Yes, some charter schools do pick their students. It’s not a myth. - The Washington Post

Yes, some charter schools do pick their students. It’s not a myth. - The Washington Post

Yes, some charter schools do pick their students. It’s not a myth.

This is a rebuttal to a recent column by The Washington Post’s Jay Mathews, who has long written in support of charter schools and who, last month, penned a piece calling it a myth that charter schools can pick and choose students.

The issue is part of a long-running national debate on charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately operated and are a key part of the school choice movement. Critics say that some charter schools limit access to students who they believe can succeed in their schools. Mathews and many other charter school boosters say these schools don’t do that.

This piece, which notes that at least one charter network conceded doing it, was written by Kevin Welner, director of the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Welner is the co-author of several books on school law, including the 2019 law school casebook “Education and the Law.” He is also author of “NeoVouchers: The Emergence of Tuition Tax Credits for Private Schooling,” and he co-wrote, with Wagma Mommandi, a book that will be published in the fall titled, “Controlled Access,” which investigates student access to charter schools.

By Kevin Welner

Washington Post columnist Jay Mathews recently published a piece he titled, “Can charter schools pick the best students? No, but many believe the myth.” Matthews is wrong. Charters’ cherry-picking of students is reality, not myth — as his own article demonstrates. And this cherry-picking can take many forms.

In a nutshell, Mathews contends that charters can’t pick their students, since applicants to over-enrolled schools are almost always chosen via lotteries. But the piece fails to address the truth that such lotteries involve just one small part of the enrollment process.

Charter schools, like other businesses, have many different models for influencing the composition of their customers, and these approaches become more dominant (and creative) as the incentives to shape CONTINUE READING: Yes, some charter schools do pick their students. It’s not a myth. - The Washington Post