The eminent researcher Gene Glass notes on his blog that the purpose of charter schools, when they were first launched, was to enroll the students with the highest needs. Now, ironically, those are the students likeliest to be avoided by most charter schools.
He writes:
The great irony is that the charter school movement was launched decades ago as a solution to the “problem” that special needs students were not being adequately served by the traditional public schools. Charter schools would specialize in serving the needs of that neglected population — or so the story went. How ironic, then, that the modern charter school movement creams the top performing, largely white middle class, sector of the public school population and leaves the poor, the needy, and the minorities back in the traditional public schools.
He gives citations to prove his point.
Glass adds:
And now, irony climbs atop irony. Charter schools that have creamed high scoring students from the public schools are labeling high percentages of the students “autistic” to increase their state allotment from under $10,000 per regular student to about $20,000 per “autistic” student. And then they report no expenditures for special programs.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“And now, irony climbs atop irony. Charter schools that have creamed high scoring students from the public schools are labeling high percentages of the students “autistic” to increase their state allotment from under $10,000 per regular student to about $20,000 per “autistic” student. And then they report no expenditures for special programs.”
I’m not a lawyer but isn’t that fraud? Reporting one thing, that happens to be a lie and then doing another.
Let’s see, the teachers and administrators from Atlanta went to jail for this. will these charter school operators go to jail…….I doubt it.
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The very engine of the con game is the tendency of the mark to assume good intentions.
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We have the fox guarding the hen house.
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Reblogged this on Politicians Are Poody Heads and commented:
Charter schools continue to do things like this with no sanctions, because they have no accountability.
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The charter movement has been perverted into a greedy money making machine. In addition to pure corporate profit and tax credits, charters are springing up in urban areas to forward real estate projects and encourage gentrification. This MO is designed to turn neighborhoods near downtown areas over to developers while creating segregated schools. The poor students get the cheap charter, and the white students get the selective charter. We are enabling a system of separate and unequal schools while we drain public schools of resources for the neediest students. Charters, funded by public dollars, are being used to promote segregation. “The civil rights issue of our time,” perhaps, but not for the reasons the charter companies claim. Now that’s irony!
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You say this well. If we could only get the public to see it turned around a bit, and actually pay attention to the the fact that we are indeed “enabling a system of separate and unequal schools” — well then, maybe we could effectively point out that this moment in history where we have been allowing the slow but sure re-segregation of our schools (and society) is indeed THE CIVIL RIGHTS ISSUE OF OUR TIMES.
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