SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the public-money-for-private-profit dept.
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, @08:57PM
If the board lacks any control over the charter school, then I would have to change my position
Yes, you went off half-cocked from the start.
THE WHOLE POINT of charter schools is that there are SEPARATE and get to make up THEIR OWN RULES.
All too often, they are run by crooks. [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [all-len-all.com]
Charter schools are simply the most recent method to rejuvenate segregation. [alternet.org]
show a profit
Ah. Neoliberalism rears its ugly head once again.
-- gewg_
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 07 2015, @10:12PM
Unfortunately, a large part of the point of charter schools is precisely that they can make their own rules, because the incumbent authorities have made such a mess of the schools currently in place.
While the grandparent poster may not have read with enough attention to detail, the key element here is that the Washington court has decided that publically funded charter schools may only operate if they work through the local school board (or equivalent) which pretty much craters their whole point. Funnily enough, this has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that enough people in Washington are angry enough with the original school system to support the creation of charter schools.
And no, Washington doesn't have a proud history of segregation. The initiative/law was passed precisely because people wanted better schools, not to keep darkies out. This isn't the Deep South. (And even if it were, it wouldn't work because of anti-bigotry laws.)
gew_, I don't know what your big issue here is (other than some weird desire to forcefeed everyone into the system for some reason beyond my reckoning) but you need to understand that homeschooling is growing rapidly in Washington precisely because people are so upset with their public schools. There are many symptoms of disgruntlement which have nothing to do with kids sitting next to kids of a different skin tone in the same room.
Maybe what you should do is come up with a way to get the public schools here to be efficient with money (good luck on that), effective at teaching (oh yeah, definitely good luck on that one) and persuade them to stick with your solution, rather than chasing after every lunatic trend (I'd wish you luck on that one, but maybe wishing you a good therapist would be better). That would do a lot more to benefit everyone than tearing down charter schools, the motivations for which you don't even appear to grasp.
As a washingtonian, I don't mind what ideology you have, but be a sport and don't let your ideology get in the way of good public policy, thanks.