A widely cited report by the federal Government Accountability Office found that charter schools enroll a significantly smaller percentage of students with disabilities than do traditional public schools. However, thus far no hard evidence exists to definitively explain or quantify the disparity between special education enrollment rates in…

As public schools, charter schools are legally required to educate all students regardless of the difficulties they bring with them into the classroom. Nonetheless, many are concerned that the charter sector fails to educate all comers. Charter schools are often criticized for not enrolling similar proportions of students with disabilities as are…

Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) commissioned Dr. Marcus Winters to analyze the factors driving the special education gap between Denver's charter and traditional public elementary and middle schools. Using student-level data, Winters shows that Denver's special education enrollment gap starts at roughly 2 percentage points in…