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Charter schools are public schools.

Charter schools cannot be selective.




It is. They can't put it in bold, but they can avoid special ed evaluations and services, have policies that make undesirable students repeat grades so their family will put them elsewhere, and more. It's just very much "unofficial."


This is simply not true.


It is 100% true in California. See the following government web page:

https://www.cde.ca.gov/sp/ch/cefcharterschools.asp

  A charter school is a public school that may provide instruction in any combination of grades (transitional kindergarten through grade twelve).

  A charter school shall admit all students who wish to attend the school; however, if the number of students exceeds the school's capacity, attendance shall be determined by a public random drawing.


That's the thing with on-paper rights... there is always a way around denying undesirables their rights. Be it onerous voter ID requirements as a tactic of vote suppression, onerous requirements for paperwork and apply systems [1] or kafkaesque processes [2] to make it harder to get unemployment insurance, or in schools looking away at instances of bullying that aren't outright violence, unfair grading and other forms of retaliation.

[1] https://bipartisanpolicy.org/blog/administrative-failures-pl...

[2] https://www.legalaiddc.org/blogs/client-spotlight-unemployme...


That isn’t different from a choice public school, at least in the surface. I would never call these schools charter, however.


Magnet and charter schools have a lot in common. You could look at state charter school statutes as encouraging school districts to be proactive about setting up academy model and magnet schools.


One could look at it that way, sure, but the people that put in these policies are specifically trying to lower taxes by dismantling public education.


No, that doesn’t reflect the situation. Charters enshrine the public school revenue by allocating some of it to “better” schools. They make it harder to lower school district revenue as they (in the eyes of parents) make the established system work better.


That is not the stated goal of charter schools. They openly state private business can do better than government.


That’s different than aiming to reduce district tax levied. I’ve read a variety of statements from charters themselves, including that one. There are also proposals to privatize administration of school districts using the same reasoning. In education, no matter who is speaking, typically the focus is on performance, retaining teachers and meeting more diverse student needs.




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