“He would be suspended, multiple times in a week, over and over,” an attorney who represents charter school students in Boston said of his client, a six-year-old with ADHD. The student’s school, while not directly rejecting his enrollment because of his mental health disorder, made it difficult for him to attend classes.
Something that is public should be broadly accessible. And charter schools, in many ways, are far from public.
This is a trend that we found in charter schools across the country: Although they rarely decline to accept a student, they can, and sometimes do, use a variety of means—such as suspensions, application hurdles, and minimum GPAs—to limit access to their classrooms.
Charter schools now enroll more than three million students nationwide. While many locally created charter schools serve their communities in caring and culturally responsive ways, as a whole, the charter school sector has raised serious concerns about a wide range of issues, often linked to privatization. These include a lack of transparency and accountability, which not only cover up instances of fraud and corruption, but also harmful practices like “pushout discipline.”
Other concerns include the fiscal burden that charter schools place on neighboring public schools, and how so-called creaming of students may perpetuate segregation and stratification within communities.
Advocates for charter school expansion insist on using the term “public charter schools.” But something that is public—whether it’s a public street, a public park, or a public school—should be broadly accessible. And charter schools, in many ways, are far from public.
This was our premise when we decided to study access issues in charter schools, and it is the premise of our new book about that study, School’s Choice: How Charter Schools Control Access and Shape Enrollment.
The book describes thirteen access-limiting practices that take place before, during and after a child is enrolled in a charter school. These practices begin when the charter school is just in development, with decisions about location and marketing. Then, during the application process, charters can encourage or discourage enrollment in subtle and manipulative ways—since their classification as “public” limits their ability to blatantly turn away students. Even after students are enrolled, many charters have in place policies that actively determine who stays and who leaves.
Consider some examples. The description and design of a school, its location, and its approach to marketing and advertising are three access-related practices that arise before enrollment, each of which has the potential to shape a charter school’s pool of applicants. LISA Academy, a charter school in Little Rock, Arkansas, a compelling example of how charter schools can use marketing and advertising. In 2016, after being cleared for expansion, LISA sent recruitment mailers to nearby zip codes, except for the three zip codes that encompassed the heavily Black and Latinx parts of town, with the highest concentration of low-income housing.
Five additional access-related practices emerge during the enrollment process placing conditions on applications, placing conditions on enrollment; steering potential enrollees away, requiring parents to volunteer, and lacking services for groups of students with different levels of need, such as those needing special education, subsidized meals, or services for students who are emerging bilinguals (whose first language is not English).
Parents interested in enrolling their children at Green Woods Charter School in northwest Philadelphia explained that they could only get an application to the school if they attended an open house that was held at a private golf club in the suburbs. The required in-person visit by Green Woods is one of several conditions that are placed on applications. Charter operators know, or should know, that applications that are long and burdensome, that have early deadlines or that include entrance assessments will intentionally discourage potential applicants.
Another five access-restricting practices take place after students have enrolled in a charter school: counseling students out, policies related to minimum GPAs and grade retention, harsh disciplinary regimes, charging fines and fees that go beyond the ordinary, and avoiding students who are more transitory by choosing not to replace (or “backfill”) the seats of students who leave.
This effectively places some charters off limits for many children, including those who are already poorly served and vulnerable.
Students enrolled in Chicago’s Noble Network of charter schools faced a harsh disciplinary regime that included exorbitant fines and fees. In 2014, The Chicago Tribune reported that the network had been charging students’ families—mostly low-income Black and Latinx students—five dollars per detention and an additional 140 dollars to attend a discipline class after accruing thirteen. The school would also charge students with fines after they accumulated four “demerits,” which were imposed for transgressions like bringing a permanent marker to school, failing to sit up straight in class, being tardy, or not properly or completely wearing the school uniform.
These practices are often multiple and cumulative for any given charter school. This effectively places some charters off limits for many children, including those who are already poorly served and vulnerable.
Free-market theorists seem to have overlooked the core competitive realities facing operators of charter schools. Yes, they want to compete to enroll students, but the incentives in place are more specific: to enroll high-scoring, easy-to-teach students who do not require extra resources. As long as charter schools face pressures to produce higher test scores, keep costs down, and minimize peer disruptions, incentives will push them to recruit a narrow range of students.
For this to change, the entire charter school system must change; it’s time for all “public charter schools” to actually start behaving like public institutions.