I went to a high school in Cali that was converted to a charter school. As far as I could tell, the main change was that they kicked out all the kids with poor grades or other problems. That is the polar opposite of "choice", it was about increasing inequality and it was completely disgusting.
Wow, so charter schools allow for stack-ranking their pupils all the out of the school if desired? Is there a list of reasons that a school cannot use to suspend or expel a student up somewhere? In addition, a list of active conditions with associated constraints for when they can?
Schools can do many things either directly or implicitly, with some variations based on local laws. Here are some that I’m aware of:
1. Have an exam to pass up to the next grade. This isn’t necessarily intended to be malicious but it means that kids who are struggling, have less than fully supported disabilities, unstable home environments, etc. aren’t in their stats for the higher grades but will be in the comparison schools.
2. Have a graduation requirement that, say, you pass a ton of AP exams. Struggling students are probably going to bail when the odds aren’t looking good.
3. Not offering support services: charters have a financial incentive not to hire specialists for special needs, psychologists, librarians, cafeteria workers, etc. Parents will often pull kids over to the public schools where they’ll get more support, which also makes the cost differential and difficulties accurately comparing performance more pronounced.
4. Favor high levels of family support: academic performance tracks closely with family wealth so anything which favors affluence will have the effect of removing more lower-performing kids. That can be homework requiring laptops which aren’t provided, having a schedule or location which doesn’t work well for transit users, after school / weekend clubs or courses with supply fees, etc.
5. Tailor the curriculum to attract certain types of student: require things like taking Latin/Greek or a STEM load, don’t offer much in the way of arts/music/sports, or simply requiring more classes total, etc.
Again, this doesn’t need to be malicious - it just means that you’re encouraging kids who aren’t hyper-focused on academics and well supported to go elsewhere. That makes the numbers harder to accurately compare with public schools who have to serve everyone and also confounds the question of how many of those kids would have been high performers at any school. People like to say this pushes them to be better, and that’s true in some cases but not as many as lore would have it and tends to ignore the kids who burn out but would have done well with a bit less pressure.
