If you want every child to have the basic right to a good education, and if you oppose segregation and discrimination against kids with disabilities as part of that right to a good education, then we need to talk about charter schools. A slew of recent stories from different parts of the country show the danger of sneak privatization they represent.
Perhaps the most powerful story comes from Durham, North Carolina, where Superintendent Pascal Mubenga said that students are not being well served by charter schools—“Go on line, check on the report card”—and that charters are draining money from public schools, but, more importantly, that charters are forces of segregation:
If Durham is not careful, Mubenga said its schools will become segregated like they were in the 1950s.
“We’re going to segregate our schools, and that’s not good,” Mubenga said.
DPS’ enrollment is currently about 82 percent black and Hispanic and 18 percent white. Many schools are already nearly completely black and Hispanic, as white parents have chosen charter schools and private schools to educate their children.
Elsewhere:
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- That’s related to the reason a Massachusetts Chinese immersion charter school was denied permission to expand: It had “higher rates of attrition of students with disabilities than other schools within its charter region.”
- The Washington, D.C., charter school visited by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who called it “exceptional,” is being forced to close because of declining test scores. (Note: constantly closing schools and forcing students to move is also a terrible educational practice. As is measuring education by test scores.)
(Links via In the Public Interest)