Numbers crunch

Back to School | The rise of charter schools plus attacks on voucher programs equals difficult times for many faith-based urban schools | Alisa Harris

Angela Ashcract/Genesis Photos

It was February and Angie Levin had just driven 200 miles in the cold to take her autistic son, Cade, to his private school. She had driven five hours twice a week for five hours of schooling all year and she was exhausted. "I don't think I can physically do this anymore," she told her husband, Keith. Looking back, she says she was a "walking zombie."

But Cade was the only child with special needs in their rural Arizona public-school district and the neighboring district of Prescott was too full to take him. So they took the money they'd made from Angie's home-based business and started their own private school for autistic children in Prescott. Angie, the self-described acronym queen and a certified teacher, dubbed the school ASCEND: Autism Spectrum Center for Educational and Neurological Development. Keith, a general contractor, scrambled to bring the building up to code while Angie collected cast-off furniture from the public school and bought 25-cent chairs from Habitat for Humanity.