Charter Schools Choose Parents and Students, Not the Other Way Around
Charter school supporters never tire of promoting the consumerist free market notion of “choice.” They have always seen society as a dog-eat-dog world in which parents and students are consumers who fend-for-themselves as they shop for a school that may or may not accept them. In this antisocial view, schools are considered commodities, just like any other commodity in the “free market.” Education is not viewed as a basic, socially-organized human responsibility and right.
Charter school advocates claim that one of the reasons charter schools are great is because parents are “free” to “choose” a charter school for their child, implying that there is some sort of voluntary action being taken by very well-informed individuals to enroll their child in a charter school. According to this narrative, charter schools play no role in determining who gets into a charter school, who stays, and who gets “pushed out.”
It is well-known, however, that nonprofit and for-profit charter schools, which are usually poorly supervised, consistently and deliberately under-enroll students with disabilities, English Language Learners, homeless students, and many other students. Charter schools routinely cherry-pick their students and practice a range of ways to remove “undesirable” students from school.
In this connection, charter schools also often require parents to sign a contract to: (1) volunteer to undertake some kind of work the school will not hire CONTINUE READING: Charter Schools Choose Parents and Students, Not the Other Way Around | Dissident Voice
