Shame on you, reinforcing the confusion as to what charter schools are when you almost certainly know better.

For the record, charters are not private schools taking public money - they are public schools, and yes they do have to take all children.

If yours was an honest mistake, you're certainly not alone - most people in this country don't know what charters are. Take a look at the results of the PDK/Gallup survey to see how widespread the confusion is: http://www.pdkintl.org/kappan/ k0...ol.htm#charters.
Brett | Homepage | 10.26.06 - 9:13 am | #

To be fair, they say "privately operated schools taking public money," which is true.

I'm too lazy to find the article now, but haven't recent studies shown that charter schools, on average, are worse than public schools?

The one (and yes, I realize one experience isn't enough to create an informed opinion) experience I have with a charter school was that of shock and awe. I can't even comprehend how bad the public schools were to force parents to put their kids in that one.
Barry | 10.26.06 - 11:14 pm | #

Charter funding varies by state.

Here in Mass, the biggest objection is that the board of ed gets to decide what charters can operate where, but then local tax revenues pay the full tuition. On the other hand, public choice schools only transfer the state portion of local revenues. So if, say, one town draws in 10 kids to its public school, but loses 10 to a charter school, then they can lose a net of more than six kid's funding.

Little wonder charters are almost universally opposed by municipalities, local voters, and parents who choose public schools. All of them lose out.

For parents of kids in public schools here, charters suck up so much funding that some high schools around here had to stop offering foreign language and instead mandated extra study hall time in recent years.

The state ought to be considered as just another district that has to pay for all the charter schools it wants to open. Then taxpayers across the state could decide how many charters they wanted to support, without having the burden borne by towns, property tax payers, and parents of kids in public schools.
MassParent | Homepage | 10.27.06 - 2:53 pm | #