The Games Charter Schools Play
Judging by the claims made by charters, one would think it but child's play to make good on their boast of having higher test scores than their public-school cousins.
Charters' ability to deliver on their promise of achieving higher scores is, after all, their sole reason for existing and the only justification for their annually diverting billions of dollars from public schools.
However, before reviewing the evidence that refutes their claims, let us first consider how charters go about "gaming the system" to their own advantage.
With few exceptions, charters cherry-pick their students, admitting only those students who do well on tests.
Rarely, do they accept students with learning disabilities, emotional disorders, autism, ADHD, speech or language impairment, behavioral problems, or immigrant children still learning English, since these students tend to test poorly and would lower a charter's overall average.
Public schools, conversely, are legally required to accept every student who walks through their doors.
Such a discriminatory admissions policy hardly makes for an honest playing field.
However, sometimes, a few students who do test poorly are accepted, and only later then asked to leave after a charter has received the public-school money that comes with these students.
The problem is that when these students return to their schools, the money that came with them stays with the charters, causing hardship to those public schools, which must unfairly absorb the loss.
Despite this practice of charters' "creaming off" the better test-takers and rejecting the rest, a Stanford University study last year showed that 19/31 percent of children in charters still get lower scores in reading and math than those in public schools; 56/40 percent receive roughly the same scores; and only 25/29 percent achieve higher scores.
Hardly a bravura performance for charters, especially when they've weakened public schools by billions annually!
Please note that this 25/29 percent with higher scores embodies the unfair tactic of charters' admitting only those who test well, whereas public schools must accept every student, without exception.
This 25/29 percent is hardly then the result of charters'providing a superior program, as it is of their unfairly gaming the system, and it is upon such dubious legal, not to mention moral, grounds that charters divert billions from public schools to themselves.
More to the point, it is hard to see how this discriminatory admissions policy is legally justified when charters accept taxpayer dollars, which require them to accept everyone.
Charters play a second game. They seem to have a curious split-personality whenever it suits them. In one breath, they claim to be public schools entitled to taxpayer The Games Charter Schools Play | Frank Breslin:
