{"id":1054,"date":"2016-10-03T16:44:12","date_gmt":"2016-10-03T21:44:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/?p=1054"},"modified":"2016-10-03T16:56:10","modified_gmt":"2016-10-03T21:56:10","slug":"when-public-school-is-no-longer-public","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/2016\/10\/03\/when-public-school-is-no-longer-public\/","title":{"rendered":"When Public School Is No Longer Public"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo<\/a>
Photo by ThoseGuys119, Flickr CC<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Charter schools are public schools that are meant to provide more choices for students and their families–at least, that\u2019s what federal law says. Yet, sometimes charter schools <\/span>reject students<\/span><\/a> based on academic performance. Does that make them less public? Other times, charter schools forbid teachers from unionizing and the National Labor Relations Board gets involved. Such competing and confusing legal definitions of \u201cpublic\u201d only complicate the debate over charter schools\u2019 legitimacy. Do these cases make charter schools any less public if the U.S. Department of Education insists otherwise? Certainly the NLRB thinks so, having recently argued that teachers in two separate charter schools do not have the right to unionize because, \u201c<\/span>charter schools are not public schools but private corporations.<\/span><\/a>\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

One way scholars of education parse out the difference is by comparing charter schools\u2019 behavior and organization with more traditional, unquestionably public schools.\u00a0Scholars find\u00a0that as long as these practices exist in a legal gray area and the school follows some institutional norms for public schools–such as not charging tuition and grading homework–charter schools are<\/em> public. <\/span><\/h5>\n