> Charter schools where I live are required to educate every child. Admissions is via lottery. Is that not the case where you live?
Here they’re required to educate BUT they can do a lot to deter expensive students. If they don’t have support staff, kids with special needs won’t apply. If they require a test to advance grades, those kids will leave. If they require lots of homework, anyone without a nanny or stay-at-home parent and lots of support will leave.
My wife used to teach at one of those schools and it followed an arc over a decade where they started claiming they were cheaper but once they added the legally required support staff they were only cheaper to the extent that they paid their staff less by hiring young teachers and burning them out before they got old enough to expect better pay or have major health insurance expenses.
That is basically the arc of every charter school: every few years you’ll hear about someone doing miracles on a tight budget, but over time it’ll either disappear as regression to the mean sets in or turn out to be some form of selection to avoid expensive children. There just isn’t one weird trick an entire profession has somehow missed.
Here they’re required to educate BUT they can do a lot to deter expensive students. If they don’t have support staff, kids with special needs won’t apply. If they require a test to advance grades, those kids will leave. If they require lots of homework, anyone without a nanny or stay-at-home parent and lots of support will leave.
My wife used to teach at one of those schools and it followed an arc over a decade where they started claiming they were cheaper but once they added the legally required support staff they were only cheaper to the extent that they paid their staff less by hiring young teachers and burning them out before they got old enough to expect better pay or have major health insurance expenses.
That is basically the arc of every charter school: every few years you’ll hear about someone doing miracles on a tight budget, but over time it’ll either disappear as regression to the mean sets in or turn out to be some form of selection to avoid expensive children. There just isn’t one weird trick an entire profession has somehow missed.