CURMUDGUCATION: Is Your Charter School A Public School?

CURMUDGUCATION: Is Your Charter School A Public School?

Is Your Charter School A Public School?

It seems to be one of the eternal questions (well, sort of a question) of the education debates-- aren't charter schools public schools? So for those folks who are still a little fuzzy on this, let me offer a handy set of questions to help you decide. Here are the signs of a public school.

Is the school and its resources owned by the public?

Who owns the building? If the school closed tomorrow, who would take possession of the building, the desks, the chairs, the books, the music stands, etc etc etc. If the physical resources of the building are owned by the public, it's probably a public school.

Does the school accept all students?

Usually when discussing this point, we get all caught up in the ways that charter schools market, cream, council out, don't offer specialized programs, and set up enrollment hoops that allow them to decide which students they will and will not take. But let's simplify this issue. Does the school accept all students? All. If they have a lottery to award seats to a select few, the answer is no, they are not a public school. No public school district gets to say, ever, "I'm sorry, we only have enough seats for fifty of you, so we'll have a lottery, and CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Is Your Charter School A Public School?

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