The Center for Civil Rights Remedies at UCLA conducted a national survey and concluded that charter schools suspend extraordinary numbers of black students and students with disabilities.
“Charter schools suspend students at a much higher rate than non-charter schools, some of which have suspension rates north of 70 percent. But a disproportionate amount of those suspensions fall on black students, who are four times more likely to be suspended than white students, and students with disabilities, who are twice as likely to be suspended as their non-disabled peers.
“Those are just some of the inequities highlighted in a blistering new analysis from researchers at the Center for Civil Rights Remedies at the University of California, Los Angeles.
“Notably, the data was from the 2011-2012 school year, when every one of the country’s 95,000 public schools, including charters, was required to report its discipline data.
“The report, which is the first comprehensive description of the use of suspensions by charter schools, covers 5,250 schools and focuses on out-of-school suspensions at elementary and secondary schools.
“Specifically, it examined the extent to which charter schools suspend children of color and children with disabilities at excessive and disparate rates.
“Among the many finding of the 36-page report: More than 500 charter schools suspended black students at a rate that was at least 10 percentage points higher than the rate for white students. And moreover, 1,093 charter schools suspended students with disabilities at a rate that was 10 or more percentage points higher than for students without disabilities.
“The most alarming finding, the research points out, is that 235 charter schools suspended more than 50 percent of their enrolled students with disabilities.
“In addition, while racial disparities in suspension rates between black students and white students were significant at both the elementary and secondary level, the rate exploded during secondary school, jumping from a 6.4 percent disciplinary gap to a 16.4 percent gap.
“It’s been well documented that the frequent use of suspensions, among many other things, contributes to chronic absenteeism, is correlated with lower achievement, and predicts lower graduation rates, heightened risk for grade retention, and delinquent behavior that often leads to the juvenile justice system.
“The host of findings, the researchers wrote, suggests that the excessive suspension rates are contributing to the school-to-prison pipeline and that at least some charter schools are likely violating the civil rights of students.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The Center for Civil Rights Remedies at the University of California compared charter schools to all schools throughout the United States, correct?
Diane, do you think that that is as appropriate a methodology as comparing each charter school with traditional public schools in the same general locale?
As you know, according to a report authored by Nat Malkus, who used the latter approach:
“Discipline rates are another important measure on which to compare charters and TPSs because charter opponents have argued that charters use severe disciplinary practices to “push out” undesirable students. In fact, a report by The Center for Civil Rights Remedies used the very same data as in Figure 8 and found that charters suspend students at higher rates than TPSs do. That pattern appears when charters are compared with all TPSs; however, the pattern of discipline is much more similar between charters and their neighboring public schools, casting doubt on whether charter discipline is disproportionate.
[…]
“Suspensions. Again, about half of charters were in the mid-range for suspension rates, compared to 70 percent of reference TPSs. The percentage of charters that had the highest rank was quite close to that of reference TPSs (Figure 24). In contrast, charters were the lowest ranked in terms of suspensions twice as often as reference TPSs, casting significant doubt on the frequent assertion that charter schools broadly use excessive discipline procedures.
[…]
“On the other hand, charter discipline practices are a clear example of a myth that these analyses persuasively discredit. Recently, a report by UCLA’s Center for Civil Rights Remedies used oversimplified comparisons that supported the notion that charters have higher rates of out-of-school suspension.30 Press coverage used pejorative phrases such as “the charter sneak attack” and the “school-to-prison pipeline” to describe the findings and further propagate this myth.31 Appropriate and balanced methodological critiques of the report will only do so much to push back on such generalizations.32
[…]
“These analyses, using the very same data but more careful comparisons, clearly show that the reverse is true for most charter schools. Compared to their neighboring TPSs, more charters have lower suspension rates than reference TPSs. Unbridled discipline policies are problematic in any school, but the idea that charter schools suspend students more than traditional public schools do is a myth.”
Click to access Differences-on-balance.pdf
“The most alarming finding, the research points out, is that 235 charter schools suspended more than 50 percent of their enrolled students with disabilities.”
Not only to many charters avoid taking students with disabilities, they do not understand how to effectively deal with those that do not “fit the mold.” Trained teachers know how to use a variety of strategies when working with diverse populations. These problems highlight the lack of professional educators in charge of and working in charter schools. The one size fits all “zero tolerance and no excuses” approach is harmful to students with disabilities. These charters operators would understand this if they were authentic educators.
YES. The mess we’ve made of education is premised on two failed theories: (1) that all students must be held to a one size fits all approach to behavior and (2) that all teachers must be held to a one size fits all reaction to any student behavior.
The pattern of dispossession is evident…
” We have a democracy that contradicted itself from inception. It professed that “all men” were born equal, except those un-people who were legalized chattel—the property of men who bought them. This infant democracy, too, restricted the vote to men of property, encouraging ownership by theft of lands belonging to those other un-people—the native nations. That pattern of dispossession is evident today in the systematic violence against black youth. Black men are 6.6 percent of the population; they are 40 percent of 2.3 million of the incarcerated population, up from 375.000 in 1970. Six million citizens who have served their sentences are not allowed to vote.”
Luciana Bohne (teaches at Edinboro University in Pennsylvania)
Unless contradictions are brought to a head, so that all can see, we will remain
the same.
We as a society have much work to do to figure out ways to help African American males adjust to society and develop pro-social habits without locking them up, shooting them and disenfranchising them.
War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.
Education reform is the civil rights movement of our time.
Charter schools are public schools.
Why are corporate charter schools allowed to hide so much data when the primary concept of charter schools was to loosen restrictions on teachers so they had more freedom to use different innovative methods of teaching to reach the most challenging students to teach. In fact, teachers were supposed to be in charge of those schools without top down decision making. Public charter school charters were to be unionized and managed from the bottom up so teachers had more freedom and protection to teach and make curriculum decisions as teachers do in Finland?
Instead the exact opposite has happened. The only thing that matches the orignal concept of charter schools is the use of the name “charter schools”. The original concept of charter schools didn’t not include being opaque in everything they do and making a profit while they do it hidden from public view.
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé and commented:
The only thing that matches the original concept of charter schools is the use of the name “charter schools”. The original concept of charter schools didn’t include being opaque in everything they do and making a profit while keeping every aspect of their operations hidden from public view. Unionized, public school teachers were supposed to be in charge from the bottom up, not top-down autocratic CEO’s, billionaires, and hedge funds. The original concept of charter schools was based on what’s done in Finland today, and Finland’s public schools are considered the best in the world today. Why is the United States avoiding and ignoring what works best in Finland?
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/why-are-finlands-schools-successful-49859555/?no-ist
I think it is important to add that charters regularly suspend children in Kindergarten and first grade. While it is true that public schools — especially high schools — may suspend a disproportionate number of black students and disabled students, I think that Americans would be shocked if they compared how many 5 and 6 year olds were suspended at charter schools when compared to public elementary schools. Is it 20 times as many? 30 times?
The so-called “education reform” movement, of which charter schools are the biggest profit-making part, has always had resegregation of America’s schools as a key agenda item. The fact that billionaires and hedge funds could pocket tens of millions of public tax dollars from this new kind of segregation was just a bonus. The first calls for “reform” in the form of vouchers arose immediately after the 1954 Supreme Court ruling on Brown v. Board of Education in which the Court declared that separate but equal was inherently unequal and ordered racial integration of the public schools. That ruling triggered “white flight” from public schools to private schools — but parents quickly realized that the tuition cost of private schools was more than they wanted to pay out-of-pocket. That realization led political and private resegregationists to the concoct the “reform” of vouchers, and to sell it to eager parents by deceptively marketing it then (and now) as merely giving parents free “choice.”
But the 1950’s voucher reform faded away when it became clear that because of school attendance boundaries no more than a few token blacks would be attending formerly all-white public schools. In 1972 when the Supreme Court finally ordered busing to end the ongoing de facto segregation, the reform movement rose from its grave and has been alive ever since then trying new tactics to restore racial segregation because it’s unlikely that the Court’s racial integration order can ever be reversed. When it became clear in the 1980’s that vouchers would never become widespread, the segregationists tried many other routes to restore racial segregation, and the most successful has been charter schools because charter schools can be sold to blithely unaware do-gooder billionaires as well as to unscrupulous profiteers who recognized charter schools as a way to divert vast amounts of tax money into their own pockets and into the pockets of supportive politicians at every level of government.
And now, reports from the NAACP and ACLU reveal the facts about just how charter schools are resegregating our nation’s schools, as well as discriminating racially and socioeconomically against American children. Very detailed nationwide research by The Center for Civil Rights Remedies at UCLA shows in clear terms that charter schools also suspend extraordinary numbers of black students and students with disabilities.
An essential part of the strategy to mask their underlying motives has been for segregationists to sell the public on the necessity for charter schools because public schools are allegedly “failing.” With all manner of “research” that essentially compares apples to oranges against foreign nations’ students, and with the self-fulfilling prophecy of dismal public school performance generated by drastic underfunding of public schools, and with condemnation of public school teachers based on statistically invalid student test scores, the segregationists are succeeding in resegregating education in America via what are basically private charter schools that are funded with public money.
And now the Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Education has issued a warning that charter schools posed a risk to the Department of Education’s own goals. The report says: “Charter schools and their management organizations pose a potential risk to federal funds even as they threaten to fall short of meeting the goals” because of the financial fraud, the skimming of tax money into private pockets that is the reason why hedge funds are the main backers of charter schools.
The Washington State and New York State supreme courts and the National Labor Relations Board have ruled that charter schools are not public schools because they aren’t accountable to the public since they aren’t governed by publicly-elected boards and aren’t subdivisions of public government entities, in spite of the fact that some state laws enabling charter schools say they are government subdivisions.
Charter schools are clearly private schools, owned and operated by private entities and must (1) be required by law to be governed by school boards elected by the voters so that they are accountable to the public; (2) a charter school entity must legally be a subdivision of a publicly-elected governmental body; (3) charter schools should be required to file the same detailed public-domain audited annual financial reports under penalty of perjury that genuine public schools file; and, (4) anything a charter school buys with the public’s money should be the public’s property.
NO FEDERAL MONEY SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO GO TO CHARTER SCHOOLS THAT FAIL TO MEET THESE MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS OF ACCOUNTABILITY TO THE PUBLIC. Hillary Clinton could, if elected President, on day one in office issue an Executive Order to the Department of Education to do just that. Tell her today to do that! Send her the above information to make certain she knows about the Inspector General’s findings and about the abuses being committed by charter schools.