AN ACTION-ORIENTED RESEARCH APPROACH TO
PRIVATIZED SPECIAL EDUCATION
by
Kathryn Mendoza
Abstract
Bright Horizons, a private school located in Florida, specializes in working with students
of varying exceptionalities and is founded on the principles of action research. It began as an
effort to create an alternative educational opportunity for a few specific children and grew
into a special education school open to the community. The purpose of this dissertation was
to perform a formal evaluation of the program and use the feedback in the next cycle of
action research. This study formally solicited input from both current and past stakeholders
including staff and parents. Stakeholders shared their perception about the strengths and the
challenges of the program, and they provided recommendations for improvements. The data
were collected and analyzed utilizing the action-oriented research approaches of Greenwood
and Levin (2007) and Stringer (2007), and the focus group techniques recommended by
Krueger and Casey (2000). The previous stakeholders and the parents of current students
were individually interviewed and the current staff participated in a focus group. The staff
directly created a portion of the action plan that was implemented. The results indicated a
significant overlap of the perceived strengths and challenges among stakeholder groups. The
strengths of the program aligned with two main areas: social/emotional atmosphere and
program format. In social/emotional atmosphere were (a) sense of belonging/student teacher
ratio, (b) trust in the staff/knowledge that children are safe, (c) students’ enjoyment of school,
and (d) staff personalities/individual attention provided to parents. In program format were
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(a) systems format for administration/classroom, (b) individualized curriculum, and (c) field
trips/outings. The challenges of the program from the perspective of parents included (a)
cost/summer school not included in tuition, (b) duplication/follow-through at home, (c)
school hours/no before or after care, (d) lack of busing, (e) lack of a lunch program, and (f)
lack of direction for after graduation. The challenges of the program from the perspective of
the staff included (a) lack of duplication/follow-though at home, and (b) job stress related to
student behavior. The findings of this study indicated that overall both the families of
students and the staff feel that the program strengths far outweigh the program challenges.
Key Words: Action-Oriented Research, Special Education, Private Education