Senate Panel Hearing Spotlights Charter Schools for Special-Needs Kids

Sen. Bill Cassidy on Thursday urged parents and school choice advocates to continue efforts to promote the educational benefits of charter schools, with an emphasis on children with special needs.

Cassidy, R-La., who chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, hosted a hearing on the charter school movement, “Chartering Excellence: A Policy Briefing on Charter School Innovation.”

The hearing shed light on ways to increase access to charter schools for students across the country. 

Cassidy opened the hearing by discussing how he’s the father of a special-needs child and acknowledging that his wife was a participant on the panel as the founder of a charter school. The Louisiana senator cited the passion a mother has for getting her child the help he or she needs. 

“[S]he’s going to make sure that her child has the best opportunity her child has to learn, and yet we put institutional barriers … in front of that mother achieving the best for her daughter, for her son,” he explained.

The Louisiana lawmaker said he saw his role as helping that mother remove those barriers.

“We’re going to pretend the status quo is good, when for decades the status quo has been bad and even declining. And I say that because a country is only the sum of its people, and if the people are well educated, achieving their potential, that country achieves its potential,” Cassidy said.

The committee also heard from Diana Diaz-Harrison, the deputy assistant secretary for special education and rehabilitative services at the Department of Education.

Diaz-Harrison, who founded a charter school network in Arizona for children with autism, has been brought into the Trump administration to expand school choice for families with disabled children.

“The administration also brought me on board because charter schools are extremely important for all children, but in particular for children who learn differently, it is hard to have a specialty in a generic environment,” she said. 

Diaz-Harrison explained that she became involved in the charter school movement through her own son, who has autism.

“[A] choice is not a choice if it doesn’t exist,” she said, explaining that a school for children in Arizona with special needs did not exist when she looked for an appropriate learning environment for her son. 

She told lawmakers that the new presidential administration was all-in for school choice.

“[T]his administration is fully committed to empowering education entrepreneurs who in many cases are also the parents who have skin in the game,” the education official noted. 

The deputy assistant secretary expressed gratitude for the opportunity to put her charter school experience to work for the American people.

“[S]o many people in the state of Arizona supported me, and to think that I was a mom with a dream, and now I have a position that can really help shape policy for all children in the United States of America is a dream come true,” Diaz-Harrison said. 

The panel subsequently discussed the many advantages of charter schools.

“It’s tailored to the individual child,” explained Lorenzo Romero, president of BASIS Educational Ventures, for which he oversees the financial management and growth strategy of more than 45 BASIS-affiliated charter schools in Arizona, Texas, Louisiana, and Washington, D.C.

Laura Cassidy, the senator’s wife and the founder of Louisiana Key Academy Public Charter School, compared the lack of school choice to giving patients with various forms of cancer the same chemotherapy treatment.

“Charter schools have the ability to identify gaps,” David Taylor, superintendent and CEO of Dayton Early College Academy in Dayton, Ohio, said, referring to market failures in adequately educating all children.

The panelists identified onerous regulations and a lack of funding as the most significant challenges facing the charter school movement. Nevertheless, despite the myriad challenges, the movement has only grown in recent years as parents have moved heaven and earth for their children.

The Heritage Foundation recently published a classical school database, which encompasses some charter schools, and includes a total of 894 schools.

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