As parents and students across Chicago know, and as academic research confirms, the results of these extreme discipline policies have been disastrous.(Jon Krause illustration / February 22, 2012)

By Jasmine Sarmiento and Julie Woestehoff

February 23, 2012

If you don't like it, you can leave.

That's the line of defense that Noble Network of Charter Schools' supporters have fallen back on in the wake of research showing that the rapidly expanding charter school network has made almost $400,000 in disciplinary fines imposed on low-income students and their parents.

Many Noble students leave the school before their senior year, some forced to choose between bus fare and their education by a discipline code that fines them for bringing chips to school or chewing gum. Students and their parents are coming to us with stories of financial hardship, of repeating an entire school year for discipline reasons, and of fines incurred for behavior like "running a pencil alongside the edge of a desk."