Reshaping Communities
Uncertainties Around Charters’ Special Ed Role
One family’s legal struggle to get a charter school to recognize their son’s special needs.
Special Education by the Numbers
Traditional public schools still serve a larger percent of special needs kids than charters. Why does it matter?
Interactive Timeline: Indian Schools
For many American Indians, formal education has been a sorrowful experience.
Refuge on the Reservation
The stories of three American Indian students trying to make it in tribal charter schools.
Interactive Timeline: Uncertain Future
Explore the history of how and why the Catholic parochial system developed in America.
Keeping the Faith
One urban parochial school struggles to keep Catholic
Teaching from the African American Experience
Why an Afro-centric school doesn’t believe it is contributing to re-segregation.
Losing their Religion
One financially troubled Catholic school sheds its religious curriculum in order to stay open.
Public Schools as Ethnic Enclaves?
Charter school education is creating safe havens for niche groups — is that meeting their needs or resegregating them?
Catholic Schools Go Charter to Survive
Conversions are an attractive exit plan for struggling parochial schools.
Life on the Rez
Leah Carrick, 14, is a member of the Ojibwe Indian tribe and grew up on the Bay Mills Indian Community in Brimley, Mich. She currently attends the Ojibwe Charter School. She said she chose the 100-seat charter on the reservation as a refuge from the public school because her teachers were “cranky” in Brimley. She [...]
Understanding Your Child’s Special Education Rights
By Elaine Meyer
Parents who send their children to public schools are often unaware that federal law entitles those children to an education that addresses their learning disabilities or mental disorders in as nonrestrictive an environment as possible. Here is a glossary to help navigate special education in public and charter schools.
IDEA: Special education rights are [...]
An Exception to the School
Written by Elaine Meyer
Produced by Elaine Meyer and Paul Stephens
In the late 1990s, James Forman, Jr., then a public defender, saw many teenagers emerge from doing time in juvenile detention only to be turned away from the public schools they were trying to attend. The schools found myriad reasons to reject them as undesirable students. [...]
Welcome to the Renaissance City
Charter schools rising . . .
The Middle East Meets the Midwest
A charter school in Michigan serves the Arab-language community.
