Investigation Reveals How Charter Schools Betray Promises of "Equal Access"

For-profit charter schools have learned how to dodge requirements that keep doors open to students they'd rather not have

- Jon Queally, staff writer 

 

Corporate school reformers promote privately operated but publicly funded "charter schools" as one of the key components of their profit-friendly approach to solving what they call the failure of traditional public schooling, but a new investigative report from Reuters shows that many such institutions disregard their own promises of inclusion and equal opportunity by creating barriers to needier students while targeting for enrollment those most likely to pad test scores or otherwise enhance their own promises of "success".

As Reuters notes, there are many regulations that guide the admission behavior of charter schools, but because most of these rules are written by states there can be a wide divergence of how school districts operate nationwide. The investigation found that larger charter school operations—like KIPP, Yes Prep, Green Dot and Success Academy—have more equitable admission and enrollment structures, but that smaller, independently-run charters—whose numbers are growing exponentially nationwide as the corporate education reform movement helps remove barriers through state legislation—are inundated with practices that make a mockery of "equal access" to all students.