According to a
recent study by the American Bar Association, Washington, D.C.,
charter schools punish students of color and students with
disabilities much more harshly than their peers. Students with
disabilities are the most adversely effected. Oftentimes these
students are expelled without due process under the law.
Under the
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which guarantees that
children with disabilities have access to public education, the
student and his or her parents are entitled to a hearing where it is
determined if the misbehavior is related to the student’s disability.
If it is, the student cannot be expelled; instead a behavioral plan
must be developed to help the student.
In D.C. charter
schools, this hearing frequently does not take place, and special
needs students are then kicked out of school without the required
procedural steps being taken.
Charter schools
claim to be public schools. However, they are not held to the same
standard as traditional public schools, which are a required to abide
by IDEA. Charter schools enjoy a privileged status as institutions
that take public funds but do not fulfill the same obligations as
traditional public schools. Students are routinely expelled from
charter schools without warning, without parents receiving so much as
a phone call in advance.
This phenomenon
is not just isolated to charter schools in the country’s capital.
Many Philadelphia charter schools have a “zero tolerance” policy
when it comes to discipline, banishing students as young as 5
years old from their campuses. In Los Angeles, charter schools
notoriously educate far fewer special-education students and English
Language Learners than traditional public schools. Traditional public
schools near charters often complain of receiving the most
challenging students who were pushed out from the charter—midway
through the year.
Charters are
more interested in maintaining a good public image and facilitating
the myth of being academically superior than in educating every
student no matter how needy. They decide which children they would
like to educate and when—the antithesis of public education.
The so-called
charter school movement appeals to working-class parents’ sense of
frustration with a public education system that is underfunded and
constantly besieged. But the primary forces organizing and
instituting charter schools have the support of the country’s
wealthiest capitalists, like Bill Gates and the Walton family. The
vast majority of charter schools remain non-union. The real aim of
the financial backers of charter schools is to bust unions and weaken
public education.
Capitalism’s
twisted values—placing profit over people’s needs—result in
working-class and oppressed students being sacrificed for the
corporate agenda. Charter schools are not an acceptable alternative
to public education. Instead, schools need increased funding rather
than the budget reductions that result in teacher and
paraprofessional layoffs, cuts in essential programs and a lack of
resources. Those charter schools that do exist must be required to
accept all students, and the workers allowed to unionize. If charter
schools fail to follow through on these just demands, they must be
shut down.
