This is how Charter Schools Undermine Public Education

Charter Schools, like High Tech High and High Tech High International in San Diego, are often lauded as giving 'choice' to parents of public school children, but they use public tax money and then discriminate against kids. They get to pick and choose the best students and leave the tough students, those with learning disabilities or social problems to the regular public school system.

This is unacceptable. Any school that uses PUBLIC MONEY should not be allowed to discriminate. When TEACHERS fail to teach students, those teachers should be held accountable. The students should not be thrown out of the school when the school fails to teach.

The story below details one charter school network that uses "high standards" as an excuse to expel 'problem students'.

From Here and Now:
We’ve been hearing about the push by civil rights groups and the Obama Administration to end so-called “zero tolerance” discipline policies in schools, which suspend and expel students for often minor infractions.

The critics say it cuts kids out of the education process and puts them in a “school-to-prison pipeline.” The schools say it raises standards.

One group of schools in particular is relying on discipline quite a bit. The Illinois state board of education found that in the publicly-funded Noble Network of Charter Schools, which has 14 campuses in Chicago, 23 percent of students were suspended in 2013. That’s compared to 9 percent suspended at area public schools.

Noble students received infractions for everything from being less than a minute late, to not sitting up straight. Noreen S. Ahmed-Ullah has been writing about this in the Chicago Tribune and joins Here & Now’s Robin Young with details.