D.C. charter schools expel students at far higher rates than traditional public schools

[Redfairen]

The District’s public charter schools have expelled students at a far higher rate than the city’s traditional public schools in recent years, according to school data, highlighting a key difference between two sectors that compete for the District’s students and taxpayer dollars.

D.C. charter schools expelled 676 students in the past three years, while the city’s traditional public schools expelled 24, according to a Washington Post review of school data. During the 2011-12 school year, when charters enrolled 41 percent of the city’s students, they removed 227 children for discipline violations and had an expulsion rate of 72 per 10,000 students; the District school system removed three and had an expulsion rate of less than 1 per 10,000 students.

The discrepancy underscores the freedom that charters — publicly funded schools that operate independently of the traditional school system — have from school system policies. That autonomy defines the charter movement and gives its schools considerable latitude to decide what student behavior they will — and won’t — tolerate.

Parents and activists say some charters expel excessively and with little oversight, shedding disruptive students who then end up enrolling mid-year in the traditional school system, which is legally bound to take them.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/dc-charter-schools-expel-students-at-far-higher-rates-than-traditional-public-schools/2013/01/05/e155e4bc-44a9-11e2-8061-253bccfc7532_story.html?hpid=z2

[duffyduff]

1. The media needs to quit characterizing these charters as "public" schools. They are not.

They are private schools in every sense of the word. Just because an outfit siphons public money, that doesn't make the outfit a public institution.

There is a lot more to being a public school than getting taxpayer money.

[proud2BlibKansan]

3. They are funded with our PUBLIC tax dollars

As long as that is the case, I'm calling them public schools.

[Recursion]

5. They have a level of oversight that private schools don't

And they have to accept all applicants (actually they have to be less selective than the traditional neighborhood schools).

The expulsion or "counseling out" thing is a problem.

That said, charters are here to stay in DC. The parents want them, and the district is absolutely broken and has been for years.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

2. From what the ex-public school teachers I know have said,

perhaps it is the public schools aren't expelling enough students.

[Igel]

4. Hard to expel a student.

A lot of districts or counties have alternative schools for the difficult behavior cases.

Gotta have a good reason to deny them their Constitutional right to a free and appropriate public education.

Of course, a lot of kids know this and know that they can pretty much do what they want. Their parents don't care. Sometimes the "system's" the enemy; sometimes they're so convinced their kid's an angel that s/he can never do any wrong; sometimes the parent's given up or figures that "boys will be boys."

Principals can't do much. Every referral to alternative school is a mark against them. So they disrupt things.