EduShyster interviewed Preston Green, who has studied the legal status of charter schools and published scholarly articles on the subject.
Green points out out in the interview that a major difference between public schools and charter schools is the rights of students. The constitutional rights of charter students are significantly less than those of students in public schools.
Dr. Green points out that charter schools have a different legal status than public schools.
EduShyster writes:
“Dr. Green warns that both state and federal courts have issued rulings stating that students in charters do not have the same due process rights as public-school students. So what does this mean for cities like Los Angeles where a dramatic expansion of charter schools is on the table? *Half of the publicly-funded schools in Los Angeles might be legally permitted to ‘dismiss’ students without due process.* says Dr. Green. *We have to ask ourselves if such a scenario is acceptable.*
“I asked Dr. Green to explain some recent court rulings on student rights, and how they relate to the larger debate over whether charter schools are public or private entities. Take it away, Dr. Green. Court is in session…
By Preston Green
“Charter advocates claim that charter schools are *public schools* because *they are open to all, do not charge tuition, and do not have special entrance requirements.* But what about student rights? State and federal courts have issued rulings suggesting that students attending California charter schools do not have the same due process rights as those enjoyed by public-school students. In Scott B. v. Board of Trustees of Orange County High School of Arts, a state appellate court found that charter schools were exempt from due process procedures that applied to public-school expulsions. In reaching this conclusion, the court observed that the state education code generally exempted charter schools from rules that applied to traditional public schools, and the expulsion statute was one of those rules.”
In short, students check their constitutional rights at the charter school door.
So, if students in charters don’t have the same due process rights as public school students, does that also include the special education students who are not getting federally mandated services or are being expelled, despite the Education For All Handicapped Children Act?
The whole thing stinks. If the charters are receiving public funds, then they should be subject to the same oversight and student due process requirements that public schools are.
If they don’t want to be subjected to this, then they should not receive public money.
Let Bill Gates, the Waltons, Eli Broad, et al, fund the charters. Not the taxpayers.
Reblogged this on Politicians Are Poody Heads and commented:
The rules that public schools are required to follow don’t seem to apply to the publicly funded charters. That ain’t right. They’re getting taxpayer dollars, they should be required to follow the same rules as public schools.
But when they’re dismissed they’ll have an “online portal” to find another school, so it doesn’t matter 🙂
I think this is a great reaction to the fact that this state has decided to completely ignore public schools:
“State schools chief Randy Dorn says he’s weighing a run for governor as an independent, arguing that neither Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee nor Republicans are living up to their duty to fund public schools.
Dorn, who recently announced he won’t seek a third term as superintendent of public instruction, said in an interview he’s leaning toward entering the 2016 gubernatorial race, if only to prod Inslee and Republican challenger Bill Bryant on education funding.”
Give people an actual choice on public education instead of the R and D consensus where they pretend there’s some difference for 8 weeks in the late summer and fall every 4 years and never get around to funding.
http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/state-schools-chief-randy-dorn-may-run-for-governor-as-independent/
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé and commented:
Expert says, “The constitutional rights of charter students are significantly less than those of students in public schools.”
If truth in advertising were the norm when it came to corporate education reform advocacy and claims…
This particular posting would be flooded with fanboys and girls of rheephorm vigorously denouncing George Orwell’s ANIMAL FARM as an anti-charter screed.
😎
“The constitutional rights of charter students are significantly less than those of students in public schools.”
The same can be said of teachers and parents. Parents have a lot of power when it comes to their children in the public schools but not in the publicly funded, private sector, for profit, charters. I’ve read repeatedly that when parents complain to these charters, they are offered the option to pull their child out and go elsewhere. IF they don’t take the option and keep complaining, the charter rejects the child.
And that is the way the private sector works. If you don’t like the way a for-profit company does business, that company reserves the right to refuse to do business with you and often suggests to the consumer to shop from someone else.
Choice is a two way street in the private sector. Consumers choose who they do business with and buy from and business reserve the right to refuse service to customers they don’t like within reason. If the business doesn’t like the customer’s complains, then they are offered the door out.
Charters are hybrid entities that cry public when it suits them and private when they want to obscure what they are doing. Most charter laws are reckless in that they often provide little oversight or accountability. There are reasons most public schools get periodic inspections, and there are laws that protect children from an unsafe environment. Detroit, in my opinion, is the grotesque exception of government failure and not the rule. This public-private status of charters has negative implications for the safety, well being and rights of both students and staff. Parents need to understand that, for the most part, their voice has been diminished in a a charter school , and they are in most cases turning their children over to a corporation. They should think twice about making such a dramatic, undemocratic “choice.”
There are multiple groups in CA trying to make changes to our charter school laws. It is a little known fact that charter schools in CA can hire “teachers” without not only a credential but even those without a Bachelors Degree. Please sign this petition: http://reformcharterschools.org/
This is just silly:
“Public Charter Schools President Nina Rees (whose organization has worked with my employer on numerous projects and who writes for U.S. News) told the Atlantic, “We are disappointed that [Sanders] continues to be confused about the tax statue of charter schools since it is legally impossible to run a for-profit charter school in this country.”
She’s making a distinction between the “operator” who can gets 93% in states like Ohio and Michigan and makes ALL operational decisions and “the school”, the legal entity.
They’re now going to just flatly deny there are for-profit charter schools by relying on legal definitions and “tax status” no ordinary person cares about? They’re not only redefining what “public” means until it’s unrecognizable but also redefining “non profit”?
All bets are off now. Words have no meaning. All schools can be run by for-profits and charter proponents will call them whatever they feel like calling them.
Do they now back for-profits? Is this like vouchers where they mislead the public by funneling money thru a tax scheme and insist they’re “vouchers”? Where are the lines? Non-existent?
I’ve decided I’m for privatizing my entire government, all levels. If we can’t have public schools they can’t have public governance. Hire contractors. Replace all of them with contract employees- 1099’s. That’s a “tax status” they should all get to know. It’s very disruptive. I’m sure they’ll embrace it.
I’m sure they’ll love having to shell out money directly for police and fire services. Say your house is on fire. The fire company roars up. If you can’t give them the fee for their services, and you don’t have a contract with them, too bad, so sad, they let your house burn down. Same thing with police.
And I’m sure everyone would be just thrilled to pay tolls on every single road they drive on, because, don’t you know, they’re all privately owned and maintained now.
And on and on and on.
Yeh, I’m sure they’ll embrace it. Why not? If privatization is “good” for the schools, it ought to be “good” for everything, right?
(And, BTW, get used to your privatized Social Security and Medicare, as well, which too many Republicans, and more than a few Democrats, want to see. The stock market is down, the banks are not doing well, and your SS investments have failed? Again, too bad, so sad. Go eat cat food and live under a bridge.)
The social contract that a well-ordered, democratic society depends upon is being increasingly eroded in this country. If it’s not making somebody a lot of money, forget about it. 😦
(Okay, yes, I’m feeling really down right now.)
Consider the source. Arch-reactionary Nina Rees was a long-time deputy assistant to Dick Cheney. NAPCS figured anyone that could lie about torture, could lie about charter schools, and they were right.
Here’s the denial that there are for-profit charter schools:
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/knowledge-bank/articles/2016-03-17/bernie-sanders-speaks-to-broader-confusion-about-charter-schools
Last I heard they opposed for-profit charter schools. Now apparently for-profits are a-ok because there is actually no difference!
Ditto for students’ right to be taught by a credentialed teacher and teachers’ rights to at least a semblance of due process.
Professor Green’s work is authoritative. Having a legal scholar of his caliber revealing the very ugly, dark secrets of the privately managed charter industry is something that this law student hopes to emulate once they become an attorney.
Arguments about whether charter schools are public schools are definitional arguments, i.e. arguments about what the term “public schools” means or should mean. That argument is more difficult to settle than, for instance, an argument about whether a 501(c)(3) corporation is a government unit (it is not).
Jed Wallace, the CEO of the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA), gave the keynote address at the CCSA’s convention last week.
CCSA CEO Jed Wakkace started blathering about how his future lawyer teenage daughter and he were bemoaning the lack of “reasonable equality” in charter schools which co-locate on public school campuses.
He was trying to make this some kind of heart-warming charter-school-promoting story about how the CCSA is about making sure “absolutely every child” gets a quality education.
Needless to say, I went off in the COMMENTS section, and cited the Preston Greene article to back it up.
In less than an hour, someone at CCSA deleted my COMMENT from YouTube, then later on, disabled the COMMENTS section, so no one could comment.
Here it is: (a little over-the-top, but writing at posting was cathartic)
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(first to COMMENT … see how long this stays before being removed)
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Jed,
Your daughter and you are kvetching about wanting “reasonably equivalent facilities” for your CCSSA charter schools, yet you simultaneously seem to be against “reasonable equality” in other aspects of education.
To wit, parents whose children have been booted out (err… counseled out) of CCSA charter schools sued these charter school officials —- CCSA members, of course —- because, when giving them the boot, the school officials did not afford those students the same due process rights as those in the traditional public schools. They wanted a judge to compel California charter schools to make charter school students”reasonably equivalent” with public school students when it comes todue process in expulsions.
And what did CCSA’s lawyers do?
They argued in court that charter schools were “private entities” and, as such, had no legal obligation to provide any due process to students, making them the analogous equivalent of the “at will” teachers who teach at charter schools. If the charter school people don’t like you for whatever reason (extra cost, being troublesome in some way, low test scores, Special Ed., immigrant who’s brand new to learning English, homeless, foster care, etc.) .. you’re gone, baby, gone… and there’s nothing that the parent or the child can do about it.
Why don’t you chew on that sad legal and educational reality with your future lawyer daughter that you’re bragging so much about about in your speech?
Jed, if and when you and your daughter question your consciences in the dark hours of the night, and consider this specious charter school policy, will your daughter think or believe that you and the CCSA are the “good guys’, or that your are on “the side of the angels” when you and your CCSA legal team makes such a repellent legal argument?
In response to this, in Sacramento, a law was being considered that would compel charter schools to provide their students the same legal rights to a due process that their counterparts in the traditional public schools enjoy.
What did you and CCSA do?
True to form, you flooded the relevant politicians with lobbyists in an all-hands-on-deck maneuver to kill, or at least block this legislation, and it worked. It’s been temporarily tabled. … so as a result, you can throw as many kids in the metaphorical trash all you like, and not have to answer for it.
Way to go! You guys are all about the kids!
Regarding those students who are dumped by charter schools like so much trash, where do you think they end up? At the traditional public schools that you and the CCSA love to malign so much. I’m teaching three of these charter school dumpees myself right now, including one who, along with a her mother and siblings, lives a nomadic existence going from shelter to shelter…
… and you know what, Jed?
She shows up to my class every day feeling the little security she has in life, knowing full well that neither I nor my principal are going to kick her to curb when the issues and circumstances of her life manifest themselves — in being late for school, or in her acting out with bad behavior or her low test scores… or whatever.
In other words, when it comes to my moral obligations as an educator, I can sleep at night.
How about you?
How about your fellow charter school CEO’s in that audience?
How about those teachers who work in your charters and who do not fulfill these same moral obligations to students in the manner that my fellow public school teachers and I do?
Indeed, how DO YOU charter honchos sleep at night?
Oh, I know… on a bed full of money (I stole that from Don Draper — “Babylon” — SEASON ONE, MAD MEN).
Regarding this dual standard for due process that charters school officials’ claim for their schools, I recommend this article by Dr. Preston Green (posted on Jennifer “Edushyster”
Berkshire’s blog) :
http://edushyster.com/signing-their-rights-away/
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PRESTON GREEN: “Charter advocates claims that charter schools are public schools because they are open to all, do not charge tuition, and do not have special entrance requirements.
“But what about student rights? State and federal courts have issued rulings suggesting that students attending California charter schools do not have the same due process rights as those enjoyed by public-school students.
“In Scott B. v. Board of Trustees of Orange County High School of Arts, a state appellate court found that charter schools were exempt from due process procedures that applied to public-school expulsions. In reaching this conclusion, the court observed that the state education code generally exempted charter schools from rules that applied to traditional public schools, and the expulsion statute was one of those rules.”