Dive Brief:
- In DC-area charter schools, admissions policies vary and sometimes limit the number of disadvantaged students able enroll, thus boosting graduation rates and test scores by “weeding out” those likely to have weaker academic records.
- The Washington Post reports that the city’s deputy mayor for education “is overseeing an effort to restructure how schools are funded by tying per-pupil payments more closely to actual enrollment.”
- New Orleans has tackled this problem in its charter schools by mandating that all empty seats be filled “as they become available.”
Dive Insight:
According to the Washington Post, area charters are worried that their continued growth and expansion will lead to regulation, including rules regarding filling empty seats similar to those in New Orleans. This democratization would likely lower the charters’ overall performance record, since students would then be able to enroll in grades that don’t currently accept new students, including grades 8-12. Some charters won’t even accept students after pre-kindergarten.
“The most recent results from the city’s DC CAS standardized test showed that scores rose the longer students stayed at the school and as fewer students took the test,” the Post reports.
A lack of transparency around charter schools’ own rules and regulations is nothing new, and admissions is only part of the issue. In Massachusetts, students have sued over more general enrollment restrictions, and in New York, a recent scandal at the popular Success Academy directly touched on the issue of charters purging low-performing and otherwise unwanted students after a principal’s “Got to Go” list was accidentally made public.
