EduShyster reports that three of the city’s leading law firms have filed a lawsuit to overturn the state’s cap on the number of charter schools.
The irony is that they are suing the state and the state board of education, which are led by charter advocates.
She writes:
So our defendants in a case alleging that the charter cap is a violation of students’ civil rights also happen to be wildly pro proponents of lifting said cap. Are there any other ways in which this case is in fact the opposite of what it purports to be? Funny you should ask…It turns out that the case has nothing to with individual rights period—it’s actually a separation of powers case that will hinge on the concept of *justiciability.* I will tell you no more about this now as we have officially stumbled onto a terrain in which I am *needs improvement.* But suffice it to say that this is yet another reason for the decided lack of enthusiasm that beshrouds this case. You see, our white-shod friends have accidentally raised a topic that our proponent-defendants would prefer to eschew: the increasingly unequal state of school funding in Massachusetts, and the role that charter schools play in exacerbating that inequality, especially in poor districts.
Remember the line about charter schools saving poor kids from failing schools? Here is the irony. Massachusetts is the highest performing state in the nation. As more charter schools are opened, more school districts will lose students and resources.
The Bay State–or at least its current leaders–seem determined to create a fiscal crisis for underfunded districts and a two-tier system of schools with public funds. One free to choose its students, the other required to enroll all students.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“He didn’t say it quite that way. In fact, Baker made it a point to emphasize the superb teaching available in the traditional public schools.
“If Massachusetts were a country, we would be top-5 in the world in science. We have a lot of great teachers all over the system,” he said.
What he also said was that traditional public education could take a page from what charter schools are doing well.
“I am willing to look at things a little differently on (the formula for) charter school funding,’ he said, while also promising to continue promoting local aid and seeking ways to support public schools in creative ways.”
It’s the phrasing they all use: “plus/and not either/or!” but that is never the way it actually plays out because that isn’t reality- it’s a slogan. It sounds great when he says it and it sounds great when Duncan says it but if charters are the priority (and with all this high powered lobbying they are clearly the priority) than they will be the focus of attention. It’s happened in my state. “Choice” so dominates discussion and “movement” activists so dominate state lawmakers that public schools are treated as a kind of duty they’d rather not deal with it all. look at Jeb Bush’s campaign statements and try to find “public schools” mentioned. It’s as if they don’t exist.
I also think it’s interesting (and an indication of the preference for charters in states run by ed reformers) that they think learning only works one way. Apparently there is no public school in that state that could possibly teach a charter school anything. They don’t even hear the bias in so much of what they say.
I am happy to see challenges to the inequity of having a two tiered system, especially when minority students are being targeted, sorted, then many discarded when they don’t have “grit,” or perhaps even food in their stomachs. It is an unfair system that undermines the democratic principles that shepherd public education. I also think the subtractive formulas to public education should be scrutinized. In Pennsylvania public schools should not go bankrupt due to charter school expansion. When legislators pass laws, they rarely understand the consequences of their actions. Even if they do understand the consequences, these need to be challenged, particularly if these changes step on others’ rights to an equitable education.
If the governor is attending charter school rallies and promoting lawsuits to lift caps and not also working on equitably funding public schools then the governor is making a choice and he has a responsibility to voters to admit that. This idea that as long as they say the right words and insist they’re “agnostics” we’ll all accept that assertion is just not reality. It’s great for their political campaigns, because everybody gets everything they want in this “plus/and!” fantasy world, but refusing to admit there’s a preference because that’s politically expedient is not the same as supporting public schools. If he’s a zealous advocate for charter schools and an “agnostic” on public schools, public schools don’t have an advocate. He’s choosing.
Is that like “truthiness”?
How many of the charter schools, particularly those run by for-profit entities, openly welcome and enroll the disabled? The severely learning disabled, the intellectually handicapped, the emotionally disturbed? I’m not saying that all public schools do a great job with this population (many public schools are still failing them), but at least they are required by law to provide an education for them.
Do all the charters do the same? For that matter, do they willingly admit kids who suffer from extreme poverty, kids who may have behavioral problems? And if they do admit them, do they do their best to work with them, or do they jettison them back to the public schools, as being “too disruptive”?
At least in my state, the answer is no! All charters have to do here is to say that they “can’t provide” the specific practitioners in speech, occupational therapy, physical therapy, etc. Charters aren’t required to provide for kids with severe disabilities.
So basically, the charters get to cherry-pick their students, leaving the disabled, those with learning problems of any kind, those with behavioral issues, and so on, back in the decreasingly-funded public schools.
How nice for the charters. And how tragic for all the kids, whether in public schools or charter schools. They are increasingly becoming pawns in the public school vs. charter school/Common Core/testing-above-all mess.
For more than 40 years the METCO program has been getting good results, and it has also had a long waiting list. I wonder if these lawyers, most of whom live in Wellesley, ever considered the 15,000 students who would be happy to attend Wellesley public schools? Do you suppose that they are also working to fight the arbitrary METCO caps that prevent all those kids from going to school in affluent suburbs?
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