A new report has charter-school advocates crying foul and their opponents cheering. In the process, the broader point that some schools have seriously questionable student-discipline practices is being lost in the crossfire. This isn’t exactly surprising. Nothing sparks an uproar in education like a charter-school debate, but it’s worth taking a step back to focus on what’s actually going on.
The report, published by the Center for Civil Rights Remedies at the University of California, Los Angeles, examines for the first time how charter schools across the country administer discipline. The authors found that black students and children with disabilities are disproportionately more likely to be suspended than their white and non-disabled charter-school peers. Charter opponents glommed onto the findings as evidence that charters are bad, while proponents played defense by saying that the disparities exist in traditional public schools. This is true. The report’s authors don’t deny this.
The report stems from the fact that since charters took off two decades ago, this is the first time they’ve had to report discipline data to the federal government. Using figures from the 2011-12 academic year, the latest year for which there is nationwide data, the report finds that almost half of black charter students at the secondary level attended one of 270 charters that were both largely segregated (at least 80 percent black students) and where the aggregate black suspension rate was 25 percent. The authors also note that 235 charter schools suspended at least half of their students with disabilities.
[For more of this story, written by Emily Deruy, go to http://www.theatlantic.com/edu...rter-schools/474459/]
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