 charter schools
nationwide and determined that inadequate funding to be a major problematic issue.
Buechler (1996) concluded that special education finance issues were
significant for charter schools because they lacked access to cost-controlling measures
usually available to school districts, such as the use o f general operating funds to
support excess costs or cooperative regionalization of services. Several Colorado
charter schools resolved this particular fiscal problem by contracting with a local
district to provide the technologies required for providing FAPE (McLaughlin et ah,
1996).
In addition to funding, some investigations concluded that technical knowledge
and expertise were critical resources needed to operate a charter school’s special
education program (see Buechler, 1996; McLaughlin et ah, 1996; Urahn and Stewart
(1994). Finn, Manno, and Vanourek (2000) concluded that charter schools in several
states were unable to meet the needs of students with disabilities due to the “lack of
experience, expertise, or resources” (p. 159). Similarly, Rhim et ah (2001) found that
charter schools lacked sufficient knowledge about special education policies and
procedures to meet the requirements o f the IDEA, usually because many of their
administrators and teachers are not educators by training. Powell et al. (1997) found
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that some California charter schools obtained technical support from local districts in
order to understand and implement their responsibilities for providing special
education. Likewise, Fiore et al. (1998) observed that some charter schools were able
to provide special education because they maintained a working relationship with their
local districts (see also “Charter schools: New models,” 1995).
In a more recent study, Fiore et al. (2000) concluded that strained relationships
with local districts served as a barrier in providing special education. Aheam et al.
(2001) similarly found that the type of relationship mandated or negotiated between a
charter school and a LEA significantly influenced the manner in which special
education was implemented in the charter schools.
In their study of charter schools in Los Angeles, Izu et al. (1998) found that the
schools utilized their fiscal autonomy to improve school-wide operations and student
performance. For instance, charter school operators reported that managing their own
budgets allowed them to immediately act on curriculum and instruction decisions as
well as shop comparatively for cost savings. Fiscal autonomy also provided the
schools flexibility to enhance their physical learning environment, particularly
upgrading and expanding their facilities. Moreover, the schools reported that
budgetary autonomy led to improvement of administrative operations through use of
special contractual arrangements with public agencies and private companies for
services, supplies, and equipment.
In the investigation by Aheam et al. (2001), all of the states in the sample
reported a shortage of staff appropriately certified for delivering special education, as
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required by the IDEA. Many of the charter schools indicated that they addressed the
shortage by utilizing a number of strategies such as: a) hiring teachers as itinerants in
inclusive classrooms; b) hiring retired teachers on a part-time basis; c) contracting
with private providers; d) sharing staff between severl charter schools; and f) offering
teachers higher salaries or more appealing work environments.
Similarly, RPP International (2001) found that charter school autonomy not
only allowed the schools to choose strategies for providing various services, but also
to choose the service providers. On average, an almost equal number of charter
schools either: a) provided the services themselves through staff or volunteers; b)
purchased services from their authorizing district; or c) acquired services from an
outside provider. The study findings showed that the newly created schools tended to
provide their own services or relied on outside providers. In contrast, conversion
schools were more likely to use the same district services they used prior to becoming
charter schools.
The Minnesota Charter Schools Evaluation: Final Report (1998) used survey
and observation data from 16 charter schools to describe how charter schools took
advantage of community-based resources such as public libraries, recreational
facilities, and public playgrounds to enhance the instruction for their students. The
survey further revealed that community partnerships were used for community-based
individualized learning opportunities for charter school students and that partnering
with organizations was utilized to obtain donations of financial and in-kind resources
to support school operations. Griffin and Wohlstetter (2001) similarly found a
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number of charter high schools that used community partnerships for student
internships and training experiences that prepared students upon graduation for college
or careers.
The investigation of California charter schools conducted by Powell et al.
(1997) provided data from a survey of 111 schools and case studies of 11 charter
schools that showed how the schools depended on the efforts volunteers as part of the
instructional staff. The results further suggested that California charter schools
usually relied heavily on in-kind support from parents as a resource to tutor and help
in the classroom with reading groups and elective courses as well as on the playground
to assist in supervising students. Griffin and Wohlstetter (2001) described a similar
strategy that involved parents and community members were tutors in a school
program for at-risk students.
Many charter schools provide special education services to students within the
general education classroom—a strategy consistent with an educational philosophy
promoting inclusion of all students (Manno et al., 1998). Izu et al. (1998) identified
some charter schools in Los Angeles that used special education teachers to instruct
students with disabilities within general education classrooms. Similarly, Zigmond
(1999) reported a similar strategy at a Pennsylvania charter school that integrated
students with disabilities into regular classrooms through collaboration between
special and general education teachers (see also Cook & Friend, 1995). This approach
complies with the IDEA requirement that students with disabilities are to be educated,
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to the extent appropriate, within the least restrictive environment with their non
disabled peers (Lange, 1997).
In addition to charter schools using general education classrooms to provide
instruction and services to students with disabilities, Izu et al. (1998) identified other
service delivery strategies. Some schools used a pull-out strategy that called for
students to receive special instruction and/or services for a certain number of hours per
week outside of their general education classroom. A more restrictive setting involved
a special day class where students participated the majority of the school day and were
periodically mainstreamed into the general education classroom for limited and
specific participation in activities with non-disabled peers.
Many charter schools have attempted to increase successful student outcomes
by serving limited numbers of students. One approach has been to design smaller
classes with low student-faculty ratios to ensure more teacher time for attending to the
individualized needs of each student and emphasizing “personalized learning” (Griffin
& Wohlstetter, 2001, p.344). Izu et al. (1998) described how the charter schools in
their Los Angeles study used reduced class sizes as a way to provide more
individualized attention for students with special needs in the general education
classroom.
Other research has found evidence that small class sizes and individualized
instruction—hallmarks of charter schools—attract students with disabilities (see Fiore
et al., 1998). Such strategies are consistent with the IDEA mandate to development an
IEP for the provision of direct individualized services to each student with a disability
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(Lange, 1997). Yet there are some research studies that show when students with
disabilities are enrolled, they may not be referred for special education because some
schools believe that such students can be successfully instructed in small general
education classroom settings without labeling them as disabled (see McLaughlin et al.,
1996; Vanourek, Manno, Finn, & Bierlein, 1997).
There are many charter schools that also limit their total student enrollment in
order to ensure low student-teacher ratios and the achievement of student goals.
Nationwide, most charter schools are small with an estimated median enrollment of
about 150 students, as compared to a median of about 500 students for other public
schools in the charter states (RPP International 2000; see also Manno et al., 1998).
The strategy of limiting the number of students served is supported by studies (see
Ancess, 1998; Anderson, 1998; Fine & Somerville, 1998) that indicate a positive
relationship between small school size and successful student achievement.
Conversely, Howley (1994) found a strong negative correlation between large school
size and the academic achievement of students: the larger the school, the lower the
achievement levels.
The study by Powell et al. (1997) reported that some charter schools used a
strategy of configuring grade levels in non-traditional combinations that easily adjust
the curriculum and instruction to meet the individual needs of students rather than rely
on the developmental age norms (see also RPP International, 2000). Similarly, Szabo
and Gerber (1996) argued that charter school autonomy for developing new and
innovative strategies for restructuring classrooms (e.g., combining grades and lower
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student teacher ratios) could influence favorable outcomes for integrating special and
general education.
Another strategy employed by charter schools has been to schedule their
activities to maximize the amount of time for performing their work. For example,
Manno et al. (1998) found that charter schools tended to have longer days, a longer
school year, school programs conducted before and after the regular school hours, and
other strategies that went beyond the traditional scheduling of public schools to meet
the needs for improved student performance. In its nationwide survey of charter
schools, the Center for Education Reform (2001) reported that many of the schools
used flexible scheduling to increase the school day and year (see also McKinney &
Mead, 1996). Time banking was another approach employed by some charter schools
to extend the school day for four days and shortening the fifth day to allow time for
the school staff to participate in various committee meetings and professional
development opportunities (Izu, et al., 1998).
Structures
To support their strategies for performing technologies, charter schools
establish structures governing responsibilities for teachers, administrators, volunteers,
and parents who are assigned tasks to be completed within different time frames in
groups or individually. In several case studies (Fox, 2002; Izu et al., 1998; Manno et
a l, 1998; Wohlstetter & Griffin, 1998), data were collected from interviews, surveys,
and observations that described how many charter schools divided their organization’s
goals into components on which the different groups and individuals could
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concentrate. The findings indicated that the schools were structured into differentiated
work groups or on an individual basis to operate with flexible rules and assignments,
communicate and make their own decisions, and deal with the individual needs of
students by means of various strategies. In some of these studies, the work groups had
various names (e.g., families, clans, clusters, castles, seasons, teams) and were
“loosely coupled” to quickly and accurately solve immediate problems and perform
on-going tasks without requiring the assistance of other groups.
Some studies found that professional development—the process through which
staff acquired new knowledge and skills—was important in the structure of some
charter schools because it helped to clarify various roles and responsibilities in
applying technologies for achieving school goals (Wohlstetter & Griffin, 1998; see
also Louis, Marks, & Kruse, 1996). Izu et al. (1998) reported that charter schools
utilized committees or grade level units to design and implement professional
development activities that focused on staff assignments and responsibilities for
fostering unique curricular and instructional technologies. The IDEA requires each
state to design a comprehensive system of personnel development to ensure the
availability of qualified special and general education personnel with knowledge and
skills for educating students with disabilities (Council for Exceptional Children,
2001).
Charter schools are also concerned with integrating and coordinating the
differentiated responsibilities for overall task accomplishment. A number of
qualitative studies found that they do so by focusing on issues like curriculum,
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instruction, and student progress through a vertical network of team activities up and
down grade levels and collaboration conducted across classes at the same grade level.
Coordination was also accomplished through rules, policies, and procedures for
teachers to evaluate their performance and detect possible deviations from goals of the
school (see Izu et al., 1998; Powell et al., 1997; Riley, 2000). The research suggested
that charter committees and teams were generally empowered to make significant
decisions about curriculum, personnel, and allocation of resources that had a direct,
observable influence on the educational status of students and the working conditions
of school personnel.
The nature of decisions that are entrusted to charter schools is a significant
indicator of the importance given to the process of governance. Overall, shared
decision-making policies for charter schools are often stipulated in their charters that
describe the kinds of decisions that representative teams are allowed to make and
sometimes the process by which deliberations should occur. The national study of
charter schools (RPP International, 2000) found that most charter schools were
allowed autonomy over decisions and policy affecting areas of education and
management. Moreover, the study results showed decision-making processes as
vertically structured with several managerial levels specifying goals, procedures, and
plans for directing organizational behavior of the schools.
Similarly, Wohlstetter and Griffin (2001) found that the decision-making
structures in their charter school sample tended to be decentralized into committees,
task forces, or teams that were formed according to grade levels or subject matter.
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Their research findings also showed that larger charter schools were more likely to
have highly developed structures for decision-making. Although there was
dissatisfaction when the decision-making process involved only a small number of
participants, some charter schools reported that school-wide consensus for every issue
demanded too much teacher time away from teaching the students and prevented
decisions and follow-up actions that needed to be made in a timely manner.
In the study by Izu et al. (1998), governance structures were established within
the charter schools to make decisions about a variety of issues. Some groups were set
up to focus on the student-centered issues—the technical core of the schools’
programs—that typically included a curriculum and instruction committee and a
student affairs committee. Other work groups focused on managing operational
elements such as budgets or facilities and school improvements. At higher levels,
there were overarching governance bodies that worked to coordinate and integrate the
decisions of other work teams, sometimes acting on the recommendations from these
work groups.
The process of shared-govemance that charter schools use to consider their
courses of action depends not only on the time available and the commitment of the
team members but also on the mode of agreement required for moving a decision
forward. In their study of charter schools in Los Angeles, Izu et al. (1998) reported
that the schools made decisions by consensus—meaning that every member of a team
agreed with a proposed course of an action. Although it would appear that consistent
unanimity in this type of process would be hard to maintain, especially with difficult
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and complex educational issues, many charter schools have placed a high priority on
consensus for arriving at decisions (see Cheung & Nathan, 1998).
Powell et al. (1997) similarly found that decision-making was by consensus in
many California charter schools when they dealt with instructional issues through
committees or teams of teachers across grade levels. Meanwhile, teachers also made
individual decisions regarding the performance of their classroom teaching tasks. And
to emphasize that teachers were responsible for their classroom decisions, some
charter schools utilized professional development to provide individualized training
for the personal mastery of teachers rather than whole-school learning (Wohlstetter &
Griffin, 2001).
A national survey of charter schools by the Hudson Institute showed that 61
percent of the teachers in the study reported being involved in decision-making groups
for budget and curriculum policy and planning (Finn, Manno, Bierlein, & Vanourek,
1997). Another qualitative study of New Jersey charters revealed that over three-
fourths of teachers surveyed participated with parents and directors in curriculum
development, setting school policies, and hiring decisions (Kane, 1998). Riley (2000)
conducted a survey of 100 California charter schools, showing that 70 percent of
teachers were assigned to departmental and curriculum committees across grade levels
to evaluate goal achievement for the school or serve on governance councils to
determine school goals.
A majority of charter schools include parents in their governing structures for
decision-making, particularly for curriculum issues (Powell et al., 1997; Riley, 2000;
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Ysseldyke, Lange, & Gomey, 1994). Similarly, the IDEA mandates that parents
participate with special and general education teachers staff to make team decisions
based on consensus about the eligibility of students with disabilities for individualized
instruction and services (Aheam, 1999; Gom, 1997; Lange, 1997). A few studies have
even argued that successful integration of students with disabilities into charter
schools is related to the autonomy of the schools to make decisions about how their
educational programs would meet the individualized needs of all students (Manno,
1996; Vanourek et al., 1997).
If there is a lack of consensus by the IEP team about a student’s special
education program or placement, members have the right to voice their concerns or
disagreements. In particular, the parent has the option of discussing their concerns
with school personnel to resolve any disagreement. If the concerns cannot be
resolved, the parent may request a mediation conference, due process hearing and/or
file a complaint with the special education agency at the state or district level (Lange,
1997). Rhim et al. (2001) cautioned that decision-making by the IEP team could be
weakened if the charter school commitment to parental choice allows unilateral
decisions by parents regarding their children’s special education program.
Summary of Literature Review
The literature supports the view of organizations as open systems interacting
with the complexities and uncertainties of their environments. Moreover, research has
shown that charter schools operate as open systems that respond to the consumer
demands and public expectations for student achievement. To accomplish their eoal
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of educating students, charter schools formulate strategies to define how they will
attain and deploy their resources to apply technologies for accomplishing tasks
supported by structures of responsibilities for various assignments.
Because charter schools are usually accorded autonomy for decision-making,
the research literature shows that they make choices about strategies that usually
involve their budget and personnel as well as curriculum and instruction in order to
achieve their goals. Their strategic approaches have included: a) analyzing the needs
of stakeholders such as students, parents, teachers, and public education regulators; b)
attaining and deploying resources; c) negotiating decisions through collaboration and
consensus-building; and d) identifying and resolving issues such as individualized
learning, inclusion of all students, and special education.
Review of the research has shown that charter schools have used their
autonomy for site-based decision-making to apply a variety of technologies to convert
resources into curricular and instructional services for serving their students, including
those with disabilities. And in spite of the IDEA requirement of specific technologies
to ensure equal access for students with disabilities to all charter school programs, the
legislation does not also require that schools apply any particular technologies for
providing special education instruction and services.
Vertical and horizontal structures o f charter school committees and groups use
their decision-making authority to differentiate and coordinate responsibilities and
assignments for accomplishing technologies to achieve student learning goals. The
literature revealed that decision-making also occurs at the classroom-grade level and.
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in the case of special education, with teachers and parents participating in teams
mandated for determining individualized education programs for their students with
disabilities.
Studies of charter schools have shown that the hallmarks of their
organizations—regulatory autonomy, self-govemance, active parental involvement,
and accountability—are significant variables that impact how they plan strategies and
divide responsibilities for applying the technologies they have determined as
appropriate for educating students. Nevertheless, the available research on how
charter schools comply with legislative requirements for educating their students with
disabilities has focused primarily on how the schools go about attaining mandated
resources. What remains to be investigated is how charter schools employ strategies
that utilize their resources and structures for decision-making to accomplish mandated
technologies for educating students with disabilities.
This present study sought to extend the research literature by describing the
manner in which charter schools organize themselves to provide special education
instruction and services. Chapter 3 describes the methods applied to study how
charter schools, as open systems, complied with the IDEA mandate for educating
students with disabilities.
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CHAPTER III: RESEARCH M ETHODS
The purpose of the present study was to explore how a sample of four charter
schools complied with the IDEA mandates for educating students with disabilities,
using the organizational theory of open systems as a framework for the study. The
following questions were used to guide the research:
• What are the technologies that charter schools apply to transform their resources
in order to achieve their goal of educating students with disabilities?
• What are the strategies that charter schools employ to organize their activities,
given the environmental demands and supports for special education?
• What are the structures used by charter schools for decision-making that support
their strategies and technologies for educating students with disabilities?
The research design entailed a multiple case study approach. Qualitative
research methods were used to investigate how the sample of charter schools provided
special education (Gall, Borg, & Gall, 1996; Strauss & Corbin, 1998). The unit of
analysis in the present study was the charter school. All of the data analyzed were
collected from four charter schools sponsored by the Los Angeles Unified School
District (LAUSD). To provide important context for the study, the LAUSD as a
charter school authorizer will first be described with emphasis on state mandates for
special education.
Background
At the time of this study, the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD)
was the largest LEA in California’s charter school movement with a student
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enrollment of over 750,000 within an area of 750 square miles. As such, the LAUSD
had authorized 35 charter schools. Eleven of the charter schools were fiscally
independent and did not participate in the LEA’s standard operating procedures for
finance, personnel, instruction, and other policies. The other 24 charter schools were
fiscally dependent and participated in the LEA’s operational structure that included the
management of their budgets and personnel recruitment. For additional information
about the general operation of charter schools in the LAUSD, please see a research
report by Izu et al. (1998) in partnership with consultants from the University of
Southern California under contract with the District
As described in the first chapter, California’s charter legislation requires a
charter school to make a choice of either being its own LEA for purposes of special
education or operating within the LEA’s special education system. At the time of this
study, all 35 charter schools authorized by the LAUSD had chosen to operate under its
LEA special education guidelines. The fiscally independent charter schools were
responsible for operating their own school-site special education program, and were
supported by funding allocations and/or services from the LEA. In contrast, the
fiscally dependent charter schools received no direct special education funding
allocation and used the LEA personnel and procedures to support the operation of their
school-site special education program.
Sample Selection
In this study, four charter schools were purposefully selected to yield data for
exploring how the schools were organized and operated to educate students with
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disabilities. The strategy for sample selection will be discussed in the remainder of
this section.
The literature suggests that charter schools vary in how they attain and deploy
resources to achieve their goals. With this in mind, nominations of California charter
schools were requested from 16 educators who had leadership roles within the charter
school movement in California and to some extent nationally. The intent was to
represent the variation in the California charter school population (to the extent
possible). The nominators were asked to recommend charter schools that they
perceived as effectively achieving the goal of providing special education to at least
five percent of their student populations.
Twenty-four charter schools were nominated with eight of them authorized by
the LAUSD. The selection of the study sample was made from the LAUSD group of
schools to help reduce the burden on the researcher and to expedite data collection.
Conducting the study within one authorizing LEA also helped to focus data collection
on school-level variables.
Four o f the eight LAUSD charter schools were selected for their differences
along dimensions that have relevance for the provision of special education. These
dimensions included each school’s: a) number o f years in operation; b) configuration
of grade levels; c) size of student population; d) percentage of special education
students; e) start-up versus conversion school; f) independent versus dependent status;
and g) special education service delivery model. School names were changed to
letters for confidentiality. Table 1 presents a summary of the sample.
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Table 1:
Sample o f Charter Schools
Charter
School
Years in
Operation
Grade
Levels
Student
Pop-
Sp.
Ed.
Start-up/
Conversion
Independent
/ Dependent
Delivery of
Sp. Ed.
A 1 Middle
(6)
Small
(100+)
10% Start-up Independent District &
Outsource
B 3 Elem.
(K-2)
Small
(100+)
5% Start-up Independent District
C 7 Elem.
(K-5)
Large
(1000+)
6% Conversion Independent Charter &
Outsource
D 8 Elem.
...(K-5)...
Medium
(700+)
9% Conversion Dependent District
Because this was a sample of only four charter schools, the study described the
perspectives and experiences of a limited number of participants, and so was
exploratory in nature. Thus, it cannot be assumed that the sample represents how
charter schools educate students with disabilities in general. The results are specific to
the four schools located in a single school district in Southern California.
D ata Sources
It has been noted that a qualitative case study requires a number of sources of
information to draw on corroborative evidence to eliminate biases that might result
from relying on any one data-collection method (Gall et al., 1996; Yin, 1994). The
following sources of evidence were used in the present case study: a) interviews with
teachers, school administrators, and parents; b) charter school petitions and other
school documents; and c) observations of special education activities.
Thirty individual interviews were conducted from March 2000 through June
2000 at the four charter schools in the sample. Each school was contacted by
telephone to request staff and parent participation in the investigation. The
respondents included the school directors, special education teachers, and parei '
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Each director selected three parents at their school who were available to be
interviewed at the school site and who had children currently receiving special
education for no less than one year. Table 2 provides a list of the respondents.
Table 2:
Interviews: Respondents by Charter School
Charter School Director Teaching Staff Parents Total by School
A 1 2 3 6
B 1 2 3 6
C 1 5 3 9
D 1 5 3 9
Total by Title 4 14 12 30
Two types of documents were used for information: external school documents
for public consumption, such as charter petitions and public statements of philosophy,
and internal documents circulated within each school, such as memos, organizational
charts, and procedural guidelines. In addition, field visits were conducted to the four
charter schools in the sample during the period from April 2000 through June 2000 to
observe the school staff and parents participating in special education activities.
Data Collection and Analysis
Comparison of the data obtained from the interviews, documents, and
observations provided multiple opportunities for testing, refining, and clarifying
themes of how charter schools provided special education to students with disabilities.
Interviews
Interviews took place at each school site and lasted from an hour to an hour
and a half. The interviewer obtained the consent of respondents to tape record their
answers with the assurance that the information would remain confidential.
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Semi-structured protocols were used for the interviews and to increase the
reliability of the data. Structured core questions were used to elicit responses that
provided information to answer the research questions, while also being open-ended to
allow respondents to reflect on their own experiences and perceptions and to permit
probing by the interviewer for underlying factors or relationships. There were two
protocols, one for the school staff and one for the parents, with similar questions,
except for the background questions. See Appendices A and B for copies of the
protocols.
The interview transcription notes were manually compiled and analyzed using
a combination o f a priori and open coding methods to group responses into categories
that brought together similar ideas, concepts, or themes in the data (Strauss & Corbin,
1998). Prior to the beginning of coding, major categories were established based on
components of open systems: technologies, strategies, and structures. During open
coding, the data were broken down into segments to be analyzed and coded as
subcategories within these major categories.
The open coding approach for qualitative data analysis has been described as
an iterative process with categories evolving from the coding and synthesizing of the
data (Gall et a l, 1996; Strauss & Corbin, 1998). In this study, emergent segments
from interview responses were coded and grouped within subcategories already
established or became new subcategories, sometimes causing previous subcategories
to be modified, collapsed, or deleted. Thus, subcategories were “grounded” in the data
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and organized for comparisons of coded segments within and across categories until
distinctions were created and themes emerged. Figure 3 lists the coding categories.
Figure 3:
Coding Categories
Contextual Variables
Charter autonomy
Learning expectations
Fiscal resources
Human resources
Legislative requirements
Technolosies
Curriculum modification
Mandated tasks
Instructional practices
Teacher interventions
Strategies
Accountability monitoring
Funding linkages
Networking partnerships
Service delivery
Staffing practices
Technical assistance
Structures
Committee/team consensus
Dispute negotiation
Hierarchy of responsibility
Individual judgments
Professional development
Rules and regulations
Documents
The charter of each school in the sample was the principal source o f document
information, since it represented an in-depth description o f the school’s plan of action
that defined how the organization planned to use its resources to improve student
performance. All four charters were public documents retrieved from the LAUSD
School Reform Office. In addition, the research report by Izu et al. (1998) abou
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LAUSD charter school operations as well as various internal documents and records at
each school were used as data sources. All documents were analyzed according to the
coded categories established from the interview data. The content analysis did not
create any new categories nor did it cause any of the already existing categories to be
modified, collapsed, or deleted.
Observations
Visitations were made to each school in the study sample during the period
from April 2000 through June 2000 to observe the conduct of Individualized
Education Program (IEP) meetings and activities in special and regular education
classrooms referred to in interview and document data. Each school visitation lasted
an average of two hours. Approximately one hour was used to observe an IEP
meeting comprised of an administrator, special education teacher, general education
teacher, and parent. The other hour was used to observe a class of 20-25 students
taught by a general and special education teacher or a group of 8-10 students taught by
the special education teacher.
Field notes were taken during each observation to help stimulate a dictated
recording of more complete information immediately afterwards that included
descriptions of participants, activities, and physical settings. A transcription was made
of each recording for an analysis according to the coded categories already established
from the interview data. The content analysis did not create any new categories nor
did it cause any of the existing categories to be modified, collapsed, or deleted.
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Sum m ary
The overarching purpose of the qualitative methods in this present study was to
identify themes in the special education experiences of teaching staff and parents that
appeared to explain how a sample of California charter schools complied with the
legal requirements for educating students with disabilities. To explore this
phenomenon, the charter schools in the sample were purposefully selected to represent
a range of approaches for delivering special education services.
Three sources of data were used: field interviews, archival documents, and
observations. Comparison of the data from these sources provided multiple
opportunities for testing, refining, and clarifying themes of how charter schools
provided special education. The data were analyzed according to aspects of an
organizational systems approach to include: a) technologies; b) strategies; and c)
structures. The results from these analyses will be discussed in Chapter 4 that follows.
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CHAPTER IV: RESULTS
Results from the qualitative analysis of data are presented separately for each
school in the sample based on how they, as open systems, went about educating
students with disabilities. The findings of the study are organized into three major
topics: technologies, strategies, and structures. A summary of the findings
highlighting the differences and similarities between the four schools is presented at
the end of the chapter.
Charter School A
This was a start-up school in its first year of operation as an independent
charter with a small population of 100 sixth graders and was slated for an additional
grade each year until grade eight. Ten percent of its students were identified with mild
disabilities for special education.
Technologies
The coded data from both interviews and documents showed that the school
educated its students with disabilities by applying two kinds of mandated
technologies: a) routine, procedural tasks that included, for example, assessment and
identification of the students for special education; and b) more complex, instructional
tasks tailored to meet the individual needs of the students. One of the respondents
explained that special education “procedural tasks involve activities that are required
for all students who have special learning needs, and these are tasks like conducting
assessments and having IEP meetings with the parents to plan the student’s
individualized program.”
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The charter petition described the mandated procedural tasks as those for
“determining whether to refer a student for an evaluation,” “assessing students with
disabilities,” “developing IEPs for each eligible student,” and “getting the informed
consent o f parents for assessments and provision of instruction and services.” The
charter petition also explained the steps that a school would follow to conduct the
required procedures for identifying students with disabilities eligible for special
education once the referrals for assessments were made by parents or staff members.
The charter document set forth the school’s procedures for a multidisciplinary
team to conduct mandatory assessments in a non-discriminatory manner and the
individualized education program (IEP) team meeting to develop a plan for instruction
and services tasks based on the individual assessment data for each student identified
as eligible. During an interview, a teacher explained that the “assessment team is
comprised of the special education teacher, the school psychologist, and any other
specialist familiar with the disability in question, like the speech specialist.”
The Director noted, “The most important thing we do for our students is to
address their individualized needs.” Observation of an IEP team meeting revealed that
the assessment information was used to develop required tasks for individualized
instruction and services to be delivered within a specified service delivery setting such
as the general education classroom or a special education classroom. A teacher noted
that these tasks called for “team work and communication between everyone working
with the student to evaluate the student’s daily progress” and were “not unlike the way
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other non-identified students received instruction except that special education tasks
require presentations that are more repetitive and in smaller increments.”
Observations of an IEP team meeting also revealed that assessment data was
used to determine a student’s eligibility for special education as mandated by federal
guidelines that included such eligibilities as “specific learning disability,” emotional
disturbance,” and “speech impairment.” It was also observed that the IEP meeting
proceedings set forth the individualized goals and objectives for the student that were
to be achieved by applying instructional tasks for accessing the core curriculum and,
in some instance, modifying the curriculum. Data from the observation also revealed
that a goal and objectives were developed for a related service task, speech and
language therapy, to assist the student in benefiting from the instructional tasks that
were described in the IEP. The Director reported “none of the students were
determined eligible for transportation, since each had a disability involving mild
learning disorders.”
One of the teachers reported that each “IEP is reviewed in an IEP team
meeting at least once a year to determine how well the student needs are being met.”
This review was based on evaluation data that the school used for determining the
academic progress o f all students in the school— state standardized testing, authentic
assessment, and classroom teacher-made tests—as well as any “individualized
multidisciplinary reassessments that would help to indicate any necessary
modifications o f the IEP for more effectively meeting the student’s needs for the
coming year.”
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While accomplishing the required tasks for referring and identifying those
students eligible for special education, the school staff also ensured the mandated
involvement of the parents at all stages of the process. Respondents reported that
parents were notified of the intent to evaluate their child for services, and their consent
was obtained for the assessment before it began. Another task for the school staff was
to ensure the parents participation in the IEP process and obtaining their consent
before any instruction or services could be initiated.
Information generated by the charter school during the accomplishment of
mandated procedural tasks for a student was documented on forms used by the LEA
and was maintained by the school as a part of the student’s educational records.
Respondents used the example of “maintaining the IEPs o f a student as essential for
the evaluation of student progress and modification of goals and objectives in addition
to informing the service providers about the required instruction and related services
tasks.” The Director noted that “the charter school experienced no problems in
obtaining, upon request, the student’s educational records from the previous public
schools,” particularly the copies of IEPs for students who had already been identified
and other evaluation information pertaining to the identification of these students.
The coded data from both interviews and documents reflected an instructional
approach at the charter school that was personalized to accommodate to the “unique
learning style of each student” which accommodated to the requirements of the
individualized tasks set forth in a student’s IEP. The staff felt that a personalized
instructional approach worked well at their school because of the small student
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population and a small number of special education students, all of whom were mildly
disabled with learning needs not significantly different, although more intensive, from
others in their general education classroom. A teacher noted in her interview:
Since the school is small with so few special education students, it works better
for all the students to work together in the same class and have their individual
needs addressed. This adds to the diversity of learning styles that can make
activities interesting and meaningful.
Classroom observation of this inclusive classroom setting showed that this
instructional approach entailed cooperative learning activities in which students
supported one another while working on their individualized tasks in a group learning
effort. One of the parents commented on an advantage of this strategy:
I like how the charter tries to meet the needs of all the students, even the ones
with special needs, in the learning activities. They have a way of teaching the
kids so that higher level kids work right along side the ones who’re not
working as high.
Teacher interventions were noted in the coded information that reflected a
collaborative co-teaching approach. An example of this was noted during an
observation of a classroom activity in which teachers of special and general education
co-taught in the general education classroom and the special education teacher used
“shadow teaching” to provide differentiated instruction to identified students after the
basic instruction was completed by the general education teacher. It was reported that
the special education teacher spent several hours a week co-teaching in the general
education classroom.
Nevertheless, the special education teacher explained that she also provided
“direct instruction to identified students to modify the core curriculum when necessary
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and to work individually with each identified student to insure the attainment of IEP
goals.” Per the goals set forth in a student’s IEP, tasks for a speech pathologist to
provide direct individualized services to identified students requiring speech and
language support were also part of the teaching interventions at the school.
An example of curriculum modification, as described in the school’s charter,
was for experiential learning within the community for all of the students in the
charter school. More specifically, the charter petition noted that the students would
have opportunities for learning activities in the community to “facilitate the
development of academic and career goals.” The provision of such services satisfied
the IDEA mandate for career and transition activities to assist older students with
disabilities, as reported by the Director, “to move into post-school activities when they
are no longer eligible for special education support.”
Strategies
The school’s charter petition described its commitment to providing students
with disabilities equal access to an appropriate education. This inclusive philosophy
was reflected in interview responses such as “everyone participates in the core
curriculum” and “we maintain equal access to our program.” To achieve the goal of
educating students with disabilities within the general education program, “no matter
what their learning needs and in compliance with the IDEA,” findings indicated that
the school formulated strategies for receiving: a) funding allocations and
contributions; b) human resources; c) technical assistance; and d) community
networking.
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In its charter document, the school chose to be a public school within its
authorizing LEA for purposes of special education. The Director explained that the
“only viable choice was to be in the District because the school was too small and
lacked the resources to be its own District.” The charter school also declared in the
charter petition its agreement with the LEA that the school would develop appropriate
strategies for applying the technologies for instruction and related services as required
by the IEPs of identified students enrolled in its educational program.
The LEA’s written authorization of the charter school further indicated that the
school was to receive a combination of special education funding and services from
the LEA to support the school’s operation of a special education program. As a result,
the LEA allocated to the school its share of mandated funding for the school to
establish its own special education instructional program. And the LEA provided all
IEP related services, such as speech therapy and counseling, by assigning itinerant
personnel to the charter school. The school reported no input as to who was assigned,
but that the LEA supervised its personnel in collaboration with the school.
The charter petition described a strategy of outsourcing by the school to
perform all instructional tasks called for in the IEPs of identified students. The
Director reported that the special education funding allocation from the LEA was used
to obtain certified personnel from “contracting with a private agency specializing in
providing special education instruction.” The Director further noted that this delivery
model allowed “flexibility in adjusting to any changes in the amount of instruction
required” for its small number of students who had mild disabilities. One of these
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teachers noted that she was not a regular member of the staff, and ensured that she
collaborated regularly with the general education teachers of the students she taught.
One hour before the start of each school day, there was “sacred time” for the
special and general education teachers to communicate with each other about the
progress of their particular tasks for accomplishing the students’ IEP goals. The
director pointed out that this strategy provided the opportunity for “teachers to
collaborate and integrate their instructional tasks in order to ensure the
accomplishment of IEP requirements.”
Respondents reported that the charter school’s choice of the strategy to
outsource for staffing to accomplish the mandated IEP instruction and services tasks
by certified and experienced personnel was to expedite their compliance with special
education mandates. The Director explained that the “school was brand-new and did
not any way to quickly setting up its own workable program and immediately begin
complying with special education requirements.” As one parent described it, “The
school was able to land on its feet running in implementing the IEPs for the students,
including my son, who were already getting special education when they were in the
school district.”
To serve identified students in the least restrictive educational environment,
observations revealed that the school utilized a pullout service delivery strategy for
pulling students from their general education classrooms for one to two hours daily for
direct instruction from the special education teacher. The special education teacher
also instructed identified students within the general education classroom. Also,
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District itinerant personnel provided services for speech and language, occupational
therapy, and adaptive physical education to students per their IEPs on a “pull-out”
basis from their general education classrooms.
Another strategy for obtaining additional special education support was the
establishment of networking partnerships within the surrounding community for
volunteers and in-kind services. The school’s charter described its working
relationship with a nearby university for the express purpose of creating “opportunities
for collaboration in supporting the instructional program.” The Director reported that
the school was in “partnership with businesses for community-based experiential
learning for transitional career activities important for students with disabilities.”
According to the respondents, the school obtained technical assistance and
information about special education from the LEA and also from the private agency
contracted for services to the school. Support was provided through written
information, consultations, and training sessions that helped the school “to develop an
understanding of the special education requirements for instruction and services and
the school’s responsibilities for complying with required procedures.” In addition, the
Director used her prior position as an administrator of special programs in the LEA as
important linkage in helping the school to develop and maintain a collaborative
relationship with the LEA for technical assistance. The Director also reported that she
obtained “technical advice from the California Department of Education to answer
questions, especially about funding, not clarified by the LEA” through telephone
consultations and the state charter school website.
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The school was included in the compliance monitoring established by the LEA
to ensure the completion of all required special education procedural tasks for all
public schools in the LEA. The Director reported that the compliance strategy for the
charter school involved its participation in the LEA procedures that guided the charter
school for ensuring its provision o f all required technologies. This particular strategy
often called for “communication between the charter school, the LEA, and the outside
agency on issues o f referral, assessment, identification, and special education of the
students with disabilities.” Another aspect of monitoring for accountability required
that monthly statistical reports o f the charter school’s special education services be
submitted to the LEA and, in turn, the charter school received periodic financial
reports from the LEA.
Structures
In describing the school’s special education activities, the charter document
described the division of responsibilities for the school staff and the decision-making
structures in which they participated. The IEP team was the group mandated by law
for special education decision-making. According to the charter document, the team
was to formally determine and document in an IEP the student’s eligibility for special
education and the tasks to be performed by certified teachers. The IEP team was also
responsible for at least annually reviewing the accomplishment o f IEP tasks and
deciding on the need for continuation or modification o f tasks.
Observation of an IEP team meeting provided data about the decision-making
process. The team included participants at various levels of the school organization:
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a) parents; b) special and general education teachers; and b) director o f the school.
Consensus building was the approach used to determine the division and assignment
of responsibilities for special education instruction and services based on the
assessment o f student’s needs, parent’s input, teacher’s expertise with instruction, and
the Director’s knowledge of available resources. Each member o f the team shared
some aspect of the assessment information about the student in question. There was a
discussion about what the data indicated and eventually an agreement of the group
about the eligibility and the kinds of tasks that could be applied to provide support to
the student in the classroom.
A teacher reported that the IEP meetings had all resulted in a consensus about
the kind of program needed for each student. The procedure for resolving an IEP
disagreement between the parents and the school was to have it “handled by the
District administering the mandated due process procedures for negotiating the
resolution of any disputes,” although none had yet occurred at the charter school.
Because the IEP team divided responsibilities and assignment of tasks for each
student’s IEP, the teachers each performed their assigned tasks by “deciding” how
they were progressing in helping students to achieve their IEP goals. The teachers
also reported that they collaborated together in “determining various instructional
approaches” they would use in the classroom in order to accomplish their IEP tasks.
One of the teachers noted that a copy of each student’s IEP was always made available
to all the service providers in order for them to have “knowledge of all their assigned
tasks.”
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At the classroom level, there was informal on-going decision-making to
coordinate and integrate of the daily instructional tasks as described by one special
education teacher:
I meet with the regular education teachers to determine the progress
of my special education students in the regular classroom and if what
I’m doing with them needs to be modified. The same is true for my
meetings with the speech therapist for some of my students.
IEP tasks were also coordinated during what the staff termed as “sacred time”
which occurred in the mornings before classes began so that the teachers could
dialogue with each other and with the Director about classroom issues and individual
students; the special education teacher was able to interact with the general education
teacher “to decide on issues involving curriculum modification or teaching strategies
for the identified students.” Such collaboration for integration of the different tasks
also occurred during annual review IEP team meetings in order to evaluate the
accomplishment of the IEP tasks for goal achievement and next year’s IEP goals and
objectives.
The respondents all agreed that there was a “definite need for involvement in
“some professional development activities” to expand their knowledge and skills
related to educating students with disabilities.” Such professional activities were
conducted by both the private provider contracted for services and the LEA provided
professional activities, thus helping to clarify the various roles and responsibilities
assigned to the special and general education teachers as well as to the related service
provider.
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Because a good part of special education was driven by mandated procedures,
the school described in its charter document the manner in which it would comply
with all requirements of the IDEA. A more expanded set of specific rules and
regulations were provided in a special education notebook to guide the teachers’
compliance with the procedural tasks to be accomplished. In addition, the authorizing
LEA provided the charter school with a comprehensive guidebook provided to all
schools in the LEA to ensure compliance with special education procedures.
The Director explained that the line of responsibility for ensuring the
availability of program options to meet the varying intensities of service for the variety
of student disabilities under the IDEA “rested with the LEA.” She described a
situation that occurred at the school when an identified student with emotional
problems was provided behavioral interventions, instructional approaches and
supplementary services to support his participation in the school’s program.
Representatives from the LEA worked with the charter school to provide support to
the student, yet his needs were still not being completely addressed. Ultimately, the
charter school convened an IEP meeting in collaboration with the LEA and agreed on
a more restrictive instructional setting more appropriate for meeting the student’s
needs at another site supervised by the LEA to which the parent agreed.
As stated in the charter, the Board of Directors, was composed of community
members, Director, parent representative, student representative, and teacher
representative, to set charter school policy through consensus regarding the
administration o f special education instruction, personnel, and fiscal allocations. The
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Director reported the she was responsible for implementing the Board policies and
developing procedures consistent with the policies. As such, the Director performed
the role of the special education administrator making day-to-day unilateral decisions
about issues that included: a) funding for instruction and provision of related services;
b) contracting with a private agency for instruction; and c) providing access to the core
curriculum. The classroom teachers were responsible for using their professional
judgment in how they would go about complying with the IEP requirements for
applying instruction and related services tasks.
SchoolB
This was a start-up school in its third year of operation as an independent
charter, with 100 students, kindergarten through second grade. Five percent of its
students were identified with mild disabilities for special education.
Technologies
As in the case of School A, School B staff also accomplished technologies to
ensure compliance with procedures for referring, evaluating, and identifying students
for special education. The charter school respondents described these tasks as routine
and highly regulated to ensure compliance with requirements for “completing
assessments within a certain number of days,” “obtaining parent permission for
assessment,” “providing timely notice to parents of IEP meetings,” “performing non-
discriminatory assessments,” “developing IEPs for instruction,” and obtaining parent
consent to provide services.”
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The Director reported that all o f the parents expressed a strong preference for
having the general education teacher try every intervention possible within the general
education program to meet any special learning need of their children before any
referral for a special education assessment was made, because they had “negative
experiences with special education in the District’s public schools.” Prior to some
referrals for special education assessment, the services of a community mental health
agency were sometimes available through a networking partnership for interventions
intended to assist students with school adjustment problems and their families.
Coded data reflected the school’s emphasis on regular classroom interventions
as part of its process for screening referrals o f students for a special education
assessment as explained by the teacher:
Good teaching practices that meet the individualized needs of students
at their own levels of development are the most important thing, rather
than labeling them for special education instruction or services just
because the law requires it. We try to do everything possible to help
the child in the regular classroom instruction before deciding to refer
for assessment for special education.
Similar to School A, the staff of School B emphasized the involvement of
parents for the referral and identification process in the development of lEPs for
eligible students. Respondents described the tasks for notifying parents, obtaining
parental consent for assessments, ensuring their participation in the IEP meeting, and
obtaining their consent to provide instruction or services.
When students were referred for assessment by the parent or staff, School B
used the same mandated procedures as School A for “a multidisciplinary team to
assess the child in the areas of the suspected disability.” Observation of an IEP
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meeting, comprised of parents and both special and general education staff, showed
assessment data being analyzed to determine a student’s IEP eligibility. From this
analysis, the IEP team developed individualized instructional tasks to be accomplished
for the student within the general education classroom. A teacher noted that the lEPs
had to reviewed by IEP teams at least once a year using classroom tests, school-wide
standardized testing, and any other individualized reassessments.
Like School A, the respondents for School B spoke of maintaining special
education records to explain the tasks required of the service providers at the school.
The special education teacher described the performance of the required tasks:
These are tasks I perform per the IEP requirements and concentrate
on meeting the individualized needs of the student by my conferring
with the general education teacher; it gets complicated because of
how the student might respond and I might have to adjust a task
depending on the student’s response.
Speech as a related service task was required for some of the students to help them
benefit from special education instruction. The Director reported that “transportation
as a related service” task had not been determined necessary for the identified students
who all had only mild learning disabilities.
To perform the necessary technologies to accomplish the IEP goals, the school
applied instructional practices that used teacher interventions to include students with
disabilities within the general classroom. Teachers reported the use o f co-teaching in
which the special and general education teachers worked together in “a shared
classroom for basic group instruction, then splitting the class into two groups for
differentiated instruction and cooperative learning activities.” Opportunities for -
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teacher planning and collaboration occurred during staff break time and co-teaching
time within the general classroom.
Since the school had only primary students with mild learning disabilities, the
teacher explained that students were not often viewed as having serious disabilities:
Primary students often seem to have learning problems but are really
within the normal range of development that are expected for children
this young and usually will disappear with the right kind of classroom
instruction as the students get older.
Strategies
The charter document described the school’s goal o f educating all students,
regardless of their individual needs, and the strategies the school would employ to
provide each student equal access to its educational program. And because the school
was “child-centered,” the Director explained that parents were not supportive of any
strategy that would refer students for special education without first providing them
with intensive support in the general education program.
Similar to School A, School B chose strategies to attain resources—funding
allocations, human resources, and technical assistance—to ensure its accomplishment
of mandated technologies for educating students with disabilities. In its charter
petition, the school chose to be a public school within its authorizing LEA for
purposes of providing special education. The Director explained that the “school was
very small and did not want to assume the responsibility o f a school district for special
education.” The school entered into an agreement with the LEA through a
memorandum of understanding to have the LEA provide special education services, in
lieu of a funding allocation, to the identified students at the charter school.
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Since this was a start-up school with no established special education program
and very few identified students, the Director noted that the “Board of Directors of the
school agreed that it was more practical to contract with the LEA for special education
staffing.” But the Director faced problems in the school’s linkage with the LEA and
its “bureaucratic red tape to obtain the services promised.” She reported delays in the
assignment of personnel by the LEA and that she had no choice or supervision as to
who was assigned. There was no problem for those students who were receiving
special education in a LEA preschool program prior to enrolling at the charter school,
since the LEA simply continued providing its services to them at the charter school.
Nevertheless, the Director reported that the itinerant personnel came to the school a
few half days per week, which was not conducive for conferring with the staff.
Classroom observation revealed that the strategy for providing specialized
instruction and related services to identified students with disabilities entailed a
process in which the general education and special education teachers worked together
to teach students with and without disabilities in a shared classroom. This strategy of
providing special education instruction within the general education classroom was
responsive to the mandate that identified students should be educated in the least
restrictive setting appropriate.
LEA personnel and charter school staff worked together to perform
assessments and the IEP team process. Because the LEA provided its personnel for
instruction and related services at the charter school, it was necessary for the charter
school and the LEA to collaborate on the performance of these tasks to ensure
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compliance even though the LEA supervised the itinerant personnel. The strategy for
monitoring the school’s compliance was to participate in the procedures set forth by
the LEA in its written guidelines and forms provided to the charter school. Another
strategy for maintaining accountability for special education compliance called for the
charter school to submit a statistical report of its provision o f services to the LEA on a
monthly basis.
Since the Director was a retired school principal who worked in the LEA
managing special education programs, she considered technical assistance “an
essential resource for understanding and being updated on current responsibilities for
procedural compliance with the IDEA.” She also commented that technical assistance
was particularly significant in light of the “constant changes in special education
mandates being interpreted by the courts.” Information was obtained from the LEA
by means o f documents, manuals, consultations and training sessions. Assistance was
also obtained through consultations with the County Office of Education. A statewide
charter school organization to which the school belonged also provided advice and
guidance through conferences, consultations, and its informational website.
There was some community networking reported both in the charter petition
and by the Director. These were partnerships that the charter school established with a
local community health center for mental health and counseling services and also with
some neighborhood Head Start programs for continuity o f school readiness services as
the students transitioned from the preschool program into the charter school
educational program.
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Structures
The charter petition set forth the school’s governance structure for dividing
responsibilities and making assignments to support mandated special education
technologies by the staff. The charter school Board of Directors, composed of
community members, director, parent representative, and teacher representative,
determined the special education policy for having the LEA provide the mandated
services to the school for instruction, personnel, and fiscal allocations. The Director
reported that she had the “responsibility for following the school’s policy to have the
District provide special education and, therefore, making daily decisions on how to
work with the District in obtaining the necessary services.”
As in the case of School A, observation of an IEP team meeting at School B
revealed similar decision-making driven by a consensus process. The team reviewed
and analyzed all relevant assessment data about a student in order to come to an
agreement about issues of eligibility and appropriate programming of tasks to be
assigned for accomplishing goals and objectives to help the student benefit from the
educational program. Any IEP disagreement between the school and a parent was to
become the responsibility of the LEA for administratively resolving the issue, even
though no dispute had yet occurred.
Once the IEP copies were provided to those assigned the mandated tasks, the
respondents explained that there was “a lot of on-going communication occurring
between the district service providers and the teachers at the school regarding the IEP
assignments” in order to coordinate and integrate their own assigned tasks. Annual
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IEP team meetings also served to coordinate the accomplishment of the differentiated
tasks by conducting reviews of the achievement of student goals.
The Director explained that because the charter school had no input regarding
the selection and supervision over the LEA personnel assign to provide services “there
was some tension in terms of responsibilities and assignments.” Moreover, the charter
school viewed the primary responsibility for providing special education services as
being that of the LEA. Nevertheless, the LEA still required the participation of the
charter school in all the activities for referral, assessment, IEP team meetings, and
collaboration with the special education personnel for delivery of services.
Because a good part o f special education was driven by mandated procedures,
the school set forth in its charter petition it strategy for complying with all aspects of
the IDEA. The authorizing LEA provided the school with a compliance guide to
ensure its compliance with the legal requirements for all schools in the LEA.
Compliance was further ensured by the LEA’s provision of opportunities for special
education training to the charter school staff at the school site and at sites within the
LEA for “a clearer understanding of their role and responsibility for special education
students in their general education classes.”
SchoolC
This was a conversion school in its seventh year of operation as an independent
charter with a large student population of over 1000 ranging from kindergarten
through fifth grade. Six percent of its students were identified with mild to severe
disabilities for special education.
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Technologies
In a similar manner as Schools A and B, School C accomplished special
education technologies by complying with procedures required for developing lEPs.
School C also accomplished technologies targeted at meeting the individual special
education needs of students. Data from the observation of an IEP team meeting
revealed how the team went about reviewing and analyzing assessment data in order to
determine a student’s eligibility and IEP.
The procedural tasks mandated for the IEP process called for what one teacher
described as the “completion of a series of steps that begins obtaining the parent’s
consent to assess, conducting a non-discriminatory student assessment, and finally
using the assessment results in an IEP team meeting to develop student goals and
objectives.” One of the tasks called for the careful “maintenance of each student’s
special education records that document the participation in the special education
program as a part of the educational record.
As required by the IDEA, the school staff consistently ensured a high level of
involvement o f the parent in all aspects of the IEP process, notifying them of the intent
to evaluate their child for services and obtaining their consent for the assessment. A
related task was to “ensure the parents participation in the IEP process and obtain their
consent before the initiation of instruction or services.” Observation of an IEP
meeting showed the staff working closely with the parent to come to a consensus in
determining the eligibility of the student and then specifying the student’s current
performance levels, annual goals, short-term objectives, and the instructional services.
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In addition to lEPs reflecting provision o f instructional services, documents
and interviews at School C revealed that other related services were also provided in
the IEP whenever appropriate for assisting an identified students to benefit from their
special education program of instruction and included audiology, counseling,
occupational therapy, and speech and language. The observation of an IEP meeting
revealed that the need for related services were determined during the development of
the IEP. A teacher explained that transportation was a related service task, although
no identified student at the school had been determined eligible for such a support.
Since each IEP had to be annually reviewed in an IEP team meeting to
determine the extent of student progress, the school based some of its review on
evaluation data used for academic testing school-wide— state standardized testing,
authentic assessment, and classroom teacher-made tests. In order to conduct the
annual review, individualized reassessment procedures were also used whenever
necessary to modify the IEP goals and objectives for the coming year.” Maintenance
of each identified student’s special education records, such as the lEPs, was a
mandated task that the school found important in monitoring the progress of the
students as well as to provide the service providers with the information of what tasks
were required.
The principal and teachers reported a highly developed intervention process for
Identifying and providing support to students who demonstrated special needs prior to
referring them for special education consideration. By means o f an intervention team
comprised of the school staff and parent, student with special needs were provided
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such assistance and support within the general education program that it was
unnecessary for many of them to be assessed for special education. Those who did not
benefit from this assistance were then referred for a special education assessment.
Respondents explained that the performance of IEP tasks for instruction and
related services required constant communication between various service providers
working on different tasks called for in a student’s IEP. One teacher described the
complexity involved:
The IEP tasks are all interrelated and require the staff to constantly
check with each other and the parents so that we can see how the
student is progressing in all areas. This is essential for helping a
student reach required IEP learning goals.
Another teacher viewed complexity of instructional tasks from the student perspective:
The kinds o f tasks that IEP teams develop are not the same for all
students since they have different kinds of disabilities. Each student
has different needs so we have to monitor each student individually
and adjust tasks whenever necessary.
And another teacher explained the importance of instructional tasks:
An IEP has to be developed in order to determine the specific tasks
required to enhance the student’s school performance. This is very
important for all the staff to use for zeroing in on the specific aspects
of a student’s disability and how the instructional team can
strategically attack the problem.
Underscoring complexity of needs, the school’s charter reported that it served students
with an array o f disabilities that included autism, learning disorders, mental
retardation, orthopedic impairments, emotional disturbance, speech and language
disorders, and hard of hearing.
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The charter of the school described the use of “cooperative grouping” as the
instructional practice that best met the diversity of student needs and learning styles.
Using this approach, teachers used small student teams to accomplish IEP
instructional tasks. Additionally, special education teachers collaborated with general
education teachers to modify instruction and the curriculum for accomplishing IEP
tasks and plan weekly lessons for special education instruction.
Strategies
A major goal of the school, as stated in its charter petition, was to provide
supportive programs that “maximize academic and social growth o f all students with
special needs.” To achieve this goal, the charter petition described the school’s
strategy of choosing to be a part of its authorizing LEA for purposes of providing
special education. Since it was a conversion school that had a prior history as a
traditional public school within the LEA, the principal explained that it was “logical to
continue this working relationship for special education purposes.”
To accomplish the technologies for achieving an effective performance of this
goal, the charter school formulated and managed strategies to pursue and attain what it
determined were the necessary supports: human resources, fiscal allocations and
contributions, and technical assistance. O f these resources, the Principal considered
human resources as the most important, stating, “You can give me all the money but it
will not insure getting people with the right knowledge, experience, compassion, and
willingness to do the teamwork.”
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Respondents expressed the need for qualified and experienced teachers for
both special and general education in order to accomplish the tasks required for
including students with disabilities within the core curriculum and activities of the
charter school. Moreover, the teachers felt that the special education program was
enhanced by the prior experiences of the Principal when working as an administrator
in the LEA for both general and special education programs. Paraprofessionals and
parent volunteers were also “important resources for supporting the school’s special
education activities.”
In contrast to School A and B, School C recruited its own staff to deliver
special education for its relatively large population of students with diverse
disabilities. This Principal explained that this strategy was chosen because “the school
had a fully established special education program with experience in hiring teachers
prior to its conversion as a charter school.” It was easy for the school to recruit
certified special education personnel because the principal explained, “Our charter
school is an exciting and innovative work environment that offers salaries that are
competitive with those of the District and attracts many qualified candidates who
apply to us for positions.”
Teachers were often recruited from the graduates of a nearby university that
utilized the charter school as a training site for its student teachers. For related
services, such as speech and hard of hearing, itinerant LEA personnel were obtained
on a fee-for-service basis to provide “flexibility in adjusting to IEP requirements for
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personnel.” Since the LEA supervised its itinerant personnel, the charter school and
LEA communicated as needed to monitor the quality of the services provided.
In declaring its choice of being a public school within the authorizing LEA for
purposes o f special education, the school’s charter petition declared its agreement with
the LEA that it would be allocated its entire share of special education funding in
order for it to provide its own services. The Principal noted that since expenditures
often exceeded the amount it was allocated, it either absorbed the excess costs within
its general fund budget, used “agreements with community and university networks to
raise money,” or received in-kind services from “agencies for health and counseling”
for students with special needs.”
The results o f School C coded data were similar to the first two schools,
revealing a service delivery strategy that included students with disabilities within the
general education program as much as possible. As one parent declared, “ At our
school, we don’t have special education students and regular education students. We
just have students.” One of the teachers further explained, “The entire school is
working towards similar goals of raising student achievement and performance.” The
Principal added, “Since full inclusion has been a goal of our staff, all special education
students participate in what we call a full inclusion resource program.
Observations and interviews showed that the special education teacher pulled
students out of their general education classroom two days a week to work on their
IEP tasks and support the access of their students to the core curriculum. Through
collaboration, the special and general education teachers shared the general education
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classroom the rest of the week to provide age-appropriate academics, and modified
instruction to all students with and without disabilities. It was also observed that
teachers used paraprofessionals to assist with group lessons, work with small groups,
and provide support in the native language of some students. Additionally, flexible
scheduling arrangements provided “preparation time” and “collaborative think time”
to support “teacher planning.”
The strategy to use the LEA’s itinerant personnel to provide IEP related
services, such as speech and language and deaf and hard of hearing, called for the
students to be pulled from their classrooms for periodic sessions of direct services.
The use of District personnel was based on the “need for flexibility in quickly
adjusting the levels of services as the requirements for tasks are modified or
eliminated per the IEP team determinations.” Similarly, the school established
networking partnerships with community agencies, such as mental health and nursing
providers, to provide support in addressing student needs. A teacher explained that
such a strategy of community collaboration “increased the services and the
effectiveness of the activities in the school’s program.”
Although the staff reported that they had “good understanding of special
education mandates,” they also felt that technical assistance was needed to update their
“awareness about any changes in special education resources and procedural
compliance requirements.” The LEA provided this kind o f updating on a “limited
basis” through its manuals or training sessions. The school sought a broader base of
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information and training from “disability organizations” and from consultations as
well as informational conferences provided by the statewide charter association.
To support and monitor compliance with mandated technologies, procedural
tasks were performed within the context of mandated timelines according to well-
defined guidelines for procedural compliance monitored by the special education staff,
the LEA, and by the parents. A teacher described the participation of the parents:
Parents are given their rights about services to their children in
pamphlets describing the procedures that we get from the district. If
we don’t go by the book, parents can file a complaint.
The principal explained, “Compliance with special education law is really not
that difficult, since we learned the procedural routine way back when our school was a
traditional public school in the District.” In a similar manner as Schools A and B,
School C participated in the annual California Department of Education monitoring
activities of the LEA’s compliance with federal disability legislation. Moreover,
School C had to submit, on a monthly basis, the statistical data of its special education
programming activities to the LEA for the purposes of monitoring compliance.
Structures
To support its performance of special education technologies, the charter
petition for School C described its organizational structures for dividing
responsibilities among the staff. As with Schools A and B, at the core of School C’s
structure for determination o f special education responsibilities and assignments was
the mandated IEP team comprised of staff and parents. Observation of an IEP meeting
showed that consensus-building was the process for making such decisions. A teacher
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reported that any IEP disagreements between the parent and the school became the
responsibility of the LEA to conduct due process procedures that involved negotiating
a resolution to the dispute, although none had yet occurred..
Based on the division of responsibilities set forth in the IEP, teachers reported
that they often made their decisions about the performance of their students and their
daily teaching activities to be used for accomplishing IEP tasks. The teachers further
explained that they regularly conferred with each other and with parents to arrive at
their own “classroom level decisions” about progress of instructional tasks for students
both identified for special education and those without any identification.
These differentiated activities called for “weekly coordination by teams and
committees to evaluate whether students were improving in all areas of concern.”
Weekly meetings were built into the school’s schedule for general education teachers
and paraprofessionals to collaborate with the special education and related service
personnel. More formally, the IEP teams were required to meet at least annually, if
not sooner, to coordinate the accomplishment of IEP tasks assigned to the staff and
evaluate the benefit of the instruction and related services provided to the students.
In addition to IEP teams, the school’s charter document described its
organizational structure as work groups that included special education teachers at
each grade level to communicate and make decisions about curriculum and
instruction. Respondents reported that there were faculty meetings “to share
information across grade levels about the curriculum and instructional strategies.” If
grade level groups decided on significant changes for special education instructional
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strategies, curriculum, or materials, the decision moved up to a school-wide committee
comprised of teachers from all grade levels, parents, and one administrator. Another
school-wide committee made decisions about administrative tasks for special
education such as the hiring of staff.
Respondents indicated that one of the school administrators was responsible
for collaborating with the special education staff to determine the need for services per
each student’s IEP and to ensure that the school was complying with the mandates.
The Principal reported her responsibility as being the liaison with the LEA and state-
level special education agencies.
Staff development was viewed by the respondents as important for effective
teaching and understanding of roles and responsibilities, and was described as an
activity “tailored to support teachers as learners.” Special education teachers were
provided training during pupil-free days, monthly seminars, conferences, and on-site
university classes. Regular education teachers were also included in special education
staff development for exchange of ideas about special education instruction and the
role of specific staff members. As mandated under law to ensure that teachers and
other special education service providers had a clear knowledge of their specific
assignments, copies of lEPs were made available to all responsible.
The charter petition described the procedures by which the school would
comply with all aspects of the IDEA. Moreover, the LEA provided a compliance
guide as part of its responsibility for ensuring that the school satisfied the legal
expectations for all schools in the district. The respondents also indicated that another
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responsibility of the LEA was that of processing and facilitating negotiations
regarding any parent complaint or disagreement regarding an IEP.
School D
This was a conversion school in its eighth year o f operation as a dependent
charter within the district. It had a medium population of over 700 students ranging
from kindergarten to grade five. Nine percent of its students were identified with
special education disabilities ranging from mild to severe for special education.
Technologies
Similar to the results for the other three charter schools in the sample, data
from interviews and documents showed that School D accomplished mandated special
education technologies for developing IEPs and for providing individualized
instruction and related services to students with disabilities.
As prescribed by the IDEA, respondents noted that the school established a
process by which a school team reviewed information that might warrant a referral of
the student for a special education assessment. If so, parental written consent was
obtained before an evaluation was conducted as mandated by law. A parent observed
that “a request for an assessment can be made by parents, students, or school
personnel” and not just through a team referral. As in the coded data from the other
three schools in the sample, School D also conducted multidisciplinary assessments to
determine eligibility of students in all areas related to the suspected disability.
Observation of an IEP team meeting of parents and special and general
education staff showed how the results of the multidisciplinary assessment were used
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to determine the student’s eligibility for special education Instruction and speech
services. Some students received transportation as a related service per their IEPs.
After determination o f the eligibility, the IEP was developed to indicate the: a)
current educational performance; b) specific instruction and related services; c) annual
goal and short-term instructional objectives; d) starting date and duration of services;
e) service delivery setting; and f) means of assessing student outcomes. The
respondents indicated that “copies of the IEPs had to be made available to all the
teachers working with the student” to ensure accomplishment of the required tasks.
One of the teachers pointed out that the school used the same assessment plan
as all schools in the authorizing LEA to obtain the parent’s consent and ensure the
mandated involvement of the parent in all aspects of the assessment procedures. Other
mandated tasks were to ensure the participation of parents in the IEP process and to
obtain their consent before any instruction or service was initiated.
The parents interviewed were very knowledgeable about the special education
mandated procedural tasks. For example, one parent stated:
The procedures for conducting and performing special education tasks
are very specialized because they are legal procedures that must be
followed in order to stay in compliance and protect the rights of my
child.
A teacher also commented on “the significance o f compliance procedural safeguards”
because “they regulate the performance of the work and compliance with the law.”
Another teacher noted. “If we don’t comply, everyone—parents, the District, the state
monitors—is demanding that we make some type of corrective action for our lack of
compliance.”
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Another teacher explained how each IEP had to be reviewed in an IEP team
meeting at least once a year to determine how well the student needs were being met.
This review was based on evaluation data that the school used for determining the
academic progress of all students in the school—state standardized testing, authentic
assessment, and classroom teacher-made tests. The coded data showed that
individualized reassessments were used during IEP annual reviews if needed to
determine modifications of IEP tasks or further eligibility for services.
Another teacher stated, “I see special education tasks along a continuum of
activities that represent best practices for educating all students.” Teachers viewed the
accomplishment of IEP instruction and services tasks as a “challenge” requiring the
coordination of “a lot of teachers and service providers who work with students who
have a lot of individual needs.” These tasks were accomplished by “collaboration,”
“analysis of student progress,” and “team effort of teachers and parents.”
The school’s approach to instructional technologies involved “cooperative
learning within small heterogeneous groups of students” interacting and helping each
other to “work on more complex tasks” and “to explore their own ideas and those of
other students.” Depending on learning needs and academic purposes, students worked
in whole groups, skills groups, cooperative groups, pairs, or individually. Experiential
learning was pivotal to this approach and was based on a theme of interdependence,
with curriculum modifications involving technology, garden lab, and outside
classrooms located on the school campus. The social development and academic
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preparation of students, including those with disabilities, were enhanced by using
curriculums focusing on “service learning and community-building activities.”
Collaboration was used to modify the curriculum and differentiating
instruction. Teachers collaborated “to integrate subjects into an interdisciplinary body
of knowledge and to integrate their skills for learning activities around a theme.”
General and special education teachers co-taught identified students in the same
classroom to reinforce the core curriculum. To accomplish IEP tasks, special
education teachers also provided direct instruction apart from the general classroom
Strategies
The commitment of School D, according to its charter petition, was to provide
equal opportunities for achievement to all students, including those with disabilities.
The principal stated that the charter school was “committed to complying with all
federal and state disability legislation in order to ensure the rights o f students with
disabilities” to an equal opportunity to be educated. To achieve these goals, the school
used various strategies for attaining human resources, technical support, and fiscal
support.
Unlike the other three independent charter schools in the study, School D was
a dependent charter school within the LEA and had its budget and personnel managed
by the LEA. As a dependent school with LEA-employed staff, it participated in the
LEA’s special education program. This included the LEA placing students with an
array of disabilities (e.g., learning disorder, emotional disturbance, autism, mental
retardation) at the school from other public schools in the LEA. Because of the
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charter school’s diverse population of special education students, respondents all
concurred that the school’s most important resource was attaining certified personnel
experienced in providing for the special needs of students.
The personnel needed for providing related services were itinerant and
assigned by the LEA. For instruction, the school recruited its own personnel from the
LEA’s pool of candidates, retaining the school’s autonomy to conduct its own process
for final selection of its special education staff. As the Principal explained:
We certainly have enough special education personnel. We also get a lot of
related services personnel sent here by the District, although it is important that
we have the final say on who is assigned to our school.
The interview responses indicated that the school not only sought qualified personnel
but also persons with experience in the provision of special education. This was
reflected in statements made such as “solid background of experience,” “experienced
teachers,” “provide stability and continuity.” The Principal had been in the same
administrative position at the school for many years before it even converted to charter
school status.
In terms o f mandated fiscal resources, the school relied on the District’s
management of its special education funding. The Principal stated that an issue for the
school was that it felt it needed far more funding than what the LEA allocated to them.
The school wanted to provide intervention services, such as additional academic
support and behavioral counseling for students at risk who had not yet been identified
through the IEP process. The Principal noted, “There is a down fall with the District
paying our bills because we have less to say about how the money is used to help the
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students as only we know them here at the school.” To supplement various
educational activities, including the cost of extra psychologist time, a parent booster
group annually raised money for the school.
In addition, the school established networking partnerships with institutions
and businesses and received in-kind services that provided opportunities for students
to have hands-on learning experiences. The charter school worked in partnership with
a nearby university to allow college students to receive field training within the
experiential teaching environment of the school, which at the same time provided
“opportunities for the school staff to interact with those at a research level of
educational practice.” The intent of the school in implementing such networking was
“to increase the innovative climate of the school,” while also to provide an
environment that could take advantage of innovative teaching strategies.
The school used strategies to include special education students within the
educational program to the extent possible. Unlike the other charter schools in the
sample, the approach was to deliver services within a variety of instructional settings.
Some students were fully included in the general education classroom with instruction
from both the special and general education teachers on a collaborative basis. Other
students with severe disabilities received intensive direct instruction most of the day in
a special education classroom and were mainstreamed into general education
classrooms to participate in activities for social interaction. Still others were included
for instruction in the general classroom and periodically pulled out for more intensive
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special education instruction. All itinerant services such as speech, occupational
therapy, and adaptive physical education were provided on a scheduled pull-out basis.
As with the other charter schools in this study, technical support was obtained
from the LEA by means of “documents, consultations from LEA resource personnel,
informational training sessions.” This was a significant process that assisted School D
to remain updated on “the constantly changing requirements of the IDEA.” One
parent reported, “Technical knowledge about special education requirements is very
important since it reassures me that the school is following correct procedures.” One
of the teachers commented on the complexity of the legal mandates:
I cannot seem to keep up with what is happening with some of the
mandated requirements. The parents seem to get the information
long before we get it from the District. And I find that the District
itself does not always know the precise answers or information and
have to research the question for me.
The strategy for compliance procedures was based on guidelines and technical
information that the LEA used to support and monitor all special education procedural
compliance. The special education team of teachers facilitated the procedures by
ensuring that all steps for compliance were appropriately addressed to safeguard the
rights o f the students with disabilities. Parents were also informed of their right to
certain procedures and to file any complaint or disagreement with the recommendation
of the IEP team with the California Department of Education or the LEA.
Structures
As with the other schools, the coded data for School D revealed a governance
structure of committees and teams collaborating at all grade levels to make decisions
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that relied on “consensus-building.” An observation of an IEP meeting, showed how
the team of staff and parents developed an IEP by coming to consensus, with regard to
an analysis of the assessment data and the eligibility goals for the student.
One of the teachers pointed out that the legal requirement for IEP decision
making was that of consensus and “not taking a vote for a majority decision.” As one
parent described the process:
The IEP teams not only come to an agreement about the student
eligibility but they get to agree about what needs to be done and then
assign the tasks with expected outcomes within certain time limitations.
As a member of the IEP team, I get to participate in planning what is
happening with my child’s program
Whenever there were disagreements between parents and school staff
regarding IEP issues, the dispute was referred to the LEA that then had the
responsibility for facilitating procedures for negotiating a resolution of the problem.
In some cases, negotiations resulted in students receiving increased instruction or
services for which the LEA had the fiscal responsibility for implementing. Likewise,
the respondents reported that the LEA had the responsibility for providing a
“continuum of placements” to address the more intensive services needed by some
identified students and were not available at the charter school (e.g., special education
centers or non-public schools).
Based on the IEP division of responsibilities, respondents reported that
teachers performed their assigned tasks by “being responsible for the daily decisions
to monitor the performance of the students and work with the parents in determining
the activities useful in implementing the IEP.” The charter school designated one of
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its special education teachers as a “lead” teacher who made “everyday decisions that
helped facilitate the coordination of special education activities.” The integration of
the different tasks assigned to the staff was more formally achieved by review IEP
team meetings that evaluated the effectiveness of the instruction and services provided
to identified students and the need for revision or development of tasks.
According to the charter document, the school’s governance structure was
based on a site-based management council of teachers, parents, a classified
representative, a student, and the Principal that made the decisions about school
service operations, development of the budget, and personnel recruitment and hiring
procedures, all which included special education. For school-wide instruction,
respondents reported that the school was structured into grade level groups, each with
a special education teacher, “to determine through consensus the strategies to meet the
learning needs of all students and integrate such decisions into the general education
program.”
The grade-level teams of teachers collaborated to select materials, develop
units of study, align lessons with state and district standards, review student work and
assessment results, and discuss best practices to develop an interdisciplinary, thematic
curriculum and coordinate their instructional approaches. Cross-disciplinary teams
were used to motivate teachers at each grade level to be innovative and experts on
topics they delivered several times across grade levels. To give teachers time to meet
and collaborate weekly in grade-level groups, school schedules were modified (e.g.,
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combining some classes) and a time-banking system used to add instructional minutes
each day in order to dismiss students early once each week.
A respondent expressed a need for activities that “developed knowledge and
skills in order to teach students with disabilities.” The LEA periodically provided
opportunities for such professional activities, thus clarifying the various roles and
responsibilities assigned to the special and general education teachers. Another
respondent stated that the charter school also arranged for its teachers to attend
conferences or professional development seminars. A local university also provided
training to the staff based on its research findings about working with diverse learners.
A teacher explained:
All of the teachers are responsible for implementing a student’s program
as described in the IEP. So we try to ensure that information on special
education and services is available and accessible to all of the staff.
Similar to the other charter schools in the sample, the authorizing LEA
provided School D with written materials and guides to ensure their compliance with
the IDEA. Furthermore, the school participated in the LEA’s annual compliance
reviews.
Summary of All Sample Charter Schools
In summary, the study findings showed many similarities and some differences
in how the charter schools achieved their goal o f educating students with disabilities.
The greatest similarities between the schools were in the technologies they applied for
meeting the instructional needs of the students and in how they structured themselves
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for decision-making. The schools differed to the greatest extent in the strategies they
used to organize their special education activities.
Technologies
As required by the IDEA, all four schools applied technologies for educating
students with disabilities. These included highly regulated procedural technologies
involving school staffs in collaboration with parents to ensure the development of
lEPs for students. School personnel utilized other technologies to provide instruction
and services. These technologies are summarized in Table 3.
Table 3:
Summary of Qualitative Findings: Technologies
Technologies School A School B School C School D
IEP process X X X X
Maintenance of documents X X X X
Parental Participation X X X X
Related services X X X X
Cooperative learning X X X X
Co-teaching X X X X
Curriculum modification X X X X
Differentiated learning X X X X
Experiential learning X X
The IEP process called for procedural technologies sequentially performed and
passed on to the next phase for completion as follows: a) process referrals of students
suspected of having disabilities; b) assess students in all suspected areas of disabilities;
c) conduct IEP team meetings to determine eligibility; d) and determine what, how,
where, and by whom instruction and services technologies were to be accomplished.
Plans and schedules were used to coordinate the performance o f the technologies. For
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example, school personnel routinely accomplished technologies within time lines,
maintained IEP documents, and ensured parent participation during the IEP process.
The charter schools were similar in applying more complex IEP technologies
for instruction and services, such as: a) co-teaching in which teachers shared tasks; b)
cooperative learning; c) differentiated instruction; d) modification of the core
curriculum for diverse learning needs; and e) for two of the schools, experiential
learning tasks. Instructional technologies were interdependent, calling for personnel
to collaborate and make mutual adjustments for accomplishing assigned tasks.
Moreover, IEP teams met annually to review the progress of students and determine
the need for modification, deletion, or addition of instructional technologies.
The findings further indicated that the sample schools integrated their IEP
technologies for instruction with their school-wide program of curriculum and
instruction designed to meet the individual learning needs of all the students. For
instance, co-teaching technologies involved teams of teachers instructing both general
and special education students.
Strategies
To achieve the goal of providing special education to students with disabilities,
the sample schools used various strategies for procuring fiscal support, human
resources, and technical support. A primary strategy for all of the schools was to
remain a public school within their authorizing LEA for purposes of special education,
and then to determine how they would receive their share of special education funding
and/or services from the LEA. A summary of the strategies is shown in Table 4.
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Table 4:
Summary of Qualitative Findings: Strategies
Strategy School A School B SchoolC School D
LEA allocation of all mandated funding X
LEA allocation of partial mandated funding X
LEA management of all mandated funding X X
LEA instructional personnel X X
LEA related services personnel X X X
Private agency personnel X
Own staff personnel X X
Technical assistance X X X X
Compliance monitoring/accountability X X X X
Flexible school schedules X X X X
Networking partnerships X X X X
Inclusion X X X X
Pull-out instruction X X X
Special day class/mainstreaming X
LEA continuum of service options X X X X
As an independent, conversion school, School C had a large number of
students identified with mild to severe disabilities and recruited its own instructional
staff, while paying for itinerant LEA personnel on a fee-for-service basis. The two
smallest schools, A and B, were start-ups having the fewest number of identified
students with only mild learning disabilities and used special education personnel from
the LEA or a private agency. For School D, a dependent conversion with students
identified with mild to severe disabilities, the LEA managed its budget and personnel,
while the school chose its instructional staff from LEA personnel. Although certified
personnel were not easy to attain, the school used various strategies that included: a)
recruiting from training institutions; b) attracting applicants with pay incentives or the
charter school environment; or c) contracting with a private agency or the LEA. For
additional human resources, the schools established networking partnerships with
community groups and individuals volunteering services or donating funds.
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Even though the charter operators were experienced school administrators, the
schools reported an on-going need for technical assistance to understand and be
updated on special education requirements. The LEA provided information through
written materials, consultations, and training sessions. The three independent charter
schools also relied assistance from the California Department of Education and Los
Angeles County Office of Education, private agencies, statewide charter school
organizations, and disability associations through publications, consultations,
conferences, workshops, and informational websites.
The schools utilized flexible arrangements and time schedules for their special
and general education teachers to collaborate and jointly deliver instruction. The two
largest schools had instructional models that included general education classrooms
with pull-out of students for direct services and also special education classrooms with
mainstreaming of students into general education. The two smaller charter schools
accomplished IEP tasks within the general education classroom with minimal pull-out
for direct instruction. More restrictive service delivery models (e.g., non-public
schools) not available at a charter school became the responsibility o f the LEA within
its larger continuum of service delivery options.
All of the charter schools monitored their compliance with IDEA requirements
through strategies that called for the collaboration of the schools, parents, and LEA.
One approach, allowed under the IDEA, was for parents to file complaints whenever
there was non-compliance with requirements. Another involved the participation of
the charter schools in mandated state compliance reviews of all LEAs and their
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schools. The accountability o f charter schools for compliance was also ensured by the
exchange of fiscal and student data between the schools and the LEA.
Structures
The study results showed that all four of the sample charter schools used
decision-making teams to divide special education responsibilities among staff as
summarized in Table 5.
Table 5:
Summary of Qualitative Findings: Structures
Structure School A SchoolB School C School D
Committee/team consensus X X X X
LEA linkage X X X X
Due process negotiation X
Professional development X X X X
The mandated decision-making group for special education was a school team,
comprised of administrators, special and general education teachers, and parents that
determined, through consensus, the IEP eligibilities and individualized goals of
students. The IEP team also assigned various technologies to be accomplished by
individuals and groups for achieving goals within certain service delivery settings.
IEP teams annually re-evaluated whether student goals and technologies required
adjustments or modifications.
Whenever there was lack of consensus at an IEP team meeting, the
disagreement was referred to the LEA for a due process hearing to negotiate a
settlement of the matter. The data showed that only the dependent charter school had
had parental disagreements resolved through due process, often involving additional
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services or costs that the LEA was responsible to implement because the charter
school was dependent.
For on-going accomplishment of IEP technologies, the schools were structured
into networks of committees and teams coordinating, through consensus, various staff
responsibilities up and down grade levels as well as across each grade level. The two
larger conversion schools utilized well-established committees for consensus about
curriculum and instruction issues involving information on student progress. For a
similar purpose, the smaller start-up schools utilized more informal collaboration of
two or three person teams to obtain consensus. All schools assigned an administrator
to coordinate the special education activities of their committees and teams.
The data showed that the charter schools considered professional development
important for helping general and special education personnel to understand the IDEA
requirements, acquire special education knowledge and skills, and determine their
roles and responsibilities. The LEA, as mandated under the IDEA, offered a
comprehensive system of professional development to its schools to ensure that it had
well-qualified personnel to provide special and general education services, although
the schools often set up their own professional development activities.
Finally, the study data revealed a formal relationship between the charter
schools and LEA that determined their roles and responsibilities for provision of
special education. By mutual agreement in each charter petition, the responsibility
and accountability for special education compliance began with each charter school,
but ultimately rested with the LEA.
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CHAPTER 5: DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS
In the previous chapter, the results of how the four sample charter schools
educated students with disabilities were described in detail. This chapter is organized
around the study’s three research questions described in Chapter 3. The chapter
concludes with a discussion o f the study’s implications for practitioners, who design
and operate charter schools, and for future research.
Before discussing the findings and their implications, it is important to restate
the limitation of the present study, as pointed out in Chapter 3. Given the small
sample of four California charter schools located in the same authorizing district, the
study could only describe the perspectives and experiences of a limited number of
participants at these charter schools. As such, the study was exploratory in nature and
its findings were not intended to represent how all charter schools educate students
with disabilities.
Discussion of Findings
Research Question One
What are the technologies that charter schools apply to transform their
resources in order to achieve the goal of educating students with disabilities?
Finding: The IEP process was the technology that charter schools used for
educating students with disabilities.
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) is the federal
legislation that protects the educational rights of students with disabilities. It requires
that a written document, called an Individualized Education Program (IEP), be
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developed for all students identified as having a disability. As such, the study results
indicated that the IEP process was at the core of all technologies accomplished by the
charter schools for educating their students with disabilities. The data revealed that the
charter schools, in compliance with the IDEA requirements, used their technical
knowledge and funding for personnel to refer, evaluate, identify, and serve students
eligible for special education services.
Finding: Charter schools accomplished technologies involving mandated IEP
procedures that ensured access to special education for every student with a disability.
As required by the IDEA, the study data revealed that highly regulated
technologies were applied to ensure that students with disabilities had access to the
IEP process. These procedural tasks were sequentially performed and passed on to the
next phase for completion as follows: a) refer and assess students; b) conduct IEP
meetings; and c) determine the necessary instruction and services technologies to be
accomplished. Plans and schedules were important coordination tools used to perform
these technologies. For example, school personnel consistently accomplished tasks
within mandated time lines, maintained IEP documents, and ensured parent
participation throughout each phase of the IEP process.
Finding: Charter schools accomplished technologies involving instruction and
related services in order to achieve the IEP goals of students with disabilities.
The IDEA calls for instruction and related services technologies to be
accomplished, based on the determination of IEP teams. The IDEA, however, does
not restrict this requirement to any particular technology. The study findings showed
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that the schools accomplished IEP technologies for instruction that included: a) co
teaching; b) cooperative learning; c) experiential learning; c) curriculum modification,
and d) differentiated instruction. All of these were complex technologies that were
interdependent and required personnel to collaborate and make mutual adjustments in
order to accomplish the assigned tasks. The charter schools in the sample integrated
IEP instruction into their school-wide education program. For instance, co-teaching
technologies were used with teams of teachers instructing both general and special
education students.
Research Question Two
What are the strategies that charter schools employ to organize their activities,
given the environmental demands and supports for special education?
Finding: The charter schools chose to remain public schools within their
authorizing LEA for purposes of attaining special education funding and staffing.
Rather than be designated as local education agencies (LEAs) under California
charter school law, the charter schools instead chose to remain public schools in their
authorizing LEA for purposes of special education. According to the study findings,
the schools felt that the LEA had more special education technical expertise; greater
numbers of personnel; and more services than the schools would have had if they were
designated as LEAs.
For special education purposes, the charter schools chose various strategies for
obtaining their funding allocations from the LEA. The findings revealed that one
school received full funding to hire full-time staff and to also hire LEA personnel on a
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fee-for-service basis when needed. Another charter school received funding for
instructional personnel and contracted with a private agency; the school was also
assigned LEA personnel for related services. Finally, two charter schools agreed to
have the LEA retain their funding and the schools used LEA personnel for all
instruction and services.
Although it was not easy to recruit personnel, the sample schools utilized a
variety of strategies that ensured an adequate supply of qualified special education
personnel. Recruitment strategies included: a) recruiting from a nearby training
institution; b) motivating people to apply because of the charter concept or pay
incentives; c) contracting with a private agency; or d) contracting with the LEA. In all
cases, the schools in the sample increased their human resources by relying on
networking within their local communities and by using volunteers.
Finding: The charter schools sought and obtained technical assistance for
special education, even though they reported understanding the IDEA mandates.
The sample schools reported understanding the IDEA requirements. The
schools employed experienced special education personnel and some of them had
experience with special education programs prior to going charter. Yet, the schools
considered it important to receive on-going technical assistance about the IDEA. For
technical assistance, the schools turned to the LEA; agencies at the state and county
levels; state charter organizations; and private agencies. According to the findings,
technical assistance included document requests, in-person training, and consultation
to improve the capacity of the schools to implement special education.
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Finding: Charter schools delivered special education services primarily
through inclusive strategies.
The sample schools used various strategies for complying with the IDEA
mandate that students with disabilities be included in educational settings, to the extent
appropriate, along with their non-disabled peers. The smaller start-up charter schools
served students with only mild disabilities and delivered services to the students
within the general education classroom setting. The larger conversion schools also
had students with moderate to severe disabilities and provided special education: a)
within general education classrooms; b) on a pull-out basis; c) through mainstreaming
into general education classrooms; and d) within special education classrooms. All the
schools employed flexible arrangements and time schedules for special and general
education teachers to collaborate on implementing the inclusive strategies.
Finding: Charter schools collaborated with the LEA and parents to monitor
school compliance with the IDEA.
California requires LEAs to participate in procedures that meet the state’s
obligation for monitoring compliance in public schools. Accordingly, the sample
charter schools were included in their LEAs annual compliance reviews and regularly
submitted fiscal and student data to the LEA. The findings suggested that the schools
perceived this collaboration as supportive. For self-monitoring purposes, each school
had a site administrator to ensure compliance with special education technologies. In
the event of non-compliance, parents could file a complaint with the LEA or state
agency.
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Research Question Three
What are the structures used by charter schools for decision-making that
support their strategies and technologies for educating students with disabilities?
Finding: The IEP team was at the core of the charter school structure for
decision-making about the provision of special education.
The mandated decision-making group for special education was the IEP team,
consisting primarily of administrators, special and general education teachers, and
parents. The team was required to determine, through consensus, a student’s
eligibility for special education and the tasks for achieving the student’s IEP goals. At
least annually, the IEP team met to review the achievement of student IEP goals and to
make any necessary modifications of technologies. Any lack of consensus arising
from an IEP team meeting was resolved through negotiations that involved dispute
resolution procedures administered by the LEA.
Finding: Charter schools used various decision-making committees and teams
to determine and coordinate staff responsibilities for special education.
The IEP teams at the sample schools determined, through consensus, the
responsibilities of various personnel for special education technologies. Committees
or teams at each sample school coordinated the performance o f these technologies
through collaboration and consensus-building. The findings indicated that the larger
conversion schools had formal decision-making committees; by contrast, the smaller
start-up charter schools had two or three person teams that met informally.
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Finding: Charter schools used professional development to help staff acquire
new knowledge and skills in the area of special education.
The study data showed that the charter schools utilized professional
development—the process through which staff acquires knowledge and skills—to
educate personnel about the requirements for special education and to clarify their
roles and responsibilities. Although the charter schools initiated their own professional
development sessions, the LEA also provided special education training for the charter
schools as it did for all of the other public schools under its jurisdiction.
Finding: Charter schools maintained a formal relationship with the LEA
regardless of the strategies they chose to provide special education.
The decision of the charter schools to participate in the LEA for special
education established a formal relationship with the LEA. Each partner had certain
roles and responsibilities. For example, the charter schools determined their strategies
for procuring essential resources (e.g., funding, personnel, and technical assistance)
from the LEA, as well as other agencies, and were responsible to the LEA for
compliance with the IDEA mandates. On the other hand, the LEA was responsible for
providing the schools with technical assistance, a continuum of special education
service options, compliance monitoring support, and administration o f due process.
Implications of Findings
Although, as noted earlier, the generalizability of the findings from this study
is limited, the present study offers some suggestions for improving the provision of
special education services in charter schools.
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Charter schools need to align their fundamental missions and practices with the
mandated IEP process. Even though the IDEA does not permit the level of autonomy
that charter schools are typically given for their overall school program, the study
results revealed that IEP teams were responsible for determining which curriculum
and instructional technologies were best suited to meet students’ learning needs. For
example, the sample schools all expressed the goal of meeting the learning needs of all
students, similar in concept to the IDEA mandate entitling students with disabilities to
a free, appropriate public education.
Charter schools need to develop strategies to ensure sufficient numbers of
certified and experienced special education personnel. The study data indicated that
charter schools sought to recruit not just certified special education personnel, but also
those who had special education experiences. Because of shortages of personnel for
all public schools, the schools in the study sample relied on a variety o f strategies,
such as contracting with private providers, using itinerant special education staff, and
using the work environment of the charter schools as an attraction for recruitment.
Charter schools need to allocate time to achieve their special education goals.
The study results suggested that sufficient time was needed for the teaching staff, both
special and general education, to participate in annual IEP team meetings with parents
and in committees and groups to share information and plans for achieving special
education goals. Time was also needed for teachers in the sample schools to jointly
plan collaborative instructional technologies, such as co-teaching. Time is also an
important variable to be considered when planning for professional development.
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Charter schools need to maintain a formal relationship with their authorizing
LEA. The sample charter schools had a vital relationship with one LEA. The LEA
provided the charter schools with mandated funding, human resources, technical
assistance, compliance monitoring, a continuum of options for service delivery
models, due process support, and professional development activities.
Professional development o f both special and general education personnel is
essential. The findings suggested professional development was an important activity
for helping charter school personnel, in general, to understand the IDEA mandates, the
alignment o f special education goals with their school missions, and their roles and
responsibilities for achievement of student IEP goals.
Overall, the findings of this study suggest that further research is needed
regarding charter school strategies for educating students with more severe disabilities
who require greater supports and services: Are some strategies better suited to special
education students with more intense needs? Additional research is also warranted to
more thoroughly investigate the relationship between LEAs and charter schools: What
is the proper balance between the autonomy of a charter school and its relationship
with a LEA for purposes of providing special education?
107
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Appendix A:
Staff Interview Protocol
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INTERVIEW PROTOCOL:
SCHOOL STAFF
Date:________________
C h arter School:______
Interview ee’s Position:
Protocol for In-depth Interviews
I ’ m here to talk to you about your experiences providing special education
services at this charter school. This interview will help in understanding how the
school educates students with disabilities to gain a better picture o f how special
education fits into the education program fo r charter schools. I am going to ask you
some questions about what needs to be done to provide special education to students,
how the tasks are assigned to various people, how decisions are made about providing
the services, and what is needed in the way o f resources and support fo r the program.
Although I will be tape recording this interview to make sure that the
information I get from your is accurate, I want to assure you that your comments will
be strictly confidential. Any information you give me during the interview will be used
in my research to describe how a group o f charter schools educates students with
disabilities and the information will not be linked back to you individually.
Thank you.
117
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Background
Director:
How many years have you been an administrator? How many years at this school?
What are your prior experiences as a school administrator? What have been your
experiences in special education?
Teacher:
How many years have you taught special education? How many years have you been
at this school? What grades have you taught? Do you have experience in general
education?
Interview Questions
1. What are the expectations in the school about children with disabilities being
enrolled here? What are the reasons fo r these expectations?
2. Do the legal requirements fo r special education play a large role in the school’ s
commitment to educating students with disabilities? Are there any other influences?
3. What kinds o f resources does the school require to provide special education? Are
some resources more important than others? Are some resources easier to obtain
than others? What resources are mandated?
4. How does the school go about determining if it has all o f the resources that are
needed fo r educating the students who have disabilities?
5. When the school obtains the resources it needs, how does it decide to use them fo r
the students in the special education program? What services are required?
6. What are the issues that influence the school’ s decisions about obtaining and
using the resources it gets fo r special education? How important is the IEP
process?
7. How does the school determine what needs to done to provide special education?
What kinds o f instruction or services need to be provided fo r the students?
8. How specialized are the instruction and services fo r special education? Is
everything individualized fo r each student with a disability? How are services
individualized?
9. Are some o f the special education tasks more routine and easy to predict as to how
they will result? Are there other tasks that are less predictable and less routine
as to their outcomes?
118
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10. How is information organized about special education instruction and services for
the students with disabilities?
11. Are there any similarities between the special education and general education
instruction and services? In what way are they delivered?
12. When students with disabilities are being taught, how much do special and general
education instructional approaches overlap?
13. How does the school go about providing the required instruction and services to
the students in the special education program?
14. D oes the instructional program in general education have any influence on the
manner in which the school provides special education instruction and services?
15. How does the school monitor or evaluate how it is providing special education to
its students? How often?
16. H ow does the school make sure that it is providing everything required under the
law for students who have disabilities? Is there a compliance monitoring strategy?
17. How are the assignments fo r special education responsibilities determined?
18. Are procedural guidelines available fo r everyone who has a responsibility fo r
special education instruction and services?
19. How flexible are the assignments or responsibilities fo r special education? Are the
procedures or guidelines for providing services adjustable?
20. How much alike are the special and general education staff responsibilities fo r
students who have disabilities? Are there significant differences?
21. How is technical knowledge o f mandated requirements and instructional needs
developed fo r providing special education to students?
21. What are the ways that lines o f communication are maintained between all
persons, including parents, who have responsibility fo r special education
students?
22. Who are the persons that make the decisions about special education instruction
and services? What are the decisions that they make?
119
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23. Describe your participation in decision-making activities fo r special education?
What is the process for making the decisions?
25. What are some decisions, if any, that are made without your participation or
input?
26. Is there always agreement about special education instruction and services needed
fo r students with disabilities? What happens if there is disagreement?
120
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Appendix B:
Parent Interview Protocol
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
INTERVIEW PROTOCOL:
PARENT
Date:_____________
Charter School:___
Interviewee’s Name:
Protocol for In-depth Interviews
I ’ m here to talk to you about your experiences as a parent whose child is
receiving special education services at this charter school. This interview will help
me understand how the school educates your child and other students with disabilities
to get a better picture o f how special education fits into the education program for
charter schools. I am going to ask you some questions about what needs to be done to
provide special education to your child and even to other students, how tasks are
assigned to people who provide the special education services, how decisions are
made about what services to provide, and what resources are needed to support the
program.
Although I will be tape recording this interview to make sure that the
information I get from your is accurate, I want to assure you that your comments will
be strictly confidential. Any information you give me during the interview will be used
in my research to describe how a group o f charter schools educates students with
disabilities and the information will not be linked back to you individually.
Thank you.
122
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Background Questions
In what grade is your child? How many years has your child attended this school?
What were your reasons for enrolling your child in this charter school?
How many years has your child been receiving special education? Have you and your
child had prior experiences with special education in other schools?
Interview Questions
1. What are the expectations in the school about children with disabilities being
enrolled here? What are the reasons fo r these expectations?
2. D o the legal requirements fo r special education play a large role in the school’ s
commitment to educating students with disabilities? Are there other influences?
3. What kinds o f resources does the school require to provide special education? Are
some resources more important than others? Are some resources easier to obtain
than others? What resources are provided under the law?
4. H ow does the school go about determining i f it has all o f the resources that are
needed fo r educating the students who have disabilities?
5. When the school obtains the resources it needs, how does it decide to use them fo r
the students in the special education program? What services are required?
6. What are the issues that influence the school’ s decisions about obtaining and
using the resources it gets fo r special education? How important is the IEP
process?
7. How does the school determine what needs to done to provide special education?
What kinds o f instruction or services need to be provided fo r the students?
8. How specialized are the instruction and services fo r special education? Is
everything individualized fo r each student with a disability? How are services
individualized?
9. Are some o f the special education tasks more routine and easy to predict as to how
they will result? Are there other tasks that are less predictable and less routine
as to their outcomes?
10. How is information organized about special education instruction and services fo r
the students with disabilities?
123
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11. Are there any similarities between the special education and general education
instruction or services? In what way are they delivered?
12. When students with disabilities are being taught, how much do special and general
education instructional approaches overlap?
13. How does the school go about providing the required instruction and services to
the students in the special education program?
14. Does the instructional program in general education have any influence on the
manner in which the school provides special education instruction and services?
15. How does the school monitor or evaluate how it is providing special education to
its students? How often?
16. How does the school make sure that it is providing everything required under the
law fo r students who have disabilities? Is there a compliance monitoring strategy?
17. How are the assignments fo r special education responsibilities determined?
18. Are procedural guidelines available fo r everyone who has a responsibility for
special education instruction and services?
19. How flexible are the assignments or responsibilities fo r special education? Are the
procedures or guidelines fo r providing services adjustable?
20. How much alike are the special and general education staff responsibilities for
students who have disabilities? Are there significant differences?
21. How is technical knowledge o f mandated requirements and instructional needs
developed fo r providing special education to students?
22. What are the ways that lines o f communication are maintained between all
persons, including parents, who have responsibility fo r special education
students?
23. Who are the persons that make the decisions about special education instruction
and services? What are the decisions that they make?
24. Describe your participation in decision-making activities fo r special education?
What is the process fo r making the decisions?
25. What are some decisions, if any, that are made without your participation or
input?
124
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26. Is there always agreement about special education instruction and services needed
for students with disabilities? What happens if there is disagreement?
125
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Asset Metadata
Creator
Booker, Myra Martin
(author)
Core Title
California charter schools: Including students with disabilities
School
Graduate School
Degree
Doctor of Philosophy
Degree Program
Education
Publisher
University of Southern California
(original),
University of Southern California. Libraries
(digital)
Tag
Education, administration,education, special,OAI-PMH Harvest
Language
English
Contributor
Digitized by ProQuest
(provenance)
Advisor
Wohlstetter, Priscilla (
committee chair
), Hentschke, Guilbert (
committee member
), Robertson, Peter J. (
committee member
)
Permanent Link (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c16-274236
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UC11339826
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3094305.pdf (filename),usctheses-c16-274236 (legacy record id)
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3094305.pdf
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274236
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Type
texts
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(contributing entity),
University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses
(collection)
Access Conditions
The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the au...
Repository Name
University of Southern California Digital Library
Repository Location
USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus, Los Angeles, California 90089, USA
Tags
education, special