Common Dreams reports
The Seattle Times reports that
The ruling--believed to be one of the first of its kind in the country--overturns the law [I-1240] voters narrowly approved in 2012 allowing publicly funded, but privately operated, schools.
Teacher and author Mercedes Schneider offers more on the Act:
As is true of charter schools nationwide, the charters in Washington State (up to the current ruling) were eligible for public funding diverted from traditional public schools. Charter schools were approved via a November 2012 ballot initiative (I-1240, the Charter Schools Act) in which charters were declared to be "common schools" despite their not being subject to local control and local accountability. And also like America's charters in general, Washington's charters are not under the authority of elected school boards.
Thus, Washington voters had approved to give public money to private entities--a one-way street that provided no means for such funds to overseen by the public.
[...] The new ruling (pdf)[1] states that charters, "devoid of local control from their inception to their daily operation", cannot be classified as "common schools," nor have "access to restricted common school funding."
[...] "The Supreme Court has affirmed what we've said all along--charter schools steal money from our existing classrooms, and voters have no say in how these charter schools spend taxpayer funding," said Kim Mead, president of the [Washington Education Association], in a statement.
"Instead of diverting taxpayer dollars to unaccountable charter schools, it's time for the Legislature to fully fund K-12 public schools so that all of Washington's children get the quality education the Constitution guarantees them," Mead continued.
The Associated Press reports that the state had one charter school last year, and eight more have opened in the past few weeks.
I pity Ms. Schneider's students if she routinely starts sentences with conjunctions--especially consecutive, redundant conjunctions.
[1] I had trouble with the connection.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 07 2015, @07:50PM
I went to a charter school in Northfield Minnesota called Northfield School of Arts and Technology at the time, now called Arcadia Charter School. Everyone there is very passionate about education and their results show it. The majority of their graduates go on to 4 year universities. They do a lot of hands-on learning and the environment is totally different from a regular school. It's layed out like an office building, everyone has their cube, and they're separated into middle school and high school, and within that different color "advisories" that are under the supervision of a specific pair of teachers. Students propose their own projects to satisfy educational requirements. Classes are offered in some things though, like math, grammar, and languages, among other things like canoe building, high tunnel agriculture, solar power.
That these facilities are available to even the poorest of children is of fantastic benefit to everyone. I can't speak to all charter schools but at least the one I went to is an overwhelming success.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 07 2015, @08:20PM
The 1st study I remember being done on charter schools was, interestingly enough, done on Washington State schools.
It said that they did worse more than a third of the time and did better less than half of the time. [google.com]
We also discussed here New Analysis Debunks the Myth of Charter School Success [soylentnews.org]
that included Minnesota and Chicago which, again, don't live up to the hype.
available to even the poorest of children
...if you're lucky enough to survive the cherry-picking process available to charter schools--but not to public schools.
Charter schools can also expel students more easily.
Despite this very "liberal" (heh) framework, overall, charter schools manage to do worse.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 07 2015, @09:01PM
In other news, you need to read more broadly.
Whatever you think of The Economist, they're renowned for their skilled display and explanation of statistics, and they have covered charter schools pretty extensively.
Here's a link: http://www.economist.com/topics/charter-schools [economist.com]
But to save you a lot of reading, what it broadly comes down to is that the success or failure of charter schools at outperforming public schools is how they are constituted, with the biggest differences occurring across state lines, based on the rules in each state. Washington laid out a questionable set of rules, with questionable results.
So, yeah, keep reading.