Take that, charter schools: Why a Washington court decision will force accountability to a movement that needs it badly
Charter schools will be accountable when they are just as transparent as public schools. Now it might happen
The recent ruling by the Supreme Court of Washington state that charter schools are unconstitutional because they aren’t really public schools has sent advocates for these schools into a fit. But their often over-the-top criticisms of the decision are reflective of what is most often misunderstood about the charter school sector and what that industry has come to represent in the political debate about public schools.
First, about the ruling: As Emma Brown of the Washington Post reports, “Washington state’s Supreme Court has become the first in the nation to decide that taxpayer-funded charter schools are unconstitutional, reasoning that charters are not truly public schools because they aren’t governed by elected boards and therefore not accountable to voters.”
Brown explains how voters in the state previously rejected charter schools on two ballot initiatives only to see an initiative pass on the third attempt, in 2012, when awho’s who of billionaires – including Bill Gates and members of the Walton (Walmart) and Bezos (Amazon) families – donated millions of dollars to ensure passage. Today, there are nine charter schools in Washington serving about 1,200 students.
The court’s 6-to-3 ruling, Brown explains, relies “on a century-old precedent that defined ‘common schools,’ or public schools, as those that are ‘common to all children of proper age and capacity, free, and subject to and under the control of the qualified voters of the school district.’”
The Washington court’s ruling certainly didn’t catch education historian Diane Ravitch by surprise. On her personal blog, she points to a letter from Parents Across America, a parent-led advocacy group supporting locally operated public schools, that explained to the state superintendent, over two years ago, “Charter schools would not meet the definition of ‘common schools’” in the state constitution.
Nevertheless, charter school advocates seethed.
Early out of the gate to object to the ruling was the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal whose headline blared, ” The Judges Who Stole School Choice.” The editors’ opprobrium continued, “The liberal majority’s real concern is preserving the union monopoly … Charter schools are public schools too.”
At the blog site of the right-wing Thomas B. Fordham Institute, the director the University of Washington’s Center on Reinventing Public Education called the ruling a “decision only the Kremlin could love.”
But anyone with a clear understanding of the issues – rather than a charter school advocacy job bankrolled by billionaires – could see this ruling coming from a mile away.
Why Charter Schools Aren’t Really “Public” Schools
As the Post’s Brown reported, the Washington’s court’s ruling “highlights a question that has spurred much debate in education circles as charter schools – which are funded with taxpayer dollars, but run by independent organizations – have expanded rapidly during the past two decades: What makes a public school public?”
To critics of the charter school sector, the very idea of calling charter schools “public” schools makes about as much sense as calling defense contractors “public” companies. The fact these entities get taxpayer money does not mean they are “public.”
For years, education law and finance scholars have warned that the legal status of charter schools is on shaky ground. In 2012, Rutgers University professor Bruce Baker asked, on his personal blog, “Charter Schools Are… [Public? Private? Neither? Both?].”
Baker notes, first, that charter schools differ from public schools, in most statutory law, because they have limited public access. Unlike public schools, charter schools “can define the number of enrollment slots they wish to make available … admit Take that, charter schools: Why a Washington court decision will force accountability to a movement that needs it badly - Salon.com:
