Heyward, G., & Gill, S. (2021). Promising Practices Drive Progress: Closing Learning Gaps for Students with Disabilities. Center on Reinventing Public Education.
Many students started the 2020 school year a little behind academically, but students with disabilities have been especially impacted by the pandemic. With the added benefit of federal stimulus funds, we wanted to know: What can schools to do support students with disabilities as they start planning for next year? And what, if anything, can schools learn from pandemic-driven innovations to narrow long-standing opportunity gaps? To learn more about how charter schools were serving students with disabilities during the pandemic, we interviewed leaders, teachers, staff, and families in three charter schools in Washington state. We identified six specific practices that took hold during the pandemic practices that interviewees said helped students maintain academic progress.