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This article is stupid. New York State Education Law says that charter schools are public schools. I don’t think we need your various ruminations on the subject in light of that.

Thank you for this excellent post.

By your arguments, public universities are not “public” schools. They are not run by elected boards, and university presidents cannot be removed by public elections. They do not serve every student who shows up; they select their students through an application process. Yet I still think they are public institutions designed to provide a public good.

Charter schools are public schools, each run by a board of trustees, which is accountable to an authorizer. In New York the authorizers are the Board of Regents or the Board of Trustees of SUNY, both of which are appointed by elected officials. The school board of a charter school has a fiduciary responsibility to use public funds to serve its students, and board members can be removed for violating that responsibility.

Many public schools do not have an obligation to accept all students: in New York City we have selective schools that enroll students based on exams or auditions and limit the number of students they can enroll. Similarly, school buildings have physical limits on the number of students they can hold. It is the district that has a moral and legal obligation to educate all students, not individual schools. Many districts use a portfolio approach to meet the various needs of their students, including neighborhood or zone schools, magnet or exam schools, specialized schools for students with disabilities, vocational schools, and charter schools. These are all public schools.

No school should “counsel out” a student without good reason, but schools do have a moral responsibility to help students find the best setting for their education. A school that did not make a parent with an autistic child aware of specialized programs that better meet that child’s needs is as reprehensible as a school that counsels a poorly performing student to find another school just to juice their own test scores. And remember, with special education it is the district’s Committee on Special Education that decides whether a zone or charter school is the appropriate setting for a student. In many cases, the CSE will determine that neither a zone or charter school is appropriate, and place them in a District 75 school. Again, it is the district that must serve all students, not every individual school. And you are completely wrong about English language learners: charter schools must make a good faith effort to enroll these students and serve them once enrolled.

Finally, charter schools are in fact subject to public oversight, both by their authorizer and the State Department of Education. They are subject to regular compliance monitoring, evaluation visits, reporting requirements, independent financial audits, federal education laws, not just the regular process of having their charter contracts reviewed and renewed.

Clearly, charter schools operate in ways very different from district schools: their accountability structures are different and they operate under different regulations. But they are both public schools.

IDEA guarantees my autistic son and special education students Free and Appropriate Public Education.  It is indeed reprehensible to deny these children their rights and it is also illegal.  If going to his home school to make neighborhood friends with whom to model/practice socialization skills is the most appropriate education, how can the home school–whether a charter or traditional public school–turn him away?  

Mr. Hoffman: Achievement First and KIPP schools, as well as all other charter schools, are accountable to their board of trustees, which in turn are accountable to their authorizer, which is appointed by elected officials. Charter schools that are affiliated with management companies are still run by boards of trustees that hire their management organizations to provide services to their schools. A board can just as easily fire its management company if it is not satisfied with the quality of service. It is the same as school districts that hire for-profit companies and non-profit organizations to provide services in their schools, such as food services, training for teachers, curriculum programs, etc. The management of those companies and organizations are not hired or fired by the district, nor would we expect them to be. We do expect the district to do its due diligence in hiring these service-providers, and the district should be held accountable for making good use of public funds.

I like Alex’s positive description of charter schools:

“They are publicly financed schools that are run by private – usually nonprofit – organizations. Sometimes they are independent, and sometimes they are part of larger charter school organizations or chains.”

I would add to that description that charter schools are subject to significant government oversight, far beyond most private enterprises.  Of course, we can argue about the sufficiency (or excessiveness) of that oversight.

I leave the public vs private label wars to others (for now!).  

Actually, Ms. Moskowitz doesn’t technically run the schools. Each of the Harlem Success school’s has a board of trustees that holds the charter and each board can sever the school’s relationship with her management organization if it is not satisfied with the level of service she and her organization are providing. I assume they have a contract that spells out the terms of their relationship. Some boards hire a management organization to do select functions like finance and HR, others hire a management organization to run their entire school, from selecting the principal to developing the curriculum to training the teachers. The more important question to ask is how are the boards holding Ms. Moskowitz accountable for running their schools.

The Charter Movement, if I can capitalize that, is, in fact, being facile with its use of language. Nothing personal about Mr. Gideon, but he has adopted their arguments, and with them, their language.

And the Charter Movement’s entire trick in this regard has been to reduce “public” (notice the quote marks) to an adjective, and then to claim that it does not matter what “public” modifies, as long as it is related to schools, in some way.

I think this is one of the cleanest examples of amphiboly (logical fallacy depending on misconstrued modifiers) that I have ever encountered.

This grammatical sleight of hand is not Mr. Gideon’s. He may not realize that he has adopted it. But his quote marks show quite clearly that he has.

Jonathan,

I see your point about the word games (and thanks for introducing me to “amphiboly”!).  I favor the longer definitions, but I would change “some run for profit, some run not-for-profit” to “generally non-profit”.  I think your definition might mislead people about the current typical form of a charter school.  

Also, just as some charter supporters might have marketing goals in mind with the use of the word “public”, many anti-charter folk seem to use the word “private” to provoke images of Walmart. 

As a parent of an elementary school child, who attends a wonderful “traditional” public school, and who has also gone through private and charter school admission processes, there is no question in my mind that charter schools are public schools with many governmental restraints. Students in charter schools must take all the state tests that students in “traditional” public schools must take. Students in charter schools are admitted via lottery. So unlike private schools, which can carefully control the make-up of their classes, charter schools must accommodate all children who “win” the lottery, and who meet the residency requirements for the school. Classes in charter schools that I have seen are made up of children of all abilities, races, and income levels. Any parent who enters the lottery has a chance to enroll his/her child in the charter school. Although enrollment is not guaranteed, the limits are due to physical space or resources, not to any administrator deciding that one’s child is not qualified for admission. I think that Mr. Hoffman’s remarks are not accurate, and his comparisons to defense contractors offensive. I am grateful for the opportunities that charter schools provide to elevate and expand the educational options available for my child and for all children in their respective districts, and find them to be fully accountable to the public and government oversight.

I’m sorry I’m so late to this party because I’m enjoying reading this thread after, frankly, Alex, being a bit taken aback by your post.

It seems no one has conclusively defined “public school,” that is, in all its forms. Different respondents seem to be running around with different definitions in their heads.

With all the variables out there (do the families have to pay? how does admissions work? who gets to attend? what tests do they have to take? is the institution for profit?), many of which are not uniform within the DOE as noted above, it would seem the only safe definition would go back to the school’s origination. That is, only the state Board of Regents can authorize the creation of a public school. And charters are incorporated by the Regents, not by the Attorney General’s office, like all other nonprofits in the state (which causes us major headaches when we try to register with the charities bureau, for example, who want to treat us like any other nonprofit instead of a public school, or try to get state sales tax, because as a public school we are not eligible for the ST-119 form, instead we have a letter from the Dept of Taxation and Finance that says, “this institution is a charter school, and public schools do not pay sales tax, therefore this institution does not pay sales tax…”).

Alex brought up one important variable: who can fire the school leader, or the board of trustees? Yes, if an elected official wanted it badly enough, the people controlling the authorizers could make this step happen. The governor appoints the SUNY trustees. He could pull all of the trustees who don’t want to threaten KS Charter School with closure if its board doesn’t fire Principal Kitchen Sink. The Board of Regents or the old Board of Education (now the Mayor) could force a school to fire its leader, which is sort of happening now with East New York Prep.

Darryl: stick to baseball. The Mets need you coaching in Port St. Lucie right now.

If you think public schools don’t “counsel” out less desirable students….you need to catch a clue.

I have seen public schools with the need to protect their reputation as a high performing school come at the expense of serving english language learners, credit deficient and/or students with poor attendance. In many districts, local schools hold on to all students until a census date has passed (this is usually the date in which annual site budget dollars are allocated, usually dollars per student enrollments) when this date passes, these prestious schools counsel out their undesirable students to protect their test scores, their dropout rates, etc, etc. Once they get their funding they have no skin in the game to attract new enrollments as they don’t generally get more site funding after the census date. The central office will hoot and hollar about retaining all kids, but at the site level, it makes their jobs easier and they are generally not penalized for letting these kids move on to charters, continuation or simply drop out.

However, most charter schools need to enroll or they will not have the dollars to stay open. I am sure there are some charters that do in fact “skim” to have de facto private schools, I believe the great of many charters that need every enrollments to maintain their operations.

A great piece and very illuminating comments. To us, the issue is not whether charter schools are public or private. It also isn’t whether charters serve their students well (some do, some don’t — just like traditional public schools). The issue is whether charters ultimately will improve the overall quality of American public education — and if they do improve it, will they do so without compromising the cohesiveness of our society.

“Well, there was a model offered, that charter schools would be little experiments/centers of innovation and the knowledge gained would then be transferred back to traditional public schools. There is little evidence that this has occurred, and no one can seriously claim that it has happened to the extent envisioned. ”

Well, this isn’t because there aren’t charter schools (such as KIPP or Core Knowledge schools) doing very good things. So is your point that not enough traditional public schools are bothering to learn from success?

Mr. Buck:

Indulge me for a moment. Share your reaction to the assertion I attribute to Rick Hess: that school choice begets competition, and competition stimulates improvement.

Thanks.

Alex, great piece.

Perhaps you can do a follow up about charter schools that are runned by for profit companies.

I haven’t seen that come up in any of the discussions here and I would by fascinated to see how the pro charter people argue that a for profit charter school should still be recognized as a public school.

There seems to be many for profits in New York City. I would like to see a state law against it. I’d like to know who is getting wealthy under the guise of educating children and at the tax payer’s expense. Certainly Eva Moscowitz is. Perhaps Malcom Smith too. What about other elected officials? What about Geoffrey Canada?

KS,

I think it must be a distinction too fine for some of us to grasp. On January 19th, a story in Edwize maintained that Victory Schools, a for-profit charter management company, was “sucking up 25¢ of every public funding dollar that should go to the students of Merrick Academy.” It also said “Legislation proposed by State Senate leader John Sampson and State Assembly Speaker Shelly Silver would combine an increase on the cap with a prohibition of for profit involvement in charter schools…”

Are these statements factually incorrect?

If not, perhaps the issue is entirely one of semantics, or perhaps there’s something I missed, but I think Mustafa’s comment merits a more serious response in either case.

Kitchensink, that’s not the same thing? Maybe in your mind, not mind?

Now that you tried to pick apart my rhetoric, address the greater issue I mentioned (that you conveinently sidestepped); how in the charter school movement certain people are getting wealthy under the guise of educating children and on the taxpayer’s dime.

Good argument! In my mind, you have more than adequately proved your point. Charter schools are not public schools.